Points Of Divergence Research Articles

The White Qia 帢 in the Wei-Jin Period

The qia hat has a complex history in medieval China. Since its emergence in the early third century CE, the hat appeared in various contexts and was imbued with a range of symbolic meanings. The white qia especially garnered associations relating to its color, including its participation in new aesthetic paradigms, its condemnation as an inauspicious political portent, its adoption as mourning dress, and its appearance as a narrative symbol connoting death, loss of privileged status, or non-human identity. An investigation into the hat’s history in the Wei-Jin period (220–420) indicates that attitudes towards and uses of the hat were influenced by changing aesthetic, philosophical, and political frameworks. Narrative depictions of the hat were also informed by the genre and provenance of the sources in question. In its literary transmutation as the hat of non-human figures, including ghosts and animal deities or spirits, the white qia’s narrative associations suggest fascinating points of similarity and divergence with respect to its continued usage as a human article of mourning dress. This symbolically rich piece of clothing, whose usages and meanings sometimes seem contradictory, or at the very least various, has not been adequately explored and contextualized. This article aims to provide such a study to contribute to the on-going work of deciphering the messages and meanings of dress in the early medieval period.

A Sonic Biography of an Afterlife: The Expelled Liberation Leader Uria Simango in Mozambican Rap

This article focuses on two interlinked trends in public memory in Mozambique: the rise of alternative heroes and parallel invocations of seemingly incompatible heroes, particularly as they relate to invocations of Frelimo’s ousted Vice President, Uria Simango, in Mozambican rap. The empirical material was produced by listening to rap music, attending shows, and through interviews and conversations with hip hop musicians in Beira, Chimoio and Maputo. This material is examined in relation to historical documents and situated alongside other types of public and private remembering. I argue that critical rap music allows insightful examinations of the links between young peoples’ perspectives on liberation history, present experiences and visions of the future. Rap performances also help to examine how the hegemony of official memory is weakening in Mozambique. These performances are a potentially generative source of alternative history; because they are deeply intertwined in public discussions as well as social activism, I argue that they potentially disrupt and transcend state-sanctioned historiographical frameworks. Taking an ambiguous stance towards historical figures, rap also differs from the opposition meta-narrative, which tends to simply reverse the official canon of heroes and traitors. I find that rappers use a variety of techniques to intervene in disputes around history in creative ways. Regional variations in performed histories draw upon both the local and global wisdoms of hip hop communities, improving their accessibility to the public.

Against the Marginalisation of Western Pedagogics in Postcolonial Zimbabwe

The current textual analysis juxtaposes Western pedagogics with Zimbabwe’s instructional methodology as currently encapsulated in the Curriculum Framework for Primary and Secondary Education for period 2015-2022. This framework is a principal document that continues to enshrine Zimbabwe’s education system while it undergoes review. Thus, the reflection estimates the applicability of Western pedagogics (as informed by Western philosophies) to Zimbabwe’s postcolonial education system. This undertaking comes against the background of Education 5.0 which occasioned the ongoing move by the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development [Mo HTEISTD] in collaboration with the University of Zimbabwe [UZ] to scrap Western educational philosophies like idealism, empiricism, pragmatism, progressivism and social reconstructionism from Zimbabwe’s teacher education syllabus. Hence, the author is explicitly perturbed by the imminent disregard of Western philosophies and their respective pedagogics as a result of the unmistakable over-exaltation of the heritage-based philosophy within Zimbabwe’s new teacher education syllabus yet to be implemented. In the process of juxtaposing Western pedagogics with Zimbabwe’s instructional methodology, the author observes strong congruence between the former and the latter. Notwithstanding a few points of divergence between Western pedagogics and Zimbabwe’s instructional methodology, the former is applicable to the latter. The current reflection, therefore, demonstrates beyond doubt that the idea of peripherising Western pedagogics (on the grounds that it is informed by Western philosophies)is more emotive than rational. This article, thus, implores the MoHTEISTD and the UZ to revisit with due sobriety their position of wanting to excise Western philosophies and their respective pedagogics, and consider restoring the same to their rightful place in Zimbabwe’s teacher education syllabus so that the country’s entire education sector remains of global resonance.

