Subject Of Fiction Research Articles

Introduction to the Special Issue on CRISPR.

Introduction to the Special Issue on CRISPR George Q. Daley As i was finalizing this introduction to the Special Issue on CRISPR genome editing for Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, news broke that the Chinese scientist He Jiankui had been sentenced in Chinese court to three years in prison for "illegal medical practice" for his role in the creation of the world's first genome-edited babies. This official reprimand reinforced the worldwide condemnation and censure that followed He's announcement in November 2018 that his team at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, had used the CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing tools on human embryos created via in vitro fertilization. He produced and brought to term two babies (and later a third) carrying mutations in the CCR5 gene, a critical co-receptor for HIV, in hopes of rendering these babies immune to infection with the virus that causes AIDS. The work was criticized as premature practice of an unproven and controversial biomedical technology, and vilified for its flouting of widely promulgated international guidelines. Numerous expert committees that had called for restraint, further research to understand the potential risks, and wider social dialogue to determine which, if any, of the many possible genetic changes that could be introduced into the human germline might one day be [End Page 1] deemed permissible. Scientists, bioethicists, and laypeople who had previously been at odds over whether genome editing of human embryos for the purpose of altering an individual's entire genetic constitution—and by virtue of passage through the reproductive germline, that of all of their offspring—should ever be practiced, were virtually united that the world's first experiment in human germline genome editing had been a gross violation of medical and bioethical norms. While the imprisonment of the first practitioner of human germline genome editing will likely dampen enthusiasm that might have been building in some quarters, an IVF clinic in Russia has boldly announced their intentions to create genome-edited babies, and application of this technology, however premature, may be inevitable. This volume is an important exercise in the critical dialogue that is essential if the potential application of this technology is ever to be managed for maximal benefit and minimal harm. Gene editing is not a new technology, nor is the genome editing of humans a novel concept barely entertained prior to the discovery of the CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing toolkit. For more than a century and a half, dating from the time of Mendel's discovery of the rules of heredity, the later definition of the gene as units responsible for the generational passage of hereditary traits, and ultimately the discovery of DNA as the molecular vehicle of such inheritance, farmers and scientists have been engaged—wittingly, or unwittingly—in the manipulation of genetic traits through selective breeding or experimental interventions. The potential that scientists might one day prove capable of altering and defining human traits either chemically or genetically in the context of in vitro fertilization and embryo manipulation has long been the subject of critical commentary and fiction. Perhaps most notable was the publication in 1932 by Aldous Huxley of Brave New World, a dystopian view of a future society in which highly mechanized in vitro embryo manipulation produced babies preordained into specific castes of social strata. The modern era of gene editing began, arguably, in the Stanford laboratory of Paul Berg, who in 1972 published the creation of the world's first hybrid DNA molecule, a link between genes of the monkey tumor virus SV40 and a virus that infects bacteria, called lambda phage (Jackson, Symons, and Berg 1972). A natural next step was injecting this novel gene construct into the bacterial host Escherichia coli, a denizen of the human intestine. But Berg deferred this experiment because of concerns about the potential risks of propagating a monkey tumor virus within the human gut, and together with other scientists, he advocated for restrictions on certain types of recombinant DNA research (such as inserting toxins, antibiotic resistance, or cancer genes into bacteria) until safety concerns could be better addressed. Berg and colleagues organized a conference of scientists to address ways to ensure the...

Facial Recognition: Why We Should Worry About the Use of Big Tech for Law Enforcement

The terrain of the privacy battle in India is changing. What was once a subject of cinematic fiction in Minority Report has now become reality, powered by improvements in computational power and artificial intelligence. Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) and Live Facial Recognition Technology have entered our lives, and are here to stay. This essay argues that rather than improving transparency or efficiency, FRTs end up threatening democracy. It sketches out the privacy and fundamental rights concerns, which arise due to the use of FRT, including free speech and free assembly concerns, and necessitate the application of the proportionality test. The essay adopts the four-pronged proportionality test to evaluate the constitutionality of the use of FRT. This involves a specific consideration of the legality, suitability, necessity, and procedural guarantees surrounding the deployment of FRT by law enforcement agencies. The essay concludes with certain recommendations on the way forward for the use of FRT in India.

