Superior Attitude Research Articles

God's Image: The Betrayer and the Betrayed in Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory

God's Image The Betrayer and the Betrayed in Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory Andrei Gotia "But at the center of his own faith there always stood the convincing mystery—that we were made in God's image. God was the parent, but He was also the policeman, the criminal, the priest, the maniac, and the judge. Something resembling God dangled from the gibbet or went into odd attitudes before the bullets in the prison yard or contorted itself like a camel in the attitude of sex."1 These are the thoughts of the whiskey priest whom the half-caste accompanies on the way to Carmen. In this compelling novel set during the persecution of the Catholic Church in Mexico beginning in the 1920s, the author dramatizes one of the essential truths of Christianity: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. . . . So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Gen 1, 26:27). The nameless protagonist of Greene's novel undergoes a continual stripping, started before the moment the reader encounters him in front of the General Obregon and continuing till the morning of his execution. From his superior attitude as a flourishing young priest, to his security, his health, to the little elements of his trade (the altar stone, the breviary, the wine, the attaché-case) the suit, the family, [End Page 106] the money, the paper with his last speech, the brandy—the priest abandons them all. But this severe purification only strengthens the core of his faith truly identified as a mystery. There are two levels on which this mystery works: the priest, in his continual conversion, keeps on discovering Christ's image among the people he meets and tries to help others see the same reality; simultaneously, as an alter Christus, the priest is reflected and contrasted partially, in subtle ways, in some of the secondary characters of the novel—Mr. Tench, the lieutenant, the American gangster, but also the half-caste (or mestizo, as he is also called). If the reader finds it easier to discover in the dentist the parody of the doctor of souls which the priest is; or is surprised at the monastic rigor displayed by the lieutenant but absent in the weak minister of God; or follows the parallel roads of James Calver and of the fugitive priest, both wanted by the authorities, looking at each other as brothers from their respective pictures in the office of the lieutenant until they get to see each other face-to-face in the Indian hut, any correspondence between the betrayer and the betrayed would seem far fetched (see 156). This article closely analyzes the relationship between the mestizo and the priest as two images of God, but also as a subtle but nevertheless real mirroring of one another. The whiskey priest is not given a name by the author. In fact, two of the three priests in the novel do not have names. As alteri Christi, the protagonist and his replacement transcend their personal identity and exist in virtue of their indelible office, which is sufficiently identified when they are addressed as "father": "If you would let me come in," the man said with an odd frightened smile, and suddenly lowering his voice he said to the boy, "I am a priest." "You?" the boy exclaimed. "Yes," he said gently. "My name is Father—" But the boy had already swung the door open and put his lips to his hand before the other could give himself a name. (221–22) [End Page 107] The third priest in the book, Padre José, is set apart from the other two by his name because he has abandoned the priesthood and has begun a civil life as a pensioner of the state. Everyone—but...

