Binary Opposition Research Articles

Novelty in the Scientific Approach Permits a New Way of Considering Issues Surrounding Abortion and the Social Construct of Reality Theory

At present, the issue of abortion is creating a polarity in many societies; the USA is a prime example, where the 'progressive' left is in a continual battle against the conservative right-wing party. The opinion presented here is that in their articles, scientists are not supposed to become involved in doing 'propaganda' for one position or the other but should look at issues like the Social Construct of Reality Theory and abortion, from a new perspective based on the cutting edge of scientific thinking and research that is both interdisciplinary and, where necessary, includes ancient spiritual wisdom; it is wholistic. A multidisciplinary approach that draws from multiple fields allows for a more comprehensive understanding of complex issues. Thus, this scientific stance presented here can be considered 'evolutionary within the tapestry of human evolution'. Scientists must also remember that science, in essence, is creative and was once considered philosophy and was taught in tandem with the creative arts, including music; from a systemic point of view, all these disciplines are part of a whole, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The holistic approach does not provide nice, tidy answers regarding right and wrong. However, going beyond binary thinking opens dilemmas, creating new unthought-of ways to contemplate issues, which enables policymakers and the public to make more informed decisions backed by scientific evidence and research.

Breaking Down Binary Thinking in Neuropsychiatry.

Breaking Down Binary Thinking in Neuropsychiatry.

Binary Opposition between Characters against Myths in the Novel Begu Ganjang by Ferdiriva Hamzah

This study aims to analyse the narrative construction in a novel by Ferdiriva Hamzah that explores the myth of Begu Ganjang. The study investigates how traditional narratives passed down through generations become the subject of debate in the context of contemporary society. The focus of the analysis lies on the dynamics between the characters, where the main character who tends to represent the values of modernity and rationality confronts the supporting characters who still adhere to traditional beliefs. This research examines the contestation of binary oppositions that emerge from the tensions that occur as reflected in the interactions between characters in the novel. This research method applies a descriptive qualitative approach, using Levi-Strauss' structuralism analysis framework to analyse the mythological construction process. The Levi-Strauss structuralism paradigm is applied to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of the Begu Ganjang myth in the socio-cultural context of Batak society. This study aims to explore and analyse the contradictions that occur in the characters in the narrative of the Begu Ganjang myth. In Levi-Strauss' structuralist perspective, this opposition is conceptualised as binary opposition.

Moving beyond binary identities in transitional justice: recognising the complexity of agency in agonistic spaces

ABSTRACT Transitional justice (TJ) has historically struggled with understanding actors in their full complexity. Part of the underlying problem centres around the insistence within dominant TJ approaches on exclusive binary oppositions: agent vs. subject, victim vs. perpetrator, etc. These binaries make it difficult for groups experiencing marginalisation and oppression to also achieve recognition of their complexity. This paper offers an alternative conceptualisation of agency. Our argument is twofold: first, that focussing on relational autonomy rather than a liberal conception of agency offers a more holistic picture of the constraints and opportunities affecting agents’ actions in social networks; and second, that creating agonistic spaces, which centre around contestation and multiplicity, in turn fosters opportunities for an increased exercise and recognition of relational autonomy. Using interview data and archival analysis from Northern Ireland and Turkey, we demonstrate how these agonistic spaces can facilitate relational autonomy in a range of less traditional TJ arenas. In their embrace of multiplicity and rejection of a single truth, agonistic spaces are better equipped to recognise the ways in which actors can be both victims and perpetrators, marginalised and empowered. This approach offers a path for fostering new approaches to justice that move beyond a focus on punishment.

Virjinia Woolf and Binary Oppositions

Virjinia Woolf and Binary Oppositions

The Fundamental Role of Binary Oppositions in Linguistic Theory

The Fundamental Role of Binary Oppositions in Linguistic Theory

Configuring Markedness Theory of Opposition in Qaisara Sheraz’s Typhoon: A Feministic Binary Opposed Linguistic Analysis

This paper aims to explore the status of women accompanied by patriarchal practices in Pakistan. The linguistic features are analyzed to find the stereotypes as the product of marked and unmarked socio-cognitive structures. Markedness theory of binary opposition has been implied as a theoretical framework. The data includes a few of the lines of the novel selected through purposive sampling. The research proposes qualitative enumeration of the feministic binary opposition. The results show the binary oppositions as marked and unmarked structures of cultural practices enduring cognitive strata through generational practice. The marked suppressive roles of women are subjected to overdue unmarked dominant roles of men. Unmarked dominant roles of the males exhibited the unjust behavior of men around Naghmana, Gulshan, and Chuadharani Kaniz. The results also depicted the negative concepts associated with roles attributed to the unmarked notion of women. The negative roles for women as unmarked concepts show their suppressive roles. The research is significant in analyzing the binary roles as the cause of unequal social relations. It implies the markedness of linguistic choices as a tool to analyze the social structure through binary opposition. The research is particular in providing an additional hierarchy of feminine markedness in the theory of binary opposition. The study also contributes to cognitive studies by implying unmarked dominant roles as the result of naturally existing, frequent, and socially practiced cognitive strata.