From a Bubbling Swirl of Signs

De-sign is an activity that is a result of semiotic and design processes combined to give a desired outcome. It is an outcome brought about by the conscious mind. But a De-sign outcome can be either tangible or intangible. Intangible results can lead to either an objective or a purely objective product. In other words, it can be a physical result or an imaginative state of mind. This paper explores the latter process of De-sign and how it relates to fictional subject matters and film. A commentary on language, beginning with the alphabet and moving onto the advent of written language, is included. The paper progresses from the world of written language, to an exploration of the mutable, purely objective world of fiction, to the more objective, rigid world of film, where elements left to the imagination, when reading, become fixed with little left for the purely objective activities of the mind. It will be shown that De-sign is an approach common to all purely objective thinking, whether it has an intangible or a tangible final product.

L’Altra metà. Sdoppiamento, simulacri e finzioni in P. K. Dick

The comparison between two worlds separated by a clear ontological or ideological gap has been one of the favourite themes of science fiction since the dawn of modernity, re-proposing itself in various forms and modes. This “differential gap”, as rightly pointed out by D. Suvin, can only be understood in historical and dialectical terms, since it invariably implies a subject, or rather an autoimage with respect to which the Other is perceived as dissimilar or opposite to us. From this point of view, the estrangement technique takes on a critical function of reflecting on the ways of constructing the Self and, more generally, on the episteme within which the individual finds himself acting and with respect to which he defines his own identity.This contribution aims to investigate this evocative theme starting from two particularly significant texts: “Exhibit Piece” (1954), one of the first stories in which P. K. Dick experiments with the concept of alternative reality, a key element in his original reinterpretation of the canons of sci fi of the Golden Age; and his recent television adaptation “Real Life”, the fifth of ten episodes of the series Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams(2017-2018).

Conjugal Strife in Anita Desai's “Cry, The Peacock”

Marriage is a supposedly sacrosanct establishment in each community. It is the perceived social organization for building up and keeping up the family as well as for making and supporting the ties of connection. Conjugal disharmony is characterized as a battle between individuals with contradicting needs, thoughts, convictions, qualities, or goals. The disharmonized character's quest for satisfaction is a typical theme in contemporary fiction. Anita Desai is considered an authority on uncovering the issue of present-day women in India. She is increasingly worried about the inward situation of her estranged protagonist in the modern, patriarchal society. In her novels, she has depicted the man-lady relationship and the untold sufferings of ladies out of the connubial disharmony. Desai's novel Cry, the Peacock is considered as the initial phase toward mental fiction in Indian writing in English. This paper talks about the connubial disharmony between Maya and Gautama and its outcomes in Anita Desai's Cry, the Peacock.

Life under another Sun: From Science Fiction to Science

Initiated in the sixteenth century, the Copernican revolution toppled our Earth from its theological pedestal, revealing it not to be the centre of everything but a planet among several others in orbit around one of the zillions of stars of our Universe. Already proposed by some philosophers at the dawn of this major paradigm shift, the existence of exoplanets, i.e. planets in orbit around stars other than our Sun, remained suspected but unconfirmed for centuries. It is only in the last decade of the twentieth century that the first of these extrasolar worlds were found. Their seminal discoveries initiated the development of more and more ambitious projects that led eventually to the detection of thousands of exoplanets, including a few dozen potentially habitable ones, i.e. terrestrial exoplanets that could harbour large amounts of liquid water – and maybe life – on their surfaces. Upcoming astronomical facilities will soon be able to probe the atmospheric compositions of some of these extrasolar worlds, maybe performing in the process the historical detection of chemical signs of life light-years away. But while the existence of extraterrestrial life remains pure speculation for now, it has been a major theme of science fiction for more than a century. By creating countless stories of encounters between humans and alien forms of life, science-fiction authors have pursued, in a sense, the Copernican revolution, confronting us with the idea that not only could life be widespread in the Universe, but also that our species may be far from the Cosmic pinnacle in matters of intelligence and technological development.

