Contemporary Narratives Research Articles

Metanarratives of Slavery

I had to see. I needed to see how I had been taught to see. I decided to go back. —Robin Coste Lewis (“Epilogue” 146) In the late 1980s, Hortense J. Spillers observed that slavery had become “primarily discursive” (29)—known not through any sort of direct knowledge but through the “cultural units” of the stories that have attempted to describe the institution (32). Those units, as Spillers would demonstrate in her analysis of Harriet Beecher Stowe, were heavily influenced by the white-supremacist imagination. Most recorded testimony from enslaved people has been mediated by the white gaze, either through the expectations of the white abolitionists who published antebellum slave narratives or the primarily white interviewers of the Federal Writers’ Project’s Slave Narrative Collection.1 Meanwhile, US popular culture has been dominated by sensational white-authored depictions of slavery, from blackface minstrelsy and Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) to The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Gone with the Wind (1936). Mirroring the violence of official archives (Hartman, “Venus” 10), the resulting gaps and distortions in the popular imagination pose a challenge to writers and artists who wish to meaningfully grapple with enslavement. Some contemporary narratives of slavery have sought to redress the impact of white perspectives: The most famous example is Beloved (1987), which Toni Morrison has described as her attempt to “fill in the blanks that the slave narratives left” (“Site” 113) as a result of their “shaping the experience to make it palatable to those who were in a position to alleviate it” (110). Many contemporary depictions of slavery take a different approach, however. Instead of restoring what is missing in the record and reversing the historic influence of white expectations, these works seek to inhabit and examine that influence, creating frankly double-visioned art and literature.

Understanding “Islandness”

Islandness is a contested concept, not just between disciplines but also cultures, entangled with what islands, island studies, and island identity are understood to be. The purpose of this article is to explore some of these different meanings, without necessarily unifying or reconciling them, with the aim of keeping multiple understandings of islandness in creative tension. We begin by considering islandness as smallness, recognizing that though many entry points into island studies relate to size in some way, what constitutes small is dependent on both context and worldview. Next, we consider islandness as culture, and the concept of island identity, which is expressed in varied forms. Finally, we consider framings of islands as others, and the extent to which contemporary narratives linked to islands are really inherent to islands or not. Ultimately, we conclude that although there is much to be gained from appreciating differing understandings of islandness, these multiple meanings make it critical to reflect on context wherever the term is used, and exercise care in assigning attributes and outcomes to islandness.

Reclaiming Sovereignty over Natural Wealth and Resources in Tanzania: Legal and Regulatory Implications on Investments

Abstract The enactment of the legislation on review of unconscionable contractual terms in various investment agreements and the assertion of permanent sovereignty over natural resources marked a significant policy and regulatory shift in Tanzania. The new legislation reopened an opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny over various existing and future investment contracts which, in the opinion of the government, contain unfair terms. The new laws have also sought to introduce a new landscape for investment dispute settlement. This article examines the legal implications of the new laws on the regulation of investments as informed by both: the national investment code and the various international investment obligations assumed by Tanzania. It offers an exploration and critique of the misguided assumption that galvanized the new enactments based on the contemporary narratives and principles of the investment law. It concludes by proposing that the new legislation should be reviewed in line with the constitutional dictates and principles of international investment law.

Textualizing the Maison de retraite in Contemporary Narratives by Francophone Women Authors

In Care Home Stories, Sally Chivers and Ulla Kriebernegg emphasize the need "to tell new and better stories about institutional care," arguing that retirement homes provide "a cultural repository for fears and hopes about an aging population" (17). This article examines the diverse ways in which "nursing-home-narrative fiction" (Life 191) by Francophone women authors raises critical questions about longevity and the ethics of care. Given their strong emphasis on modalities of care and their call for dignity and respect, these engaged narratives constitute powerful examples of "protest literature" (Gullette 80) and, as such, make a significant contribution to humanistic gerontology.