Tetrads for History and Alternate History

Tetrads for History and Alternate History

On the coordinate change in the Turkish literary process

Abstract: In this study, the author examines the literary landscape in Turkey given the new dimension opened by the vertical gradation of fiction. The division of literature into high literature (classic), middle-tier (Belles-lettres), and low-tier literature (for mass consumption) is becoming increasingly prominent. Belles-lettres seems to be the most mobile of those, with its representatives being able to, over time, find themselves both at the top and the bottom rung of this paradigm. Zülfü Livaneli's works straddle the line between the high literature and belles-lettres, while books by Barış Müstecaplıoğlu are a perfect example of mass literature becoming regarded as belles-lettres. Another productive approach is horizontal gradation – dividing modern Turkish literature into genres. This is especially true for mass literature, where a clear classification into genres and subgenres is pretty much a precondition for existence. The study singles out such genres of mass literature as detective novels, women's romance novels, and historical adventure novels. Speculative fiction occupies a special place in this, with its genre affiliation being a topic of major discussions. The Turkish literature of the 2000s features several principal genres of speculative fiction: sci-fi (K. Kutlu, G. Berkkan, H. Balçı) with alternative history being a part of such (G. Dayıoğlu, H. Kakınç); fantasy with its subgenres of urban fantasy (S. Yemni, S. Atasoy, G. Elikbank, F. O. Şeran, C. Yücel), "sword and sorcery" fantasy (B. Müstecaplıoğlu, A. Aras, G. Canbaba) and dark fantasy (S. Ersin, G. Öğüt), as well as the genre of dystopia (A. Şaşa). In conclusion, the author argues that analyzing literary pieces necessitates operating with both the vertical and horizontal paradigms simultaneously.

Три круга интертекстуальности: «усадебный миф» в романе М.Л. Степновой «Сад»

The article analyzes the landmark novel of Russian writer M.L. Stepnova, The Garden (2020), which has aroused the public’s and critic’s interest, continuing the “estate text” of Russian literature of the 19th–20th centuries. It is shown that the image of the garden in the work is both national (the whole tradition of the Russian “estate text”) and universal (the Bible, Voltaire, H.L. Borges, U. Eco, etc.). The key to an adequate reading of the postmodern novel with its “semantic insolubility,” narrative “nonselectio,” experiments on human identity, an invitation to the “alternative history,” etc. is an analysis of its intertextuality, generating original life-creating strategies. There are three concentric circles of intertextuality that diverge in the breadth of space-time coverage: character, author-narrative, and mythopoetic. If in character terms the protagonist of the work — the garden — directly participates in people’s lives, at the author-narrative level becomes an ideologeme, symbolizing with his death under the axes of hired workers the tragic fate of Russia at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, then in the super-author’s mythopoetic sphere reveals the quality of practical immortality, indestructibility. The reason for the suicidal cutting down of the garden of the grown-up Princess Boryatinskaya is the excommunication of this heroine from fiction, primarily “estate,” with its powerful lifecreating potential. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the systematic analysis of the intertextual strategies of the iconic modern novel for the first time and the identification of their three-level structure. The article applies historical-literary and cultural approaches, methods of historical poetics, and structural-semiotic analysis and uses the modernist and postmodern thesaurus paradigms.

Unveiling the tapestry: a comparative investigation into data-protection legislation in India and Pakistan

In today’s digital interconnectedness, data regulation in South Asia, particularly in India and Pakistan, is transforming into a state where profound changes are occurring. This article deals with the contrastive analysis of personal data-protection laws in the two countries, with the aim of revealing the points of convergence and divergence and the reasons that either support or reject unification. Different approaches led to the development of these standards, which encompass varying levels of scope, complexity and risk. The methodology prescribes reviewing and assessing the existing laws and proposing their legislative development. The research exposes the inefficiency in the legislative aspect of dealing with the rising demand for an adequate regulatory framework for data-protection measures. The wisdom drawn from this examination bestows priceless advice on Politian’s, legal experts and all involved parties who are concerned about data protection in the context of digital connections. International best practices can be adapted to inform reforms of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, in India and the proposed Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023, in Pakistan to bring enhanced regimes for comprehensive and effective personal data protection in both nations. Keywords: data-protection laws; India; legislation; Pakistan.

Considering Older Adults in Mainstream Technology Development: A Panel Report from AIS Women’s Network ICIS 2022

As the world’s population continues to live longer, the consideration/inclusion of older adults in mainstream technology development is paramount. Organizations that develop software and hardware for mainstream technology will miss a significant market segment if they fail to consider the aging population. The following questions are addressed in this paper as shared by three academic experts in this research domain. What are the prominent definitions of social inclusion? 2) How do older adults (65 years or older) fit that definition? What are some key interpretations that placed older adults as a socially excluded group in mainstream technology? How have IT vendors included aging adults? And, what are the ways IT vendors have not included aging adults? How do you encourage vendors/software developers to consider cognitive age versus chronological age in new app development? Points of convergence and divergence among the researchers are reported and suggestions for future research addressing the inclusion of older adults in mainstream technology development are provided.