The war novel and human rights

The war novel, a distinct genre of fiction, has typically been read as a type of humanitarian narrative. This article explains how the war novel participates in humanitarian discourse but also has another role to play that addresses human rights more specifically. In the effort to identify accountability, war novels explore complex historical events and offer us important insights on the challenges of historical narration more broadly. Furthermore, in offering explanations for “who?” and “why?,” war novels model how we can approach the complex history of conflict for human rights. To illustrate how accountability is a central theme of war fiction, the essay turns to examples of novels about the Vietnam War.

Entre o Real e o Ficcional

O romance Diário da queda, de Michel Laub, foi publicado em 2011 e narra a história de um homem de meia idade que rememora eventos do passado. A obra trata-se de um diálogo em três tempos: entre as memórias do narrador-personagem, do pai e do avô, sobrevivente de Auschwitz. O presente artigo tem como objetivos: a) apontar algumas vertentes da literatura brasileira contemporânea, dialogando com as considerações de Beatriz Resende (2008) e de Karl Eric Schøllhammer (2009); b) problematizar a proliferação das escritas de si na atualidade, partindo-se do conceito de Doubrovsky autoficção, formulado em 1977; c) analisar as relações ético-estéticas presentes na obra Diário da Queda, de Michel Laub, no que tange ao diálogo entre a herança do Genocídio Judeu e a construção do sujeito ficcional; d) discutir o conflito intergeracional presente na obra e suas repercussões na construção da identidade do narrador-personagem.

The graphic aesthetics of a printed book An exploration in narrative fiction theme

L'objecte d'estudi d'aquest treball descriu un nou terme, estetica grafica, com el resultat final que es manifesta a un receptor quan soste i observa un llibre impres entre les seves mans. La nostra area d'estudi se situa en la tematica editorial de la ficcio narrativa a Espanya per tres raons: per representar el percentatge mes elevat quant a volum de negoci editorial; per considerar l'objecte lliuro com un mitja de comunicacio entre la realitat i la ficcio; i per les particularitats del flux de tasques que intervenen en l'edicio impresa. Amb aquesta finalitat explorem, mitjancant una metodologia qualitativa, l'edicio en la tematica de la ficcio narrativa des de l'any 2010 fins a l'any 2015 en el sector editorial espanyol. La informacio obtinguda ho hem corroborat mitjancant una serie d'entrevistes en profunditat realitzades a professionals seleccionats sobre la base de la seva posicio laboral, trajectoria editorial i prestigi professional en aquest sector. Tot aixo ens ha permes descriure el terme “estetica grafica” i com es manifesta a partir de tres variables: aspecte estetic, forma estructural i estil grafic. L'abast del nostre treball ens ha permes plantejar una teoria sobre l'estetica grafica d'un llibre impres i, a manera d'assaig preliminar realitzat durant tres cursos academics, des del 2015 fins al 2018, recaptar evidencies amb les quals aportar una primera avaluacio des de les perspectives qualitativa, educativa i cientifica. Els resultats obtinguts en aquest treball ens permeten aportar indicis que evidencien que la configuracio, aleatoria estrategica, d'una estetica grafica es determina a traves d'un enfocament holistic entre el conjunt de tasques que es realitzen en l'edicio impresa. I tambe sostenir que una inadequada estetica grafica pot condicionar d'alguna forma la comunicacio entre l'obra literaria impresa en un llibre i la interpretacio que realitzi un receptor.

