Contemporary Engagement Research Articles

‘All Divine’: mapping the intersections between spirituality and modernity in independent Indian music

ABSTRACT In this paper, I examine some ways in which Indian artists explore tradition and modernity by fusing devotional music and spiritual themes with popular music. This is illustrated through examples such as ‘Krishna’ (1996) by the indipop group, Colonial Cousins, as well as works such as ‘Aathma Raama’ (2012), ‘Vaishnava Jana To’ (2019), and ‘All Divine’ (2022) by hip-hop artist Brodha V. My analysis draws upon established theoretical frameworks including cultural hybridity, globalisation theory, transculturation, and modernity. While spiritual motifs appear to be inextricably linked with traditional Indian musics, this is rarely viewed through the lens of modernity. Through a series of case studies, I explore key instances indicative of sonic conversations negotiating the global and local, emphasising the role of language and global cultural flow in facilitating both resistance and transculturation. Beyond uncovering contemporary engagements with spirituality, case studies reveal how Indian modernity is increasingly characterised by a manner of hybridity. Ultimately, the analysis contributes to our understanding of hybrid modernities and postcolonial identities.

Botanic Gardens in Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainability: History, Contemporary Engagements, Decolonization Challenges, and Renewed Potential

Botanic gardens are increasingly important agents of plant research and conservation. A large number of botanic gardens have been established throughout the globe since the mid-20th century to pursue new socio-environmental missions. Others, with histories that span centuries, have also undergone a deep transformation in the context of growing attention to matters of sustainability. Bridging key aspects of the scholarly literature on the genesis of the botanical garden institution in Europe and its legacy, this article presents the re-invention of these gardens as institutions of conservation, sustainability, and social engagement as they renew their relevance in the contemporary world. This article proceeds by covering three focal points. First, it summarizes the scholarly literature on the emergence of botanical gardens in Europe and their association with the rise of modern science, the nation-state, colonialism, and empire-building. Second, it presents accounts of current scientific and biodiversity conservation endeavours as reflexive engagements with these historical legacies, decolonization initiatives, and new socio-environmental missions. Third, this article points beyond its focus on the historical transformation of the European botanical garden institution, by identifying a more widely encompassing body of scholarship that puts forth frameworks for understanding the current role of botanic gardens on a global scale.

Protection of Visual and Architectural Heritage Based on the Implementation of he Living Museum Concept in the Cracow Stained Glass Factory

This article focuses on the concept of a living museum based on the Stained Glass Factory in Cracow. It examines how such a museum can integrate elements of real life into the exhibition, creating a unique experience for visitors. By examining the intersection of traditional craftsmanship and contemporary engagement strategies, the paper delves into the potential of revitalising cultural heritage. The study investigates the impact of such a concept on preserving and promoting the rich legacy of stained glass artistry, providing insights into the viability and enriching potential of this concept for both the local community and visitors. The conducted research also aims to trace the historical significance of stained glass in Cracow’s architecture and how the museum concept affects the dissemination of this knowledge.

Contemporary Engagements with Decoloniality: Tracing Epistemic Disobedience and Decolonial Aesthesis in Pakistani Anglophone Literature

This paper seeks to discover epistemic reconstruction and reconstitution in Pakistani Anglophone literature to identify epistemic disobedience that confronts the rigidity of Western canons. In a so-called postcolonial age, the integration of indigenousness with decoloniality weaves an indigenous knowledge tapestry that may challenge hegemonic intellectual imperialism. In the last few decades, there has been a surge of interest in decolonizing epistemology. The native epistemological quest offers alternative knowledge claims that can replace hegemonic epistemology in the colonial matrix of power. It may be used to challenge the lionized image of various Western epistemologies ingrained in indigenous thinkers' minds over history. The central thesis of this paper is to examine the role of Pakistani indigeneity in providing a locus of enunciation, a context, or situatedness for Pakistani Anglophone literature to question Western canonization to decolonize indigenous epistemology. To accentuate epistemic disobedience that occurs in the wake of epistemic decolonization, this study explores Straggling through Fire by Gulam Murtaza Aatir by placing it in the theoretical framework of decoloniality by Walter Mignolo. Walter Mignolo's discernments on epistemic disobedience, locus of enunciation, and decolonial aesthesis provide a central theoretical framework for this paper to analyze Straggling through Fire by Gulam Murtaza Aatir. It paves the way for Pakistani researchers in the future to insert the versatility and novelty of our indigenous Anglophone writers in the mainstream of English literature to confront Western canonization.