Object Incorporation in Latin: Towards Macro- and Micro-Typology of Incorporation

In this paper, the Latin language is analyzed in the context of typology of object incorporation. The authors draw on the research of Mithun, who considers incorporation on the basis of two obligatory conditions: first, the noun must be embedded in the verb, and second, the language must have parallel syntactic paraphrases with non-incorporated noun. The second criterion is so important that the phenomenon of incorporation is acknowledged to exist even in those languages where there is no complete integration of the noun into the verb, but only a certain syntactic compactness, provided there are parallel constructions. The latter type has been coined “noun stripping” and has launched the division of incorporation into two types, viz. “strong” and “weak” incorporation. Another important point of divergence between the incorporating languages is the change of the argument structure of the source verb, namely, the preservation or loss of transitivity of the incorporated complex. Taking all these parameters into account, the authors propose a new typology of object incorporation, including languages that have not previously been considered in the context of this phenomenon. This typology is not based on a strict opposition of incorporating and non-incorporating languages, but represents a kind of continuum in which the place of a language depends on whether it demonstrates: 1) full incorporation or only a close syntactic Noun–Verb compactness; 2) the presence of parallel syntactic paraphrases; 3) the detransitivisation of the resulting compound verb. The authors examine each criterion in detail as applied to Latin and show the place of Latin in this typology.

Heritage of the “Cast Iron Grandmother”: Narrative Versions of Kasli History

This article focuses on the production of Kasli castings in the 1930s–1940s (essays by N. Dobychin, M. Zuev-Ordynets, and P. Bazhov). The authors carry out a historical contextualisation of the sources referring to the travel notes of D. Mamin-Sibiryak (1887) and interviews with the inhabitants of Kasli obtained during an expedition to study the narrative landscapes of Ural cities (2021). The authors aim to comprehend the situation of alternative history with reference to the city of Kasli, which is set by options for describing the present, focused on the desired future. In the history of Kasli castings, the 1930s is considered both as a relevant present with the nearest future, and as a turn in the past favourable for local production, preserved in the memory of the Kasli people. Methodologically, the research is based on multiscalar analysis with an emphasis on the interaction of different time and space scales. The article introduces materials of the State Archive of Administrations of Sverdlovsk Region related to the biography of N. Dobychin which has never been done previously, since it is his essay Living Cast Iron that is said to have played a decisive role in the revival of the production of artistic iron casting. The authors analyse texts about Kasli castings in terms of their possible influence, due to the scale of the placement platform (central or regional press, circulation, etc.) and the accuracy of compliance with the moment of cultural politics, reflected in the composition and motif structure of the text and the communication of an external or internal view of events. The essay, which influenced the local narrative about the fate of either dying or rising production, may have become a resource for mythologising the “long-lived” Ural craftsmanship in the words of the famous “cast-iron grandmother” of Bazhov. The judgments of today’s Kasli residents about the past and present of the city testify to a complex combination of pride and resentment towards their historical past and present.

Deconstruction of Eurocentric Historiography in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide

The Hungry Tide, the fourth novel of Amitav Ghosh, mainly chronicles the daily struggles of the marginalized people living in the islands of Sundarbans. Along with their struggle, Ghosh records their customs, culture, religion, language, dreams, legends and myths in the novel. Ghosh’s incorporation of such elements of the tidal country has two prominent implications. Firstly, it allows him to deconstruct the Eurocentric historiography of India that resulted from its colonial past. Secondly, he writes an alternative history from the perspective of the subaltern where the people of marginalized group gain their voice, agency and position that are absent in the official and recorded history. Although he writes the novel using English language, he artistically subverts the language of the colonizers to dig up an authentic history by employing his own style of historiography that reconnects us with both our past and forgotten history. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to show how Amitav Ghosh, in his novel The Hungry Tide, endeavours to create an alternate historiography of the tidal country that transcends the stereotypical Eurocentric narrativity and presents a scrap of history that is omitted from the officially recorded history.

The Significance of Coffin Construction Practices in the Old and Middle Kingdoms

Over time, technology and traditions shift as artists or craftspeople adapt to transformations in fashion, politics, religion, the availability of materials, and advances in knowledge. These changes in production are often visible in the material record. Understanding why certain elements of production change or remain constant can therefore help archaeologists or historians to understand better the broader social contexts in which these communities of practice lived and worked. Developments in the production of ancient Egyptian coffins over time can provide an example of the type of social insights that a long-term, large-scale analysis of technological history permits. In this longue-durée analysis, the author highlights the construction history of coffins from the beginning of the Old Kingdom through to the end of the Middle Kingdom, punctuated with a selection of detailed case studies. The adaptations in practice show carpenters beginning a tradition, demonstrate the emergence of communities of practice, and express a major shift in approaches in response to revolutions in religious expression. Once this tradition emerges, however, it remains constant throughout the First Intermediate Period and beyond, during a time otherwise characterised by experimentation and political upheaval. This suggests a continuity and resiliency among communities of carpenters, building up an alternative history to the royal narrative.