Things as They Seem

AbstractI respond to the five papers of criticism in this issue of Philosophy. I argue that my cognitive dualism, which may be open to the theological objections levelled by Fiona Ellis, is vindicated by its ability to explain both freedom and inter-personal relations. I defend the inter-subjectivity of aesthetic judgment against Simon Blackburn's argument from ‘the acquaintance principle’, and my vision of cultural decline against the sceptical arguments of Samuel Hughes. The crucial role played by subjectivity in my fiction, discussed by Alicja Gescinska, enables me to add to David McPherson's account of existential conservatism, with which I largely concur. I end on a note of puzzlement, as to why such innocent arguments should be the target of such implacable hatred.

Marcas, produtos e temáticas na ficção televisiva: um ensaio sobre o placement como estratégia de produção

O presente paper procura discutir, de forma preliminar e ensaística, o uso do placement de marcas, produtos e temas na ficção televisiva, enquanto estratégia comercial, mas também enquanto estratégia social. Num tempo de superabundância de oferta de conteúdos e de proliferação de plataformas de distribuição e de dispositivos de acesso, o recurso a alternativas criativas de produção e financiamento de conteúdos procura garantir a fidelização de telespectadores e, por consequência, desencadear a compra, num constante processo dialógico entre anunciantes/marcas, canais/conteúdos e recetores/consumidores. Assim, e numa atitude reflexiva, é explorado o product placement enquanto conceito, atendendo às suas potencialidades e impactos, fazendo-se o contraponto e a analogia com o placement de temas (merchandising social), enquanto campo disciplinar dentro dos estudos dos media, mas ainda com pouca expressão analítica e académica em Portugal.

Contagious Horror: Infectious Themes in Fiction and Film.

Infectious diseases have been a preeminent part of literature since the earliest human writings. In particular, they have contributed greatly to the genre of horror-written or visual art intended to startle or scare. Horror fiction has emphasized infectious themes from the earliest Babylonian and Hebrew texts. In medieval times, stories of vampires and werewolves often had a contagious component, and pivotal works of Victorian horror centered around fear of infection and contamination. As film became prominent in the 20th Century, a strong emphasis on themes of plague and apocalypse developed. An analysis of the use of infection in horror fiction and film shows that it often represents a metaphor for societal concerns, and it is extremely useful in framing challenging issues for a wide audience.

Desasosiegos de la memoria. Tecnología y recuerdo amplificado en la serie Black Mirror

One of the recurring themes in contemporary audiovisual science fiction has revolved around the relationship between memory and technology. In these types of stories, the social and individual implications of a transhuman memory, that is, technologically improved or augmented, have been approached with relative frequency. In this paper, I intend to analyze how the relationship between memory and technology has been represented in the successful television fiction series Black Mirror. From an approach based on studies on cultural memory and television fiction, and from the analysis of qualitative content, I specifically examine two chapters that explicitly thematize the relationships between memory and technology: The Entire History of You (2011) and Crocodile (2017). The results of the analysis show how, in these episodes, the irruption of mnemotechnological innovations leads to a decentering around the very concepts of remembering and forgetting, upsetting the limits between registration and recall, between the archive and memory, between personal and public and even between past and present. In these chapters, the social and human reaches of the amplification by technological prostheses of the biological capacities of registration, storage and recovery of memory are delineated critically from two fundamental axes: on the one hand, memory as an object of compulsive consumption, and on the other, memory as an object of social control.