Review ofT. S. Eliot:The Contemporary Reviews

T. S. Eliot: The Contemporary Reviews. Ed. Jewel Spears Brooker. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004. xliv, 600 p. $110. Contemporary reviews of a writer's work are often of interest only as evidence of shifts in reputation or as raw material for reception studies. In T. S. Eliot's case, there is more at stake. Within the six years that separate the first review of Prufrock and Other Observations from those of The Waste Land (1917–1923), Eliot became the most praised and denigrated poet of his time. Reviewed by the old guard and by young writers who later became famous, he served as a lightning rod for controversies about modernism. The introduction to T. S. Eliot: The Contemporary Reviews by Jewel Spears Brooker provides a perceptive guide to the course of those contentions. As she remarks, the early reviews established a pattern that was to persist for a decade: emphasis on an intense and disturbing subjectivity in the poems, and identification of Eliot as a poet whose technical skill and subtlety could neither be imitated nor adequately characterized. After publication of The Waste Land, the subjectivity of the early poems could be construed as expressive of the consciousness of a generation—and condemned for its incoherence, negativity, and perverse intellectualism. A review of Poems 1909–1925 summed up Eliot's reputation at the time: "violently attacked, passionately admired, and . . . perfectly misunderstood" (p. 136). Publication of The Sacred Wood (1920) introduced another Eliot—one perceived as a "scientific" critic whose scholarship, intelligence, "superior attitude," "stiff and hidebound style," and "ice-cold heart" triggered suspicions about the poet behind the poems. In Homage to John Dryden (1924), one purpose of [End Page 176] Eliot's literary criticism became clearer. Edmund Wilson perceptively noted that Eliot praised those of his predecessors (for example, the metaphysical poets and French symbolists) who constituted a tradition of which Eliot himself was a part (124). "Tradition and the Individual Talent" served the same purpose and, in its emphasis on impersonality, replied to critics of his poetry who identified the subjectivity of its personae with the poet himself. In the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth said that "entirely to enjoy the poetry which I am recommending, it would be necessary to give up much of what is ordinarily enjoyed." Eliot engaged in an analogous attempt to refashion taste. Literary modernism was presumed to be progressive. In "The All-Star Literary Vaudeville" (1926), Edmund Wilson referred to Pound and Eliot as writers of "the literary Left." When Eliot's prose of the twenties and thirties extended its range to include politics, religion, and society, the assumed connection between literary innovation and political radicalism began to collapse. His notorious declaration in For Lancelot Andrewes (1928) that he was a royalist in politics, an anglo-catholic in religion, and a classicist in literature prompted strictures from Wilson and Conrad Aiken. Approval of Selected Essays (1932) by the New York Times and the Sunday Times (London) was counterbalanced by the lukewarm reactions of the Times Literary Supplement, the New Statesman, Paul Elmore More, and sharply critical reviews in the New Republic and the Nation. Hostility reached its height with publication of The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933) and After Strange Gods (1934). In the latter volume Eliot remarked that his "declaration of faith" in 1928 had been "injudicious," but he created a new basis for repudiation of his standpoint in his comment about the undesirability of many "free-thinking Jews" in nominally Christian societies—a remark that was noted only in passing at the time but that has recently dominated discussion of his work. For those plunged back into these contentions, it is a relief to encounter R. P. Blackmur's comment on After Strange Gods: "Nobler, and rasher, intentions cannot be conceived" (273). The first Eliot was a poet; the second was a critic. In the early thirties, Henry Hazlitt noted that...

Historiographic Method and the Study of Early Cinema

For better or worse, my efforts to assess the state of film history have taken a personal turn. My work as a film historian found traction in the midto late 1970s when, as an independent filmmaker and part-time graduate student, I became curious about the beginnings of cinema, particularly of film editing. What was the first cut? How did editing develop? The available literature did not adequately address these issues, and so I began to explore them myself. Of course, my questions seem somewhat naive in retrospect. I soon realized that editing was around long before cinema, that in nineteenth-century screen entertainment, the exhibitor, rather than the image-maker, generally held editorial control and was responsible for what we now call postproduction. On a basic level, then, film editing was not invented but shifted from exhibitor to production company, resulting in the centralization of this crucial element of creative control and acceptance of the filmmaker as an artistic and cultural force. Intimately related to this insight into production practices was an interrogation of the system of representation, which prior scholars had dismissed as primitive, unformed, and incoherent. Rather than assuaging my curiosity, these new understandings pointed to related topics for engagement, which absorbed much of my energy for the next fifteen years. Obviously I was not alone. The study of early cinema produced a community of scholars whose work was historical and based on archival research. As has often been noted, the 1978 annual meeting of the Federation of International Film Archives (FIAF), held in Brighton, England, proved to be a crucial moment as historians, archivists, filmmakers, and theorists from Europe and the United States came together to view fiction films made between 1900 and 1906 and to present their initial insights on the pre-Griffith era. The conference signaled a new integration of academic and archive-based history and fostered tendencies that contributed to the formulation of a new historiography. One of the most fundamental changes involved a new approach or attitude toward the subject. Too often film scholars have maintained a superior attitude toward the works they examine and the creative artists who made them. In this regard, Edwin S. Porter, the key figure in my dissertation, was a touchstone. Film historians had sometimes credited Porter with the breakthrough realization that cinema could be a storytelling form, but just as quickly they had criticized him for being rather inept as a storyteller. Of course, both assessments were off the mark. On the one hand, storytelling was around from the onset of cinema and Porter was just one of many filmmakers to develop the story film in the early 1900s. On the other hand,