A Tale of Two Theories

A Tale of Two Theories

About the single combat of Prince Mstislav and Rededya: a comparative historical analysis of the culture of single combats in Ancient Rus at the end of X - the first half of XI centuries

The article examines the story of the "Tale of Bygone Years" about the single combat of Prince Mstislav and Rededya as an evidence of ancient Russian military culture of single combats. The evidence is correlated with other written and archaeological sources to establish its connection with the actual political history. For comparative study, the evidence is correlated with other Old Russian written sources about single combats and contemporary narrations about single combats in the monuments of Byzantine historiography. During the comprehensive study of the text of Mstislav's prayer, the evidence of the military veneration of the Mother of God in Byzantium and in Russia, including references to prayers to the Mother of God, is considered. The conducted research allows us to conclude about the influence of the Byzantine military tradition and religious culture on the military culture of Russia. The relationship is most clearly traced in the religious appearance of the single combat, while the chronicle narration in question is attributed to the earliest evidence of the military veneration of the Mother of God in Russia. There are similar ideas about single combats as events that deserve to be preserved in historiography. It is not easy to determine the relationship between the organization and conduct of single combats, due to the scarcity of chronicle data. The Byzantine influence, presumably, was expressed both in the rethinking of ideas about single combats, and in the veneration of the Mother of God as an assistant or intercessor in the event of war.

Life and Lyricism in Contemporary Narrative; Emotion, Mood and Genre as Global Perspectives

Global Perspectives consider the relationship between literature, language and perception, as well as how literature and language ‘do’ conflict and complicate notions of mood, emotion, and genre. Lyricism in global narratives has the ability to disrupt time and generate a further expansion of genre. With a short study on the mode of writing by Julio Llamazares and Anne Carson, this article discusses enactive forms of perception, referring to enactive experience as the way to describe a text’s capacity to activate our mental need to attend to a text, disorienting in its form or temporality, and our perception of the realities of the world, in particular, isolation and digital remove. Making a reference to Gumbrecht´s Stimmung and Deleuze´s rhizome, it considers how phenomenology of the present becomes a primordial task after globalization, and how priority is given to developing an analysis which identifies dehumanizing effects in contemporary societies.The article later refers to Martha Nussbaum´s theory of emotion and concludes by recognizing the importance of sensorial perception and emotion in literary studies in the twenty-first century.

“What I really wanted was some rivets, by heaven!” The labours of empire: Work and production in Conrad’s “Youth” and Heart of Darkness

ABSTRACT Written during the decline of the imperial-capitalist international division of labour, Joseph Conrad’s maritime adventures such as “Youth” constitute some of the earliest literary registrations of the stagnation of a world-system undergirded by the exploitation of labour. This is perhaps why Fredric Jameson claims that Conrad’s fictions mark “a strategic fault line in the emergence of contemporary narrative”. Conrad’s are some of the first texts to question whether imperial capitalism actually contributed to social development in the colonies. This article argues that his representation of the inefficiency and unproductivity of work aboard the Judea in “Youth” and in the Belgian Congo in Heart of Darkness signals a broader strategy of exploring the contradictions and discontinuities of the social logic that structures capitalist accumulation. Whilst still writing within an imperial language and logic, Conrad’s portrayal of imperial inefficiency in these texts moves towards representing the colonialist division of labour from without.

U.S. Fiction in the Age of Authenticity: Earnestness and Digital Epitexts in Leilani’s Luster

This essay aims to explore the interrelation of the widespread use of digital epitextual material and the common practice, in post-postmodern U.S. fiction, to employ characters and character-narrators that share some biographical details with their authors. Specifically, this essay attends to narrative communication when an autobiographical connection between authors and characters is established not textually, but paratextually, through digital epitexts to be found, for instance, on authors’ social media profiles. Through the analysis of Raven Leilani’s Luster (2020), I will show how digital epitexts acquire a central role for contemporary narrative dynamics: it is through them that many novels realize the author-character connection providing fiction with a layer of alleged authenticity meant to reinforce the post-postmodern tendency to earnestly engage with ethical and political issues.

From Silence to #Shout: French-Language Abortion Narratives in Transnational Dialogue

Abstract: Taking as premise that stories provide the frames through which we grasp and articulate lived experiences, this article brings abortion narratives into transnational and transgenerational dialogue in order to challenge the dominant story told about termination. Comprised of accounts of both clandestine and legal abortions occurring on three continents (Algeria, Hexagonal France, and Belgium, with critical parallels noted in US narratives), including four literary texts, several collections of testimonies, and one documentary film, the corpus highlights core commonalties that cut across experiences of termination, demonstrating the global impact that women's health stories harbor. Part One examines Bey's Au commencement était la mer , Malinconi's Hôpital silence , Ernaux's L'événement , and, to a lesser extent, Guathier's Paroles d'avortées , discussing the dehumanization of institutional violence and lack of information as key commonalities. Turning to contemporary abortion narratives in a variety of genres, Part Two shows how silence, stigma, and dehumanization continue to characterize abortion stories today, but also notes a shared volition to craft new narratives of intelligibility. Finally, Part Three discusses the power harbored in dialogue amongst abortion narratives of all types, notably in terms of the medical humanities and the expansion of language available to express lived experiences, but more importantly as foundation for a relational understanding of abortion as part of reproductive care—a notion nascent in contemporary narratives, but which comes to the fore when stories are circulated as feminist folklore.