Horse-Racing Fraud in Victorian Fiction

Horse-Racing Fraud in Victorian Fiction Nancy Henry (bio) In his account of English horse racing, A Mirror of the Turf (1892), Louis Henry Curzon writes: There is no other business, perhaps, which offers so many opportunities for successful fraud as horse-racing, and that for the best of reasons: the chicanery that is prevalent does not render those who practice it amendable to the criminal law, turf crimes being without the pale of legal action. (271)1 Curzon reflects that frauds in the late nineteenth century are more subtle and less violent than in the past, when a horse might be “ ‘nobbled’ or ‘got at’ by some person hired for the purpose, or it might be lamed by the farrier, or perhaps poisoned by a stable attendant” (272). In contrast, the “coups” of his own time are planned over months or years, as when bookmakers purchase horses in order to manipulate their odds across multiple races. Such scams may be impossible to detect, much less punish. He concludes that “turf frauds of many kinds, but especially those kinds which entail no penal consequences, are plentiful enough even at the present time” (300).2 Victorian and contemporary historians have established the changing nature of racing fraud, which became more businesslike as the sport became more commercialized.3 Victorian horse-racing fiction represents a distinctive subculture at the intersection of athletic competition and local and global economies of betting. J. Jeffrey Franklin analyzes gambling as “part of the Victorian discourse of money, [treated] as one among the other channels through which capital was circulated in nineteenth-century Britain” (34–35). I argue further that a focus on horse racing, and on fraud in particular, in Victorian fiction contributes not only to the histories of racing and gambling but also to the history of finance and financial fiction. Writers of fiction were particularly drawn to those earlier forms of fraud mentioned by Curzon, such as poisoning and laming, which could only be carried out by someone intimate enough with the horse to get close and do harm. Such acts of sabotage were motivated by vengeance—usually against the owners of the horse. The elements of class conflict and personal vendetta played into the overall themes of Victorian fiction. The problem of how to identify the perpetrator was consistent with that of other financially themed novels. Swindlers such as Charles Dickens’s Merdle in Little Dorrit (1855–57) [End Page 235] or Anthony Trollope’s Dobbs Broughton (also a horse player) in The Last Chronicle of Barset (1866–67) or Augustus Melmotte in The Way We Live Now (1875) disguise their scams through false identities and elaborate schemes. In contrast, tampering with a horse to sabotage a race, on which great sums of money might be wagered, depends on the simple fact that horses cannot testify. Fiction has the capacity to examine the psychology of the saboteur as well as the experience of the horse. In this respect, examining frauds that involve tampering with the equine athlete opens up the study of financial fiction to the realm of animal studies.4 That Curzon sought a variety of terms—fraud, chicanery, and crime—to describe cheating in racing suggests the difficulty of definitions. The term fraud is expansive, encompassing many possible scenarios of dishonest behaviour. Chicanery seems quaint, and crime is inaccurate where the law is not involved. Within sports generally, Graham Brooks, Azeem Aleem, and Mark Button see fraud as a subset of corruption and offer a useful definition: fraud “is based on deception with the intention of securing some advantage—immediate or in the future—and depriving a third party such as individual(s), a small group of people or organisation of honest services or benefits at the expense of other individuals and organisations” (18). I keep this definition in mind while employing the term fraud in cases where a saboteur intends to deprive an owner of a sound horse, and, consequently, to defraud of their money the people who bet on that horse. Furthermore, such fraud may symbolically target an entire class of wealthy horse owners; crucially, it also physically harms the animal, which may or may not recover. With...

Can technology save the environment? Lessons from Iain M. Banks’ Culture series

A common theme in speculative fiction concerns technological overreach. All manner of scenarios have been developed by science fiction authors and filmmakers, warning of the potential for subjugation, obliteration, or alienation as technologies grow in power and scale. Yet within environmental circles, even though the dangers inherent in technological development are well appreciated, environmental challenges are coming to be defined more and more as technical matters to be resolved via technological means. This article explores some of the meaning and limits of this contemporary environmental techno-optimism, through engagement with the “Culture” novels of Iain M. Banks. The Culture novels chronicle a space-faring, post-scarcity civilization, and stand as a kind of best-case extension, in environmental terms, of humanity’s present technological trajectory. The article wrestles with the potential for great benefit but also extraordinary risk that comes with treading down Banks’ path and outlines the kinds of questions that must be asked and answered in an increasingly technology-saturated world. The article distills lessons from comparing Banks’ novels to the “Biosphere 2” experiment. It also explores a few of the ways in which speculative fiction might be deployed in the classroom to better equip students and citizens to wrestle with existing and emerging technologies and their implications.