Humor's Role in Imagining America: Ebenezer Cook's The Sot-Weed Factor

In stark contrast to the serious religious writings of the New England Puritans, Ebenezer Cook's poem The Sot-Weed Factor; or, a Voyage to Maryland portrays a colonial America full of con artists, rambunctious lawyers, and drunken planters. The narrator is an English tobacco factor who is swindled by these unscrupulous colonists. The poem becomes a form of revenge he hurls insults and curses, but, several critics have argued, the humor in the poem is two-fold. While the factor points out the shortcomings of the colonists, he reveals himself to be a buffoon unable to negotiate life in the New World. Both audiences for the poem, English citizens and colonists, would then find it humorous, J. A. Leo Lemay has pointed out, the English citizens laughing at the portrayal of colonists uncivilized and the colonists laughing at the British factor's ineptitude. The dual satire, however, does more than shrewdly appeal to two audiences. In this essay I will investigate humor's role in the process of imagining America a community separate from the motherland of Britain. Humorous writings in general and Cook's poem in particular have received little attention related to their role in the process of nationalism. (1) Their move is not admittedly the bold declaration of a on a hill set apart from England, but the humor works by subtly separating British from colonists, outsiders from insiders. As the factor insults the colonists, he distances himself from them, thus taking on the role of the outsider. In the dual satire, the colonists become insiders who perceive the humor in the factor's inability to adapt to life in America. The humor of the poem forms an imagined American community by uniting colonists who get the New World jokes. The factor describes his entrance into the New World unwanted and treacherous. He claims that he was Condemn'd by Fate to way-ward Curse (1) and was forced my Native Soil to fly, / And the Old World must bid good-buy (6-7). In describing his unwelcome journey from England to America, the factor establishes at the very beginning of the poem the important distinction between the Old World he left with heavy heart and the New World he enters unwillingly. He immediately takes on the role of the outsider he betrays his ignorance of the colonial experience. This entrance into the New World is paralleled in literary history by the character of Robin in Hawthorne's short story, My Kinsman, Major Molineux. Hawthorne's story is set later in colonial history and is more overtly concerned the distinction between Old World and New, but the positions of the factor and Robin are similar. (2) Both are unable to read the culture around them and so unwittingly become the objects of humor. Robin has come to the a young man expecting to get ahead in life through his wealthy uncle. We are told he enters the as if he were entering London city but instead finds the turbulence of colonial rebellion. Unaware of the events taking place, he tries to get directions to his uncle's house by asking the various citizens he meets, Whereabouts is the dwelling of my kinsman, Major Molineux? Instead of receiving a direct answer to his seemingly innocent question, he is repeatedly laughed at and even accused of being a runaway. The sot-weed factor of Cook's poem likewise is accused of being a runaway when the locals do not recognize him. He also betrays confusion about his surroundings when he, for example, mistakes the sound of cows for the howling of wolves and panics. Although he maintains a superior attitude, he is lost Robin entering the New World. Our factor, however, differs from the later outsider of Hawthorne's story in one dramatic aspect: while Robin expects the people he meets to treat him an equal and is shocked by being targeted an outsider, the factor does not recognize the colonists equals. In fact, the factor goes to great lengths in his satire to portray the colonists the Other because in his eyes they have deviated so drastically from their English cultural roots that they are no longer even remotely related to him. …

From Masturbation to Homosexuality: A Case of Displaced Moral Disapproval

I argue that the decline in moral disapproval of masturbation in the American religious culture over the last half-century is directly responsible for increased moral disapproval of homosexuality. Moral disapproval previously directed toward masturbators is being redirected instead toward homosexuals. Since masturbation has been practiced by the overwhelming majority of individuals who self-identify with the American religious culture, while homosexual acts have been engaged in by a significantly smaller number of individuals who self-identify with this culture, the displacement of moral disapproval from masturbatory behavior to homosexual behavior leads to the stigmatization of those who engage in homosexual behavior, and an attitude of moral superiority and personal condescension inevitably follows. Nineteenth and twentieth century writings on the perils and evils of masturbation are cited in support of this argument.

Let’s try to weed out applicants with a superior attitude

Nursing Standard states that the number of nurses reported to the UKCC over allegations of professional misconduct has soared to its highest point (News August 9).

19 Devaluation and Deselection: June 1949 to February 1950

Sunday 26 June The papers today are full of the financial difficulties — the drain on our gold reserves and the proposed convertibility of sterling — I don't profess to understand the intricacies of finance, but clearly our main trouble is that we cannot sell our goods cheap enough.Monday 27 June Today in the House we began the Committee stage of the Finance Bill — it will go on again tomorrow. Cripps is not giving way on a single point. He assumes rather an irritating, superior attitude in the House which is rubbing our people the wrong way. There is general gloom about our financial position and the Socialists are fussed about the industrial unrest in the docks and on the railway — I suppose they will solve the railway problem by giving the extra pay.