The Life and Philosophy of Maria Vladimirovna Bezobrazova

The article presents an exploration into the history of Russian philosophy with the help of the genealogical approach, which, on the one hand, allows to take a fresh look at the texts of women philosophers and to approach them from new angles, and, on the other hand, actualizes the idea of alternative memory, an alternative history of philosophy, returning female thinkers to the field of historical research and finding a place for their ideas and theoretical achievements. The discourse-methodological analysis underlying genealogy allows to study utterances from the point of view of its social production, which leads to the problems of power and knowledge and shows that the latter is created not only through the discourse of affirmation, but also through that of exclusion. Consequently, it is not only necessary to deconstruct the dominant historical and philosophical discourse, but also to examine what this discourse excludes, and feminist genealogies set themselves such a task. This has led to a change in the status of philosophy itself, which can no longer be “high theorizing” about abstract principles, but becomes the practice of the political. This approach, applied to the analysis of the texts of the Russian thinker M.V. Bezobrazova, paints a clear picture of both the general philosophical significance of her ideas and the political meaning of the problems under study, and allows to trace the movement of thought from philosophy to politics. Of particular importance is the conclusion that the feminist analysis of the texts of women philosophers serves, first of all, to establish intergenerational dialogue and the manifestation of female solidarity.

The Scars of Memory: The Biographies of Monument Trees in Central Europe

The author of the article examines monument trees, representing in history and culture traumatic social experiences. Using examples from Central Europe, he describes specific trees and their close environment (surroundings), looking for traces of dramatic events or processes from the past. On this basis, he reconstructs the biomemory of the region, which stores the “scars” of military conflicts, political violence, expulsions or cultural cleansings. The author argues that biomemory can function as an alternative history or counterhistory, preserve local tradition, inspire social practices, and conceptualize the relationship between the ideological, civilizational and organic perception of the natural environment.

A History of the Fort at Long Akah: Contact, Collaboration and Power

This paper traces history through the fort at Long Akah during the various eras of the Brooke administration, the colonial government and the Sarawak State government. This study takes its cue from the notion of the fort as a vehicle for a distinctive history of an area and uses indigenous oral histories and recollections as “alternative history.” Forts were built during and after pacification and this process was dependent on the collaboration of local leaders whose influence was ritually prescribed by the adat. The forts functioned as a place where taxes were paid, where court cases were heard, and where trading took place. While the fort at Long Akah represented locally a locus of power for the Brooke administration, it will be seen that this power was located in a crucial local collaboration in governance, which depended on the role of local leaders.

Философско-эстетические воззрения Г.В.Ф. Гегеля и В.С. Соловьева: к вопросу о влиянии

The article provides a comparative analysis of the aesthetic views of G.W.F. Hegel (based on the material of “Lectures on Aesthetics” prepared for publication by H.-G. Goto) and V.S. Solovyov. The presented history of the question of the influence of Hegelian philosophy on Solovyov's work demonstrates the prospects and productivity of research related to the issues of aesthetics of Solovyov and Hegel. In this regard, there is a need to summarize the results of the investigations on this topic, making a number of important clarifications and revealing previously intended points of convergence and divergence of the two philosophers. Both general aesthetic problems (the meaning of beauty in nature, the connection between beauty and the absolute idea) and applied issues of an art and literary nature (justification of the hierarchy of arts, features of lyrical poetry) are considered. A direct and hidden polemic of Solovyov with Hegel's ideas is revealed: the objection to the subjectivity of the perception of beauty in nature, the emphasis on the need to spiritualize substance under the influence of beauty. Clarifying the understanding of the role of art in history by Hegel and Solovyov makes it possible to more clearly trace the grandiose prospects for the development of art in the Russian philosopher, whose concept of theurgic creativity will later be adopted by younger symbolists. Speaking not only as a philosopher, but also as a poet, Solovyov criticizes Hegel's position on lyrical poetry as an expression of the individual subjective consciousness of the artist. It is demonstrated how the Hegelian dialectical method is implemented by Solovyov in characterizing the stages of development of Russian poetry of the XIX century. It is suggested that the dialectic of freedom and necessity was interpreted by Solovyov when presenting the theory of fate as the Providence of God.