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

Reviewed by: The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak Zeynep Z. Atayurt-Fenge ELIF SHAFAK The Island of Missing Trees New York. Bloomsbury. 2021. 368 pages. SHORTLISTED FOR THE Women's Prize for Fiction 2022, Elif Shafak's thirteenth novel, The Island of Missing Trees, revisits Shafak's much-frequented topics of identity, memory, and gender. Divided into six parts and preceded by a prologue, the novel features a multilayered and polyphonic narrative, stylistically reminiscent of her previous novels, including 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (2019). Within this subtly knitted narrative structure, Shafak portrays different ways of life, expressed through the stories of various life-forms and connected to each other under the common denominator of grief—namely, grief for the loss of home, lover, and grief for the loss of biodiversity. Yet the novel is also about a sense of longing for wholeness, oneness, and harmony, not only between people but also between all elements of the wider ecosystem. Foregrounding the notion of relationality, The Island of Missing Trees interweaves the Anthropocene with the ecological system, creating a narrative that promotes a holistic vision of posthumanism while situating human suffering side by side with the distress experienced by the ecosystem due to the atrocities visited upon it by the human world. To this end, she presents a mythical arboreal point of view, rendering the theme of ecological consciousness as a stylized expression that lays emphasis on the notion of multiplicity. And around this ecological consciousness, Shafak interlaces the themes of love, [End Page 76] hate, and death through a double narrative structure that alternates between 1974 and the 2010s, and geographically between Cyprus and London, bridged at the center by the narrative of a conscious, speaking fig tree. The historical vein of the narrative deals with the period before and after the partition of Cyprus and its damaging effects on people and the landscape. While depicting this political and military crisis, Shafak avoids giving precedence to any particular group by referring to the inhabitants of the island only as "islanders." Thus, the impartial tone prompts an empathetic insight toward a harmonious coexistence, not only among the members of different ethnic groups but also between the human and the nonhuman world. This stance is infused into the contemporary narrative, which is set in north London a few days before Christmas. The festive mood of the holiday season is overshadowed by the prospect of a cyclone and also a familial trauma involving a teenage schoolgirl, Ada (whose name means island in Turkish), her Turkish Cypriot archaeologist mother, Defne (a Turkish name with Greek origin, meaning laurel tree), and her Greek Cypriot ecologist and botanist father named Kostas, working on the role of fig trees in restoring biodiversity. Within this multilayered structure, the narrative discloses the troubling experience of each character with the theme of loss—respectively, loss of a mother, loss of a spouse, loss of roots, and loss of natural habitat. Through Shafak's incisive storytelling, these stories of the human and the nonhuman world grow into each other and create a saga on whose surface various forms of sorrow are inscribed. The reciprocity between the human and the nonhuman world is further made evident in the way the novel structurally alludes to the botanical process of burying and unburying a tree, a beautifully constructed symbolic trope that both warns against digging up the past in an antagonistic fashion—thus unearthing conflicts—and proposes reconciliation and reconnection with one's roots no matter how tangled they are. In this regard, the novel points to the impact of revelations on personal as well as social levels, and through these revelations it is not the feeling of anger that is communicated but understanding of grief, an emotional state described in the novel as "a language" that is universal. Although this language might seem relevant only to human beings at first sight, Shafak makes it equally pertinent to the nonhuman world in her narrative, offering an aestheticized construction of the ecosystem by drawing attention to the ornate patterns in nature, including the behaviors of flies, mosquitos, ants, bees, and butterflies. Accordingly, she constructs a fig tree as a major...

The Epistemic and Political (Re) Configuration of the Quilombo Category-Historical and Contemporary Narratives

The aim of this article, based on a brief historical and theoretical review, is to highlight the different conceptions of the Quilombo category over the years in Brazil. Some legal, social and political advances were achieved due to the struggles of the social and black movements in the country, when the communities were present in the Brazilian government agenda, from the recognition of the definitive ownership of the lands that were occupied by their remnants, guaranteed by the 1988 Constitution - Article 68 of the Transitory Constitutional Provisions Act (ADCT), thus constituting a quilombola social agenda, having its institutionalization through the creation of the Secretariat for Policies for the Promotion of Racial Equality (SEPPIR) and the National Council of Promotion of Racial Equality, both in 2003. We thus present the arguments around memory, uses and meanings of history and legislation on quilombos.