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

Reviewed by: King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa Paul Gordon Lauren King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998). All the great advances in human rights have been—and will continue to be—made at that critical moment of moral judgment when men and women confronted with abuse react with outrage and make a decision. They decide that despite all of the tradition, prevailing assumptions, pressures from vested interests, and resistance aligned against them, they will no longer be willing to simply accept things as they are, no longer be passive, and no longer be silent. They become willing to risk their families, their friendships, their jobs, their reputations, their security, and sometimes even their lives on behalf of those who suffer. Once they became aware of the unspeakable suffering of the Middle Passage across the Atlantic, for example, Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce determined to commit their lives toward ending the slave trade. The personal experience of holding wounded soldiers writhing in agonizing pain without medical attention led Henry Dunant to create the International Red Cross. Witnessing the terrible plight of thousands of helpless people fleeing their homelands in the wake of war and revolution in order to save their lives convinced Fridtjof Nansen to devote himself to protecting the rights of refugees. The realization of the unimaginable genocide of the Holocaust convinced many in the world, like Eleanor Roosevelt, of the need to work tirelessly on behalf of establishing international standards of human rights. The arbitrary arrest of students for toasting “to freedom” moved Peter Beneson to launch a letter writing campaign that eventually became Amnesty International. All of these actions, and countless others by those known and unknown from the globe to the grassroots, flow from decisions made at moments of moral choice. This essential element in understanding and appreciating the historical evolution of human rights is captured in all of its drama, pain, and courage by Adam Hochschild in his blistering book, King Leopold’s Ghost, and appropriately subtitled A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. At the end of the nineteenth century, King Leopold of Belgium became obsessed with seizing control of territory in Africa. Like many other Europeans and Americans of his day, he viewed the continent as if it were without Africans: a vast expanse of uninhabited space, just waiting with unlimited possibilities for prestige and profit. The Congo appeared ripe for the taking. With charm, seductive rhetoric, political guile and deviousness, propaganda and sham organizations, bribes, hidden accounting, manipulation, the ruthless use of the military power of the state, and boundless greed, Leopold set out to make the Congo his personal fiefdom. Brutal exploitation and the forcible extraction of tons of ivory, and then shiploads of rubber, soon brought him staggering wealth. Like all oppressive regimes, of course, the success of Leopold’s operation [End Page 535] required those willing to follow orders. He needed explorers, military officers and men, steamboat captains, state functionaries, concession company officials, foremen, and soldiers of fortune, among others, willing to accept the prevailing attitudes of racial superiority over indigenous peoples, to do exactly what the system told them to do without asking troublesome questions, to inflict pain or kill, and to keep quiet. He had no difficulty finding such people. Indeed, an important measure of his success in this regard can be seen in the fact that he was able to hide the brutality of his operation and actually portray himself as a philanthropic monarch and the Congo as a veritable model of progress and civilization for years without challenge. But not everyone can be bought or persuaded. Through Hochschild’s impassioned and riveting account, we find visitors with different eyes and different values traveling by foot around the lower rapids and by steamer up the river into Leopold’s hidden and lucrative Congo. One of these is a black American named George Washington Williams, a Baptist minister and writer. To his shock, he dis-covers not the paradise of a benignly ruled colony and well-treated people as described by...

Gender Differences in Depression: The Role Played by Paternal Attitudes of Male Superiority and Maternal Modeling of Gender-Related Limitations

A reanalysis of a large multi-generational,predominantly Caucasian sample of adults found a largegender difference in self-reported depression involvinganxiety, appetite and sleep disturbance, and fatigue (“anxious somatic depression”) butnot in “pure depression” unaccompanied bymany of these other symptoms, replicating earlierfindings on high school and college samples. Anxioussomatic depression was prevalent among women whosefathers reported attitudes of male superiority and amongwomen whose mothers reported emphasizing the importanceof professional success but feeling that the jobs they held were not respected by others. Anxioussomatic depression, but not pure depression, was foundto be prevalent among women who did not attend collegeand among those who attended college but felt that the jobs they held were not respected byothers.

Racism 102: The Classroom

Within our educational institutions today, supremism (racial superior attitudes) are a function of how schools enforce discipline, use standardized tests, select curriculum and texts, and of teacher attitudes. To illustrate the expression of supremism in American schools today, in Study 1, the authors instructed European American 4th-year teachers-in-training to estimate the grade point average (GPA) and IQ of four African American or four European American children. The GPAs and IQs of the African American children were estimated to be significantly lower than those of the EuropeanAmerican children. Study 2 showed that the racial attitudes of European American student teachers predicted their evaluation of and the pleasure they derivedfrom reading a short story or a poem supposedly written by an African American author It was concluded that old-fashioned racism remains afundamental problem at all grade levels in American schools today.