Introduction

RISE 6.2 offers new perspectives on the Irish border. Bringing together contributions from different disciplines and cultural fields – history, political science, film studies, constitutional law and the theatre – it seeks to provide a multifaceted and complex discussion of a phenomenon that is all too often simplified in the political discourse before and after the 2016 Brexit referendum. Following the agenda suggested by the short film-essay Hard Border (2018), directed by Juliet Riddell and performed by Stephen Rea, this themed issue of RISE approaches the Irish border by differentiating between internal and external – Irish and Northern Irish, British and continental – perspectives and by exploring historical dimensions as well as contemporary engagements with a border whose increasing (discursive and material) invisibility following the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement of 1998 has been crucial to the ongoing peace process.

Memori melompat (‘jumping memory’): The mnemonic motion of Indonesian popular culture and the need for a local reframing

The third phase of memory studies is considered to have taken memory into ‘the global age’, yet this article illustrates that in many ways, the nation has since been reinstated within a global context. This article critically scrutinises the idea that memory travels freely and shows that a straightforward mobility of cultural memory does not apply to every local context. In Indonesia, memory travels temporarily, briefly and not far. It therefore suggests more of a jump rather than a journey. As a demonstrative semantic device, the Indonesian term memori melompat (jumping memory) signifies cultural memory formation beyond the West. Nevertheless, the choice of an Indonesian term does not denote a uniqueness to Indonesia, but emphasises instead that Indonesian popular culture about the Indonesian War of Independence is indicative of the need for a local reframing of existing memory concepts to better understand contemporary engagements with the (colonial) past.

Southeast Asia in China: historical entanglements and contemporary engagements

Southeast Asia in China: historical entanglements and contemporary engagements

Reawakening Cold War Social Movements Through Memory Work and Archival Performance

Abstract This article examines the ways in which artefacts of Cold War social movements are reassembled in and through the creation of archives in the present. We ask: how have artefacts of past social movements been re-engaged with memory work through intergenerational transmission and performance? Through the analysis of selected examples, including a) ethnographic work on a Pan-African social movement in Senegal, b) archival research of Cuban Cold War graphic design, and c) a decolonial pedagogical project taking place at a UK university, we illustrate the different – and at times overlapping – dimensions of the ‘memory-activism nexus’ they engage (Rigney 2018; 2020). Through a theoretical framework that draws from social movement theory, memory studies and performance theory in relation to archives, we identify and analyse contemporary engagements with past social movements. We argue that through distinct interpretations, (re)assemblages, and framings of artefacts, memory work through the creation of archives is necessarily an embodied and performative practice.

875 Women in Surgery: A Qualitative Analysis of Tweets Engaged in the Gender Disparity Discourse

Abstract Aim This study was conducted to identify the main areas of gender bias affecting current female-identifying surgeons through posts shared on a social media platform, Twitter, and to use this analysis, alongside contemporary literature, to suggest how social media can help progress the movement towards gender parity in surgery. Method The study analysed five Twitter hashtags used to engage in the gender-bias discourse: #ILookLikeASurgeon, #MedBikini, #WomenInSurgery, #OperateWithRespect, and #HammerItOut. Phase One involved the manual collection and thematic analysis of tweets to identify the main areas of gender bias before relating this to literature. Phase Two used Twitter analysis software, TweetBinder, to create analytical reports to demonstrate the efficacy of Twitter as a data resource. Results Three-hundred-and-fifteen tweets were collected, with five main themes of gender-based discrimination identified: sexism, bullying, sexual harassment, patients’ perceptions, and pay and job disparity. Female-identifying junior staff have experienced gender-based microaggressions to deter them from a surgical career. Bullying and incidences of sexual harassment promote the attrition of female-identifying surgeons, resulting in great pay disparity and global under-representation. The Twitter hashtags significantly improved the outreach of the tweets, promoting engagement with new users to the discourse. Conclusions The thematic analysis of tweets echoes the findings of contemporary research but personalises the statistics around gender disparity to create a more compelling provocation for attitude change. Twitter can facilitate contemporary engagement in the surgical gender-parity discussion from both familiar and new users. This may influence current surgical trainees and inspire a new generation of diverse and inclusive surgeons.