I VR therefore I am: toxic binary thinking in visions of the metaverse

ABSTRACT While the metaverse is typically billed as representing a radical break with the past and an invention of a new reality in a virtual form it merely reproduces historical patterns of anthropocentric dominance, exploitation, and violence. The Western intellectual tradition has long billed the human (or a privileged part of humanity) as the bearer of special rights, moral status, and epistemic capacities, which were seen as rendering the rest of the world not only subservient, but even existing solely for human benefit. Moreover, particularly since the Enlightenment, this dualism was also extended within the human by drawing a dividing line between the body and the mind. To trace the morphing of such ideas into the digital domain, this article provides a critical reading of the mainstream accounts of the metaverse. Crucially, the metaverse functions as a perfect manifestation of the vision for a domain of the mind, radically separated from all embodiment and always adjusting to human needs through data-based rendering of virtual worlds. However, the metaverse not only represents the conquest of the embodied physical world but also reproduces expansionist and colonialist tropes of (virtual) land grab, subjection of the world to human will, and exploitation of (digital) resources. In this way, visions for the metaverse enable seemingly guilt-free reenactment of the behaviours and attitudes that have led to great injustices in the past and in the present.

Optimism and resilience among the precariat: a gendered analysis of community home-based care work in South Africa

ABSTRACT Community Home-Based Care (CHBC) workers around the world have not been satisfied with their work over the years. In South Africa, unfair labor practices and poor organization of CHBC work have recently led to strikes and unionization by caregivers. At the frontline of caregiving are black working-class women whose dominance illuminates how the intersections of gender, class and race contribute to care workers’ precariat position. Regardless of the gendered precarious encounters, the 20 female CHBC workers from Soweto, South Africa, who participated in this study, are optimistic and resilient. This article visibilizes the optimism, resilience, positivity, self-empowerment, control, the gendered power, and agency that care workers exercise in response to the challenges that characterize care work. Beyond merely illuminating the gendered oppositional binaries, the article calls for the deconstruction of gendered hierarchies in care work to disrupt the exclusive participation of women in the global labor markets as care workers.

Patagonian Imaginary Nature: Colonial Narratives in Documentary Films on Subnational Spaces (1920–1955)

This study contributes to the ongoing historical examination of ecological and postcolonial questions in Latin America through the lens of new media genre narratives. Early 20th‐century documentary films of Argentine Patagonia institutionalised a natural binary opposition, positioning those challenging colonial power relations based on natural resources against an ideal and achievable future. These narratives sought to shape dialogues and subjectivities about the region, defining the boundaries within which claims and changes were acknowledged. From this perspective, this research aims to advance the historical examination of the emergence of subnational future narratives and their connection with power dynamics in Latin America.

Ancient and Modern in Eighteenth-Century British Music Criticism: The Contradictory Case of Henry Purcell’s Te Deum and Jubilate

ABSTRACT During the early modern period, the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns encapsulated profound changes in the way people conceived of the past in relation to their own present. While the Ancients continued to advocate emulating esteemed ancient authorities, the Moderns sought to break away from previous models through original invention. In reality, this binary opposition disguises a much more gradual process of change, which often resulted in contradictory perspectives on the past. This article uses music criticism from eighteenth-century Britain to explore these complexities, concentrating on how Henry Purcell’s Te Deum and Jubilate was appropriated by authors from both sides of the Quarrel to advance opposing viewpoints, using embryonic musical analysis as a hermeneutic tool. The study exposes the tensions underlying the developing historical narratives on which Purcell’s posthumous reputation was built, allowing us to place our own understanding of his reception more firmly within its socio-cultural context.