The Effect of a Therapist's Pregnancy on a Therapeutic Relationship with an Inmate Charged with Infanticide

Summary This paper describes the impact of pregnancy on a therapeutic relationship. It is a personal account, told from the therapist's perspective. Specifically, it discusses the effects of the interaction between the increasingly noticeable pregnancy of the clinician, and the circumstances of the patient: an incarcerated woman charged with the death of a toddler. It explores the psychodynamic changes during the course of therapy due to the clinician's pregnancy and the inmate's crime. The therapist describes an increasingly negative countertransference, while the patient expresses an attitude of superiority over the clinician. It is suggested that the patient identified with the therapist and that both members of the therapeutic alliance were dealing with their own internal struggle with their ability to mother.

Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793 (review)

430 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 Dali L. Young is an assistantprofessor ofpolitical science and the author o/Calamity and Reform in China (Stanford University Press, 1996.) mi James L. Hevia. Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of1793. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995. xv, 292 pp. Hardcover $49.95, isbn 0-8223-1625-0. Paperback $15.95, isbn 0-8223-1637-4. There has been much renewed interest in the historical significance of the 1793 Macartney mission to Qing China in both the West and China. For example, Joanna Waley-Cohen, in her recent article on Chinese reactions to Western technology in the late eighteenth century ("China and Western Technology in the Late Eighteenth Century," American Historical Review 98, no. 5 [1993]: 1525-1544), has revised earlier assessments of Qing dynasty blindness to world developments in the eighteendi century and has shown how these erroneous assessments grew out ofWestern technological superiority after the nineteenth-century industrial revolution, which was then read back into the Macartney mission to China by later historians and diplomats. This misassessment in Western attitudes toward China, Waley-Cohen argues, was also due in part to the Qing court's need under the Qianlong emperor (r. 1735-1795) to reassert the "public Chinese attitude of superiority toward foreigners" in the factionalized domestic politics of1793 at the same time that it avidly employed Jesuit experts in the arts ofwarfare for its late eighteenth-century military campaigns against rebels within the empire. Hevia's book continues this revisionist trend by reevaluating the Macartney mission in light ofQing foreign relations and die development ofmodern European diplomacy. Cherishing Men From Afar explores Manchu and British imperial formations in the late eighteenth century as the cultural productions of two expansive imperialisms with equally universalist pretensions. Their different modes ofpolitical practice based on competing sets ofhierarchical relationships and political claims betray, according to Hevia, substantially different conceptual frameworks and signifying practices. Consequently, the Macartney embassy to the Qianlong court© 1996 by University was not caught up in a simple conflict between a "traditionalist" Chinese tribute ofHawai'i Presssystem and a "modern" European diplomacy whose driving force was an entrenched "culturalism" in the traditional Chinese political world. Instead, Hevia suggests that the Chinese "tribute system" model used by John K. Fairbank and Reviews 431 many others since has overdetermined the confrontation by essentializing it as an inevitable confrontation between tradition (China) and modernity (the West), thereby missing the specific historical challenges that a land-based Qing Imperium and a seafaring British empire each faced when they encountered each other for the first time in 1793. According to Hevia, the two modes of Qing and British diplomacy must each be unraveled in order to understand how the Qing framework for imperial ceremonies ofguest ritual and imperial audience and the British notion ofinternational relations interacted. In the process, we learn how European discourse on diplomacy between equal states was itselfa historical artifact ofEuropean global expansion whose naturalizing discourse of sovereign equality in effect legitimated discursive forms ofsymbolic violence (Western superiority / Qing arrogance) in 1793 before diplomacy was transformed into open warfare (free trade / Opium War) in 1839—an argument that of course derives from Edward Said's Orientalism but is now redeployed in Sino-Western relations. We also see how the Manchu cosmopolitical order for the production and negotiation ofimperial power was based on specific ritual and ceremonial procedures that informed how Qing officials would handle the requests of an emissary ofthe British empire. The strength of Hevia's account lies in its clear delineation ofdie basis for Manchu rulership in the Qing Imperium. In a realm filled with heterogeneous Manchu, Mongol, Tibetan, and other ethnic lords, the Manchu rulers successfully used lordship as the basis for organizing interdomainal relations and incorporated such lords under the Qing emperor's claims to political preeminence. Ritual and its attendant forms ofceremonial behavior (i.e., "disposition ofbodies" via the kowtow, etc.) were the cosmologica! forms ofpolitical interaction between lords that revealed their inclusion under the Qing and the negotiated forms of that inclusion. Accordingly, Hevia makes it clear how the Macartney embassy to China was perceived by the...