From Devil-Fish to Friendly Whale? Encountering Gray Whales on The California Coast

Eastern North Pacific gray whales are famed for their remarkable ecological history: from near extinction to recovery and from ‘devil-fish’ to ‘friendly whale’. This article critically examines the origins and development of the narrative framing of gray whales’ history as one in which the whales were long known as ‘devil-fish’, until they became ‘friendly whales’ in the 1970s. Drawing on archival sources from the mid-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries, this article interrupts the premise of a smooth and linear transition from devil-fish to friendly whale. Instead, gray whale histories reveal much more complex and even contradictory human–whale encounters along the California coast. Throughout the time period examined, precursors of the familiar contemporary narrative of gray whale history emerged, each building on prior remembrances of gray whale pasts. More broadly, this article contributes to contemporary conversations in more-than-human historical studies about nonhuman agency, multispecies encounters, memory, and environmental histories of emotion.

How and why tobacco use affects reconstructive surgical practice: a contemporary narrative review.

The overall negative impact of tobacco use on an individual's health has been well documented but the literature on tobacco's impact on post-surgical outcomes, specifically the outcomes after urologic surgery, is not as clear cut. The aim of this narrative review is to provide urologists with the information needed to have a nuanced pre-operative counseling conversation with patients about tobacco use. Here we combine publications on the histologic and physiologic changes induced by nicotine and tobacco use with publications from the wider surgical literature on post-operative outcomes in tobacco users. A literature search of PubMed, Google Scholar and Medline was performed using iterations of the following terms: tobacco, nicotine, changes, physiologic, histology, post-operative, and surgical. Non-English publications and abstracts were excluded. Inclusion required agreement from all authors and preference was given to human specimens over animal models for the basic science manuscripts and large database and meta-analyses over single institution experiences. Tobacco use results in measurable changes in nearly every organ system in the body. While smokers have increased wound complications, there is no evidence that reconstructive surgery using grafts or flaps fail more frequently in tobacco users. Smokers have an increased risk of respiratory complications following endotracheal intubation. Surgeries should not be canceled due to a patient's inability to cease tobacco use. Urologists and patients should engage in joint decision making regarding the timing and pursuit of elective operations.

Foreword

This journal is meant to be an international journal. Hence, articles that we publish in this journal shall represent international coverage. This second edition of this journal just does that. It consists of six (6) articles that examines issues related to Muslim politics in at least four different countries: Indonesia, Turkey, Malaysia and Egypt. Two articles on Indonesia examine, respectively, the conservative turn of subcultural youth and the emergence of Islamic populism in Palembang in 1950s. Two other articles are comparative studies: one article discusses the contemporary narratives of leftist Islam movements in Indonesia and Turkey; and the other compares the number of religious legislations in Indonesia with those of other democratic states to gauge the level/quality of democracy in Indonesia. The remaining two articles exclusively discuss social and political issues in Malaysia and Egypt. The Malaysia article examines the history of women’s involvement in politics from the time of the Malay Sultanate until post-World War II in Malaya, which now forms the modern territories of Malaysia and Singapore. The article on Egypt discusses major shift in the discourse of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, from the advocacy for restoring the Caliphate to the call for a modern civic state. Future editions of this journal shall cover political issues in more Muslim countries to further strengthen this journal’s credential as international journal. To attain that objective, scholars from around the world are warmly welcome to write articles for our journal.

Contemporary Narratives of Leftist Islam Movements in Indonesia and Turkey: A Comparative Analysis

This research analyses the contemporary narratives of leftist Islam movements being developed as a counter-narrative to dominant Islamic discourse in Indonesia and Turkey. These leftist Islam movements were introduced under different circumstances in the two countries. In Indonesia, leftist Islam was initially promoted by Islamic scholars who were interacting with Marxist references. This was shown in the cases of Haji Misbach, who was one of Indonesia’s – and the world’s – first leftist Muslim figures. In the case of Turkey, some leftist Islamic movements were inspired by the modern Turkish Marxist movement, which emerged in the middle of the twentieth century and was eventually combined with Islamic elements. This research argues that as both Indonesian and Turkish governments are consolidating their modes of authoritarian neoliberal governance, combined with increasing religiosity, the narratives of leftist Islam are re-emerging as a way to provide socio-political criticisms and to formulate alternative ideas on the role of Islam in improving the livelihood of Muslims in Indonesia and Turkey. This research engages with several cases of leftist Islamic movements in Indonesia and Turkey. In Indonesia, this research takes the examples of FNKSDA (Nahdliyyin Front for Natural Resource Sovereignty) and its media outlet Islam Bergerak (Islam on the Move) which have had an important role in organising leftist Islamic movement in Indonesia during the 2010s. In the case of Turkey, we examine the role of Antikapitalist Müslümanlar (Anti-Capitalist Muslims), also known as Kapitalizmle Mücadele Derneği (Association for Fight against Capitalism). This research identifies the socio-political origins, main ideas, goals, and strategies of the contemporary leftist Islam movements in Indonesia and Turkey.