ДМИТРО ЧИЖЕВСЬКИЙ ЯК ІСТОРИК НАЦІОНАЛЬНОГО ЛІТОПИСАННЯ

The article is devoted to the study of D.Chyzhevsky’s contribution to the analysis of the artistic filling of ancient chronicles through the use of the stylistic method of analysis. An important conclusion is the assertion of the national chronicles of the eleventh and thirteenth centuries that their authors are highly educated, good connoisseurs of the Bible, ancient, Byzantine literatures, works by Homer, Joseph Flavius, George Hamartol, Joan Malalai, the Byzantine chronograph, Alexandria, especially popular in the princely environment, and the images of Alexander of Macedon, Darius, reproduced in it, as well as the image of Hercules, were close and exemplary for our princes. As for the brief history of national writing, D.Chyzhevsky, analyzing the historical and aesthetic canvas of the chronicles of the eleventh and eighteenth centuries, adequately and convincingly characterized the artistic value and originality of memorials, revealed the crucial importance in their creation of the high erudition available to the authors, the thorough knowledge of the history of Ukrainian and foreign, in particular of ancient, literatures; emphasized in the chroniclers the literary ability, heroic and patriotic abilities, national centrism and moral and religious nobility, attachment to traditions, a part of the literary and chronicles, which contributed to the writing of majestic epic paintings addressed to the depicted and described heroes of works. The historian of literature has convincingly proved that such a long-term development of the genre of the chronicles (XI-XVIII centuries) was facilitated by the content-artistic perfection of «The Tale of the Past Years», the talent of its founders, Nikon, Nestor, Sylvester, whose own work, the idea of unity of Russia in the struggle against internal and external enemies, which remained urgent throughout all subsequent centuries, and a significant conservatism of the genre, focused on the upbringing of historical generic, national, cultural memories, laid the solid foundations for the development of our entire national first literature which convincingly demonstrate chronicles, historical fiction themes XIX-XXI centuries. The own «History of Ukrainian Literature», the level and conclusions of the analysis of the chronicles D.Chyzhevsky scientifically reasonably developed the principle of national centrist, founded in his medieval works by M.Maksymovych and confirmed by the formation and development of our literary thought. In them, the doctrine proved that in the analysis of ancient writing, chronicles must use a stylistic approach to express their artistic, their aesthetic nature and value. The new thought of the scientist was his noteworthy that the chronicles have signs of the classical direction, characteristic of the works of the elite princely-Sarmatian and Cossack-Kozar tribes.

SCIENCE FICTION IN THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU AND THE TIME MACHINE

The present research paper is about two different novels, which are the Island of Doctor Moreau and the Time Machine, which are written by H.G.Wells; who is one of the most prominent writers in the 20th century. The main objective of this research paper is to explore the theme of science fiction and reveal the role of literature to express the power of science fiction, as the human beings can create and innovate, because they cannot do so if they are prisoners of their limited reality. As all people in the 20th century concentrate on scientific theories and struggles between classes, H.G.Wells reflects these two ideas according to his point of view in his works; the Time Machine and the Island of Doctor Moreau, using the power of science fiction to imagine other worlds that are not available in concentrate reality, predicting how the life will be and how to live within for the outside world past and future.