The evolutionary loss of the Eh1 motif in FoxE1 in the lineage of placental mammals.

Forkhead box E1 (FoxE1) protein is a transcriptional regulator known to play a major role in the development of the thyroid gland. By performing sequence alignments, we detected a deletion in FoxE1, which occurred in the evolution of mammals, near the point of divergence of placental mammals. This deletion led to the loss of the majority of the Eh1 motif, which was important for interactions with transcriptional corepressors. To investigate a potential mechanism for this deletion, we analyzed replication through the deletion area in mammalian cells with two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, and in vitro, using a primer extension reaction. We demonstrated that the area of the deletion presented an obstacle for replication in both assays. The exact position of polymerization arrest in primer extension indicated that it was most likely caused by a quadruplex DNA structure. The quadruplex structure hypothesis is also consistent with the exact borders of the deletion. The exact roles of these evolutionary changes in FoxE1 family proteins are still to be determined.

Colonialism, Diasporic Politics and Alternate History in Shauna Singh Baldwin’s What the Body Remembers and Anita Rau Badami’s Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?

Shauna Singh Baldwin in her novel What the Body Remembers (1999) and Anita Rau Badami in Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? (2006) take up diverse treatises which are advantageous in the construction of subjectivity of a postcolonial subject. The present article deals with Baldwin’s representation of the nation and Badami’s depiction of politics, which trespass borders and affect diaspora Sikhs and members of other communities. Colonialism has been one of the causes of communalism which resulted in distortions in the historical representations of the events. Both the novelists amidst religious and historical landscapes of India also make political statements in their distinctive ways. It is interesting to analyze these statements from the perspective of postcolonial discourse as both authors belong to a period when literary texts and histories are being re-examined with a counter-narrativistic assessment. Both the authors bring out the Sikh perspective on the colonial and racist policies of the British in India and the colonial/postcolonial racist attitude of majority communities in foreign lands towards ethnic minorities through the characters taken in the novels under study. Politics of extremism and fundamentalism is the crux of both the novels. The English language has been shown to have been given a special status in the colonial regime. How language becomes a tool of both subversion and oppression is an important theme in both novels. The novels interrogate written history from alternate perspectives through the turmoil of time and space in which the novels are written. Both Badami and Baldwin conceive their characters presenting them as products of their time, place and environment.

The logos Christology in the fourth gospel (Jn 1:1–5, 14): A soteriological response to an Ewe cosmic prayer

This article interprets the logos Christology in the fourth gospel within Ewe-Ghanaian cosmic setting. The article employs a combination of the exegetical and mother tongue biblical hermeneutics as its methodologies. The article compares the concept of the logos in John 1:1–5, 14 with a similar concept in Ewe cosmology with the aim of finding their points of convergence and divergence. The article also identifies linguistic and theological gaps in the Ewe rendition of John 1:1–5, 14 and proposes a new translation that addresses it. A translation of the logos in Ewe cosmic perspective renders the term nyagbe, the intelligible word which dwells with the female pair of Sogbe-Lisa and manifests itself from the absolute state of existence [logo] to the embodied state [logosu]. When nyagbe journeyed from the eternal state of existence to the embodied state of existence, it manifests itself at five different levels of existence until it reaches the final state where humans exist. Although believed to be the epitome of all creation, human beings are at the same time described as being at the shore of ignorance and therefore must continually climb the ladder of knowledge in order to free themselves from it. It is for this reason that humans constantly petition the cosmic forces for their salvation. The article therefore, identifies a soteriological gap created in the Ewe soteriology and concludes that the only soteriological response to the Ewe cosmic cry for deliverance from the state of ignorance is the logos incarnate in John 1:14.Contribution: The article contributes to the academic knowledge on the logos Christology in the prologue of the fourth gospel (John 1:1–5, 14), specifically in the use of mother tongue in biblical hermeneutics in Africa.

The Role of Short-Term Memory in Language Processing: A Theoretical Review

This article takes an in-depth look at the complex role of short-term memory (STM) in language understanding. In addition to synthesizing previous research on this interrelationship, he ventures into less explored territory by analyzing the external and contextual factors that can influence this dynamic. The study has three main objectives: first, a comprehensive synthesis of previous work on the role of STM in various linguistic aspects; secondly, a discussion of points of convergence and divergence between these studies; and third, an innovative exploration of external influences, such as cultural and educational context, on the relationship between STM and language understanding. This last dimension sheds new light on the limitations of existing theories and highlights the importance of considering a wider range of variables when studying STM and language. The findings have significant implications for areas such as education and language therapy and suggest promising directions for future research.