What would Freud have made of it? Notes on a “normal pathological organization” within contemporary psychoanalysis

AbstractPsychoanalytic discourse in relation to the situation in historic Palestine is subject to both ideologically‐based and anxiety‐driven inhibitions and restrictions that conflict with the discipline’s claim to be able to “stay with” difficult issues, to “think the unthinkable”. This situation is understood as a social pathology, and its impacts are explored through a literature review (explaining the paper’s length). It considers works that directly seek to protect Zionism from its critics, and texts whose purpose is to demonstrate the relevance of psychoanalytic concepts to the study of social injustice. The qualities of this contemporary discourse are considered alongside Freud’s comments on the conditions for freedom of thought within psychoanalysis, and the example he provided in his comments on politics and society. Rather than a psychoanalytic contribution to understanding an issue of public concern, the paper attempts to describe aspects of psychoanalytic culture itself. It aims to facilitate deeper reflection amongst clinicians, on both an individual and collective level, regarding their contemporary engagement with coloniality and the social responsibilities of the psychoanalytic community.

Thinking destructively with aesthetics

ABSTRACT The essay explores a hermeneutic reading of nature that expands the Kantian theory of aesthetics beyond the need for beauty to support cognition’s subjective interest. As in Kant’s third Critique, reason’s subjective interest, which refers to how the manifold can be held together by the unity of transcendental apperception, grounds nature's purposiveness in moral intelligence. By improvising on Kant’s aesthetics, as Schelling did in German Idealism, we can imagine the subject of critical reason embracing a modal possibility of existence that deals with nature's part-whole essence or nature’s original duplicity. The modality creates a subject capable of choosing and justifying a world of its own, but not without the destructive condition that precedes this act, the world's intuitive collapse. Given the contemporary engagements with Kant’s aesthetics, from Simondon, Badiou, Stiegler, Hui, Karatani, and other critical commentators (of Kant), the essay addresses how this modal possibility of existence connects aesthetics to the ethical task of destroying the known world. But to the extent that the world is exhibiting signs of collapse, as we enter a new geological era, the aesthetic sense of locating ‘where nature in this collapse is’ becomes an essential path of thinking and living with ruins.

Indigenous peoples and inclusion in clinical and genomic research: Understanding the history and navigating contemporary engagement

Despite significant improvements in pediatric cancer survival outcomes, there remain glaring disparities in under-represented racial and ethnic groups that warrant mitigation by the scientific and clinical community. To address and work towards eliminating such disparities, the Pacific Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Consortium (PNOC) and Children's Brain Tumor Network (CBTN) established a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) working group in 2020. The DEI working group is dedicated to improving access to care for all pediatric patients with central nervous system (CNS) tumors, broadening diversity within the research community, and providing sustainable data-driven solutions. To this end, the DEI working group aims to coordinate regular educational sessions centered on critical DEI topics in pediatric research and clinical care of pediatric patients, with a focus on pediatric neuro-oncology. In April 2022, the group led a moderated panel of experts on Indigenous Peoples’ rights and participation in clinical research activities. The following paper serves to provide the scientific community a perspective on how to prioritize the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples in research with cultural sensitivity and with the intent of improving not only representation, but patient outcomes regardless of patient race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic background.

The return of the kinga (saltwater crocodile): Population ‘bust then boom’ shapes shifting baselines in Indigenous biocultural knowledge in northern Australia

The saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) can be regarded as a cultural keystone species for many Indigenous societies around the world, including for many Aboriginal clans in northern Australia. Here the regional population of Crocodylus porosus suffered a decline, almost to extinction, with unregulated commercial hunting between the 1940s to the early 1970s. Following protected status, saltwater crocodile populations made a rapid recovery. This research documents the perceptions and experiences of this rapid (within living memory) ‘bust then boom’ saltwater crocodile population change, among a regional group of Indigenous Australians (comprising several clans) from the Alligator Rivers Region of western Arnhem Land and Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory. Using semi-structured interviews, archival work and on-Country (place-based) learning, significant influences on the continuity of Aboriginal people's contemporary engagement with freshwater Country were identified. In particular, the loss of access to freshwater customary harvesting sites and to key harvested species, and as a driver of adaptive changes in harvesting methods and consumption preferences for saltwater crocodile meat and eggs. Importantly, the experiential losses from restricted access to waterbodies were found to have significant impact on opportunities for inter-generational knowledge transmission, according with more recent applications of the Shifting Baseline Syndrome to Indigenous Ecological Knowledge. Findings demonstrate the need for monitoring and management programs of cultural keystone species, like the saltwater crocodile, to include Indigenous-led biocultural knowledge programs as a means of supporting local and Indigenous Knowledge systems. This is particularly critical in cross-cultural, First Nations, and joint-management contexts.