Oblique Translations in David Mitchell’s Works

Translation crops up in David Mitchell’s work both as a fictional theme, for instance in Black Swan Green (2006) and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010), and as a personal practice when Mitchell and his wife Keiko Yoshida translated two non-fiction works by a young Japanese boy with non-verbal autism: The Reason I Jump (2013) and Fall Down Seven Times, Get up Eight (2017). Interestingly, these four books are all related to the genre of autobiography, and three of them focus on Japan. Drawing from an investigation into the specificity of the Japanese tradition of translation and into theories of translation as intertextual and multi-temporal, we will start by exploring the notions of relay and voice in Mitchell’s use of translation. To further investigate the particular nature of the association of translation and autobiography in Mitchell’s work, we will discuss the concept of devolved testimony developed by French historian Emmanuel Bouju and that of the ‘born-translated novel’ by Rebecca Walkowitz. We will finally contend that the notion of “oblique writing”, defined as the practice of rewriting or writing over a lost voice from a lateral perspective, captures the spirit of these works, enabling him to navigate both issues of power play and the delicate relation between intimacy and distance.

THE HOLOCAUST AS AN ETERNAL LESSON FOR MANKIND (Education of resistance to racism and xenophobia on the basis of contemporary foreign fiction and cinema)

The theme of the Second World War and the Holocaust is one of the topical themes of contemporary fiction and cinema. Outstanding writers and directors of our time are turning to the embodiment of this tragic topic. They set themselves the task of comprehending the past and giving the third millennium generation spiritual experience that will help young people combat the manifestations of racism and xenophobia in the modern world. The article deals with the novel “Schindler’s Ark” by Th. Keneally, “The Children of Noah” by E.-E. Schmitt, “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” by J. Boyne, “The Book Tief” by M. Zuzak and movies that are based on these books. In the genres of a historic novel and psychological story based on the documents, the writers revealed the complicated social processes in Europe during 1930-1940. The writers described the historic events within the life of ordinary people who lived in the terrible circumstances of the totalitarian system. The symbols playedthe main role in revealing the subject of the Holocaust in the novels and films about the Second World War and the Holocaust. Thomas Keneally continued the traditions of romantic irony and added to it some social, psychological and philosophical meanings. The irony in the novel by Thomas Keneally “Schindler’s Ark” plays an important role in the investigation of European society in the tragic period of the 20thcentury. In the novels by Thomas Keneally irony takes place on the different levels such as plot, composition, imagology, time and space, style and language. T. Keneally broadens the meaning of irony and its function in the documentary and historic novel. The irony in the novel “Schindler’s Ark” maintains some main functions: social for explaining the anti-humanistic essence of fascism, war, racial hatred, research in investigating the tragedy of the Holocaust and its consequences, psychological in revealing the psychology of people of different social class, philosophical in discussing the important issues of human life in the word, axiological dealing with the values of mercy, morality, the ability to resist violence. T. Kenealy represents different forms of irony such as the irony of the narrator, the irony of the author, the combination of controversial documentary facts, the contradiction of phenomenon and notions, the comparison of the different points of view, self-irony, irony as inner enlightenment, catharsis. In the novel “Schindler’s Ark” by T. Kenealy the author of the article analyzed the traditions of world literature such as B. Brecht within the motive of personal financial profit from the war, N. Gogol within the motive of buying and selling the dead souls. The writer represented these motives in his own way as the events took place during the real historic time, and he found the inner power in people of past century to keep their life, humanity and culture on the Earth. The irony is a unique feature of T. Keneally’s individual style and it enriched the genre of novel.

The Neurostructure of Morality and the Hubris of Memory Manipulation

Neurotechnologies that promise to dampen (via pharmacologicals), disassociate (via electro-convulsive therapy), erase (via deep brain stimulation), and replace (via false memory creation) unsavory episodic memories are no longer the subject of science fiction. They have already arrived, and their funding suggests that they will not disappear anytime soon. In light of their emergence, this essay examines the neurostructure of normative morality to clarify that memory manipulation, which promises to take away that which is bad in human experience, also removes that which enables human beings to be good. Concepts such as free will, moral responsibility, and the neurobiological basis of moral reasoning are explored to underscore the fundamental hubris inherent to the memory manipulation enterprise.