Caribbean Confederations as Relationalities

In this essay, I connect my work on Archipelago studies with Édouard Glissant’s notions of relationality and Caribbean confederations to formulate what I denominate as the erotics of archipelagic thinking. My main goal is to share my process of thinking with and through Glissant’s work to focus on a series of theoretical gestures that have allowed me to propose modes of reading literary depictions of Caribbean con/federations that go beyond the binary opposition between colonialism and nationalism. I am performing an exercise that I assign to my students when I teach the “Introduction to Critical Theory” course at the University of Miami. Instead of writing an essay with a short theoretical introduction followed by a detailed close reading of literary and cultural texts that illustrate a keyword or a theoretical insight, I conduct a methodological meditation in which I theorize the archipelagic as a form of relationality that configures an erotic imaginary beyond the nuclear family and towards affective networks. To think about the Caribbean as an archipelagic formation, I use my comparative work on the Antillean Confederation in the Hispanic Caribbean (1860-1898) and the West Indies Federation in the English Caribbean (1958-1962) as a historical context in which the region congealed as a network of locations “act[ing] in concert."

Different External Interference Directly Leads to Different Endings for Transgenders

Based on Judith Butler’s gender performativity theory, this paper reveals that the nature of gender is an idealized imitation and expression, which breaks the original binary opposition between heterosexuality and sexual minorities and analyzes the impact of symbolic society’s views of such imitative behavior as an inherent attribute of gender on sexual minorities. The protagonists in Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Alain Berliner’s movie My Life in Pink both reflect the living conditions of transgenders in real society. They face the same dilemma but have completely different endings. Due to the different reactions of the external environment and people around them, the psychological changes and personality shaping of the two transgenders are also totally different, Gregor died tragically, but Ludovic was eventually accepted by society. Therefore, breaking the stereotyped thoughts of gender by combining gender performativity theory, this paper makes a comparative analysis of the influence from external interference on the personality shaping of transgenders in the two genres, calling for a more open and inclusive social environment.

Theories of constitutional interpretation in the United States of America

The article substantiates the judgment that in relation to that in relation to the theories of constitutional interpretation in the United States, paradigms constructed according to the type of binary opposition (originalism –the concept of natural law), are clearly insufficient. Therefore, private legal theories, which are theories of constitutional interpretation of the United States, should take into account the basic principles and institutions, doctrines of the branch of Constitutional Law of the United States: the concept of a “living constitution”, the theory of judicial precedent, procedural aspects of Constitutional Law, structuralist theories.

SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE IN MORTAL ENGINES (2018) FILM: A STUDY OF POSTCOLONIAL ECOCRITICISM

This research aims to uncover the social and environmental issues depicted in Mortal Engines (2018) and explore the possible implications the film promotes from the disparity’s depiction concerning social and environmental justice. The study utilizes Huggan and Tiffin's Postcolonial ecocriticism and mise-en-scene theory, employing a descriptive-qualitative research method. The data is collected from the characters' dialogue and visual representations highlighting social and environmental injustice. The findings show that: 1) There are significant correlations and interconnectedness between different issues, resulting in social and environmental injustice within the film; 2) This injustice originates from ecological imperialism and is perpetuated by dualistic and binary thinking. These thinking patterns lead to bio-colonization, violence, abuse of power, marginalization, othering, and exploitation, contributing to power imbalances, social injustice, environmental racism, and degradation; 3) The depiction employs mise-en-scene, dialogue, symbols, allegory, visual language, and literary devices, the film effectively engages the audience and promotes social and environmental justice values; 4) The research also uncovers the film's role as an interventionist and counter-hegemony, advocating for social and environmental justice, decolonization, resistance, sustainability, humanity, and historicism.

How reliable is the Real Adsorbed Solution Theory (RAST) for estimating ternary mixture equilibrium in microporous host materials?

Microporous crystalline adsorbents such as zeolites, and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have potential use in a wide variety of separations applications. In applications such as CO2 capture, the Ideal Adsorbed Solution Theory (IAST) often fails to provide a quantitative description of mixture adsorption equilibrium especially in cation-exchanged zeolites. The failure of the IAST is ascribable to non-compliance with one or more tenets mandated by the IAST such as (a) homogeneous distribution of adsorbates within the pore landscape, (b) no preferential location of guest species, and (c) absence of molecular clustering due to say hydrogen bonding. The focus of this article is on the reliability of the Real Adsorbed Solution Theory (RAST) models for quantitative estimation of adsorption equilibrium. Configurational-Bias Monte Carlo (CBMC) simulations are undertaken to determine the adsorption equilibrium for ternary CO2/CH4/N2, CO2/CH4/C3H8, CO2/CH4/H2, and water/methanol/ethanol mixtures in NaX, LTA-4A, CHA, DDR, and MFI zeolites. Additionally, CBMC simulations of the constituent binary pairs are used to determine the Wilson or NRTL parameters, taking due account of the dependence of the activity coefficients on the spreading pressure. Use of the binary pair Wilson or NRTL parameters allows the estimation of ternary mixture adsorption equilibrium, that is tested against the CBMC data on component loadings. In all investigated guest/host combinations, the RAST provides a good estimation of ternary mixture adsorption equilibrium.