The Legacy of John Finnis: Contemporary Engagements and Developments

The Legacy of John Finnis: Contemporary Engagements and Developments

The Mythic Sea in Contemporary Irish and Caribbean Poetry

Abstract Myths of the sea are some of the most enduring cultural associations with oceanic spaces. In particular, literature written from islands and coastal locations often shares an interest in these mythic narratives. With a focus on this comparative element, this article investigates how contemporary poets from Ireland and from the Anglophone Caribbean engage with the myths of the sea in their work. It examines the poetry of Lorna Goodison (Jamaica), Seamus Heaney (Northern Ireland), Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (Republic of Ireland), and Derek Walcott (Saint Lucia), demonstrating the ways in which a contemporary engagement with the myths of the sea transforms and translates understandings not only of the present moment but also of traditional ideas of linear time. Specific myths of the sea become a tool with which to mine the past and present as they allow these poets to reflect on beginnings, endings, and the repetition of cycles. The critiques that these poets level in their work are also considered through a gendered lens here, as the association between woman and sea, as well as the mythologization of woman is discussed. This article analyzes key poems from these writers to draw out rarely evinced transatlantic routes of correspondence between the four poets. In doing so, it also emphasizes the connective properties of the sea’s cultural, artistic, and imaginative resonances.

VOLUME 52 (2022)

VOLUME 52 (2022)

Mike McCormack’s style of post-mortem modernism

ABSTRACT The legacies of modernism in Irish literature have frequently been approached through the prism of influence, as writers are often compared with James Joyce, Flann O’Brien and Samuel Beckett. This essay reconsiders how we can critically approach modernist legacies by closely examining the style of Mike McCormack’s one-sentence novel Solar Bones (2016). I argue that Solar Bones responds to the Irish economic crash of 2008 by performing a kind of ‘post-mortem’ on modernist forms of narration and temporality, which is reflected in how the novel is written. Building on David James’ framework for tracing modernist legacies in Modernist Futures (2012), I consider how Solar Bones self-reflexively explores various modernist styles through a posthumous narrator as a means to portray the social and historical fallout of the Celtic Tiger. Consequently, McCormack’s style of post-mortem modernism exemplifies how we can critically attend to the particular formal, affective and political qualities that animate contemporary engagements with modernism’s legacies, while also allowing us to consider the novel in relation to a ‘rejuvenated experimental pulse’, as McCormack puts it, in twenty-first century Irish literature.

Rethinking haute couture: Julien Fournié in the virtual worlds of the metaverse

This article deals with the concept and practice of haute couture, of the designing and making of high-quality fashion clothes, and haute couture's contemporary engagement with the virtual worlds of the ‘metaverse’, a shared virtual environment that features online gaming and augmented reality. The article is an encounter with these virtual worlds, particularly as they are manifested in the haute couture of the French haute couturier Julian Fournié. To understand Fournié's haute couture, and thus to build a foundation for an interpretation of his most important fashion ideas, it is argued that researchers need to explore Fournié's engagement with virtual worlds and augmented reality from the perspective of German philosopher Martin Heidegger's phenomenological explanation of thinking and rethinking, and then at how Fournié develops and revises the meaning of haute couture.

NicholasMcDowellPoet of Revolution: The Making of John MiltonPrinceton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2020. xvi + 485pp. ISBN 13: 9780691154695. $35.00 (cloth).

NicholasMcDowellPoet of Revolution: The Making of John MiltonPrinceton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2020. xvi + 485pp. ISBN 13: 9780691154695. $35.00 (cloth).

Ridiculous Subjects:Coriolanus, Popular Representation, and the Roman Tribunes in Early Modern Drama

This essay argues that the famously ambivalent treatment of popular representation in William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (1608) is rooted in the play’s examination of a specific class of political representative: the plebeian tribunes of ancient Rome. It begins by tracing the extensive and deeply polarized reception of these officers in English prose before discussing their role in several earlier plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In both print and performance, the imagined figure of the tribune lent historical specificity and human weight to early modern debates about the abstract idea of popular representation, increasingly understood during the period as a political structure through which the material needs of the common people—and perhaps even their distinctive habits or ways of living—might be integrated into government without plunging it into the chaos of direct popular rule. Guided by these contemporary engagements with the tribunate, the essay demonstrates that the tribunes of Coriolanus neither straightforwardly defend nor subvert the political agency of the play’s Roman citizens. Instead, the play advances a more self-reflexive, theatricalized vision of popular representation that opened up new intellectual and aesthetic avenues for exploring this topic in the following decades. [A.B.]