Factors Affecting Physiotherapy Graduate Job Selection

Summary A study was conducted into the factors influencing new physiotherapy graduates when choosing their first post. Questionnaires were sent to all 108 final-year students from the five schools in north-east England. The overall response rate was 72.5%. The factors of major influence on job choice were: attitudes of potential superiors, in-service training, attitudes of potential colleagues and post-registration resources. A high degree of concordance was shown between respondents. This study may serve to high-light some of the current recruitment issues.

Male Images and Female Desire

Male Images and Female Desire Gudrun Brockhaus (bio) Translated by Hillary Hope Herzog and Todd Herzog The social-psychological attempts to uncover an “explanation” for the susceptibility to fascism often revolve around certain relatively abstract psychological mechanisms: underdeveloped ego, sadomasochism, sexual anxiety, authoritarianism, and crises of identity have all been suggested. 1 I don’t want to take up this tradition of psychological investigations of fascism here; rather, I want to back up a step and move toward a much more specific description of the content of the wishes, anxieties, and conceptions of men and women during the National Socialist era. What occupied their thoughts, and what aspects of National Socialism addressed their wishes and anxieties? These questions emerge from the tradition of Ernst Bloch’s objections to his communist friends of the 1920s right up to the 1962 edition of Erbschaft dieser Zeit (Heritage of our time), in which he spoke of a “helplessness” against the “deceitful intoxication” of the Nazis, of the “uncontrollable attractions,” and of the “desire for an unclear something else” that found their expression in the pro-Nazi movement in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. 2 Bloch complained at the time—and it remains a pressing issue today—that “leftist” analysts of fascism, such as those by Géorg Lukács and Karl Kautsky, derided the contradictions of Nazi ideology with a “tender arrogance” ( “weichem Hochmut” [ EZ, 146]), diagnosing the low intellectual level and barren rhetoric of the Nazis from a stance of crystal-clear Enlightenment. Many texts concerned with the theme of women and fascism adopt a similarly superior attitude in describing the reactionary, misogynistic program [End Page 71] of the Nazis. Such blood-and-soil stereotypes of women as Gebärkuh, 3 the blond Gretchen, the selfless and self-sacrificing mother, and the hero’s widow are constantly disproved. Often, “impossible” quotations are piled up one after another—Alfred Rosenberg, for example, is always a good source. Though it is not the intention of the critics, this way of presenting the antifeminist program of the Nazis makes the success of National Socialism even less understandable; unless one wants to ascribe that success to female stupidity, this mode of presentation doesn’t explain why those against whom the program was so clearly directed went along with it. Klaus Theweleit, in his analysis of the “male fantasies” (“Männerphantasien”) that he found in the protofascist writings of Freikorps soldiers, also warned of the danger of antifascist criticism placing itself in a position of radiant enlightenment, hovering far above the object of study. 4 If I didn’t allow these objects to speak, if I didn’t attempt to place myself among the pro-Nazi women, if—I am willing to assert—I didn’t attempt to feel as they felt, I would understand nothing of the fascination of fascism. This call for understanding the feelings of the objects of study is especially applicable to fascism in all its forms, since the psychologizing of politics was central to fascism’s success. The Nazis did not attempt to win over potential voters with a concrete political program or proposals to reorganize society. Their widely interpretable slogans appealed to an emotional accord. Over the years only two central elements of the program remained constant: anti-Semitism and a militantly expansionistic nationalism—and even these were not clearly formulated. Many other elements were diffuse, did not lend themselves to concretion, were not translated into institutional pragmatics, and so allowed for contradictory interpretations. In terms of the political program concerning women, Rosenberg’s notion of the woman as the servant of the man coexisted for years with views such as those of Sophie Rogge-Börne, who saw the woman as equal to the man in a communal fight. The vagueness and multiple meanings of Nazi ideology arose on the one hand from the inability to achieve a politics that matched reality, and on the other hand from the conscious goal of addressing and uniting the most diverse factions. They point above all, however, to the aestheticization and depoliticization of the public-political discourse, in which the event replaced the argument or at least notably reduced its importance. A...