Contemporary narratives about asymmetries in responsibility in global agri-food value chains: the case of the Ecuadorian stakeholders in the banana value chain

Global concerns over environmental and social issues in agrifood value chains have increased and are reflected in a number of voluntary sustainability standards and regulatory initiatives. However, these initiatives are often based on poor knowledge of production realities, creating a disconnect between producing and consuming countries. Through narrative analysis, this paper reveals asymmetries in the responsibilities of the various actors participating in Ecuadorian banana value chains, providing clear problem- and solution-framings. Despite the broad range of actors interviewed, our analysis reveals convergence in two main narratives that reflect asymmetries amongst local actors in terms of their ability to participate, ability to maintain participation, and adaptation strategies in view of changing external factors. One narrative relates to sustainability adaptations, the cost of which is not shared among all value chain actors. This is combined with a downward trend in the price of bananas and the lack of a differentiated price to account for losses and costs arising from increasing sustainability standards. Another narrative reflects a value chain structure that threatens small-farm survival. It highlights the urgency of protecting small-farm activity by enforcing national regulation and developing new market segments/models that understand small-scale producer reality. Study results show that the multitude of standards is not seen as beneficial and that downstream actors rather wish for common minimum standards to reduce business costs. Compatibility between standards and local realities should be a priority for global sustainability standards adoption. Building on the problems and solution-framings of local value chain links, we give voice to local actors, and link their perceptions to existing literature and discursive politics while contributing to social transparency and addressing the democratic deficit in agrifood value chains.

Primary care and vaccination

The present research delimited as objective to carry out an investigation on the challenges encountered by Primary Health Care and its Contributions with regard to vaccination for the control and immunization of the population. It is essential to consider contemporary narratives - national and international - that orbit around the central axis “Primary care and vaccination”, which consisted of: immunization; population management; quality of life; contributions; challenges and vaccine coverage, in a timeline from 2019 to 2022. As challenges, we deal with disinformation, or even fake news, which confuse the population, leading them to disbelieve in the vaccine potential. Finally, we analyze what have been the main contributions of primary care to improve the implementation of vaccine management. We resort to portals such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the Ministry of Health of Brazil and articles from the Vitrual Health Library to strengthen that, in Primary Health Care, vaccination services offer important evaluation indicators, which have been demonstrating, as over time, the contribution of vaccination actions to the health sector, characterizing them as one of the most rewarding, in view of the impact on disease control.

Weather Magic as Environmental Knowledge in Southern Vanuatu

This paper presents weather magic practices from the islands of Tanna and Aneityum, in southern Vanuatu, and highlights how this phenomenon is a critical domain of Indigenous environmental knowledge, particularly knowledge involving plants. Recent literature suggests that diverse cultural systems, such as music, can be viewed as domains of environmental knowledge, and we propose that magical systems should be afforded the same recognition. Although anthropological work in Melanesia has historically featured various magical practices, relatively little has been said about how these have been used to influence or understand the weather, and even less has been presented directly by Indigenous weather magic practitioners, who are co-authors on this paper. In this contribution, we intersperse anthropological and ethnobotanical commentary with verbatim narratives provided by three local experts in weather magic from southern Vanuatu, including oral histories, contemporary narratives, and the results of ethnobotanical surveys. The detailed knowledge that weather magic practitioners on these islands hold regarding their local environment represents an important means of transmitting not only cultural heritage, but also botanical knowledge, the maintenance of which may be critical for current and future conservation efforts. This research documents rich cultural traditions of local and global significance which are worthy of the attention and preservation afforded to other forms of Indigenous environmental knowledge. The goals of magic and those of science are not necessarily inherently opposed, and we show that magical practice can indeed involve and even preserve a detailed and powerful mode of knowing the environment.

Presentism and the Study of Late Antiquity

Presentism and the Study of Late Antiquity