Act Of Denial Research Articles

Brexit’s Illusion: Decoding Islamophobia and Othering in Turkey’s EU Accession Discourse among British Turks

The warnings about Turkey’s not-so-near accession to the EU are explored as a strategic tool in the Brexit campaign, linking concerns about sovereignty and immigration compounded with the anxieties surrounding Islam and the threat of terrorism. Drawing on the theoretical framework of Edward Said’s Orientalism and the unique perspectives gathered from British Turks, this paper sheds light on their nuanced responses. It uncovers strategies of disbelief and denial in the face of the constructed narrative that portrayed Turkey as an undesirable ‘Other’ with its predominantly Muslim population. A closer analysis of some British Turks’ narratives is premised not only on the sacralised defence of the principles of Turkish westernisation but also on the socio-political reputation of the Islamic Ottoman past as almighty. The article equally contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex interplay between British national identity and discourses surrounding immigration, sovereignty, and Islamophobia within the context of Brexit, as well as the principles by which the privileges of modern, secular Turkey, as well as the demise of the mighty Ottoman image, are maintained. In a paradoxical manner, the act of denial only serves to affirm the Brexit campaign’s narrative depicting Turkey as an undesirable ‘Other’ with a predominantly Muslim demographic.

Exploring dignity in the context of displacement – evidence from Rohingyas in Bangladesh and IDPs in Afghanistan

This paper focuses on understanding how displaced people perceive dignity. In doing so, empirical evidence from the displaced Rohingyas from Myanmar, now living in Bangladeshi camps, and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Afghanistan are contrasted with how dignity is being conceptualised in existing social science literature. In most traditional models or theories of dignity, one’s lived experience is absent, ignored or presumed by the theorist. This paper demonstrates that the common and traditional approaches that ignore the importance, experience and perception of dignity (and loss of it) from the perspective of the ‘victim’ group are, in effect, engaging in an act of denial – imposing the view and perspective of the powerful on the experience of the vulnerable, denying their voice. Rohingyas in Bangladesh and IDPs in Afghanistan are presented as two interesting case studies in understanding and revisiting existing conceptualisations of dignity through a bottom-up approach. Arguments presented in this paper enable us to view dignity through the lens of the affected, vulnerable and victimised people. It is argued that, for effective and sustainable resolutions for these vulnerable groups, such a view can inform national, regional and international policymakers, allowing them to become conscious of dignity from the perspective of the displaced people.

After Identity: Mennonite Writing in North America ed. by Robert Zacharias

Reviewed by: After Identity: Mennonite Writing in North America ed. by Robert Zacharias James Urry After Identity: Mennonite Writing in North America. Edited by Robert Zacharias. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2015. vii + 225 pp. Index. $31.95 paper. The subject of this collection of essays involves issues of identity in the context of creative writing by “Mennonites.” These are mainly the greatly varied descendants of European religious groups who arrived in North America at different times from different places but now encompass converts from elsewhere. Some contributors are literary scholars, others are both writers and literary scholars, and one is a historian. The postmodernist emphasis is apparent in many chapters, not just in the act of denial (including of self and labels of identity) but also in the choice of “theorists” selected to fashion argument. The collection is divided into two parts. The first examines the ways in which identity has been “framed” as “Mennonite” by literary critics, by authors from Mennonite backgrounds, and even by publishers. Some authors have denied their past or have at least claimed it is insignificant or irrelevant to an understanding of their work. As the lone historian points out, Mennonite writing has occurred in the context of the modernization of many Mennonite worlds. One consequence of this context is a certain love-hate relationship with whatever constitutes the very category “Mennonite.” Is one’s Mennonite past something to be transgressed? Or should it be reconstituted in line with current concerns and fashions? Various contributors raise many of these issues in their own particular ways. The second part of the volume considers ways in which creative writers and critics could expand their exploration and analysis of Mennonite identity. These include examining areas not previously touched upon, including the emergence of gay culture. While some contributors draw on comparative studies, others find enlightenment in further literary approaches. The past, however, maintains an influence: the rhythm and structure of ancient hymns and the echo of the catechism’s questions provide a counterweight to the present. While many of the contributors have connections with the prairies and Great Plains, there is not a strong sense of place. As migrants and transmigrants for their faith, Mennonites relate strongly to family and community rather than place, interconnected by genealogy and history. It is perhaps surprising that Mennonite writers of historical fiction are not considered in greater detail. And although one contributor touches on the subject of “play,” the issue of humor is not considered. Literary analysis, like Mennonite identity and the public presentation of self, is a serious business. James Urry Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand Copyright © 2017 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Should It Matter Where Genocide Denial Is Banned? A Critique of the Nexus Argument

A great many countries have adopted laws banning the denial of historical events – typically genocides and crimes against humanity. One attempt to classify these laws focuses on nexus: Is there a connection between the country banning the denial and the historical act being denied? For example, Germany might have a reason to ban Holocaust denial but Argentina would not. My essay critiques this argument. One critique is practical: How “local” must the history in question be? Does the concept of “local” censorship make sense in a world where nation-states (the entities called on to censor) have increasingly limited relevance? Another problem is theoretical: By highlighting the slippery slope problem (Argentines banning Holocaust denial), the nexus argument undercuts other legitimate arguments for and against memory laws. One can, for example, view memory laws as responses to political pressure. For example, Armenians in France have been trying for a decade to get France to ban denial of the Armenian Genocide. But what makes memory laws such an appealing alternative? One possibility is that calls for memory laws emerge from an explosion of denial which, in turn, comes from global efforts to taboo more traditional forms of hate speech. Regardless of the cause of memory laws, a “place”-based analysis has serious limitations. A serious analysis of memory laws should instead focus on: a) the nature of the event being denied; b) the rhetorical form the act of denial takes; and c) the legal context in which the act of denial arises (i.e. does the society ban other hate speech and/or denial of other genocides?). “Place” may have a role in this analysis – but it is a limited one.