Severing the ties that bind: government repression of indigenous religious ceremonies on the prairies

Religious ceremonies were an inseparable part of Aboriginal traditional life, reinforcing social, economic, and political values. However, missionaries and government officials with ethnocentric attitudes of cultural superiority decreed that Native dances and ceremonies were immoral or un-Christian and an impediment to the integration of the Native population into Canadian society. Beginning in 1885, the Department of Indian Affairs implemented a series of amendments to the Canadian Indian Act, designed to eliminate traditional forms of religious expression and customs, such as the Sun Dance, the Midewiwin, the Sweat Lodge, and giveaway ceremonies. However, the amendments were only partially effective. Aboriginal resistance to the laws took many forms; community leaders challenged the legitimacy of the terms and the manner in which the regulations were implemented, and they altered their ceremonies, the times and locations, the practices, in an attempt both to avoid detection and to placate the agents who enforced the law. Katherine Pettipas views the amendments as part of official support for the destruction of indigenous cultural systems. She presents a critical analysis of the administrative policies and considers the effects of government suppression of traditional religious activities on the whole spectrum of Aboriginal life, focussing on the experiences of the Plains Cree from the mid-1880s to 1951, when the regulations pertaining to religious practices were removed from the Act. She shows how the destructive effects of the legislation are still felt in Aboriginal communities today, and offers insight into current issues of Aboriginal spirituality, including access to and use of religious objects held in museum repositories, protection of sacred lands and sites, and the right to indigenous religious practices in prison.

Manufacturing managers and the adoption of advanced manufacturing technology

The theory of reasoned action is used to explain why manufacturing managers champion the adoption of advanced manufacturing technology (AMT). Championing includes familiarization behaviours, such as experimenting with new technologies, and promotion behaviours, such as convincing others of the benefits of new technologies. The theory of reasoned action suggests that championing behaviours of manufacturing managers are determined by their personal beliefs about the outcomes of the adoption of AMT and their beliefs about the attitudes of superiors, peers and subordinates towards AMT. The explanatory power of the theory of reasoned action is tested with data collected from a survey of manufacturing managers in the automotive parts industry. A partial least squares analysis of the data shows that the theory does explain the championing behaviours of familiarization and promotion. The paper concludes that personal beliefs about the outcomes of adoption of AMT are most significant in determining promotion behaviours and that beliefs about the attitudes of senior executives towards AMT automation are most significant in motivating familiarization behaviours.

The Verbosity of Minimalism: Sarraute, Duras and Redonnet

Women in French Studies THE VERBOSITY OF MINIMALISM: SARRAUTE, DURAS AND REDONNET Rachael A. Criso University of Pennsylvania Minimalist theater seeks to convey its message via a few simple elements: a nearempty stage, one or two characters and sparse dialogue. Uninflected voices offer fragments of life in attenuated scenes of existential angst. Often omission serves as comment, and pauses punctuate the speech. It is the spectators who must fill the gaps. These blanks constitute one of the major thrusts behind minimalist drama, and exist as non-verbal, non-visual voices. In Archéologie du savoir. Michel Foucault argues that what is not said can often be more substantive that what is: " Le discours manifeste ne serait en fin de compte que la présence répressive de ce qu'il ne dit pas; et ce non-dit serait un creux qui mine de l'intérieur tout ce qui se dit" (36). The unsaid manipulates our comprehension of what we hear, colors our perception, and guides our understanding. Thus, minimalist drama, given its visual and verbal starkness, operates within the realm of the spectators' subconscious, causing strings of connectors to link, remember, judge, condemn, pity or praise, all in an unrecorded split-second. Ultimately, the juxtaposition of disparate, banal statements with silences expresses much more than the individual words taken at face value. Consequently, the whole is much more than the sum of its parts. In his study, Théâtres du nouveau roman, Arnaud Rykner coins the phrase "logodrame " to describe plays in which conversation, or the parole, acts as catalyst. In the logo-drame. language exists as the motorizing force (instead of as a mere descriptive instrument), and dramatic progression is determined by the dialogue and its barely-perceptible fluctuations in intonation and tone. For example, to reveal "inner movement" — the emotions concealed beneath commonplace events and inane conversation —Nathalie Sarraute developed what she called "tropismes." Sarraute evokes superficial, mundane situations through 21 Women in French Studies banal dialogue perforated with silence. These minimal verbal exchanges give way to "sous-conversations" — the fleeting, impalpable sentiments which words are too clumsy to describe. As Sarraute explains, the botanical term, "tropisme," reflects the instinctive nature of these emotions, in the same way that a plant has an instinctive and natural tendency to move toward a light-source. In her radio play, Le Silence, Sarraute emblematizes physical silence. As there is no scenery or action to distract the listener, only words and silence act as communicators. Even in a subsequent stage version of the play, disembodied voices, devoid ofparticularizing traits, serve as the vehicle for the tropistic force and the only way to express inner movements. Throughout Le Silence, the main character, Jean-Pierre, says almost nothing. His silence triggers the logo-drame when the other characters question his lack ofcommunication. They interpret it as a superior attitude; they see it as scorn, disapproval. Later, they mistake it for a sign of intelligence, then moral strength and, finally, physical prowess. Jean-Pierre refutes none of these attributes, which only serves to encourage the others to continue their diverse interpretations of his silence. Most importantly, his silence forces the others to articulate their reactions — they would rather say anything than be left in the void. Silence undermines the nature and reason for social intercourse. It invades the interchange between human beings, and acts as a parasite on communication. In this play particularly, it functions as the negator of speech itself, destroying conversation by erecting a barrier. However, counteractions by the other characters indicate the existence of the "non-dit," the inferiority, intellectual weakness, rejection, guilt and envy — emotions often felt but seldom voiced. When Jean-Pierre finally speaks, only to utter a banality, the spell is broken, and the others are quick to deny the effect of his silence and their unguarded reactions. Finally, the act of speech erases the memory of silence; the other characters, as nothing concrete was expressed into words, calmly pretend that they were never angry, admiring orjealous. The "non-dit" then operates in both directions; the intangibility of inner movements, only perceived and never concretized, makes them easy to deny and impossible to prove. In Sarraute's recent...