Revisiting Whitehead’s Abstractive Hierarchy

In Whitehead’s theory of “events”, the primary focus is on the critical assessment of abstraction. Modern science’s heavy reliance on abstraction has resulted in what Whitehead calls “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness”, where the abstract is mistaken for the actual. To address this issue, Whitehead replaces the traditional category of abstraction with eternal objects and defines the abstractive hierarchy. He aims to clarify the metaphysical status of abstraction and concreteness while dissolving their binary opposition. It is important to note that there are two possible approaches for interpreting an abstractive hierarchy. The differences between these approaches stem from the question of whether abstraction and complexity should be considered identical concepts. Based on their respective understandings, the abstractive hierarchy will exhibit different structural features, as well as varying positions for the concepts of abstraction and eternal objects within Whitehead’s metaphysical thought.

Representation of Gender Dominants in the Russian Language. Diachronic Aspect

The article speaks about gender dominants in the Russian language. In Russian linguistics the problem of studying gender becomes especially relevant in the beginning of the 21st century, although the studies of peculiarities and differences in the speech of men and women were conducted throughout the 20th century. Gender studies make it possible to analyze language taking into account the multifactorial influence of gender, with the binary opposition «male / female», «masculine / feminine» largely representing the value orientations of any ethnos. In modern society, linguistic gender dominants are associated with the activation of the feminist movement around the world, as well as with the spread of variously interpreted liberal views. In general, femininity and masculinity as part of modern linguoculture are related to the essential characteristic of an individual and are determined by the qualities considered «feminine» or «masculine» in Russian ethnoculture. That is why the phraseosemantic group of feminine and masculine lexicon is actively replenished in the modern Russian language. However, in general, it should be stated that in Russian linguoculture, first of all, the gender dominants, preserved since ancient times, which are based on the binary opposition of mother / father, man / woman.

“I desire to live and live... thousands of other lives”: multimythologism in I. A. Bunin’s onomastic code

The article considers the manifestation of multimythologism as a characteristic feature of I. A. Bunin’s artistic worldview at the level of the individual author’s poetic mythonymicon. The paper identifies lexical units referring to the characters (gods, wizards, heroes, fantastic birds and animals), places, magic objects of the mythologies of the ancient Greeks and Romans, Sumerians and Akkadians, Indians and Iranians, as well as Egyptians, Scandinavians and. It is noted that the organization of the sound system of I. A. Bunin’s poetic speech is provided by regular graphic-phonetic transformations of mythonyms, and the uniqueness of the onomastic code of his lyrical texts is created by the inclusion of special mythonyms-bilexemes, onymized appellatives and mythological names with a low level of precedent and occasional units. It is established that for explication of philosophical and symbolic subtexts, representation of key motives and binary oppositions I. A. Bunin subordinates traditional sacral genealogies to the author’s individual picture of the world, matches and simultaneously uses mythonyms belonging to different national mythological onomasticons. The author comes to the conclusion that all the lexical units of Bunin’s poetic mythonymicon are connected by a single ideological attitude, aimed, on the one hand, at overcoming the autonomy of cultural worlds, and on the other hand, at preserving cultural pluralism.

Attempting to Break Binary Oppositions of East and West: Hanan Al-Shaykh’s “I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops”

Abstract Hanan Al-Shaykh’s, “I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops”, calls for cross-cultural dialogue between different cultures. The text explores the cultural tensions that shape an individual’s identity within the postcolonial context. This article examines an encounter in the text between the Moroccan protagonist and her English boyfriend, his sister and his friends in London. Engaging in dialogue between multiple postcolonial theories such as Frantz Fanon’s concept of “absolute depersonalization”, Edward Said’s Orientalism and “contrapuntal consciousness” – Mary Louise Pratt’s theory of transculturation and Homi Bhabha’s notion of “hybridity”, this research studies how the processes of transculturation and hybridity can act to transcend cultural clashes and East–West divisions. The author resorts to using colonial tropes or Orientalist stereotypes to eventually subvert these problems but, at times, this causes ambiguity and contradictions in her text. The female protagonist follows a non-linear trajectory, experiencing various stages before she reaches a hybrid state; these stages involve a fascination with London, cultural clashes, self-assertion and integration, incorporating cultural crossing and hybridity. The female protagonist slips back and forth from one stage to another with all her experiences contributing towards the attainment of cultural dialogue.