A Tribute to Kaye Bock

It's been almost seven months since Kaye passed, and I still haven't taken her number out of my speed dial. There's no good reason for keeping her old office phone number in my cell phone. It's an act of denial, perhaps. Or maybe it's just comforting in some way to scroll through my phone and see her name come up again and believe for half a second that I could still press a button and hear her matronly voice and full laugh ring in my ear. That brief moment of comfort is always followed a few seconds of tightening behind the eyes as I remember where and when we are today .

Modifizierte Bulgarische Sprichwörter Im Lichte der Pragmatik: Zu den Ergebnissen Einer Internetrecherche

Proverbs typically considered to be traditional sayings that give advice or express general truths based on age-old human experience. Nevertheless, they have never been considered as items expressing the absolute truth. It was their didactic wisdom that was appreciated and passed onto the next generations. People also noticed that proverbs were not always to be accepted and followed as universal laws of behaviour, so they reacted humorously or satirically to these folk sayings by creating a new form of proverb — the anti-proverb. Both proverbs and anti-proverbs are therefore considered parts of the natural language and have nowadays become a subject of linguistic studies.The present paper conducts a research on Bulgarian anti-proverbs compiled from the Internet, with a special regard to their pragmatic characteristics. Numerous databases and other sources enable the researcher to emphasize certain that anti-proverbs have inherited from traditional sayings; these functions include the expression of invocation, suggestion, warning, and regulations. In addition, the present paper discusses some new functions of proverb-parodies, namely the questioning of popular opinion and norms, as well as the act of denial. Such function-changes are the results of paremiological adaptations to contemporary social, cultural, and economic needs.

Sighting / Siting / Citing the Scar: Trauma and Homecoming in Faulkner's Soldiers' Pay

Like so many young authors of the 1920s, William Faulkner drew material for his early work from the horrors of World War I and the difficulties confronting soldiers on their return home. In Malcolm Cowley's words, When the war was over--the other war--William Faulkner went back to Oxford, Mississippi. He had served in the Royal Air Force in 1918. Now he was home again and not at home, or at least not able to accept the postwar world.... Slowly the brooding thoughts arranged themselves into the whole interconnected pattern that would form the substance of his later novels. (1) Although his second novel, Mosquitoes, glances over the war, his first, Soldiers' Pay, and his third, Flags in the Dust, deal squarely with the theme of nostos. (2) Faulkner's own homecoming, for other reasons, was also disturbing, ambiguous, and full of literary possibility. For although he claimed all his life to have flown in the skies over France and to have received grievous injuries there, the truth is that Faulkner missed the war. The facts of his military career are not entirely clear. In the spring of 1918 Faulkner, at age twenty not yet eligible for the draft, was living in New Haven, Connecticut, with his friend Phil Stone. Faulkner claimed to have attempted to enlist some time before March 1918 and to have been rejected because he was too small, but no records of such an attempt survive. What is certain is that in June 1918 he passed himself off as an Englishman and enlisted with the Royal Air Force in Canada, but the armistice ended his service before he ever flew a mission. Nevertheless, on returning to Mississippi he affected the clothing and manners of an officer in the RAF, down to the cane and swagger stick, and began a lifelong fabrication of his war experiences. To his brother Jack (who did see action with the Fifth Marine Regiment) he told stories of celebrating the armistice by doing aerial stunts while drunk and finally crashing upside down into a hangar; to others he told of war injuries: a wounded leg--for a time he affected a limp--and a head injury that left him with a plate in his skull. (3) That Faulkner returned from a war he missed and affected a wound he did not receive invites theoretical speculation. (4) Faulkner simultaneously departed and stayed at home; he returned, but from a trauma he had merely fabricated. His elaborate and changing tall tales about his war service suggest this lack of combat experience provoked a need to realize a scar--to establish the reality of his fabrication by referring to it, situating it, and making it visible. If he missed the war, his fiction clearly demonstrates that he recovered it in his imagination. (5) Faulkner's first novel, Soldiers' Pay, addresses the theme of traumatic disruption in ways that are both straightforward and indirect. It chronicles the homecoming of a fatally wounded pilot and how that homecoming affects his family, his town, and the lives of the man and woman who care for him. Soldiers' Pay shows how trauma, brought home as a sign of unhealable rupture, propagates along familial, sexual, and social lines. Donald Mahon, having received terrible injuries in a dogfight over France just before the armistice, returns to his home in Charlestown, Georgia, to his father, a benevolent Episcopalian rector named Joe Mahon, the family servant, Emmy, whose secret lover he had been before the war, and his fiancee, the vain and shallow Cecily Saunders. The novel traces the reaction of the characters and the town to this terminal homecoming. Dr. Mahon insists on his son's potential for recovery despite his obviously fatal injury, while in a similarly blatant act of denial, Cecily, repulsed by Mahon's disfigurement, attempts to flee their betrothal by giving herself to, and finally marrying, her passionate but dim-witted admirer, George Farr. More complex than these are the reactions of Joe Gilligan, another soldier, and Margaret Powers, a young war widow, who encounter Mahon on a train, shepherd him home, and remain there to care for him. …