Showdown at Culture Gap: Images of the West in the Plays of Shuji Terayama

Although the popular press recently announced the "discovery" of hanbei (Japanese anti-American sentiment) and kenbei, its more virulent, gut-level version, such attitudes are far from new. Japanese intellectuals and artists have suffered from an intensely paradoxical ambivalence toward "the Other" for at least 1500 years, ever since initial contact with China forced Japan to confront conflicting attitudes of cultural superiority and cultural indebtedness. It can be argued that Japanese intellectual history is a pendulum swinging wildly between the extremes of national self-aggrandizement and feelings of inferiority.

Showdown at Culture Gap: Images of the West in the Plays of Shuji Terayama

Although the popular press recently announced the "discovery" of hanbei (Japanese anti-American sentiment) and kenbei, its more virulent, gut-level version, such attitudes are far from new. Japanese intellectuals and artists have suffered from an intensely paradoxical ambivalence toward "the Other" for at least 1500 years, ever since initial contact with China forced Japan to confront conflicting attitudes of cultural superiority and cultural indebtedness. It can be argued that Japanese intellectual history is a pendulum swinging wildly between the extremes of national self-aggrandizement and feelings of inferiority.

Chile and the United States: Empires in Conflict

From virtually the onset of its independence in the early nineteenth century, took a superior attitude toward its racially mixed and less organized neighbors. This stance was not unlike that of another young republic in the hemisphere: the United States. With their relatively stable governments and prosperous economies, the two countries claimed amoral right to impose their will on nearby nations. Given this shared imperial impulse, it is not surprising that they became rivals.In Chile and the United the third volume to appear in the series The United States and the Americas, William F. Sater traces the often stormy course of U.S.-Chilean relations, covering not only policy decisions but also the overall political, cultural, and economic developments that formed the context in which those policies unfolded.As Sater explains, the Chileans initially believed that they could triumph in the event of a clash with the Americans because of their superior moral commitment and willingness to endure sacrifice. Unintimidated by the size of the United States, found its sense of mission bolstered by the American government's inconsistent enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine and grudging acceptance of Chilean dominance over Peru and Bolivia. Yet, Sater shows, by the end of the nineteenth century had to face reality: its organizational skills could no longer compensate for a limited population and resource base. Worse, just as both the United States and Chile's neighbor Argentina became wealthier and more populous, sank into a political morass that paralyzed its ability to govern itself. Once the premier power of the Pacific, it fell to second-rate status--a fact that nevertheless did little to mitigate the Chileans' sense of cultural superiority.In the early twentieth century, Sater notes, scored several economic and diplomatic victories over the United States and, after World War II, resorted to various new doctrines and strategies in hopes of regaining its lost glory. When the efforts of strongmen failed, Chileans turned to Christian Democracy, Socialism, and finally military rule--none of which succeeded in restoring the country's political unity and self-esteem. Yet, Sater contends, rather than accept that geopolitical and economic realities had limited their nation's place in the world, Chileans blamed the United States for whatever ills befell them, even as they continued to expect American aid. For its part, the United States insisted that accept its counsel in order to receive U.S. economic assistance. This frustrating standoff, Sater shows, is but the latest phase of a contentious relationship, nearly two centuries in the making, that shows no ready signs of disappearing.