General Human Condition Research Articles

IL CLOWN – UNA METAFORA PER L’IDENTITÀ DELL’ARTISTA NEL CIRCO DELLA STORIA E DELL’ESISTENZA IN MATEI VIȘNIEC E NORMAN MANEA

The Clown – a Metaphor for the Artist Identity in the Circus of History and Existence at Matei Vișniec and Norman Manea. The paper will highlight affinities and differences in the way Norman Manea and Matei Vișniec, two prominent writers of the Romanian exile from the 80s, narrate the existential failure in the novel The Black Envelope and respectively in the play Old clown wanted, making extensive use of the modalities provided by an intensely poetic imaginary. The dreamlike representations, which acquire opposite connotations in the plots of the two authors, as well as certain image-metaphors, elaborated according to the models inspired by Federico Fellini, highlight some aspects that distinguish the perspective expressed by each writer regarding the dense and broad semantics of the circus. In Matei Vișniec’s play, the circus topos declines in the forms of precariousness, which defines the artist’s condition as well as the general human condition - perpetually threatened by the inexorable passage of Time. As for Norman Manea’s novel, the writer concentrates in this plot the perception of History as a buffoonish and vulgar manifestation, which condemns the individual, the artist in the first instance, to the status of victim. In this way, Manea and Vișniec actually explore the forms of manifestation peculiar to a cultural and linguistic imaginary related to the representation of individual and collective identity. Clovnul ‒ o metaforă pentru identitatea artistului în circul istoriei și al existenței la Matei Vișniec și Norman Manea. Articolul va evidenția afinităţi și diferenţe în modul în care Norman Manea și Matei Vișniec, doi scriitori marcanți ai exilului românesc din anii ’80, povestesc eșecul existențial în romanul Plicul negru și respectiv în piesa Angajare de clovn, recurgând amplu la instrumentele unui imaginar de natură intens poetică. Reprezentările onirice, care capătă conotații opuse în tramele celor doi autori, precum și anumite imagini-metafore elaborate după modele oferite de Federico Fellini, evidențiază aspecte care disting perspectiva exprimatǎ de fiecare scriitor referitoare la semantica densǎ şi amplǎ a circului. Ȋn piesa lui Matei Vișniec, toposul circului se declinǎ ȋn formele precaritǎții, care defineşte condiţia artistului precum şi pe cea general umană – ameninţată perpetuu de trecerea inexorabilă a Timpului. Cât priveşte romanul lui Norman Manea, scriitorul concentreazǎ ȋn aceastǎ tramǎ percepția Istoriei ca manifestare bufonescă şi vulgară, care condamnǎ individul, artistul în primă instanţă, la statutul de victimă. În acest mod, Manea și Vișniec explorează, de fapt, formele de manifestare proprii unui imaginar cultural și lingvistic legat de reprezentarea identității individuale și colective. Cuvinte-cheie: clovn, circ, artist, dictator, istorie, teatru în teatru, poeticitate Article history: Received 28 December 2022; Revised 28 January 2023; Accepted 12 February 2023; Available online 27 March 2023; Available print 31 March 2023.

Enfeoffment to Use, Legalism, and Humanism in Gower's Mirour de l'Omme

Enfeoffment to Use, Legalism, and Humanism in Gower's <i>Mirour de l'Omme</i>

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, Volume 1: Early Manuscript Books. Ed. Jennifer Keith, with Claudia Thomas Kairoff.

<i>The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, Volume 1: Early Manuscript Books</i>. Ed. Jennifer Keith, with Claudia Thomas Kairoff.

Some thoughts on the “new” latency age: Normality and psychopathology

The author discusses some aspects of the impact of our changing society on the latency phase, while presenting a clinical case. At this age, children need a reliable environment, protecting them from sexual and aggressive overstimulation, as an essential condition for the work of latency to be carried out. As some authors point out, if post-Oedipal repression is hindered, children may be pushed towards an early, highly disruptive adolescence process. Strong and untimely anxieties may arise, requiring particular defensive and adaptive strategies. According to the author’s experience, concerns about death may be observed, these not usually being expected at the latency age. In some children, these seem to promote an early process of intellectualization. The patient described here was a violent, self-harming child from a disturbed family. As soon as his psychic state improved with psychotherapy, he expressed anxiety about mortality as a general human condition and was able to reason on the concept of infinity at a quite abstract level. The significance of this observation is discussed from a developmental point of view.

A Critical Interpretation of Black Humor in Charles Wright's the Messenger and the Wig

Charles Wright is one of the experimental American novelists of the mid-sixties and is concerned with depicting the absurdity of life in a world that threatens to destroy man’s sovereign self. As a black humourist, he not only highlights the black man’s despair in the white dominated America, but also the general condition of man in a hostile universe. He has placed his characters in the most bizarre setting to bring out man’s utter helplessness in the world. He tries to show how man becomes an easy victim of both the cosmic and social forces in the present day world. But despite his treatment of the bleak universe of human beings, Wright’s vision of life is not dominated by cynicism and despair. In this paper an attempt has been made to show how by incorporating into his fiction the vision of black humour Wright presents a constructive vision of life by not choosing an alternative to the meaningless and purposeless life, but by complementing it with a spirit of laughter which should help man in confronting life with courage and fortitude. His treatment of black man as a paradigm of the precarious human condition divorces him from other black novelists of the protest tradition. Whereas the writers of the protest tradition are occupied with the specific nature of black man’s problems, Wright is concerned with the idea that the black man, by his special burden in history, becomes the ultimate metaphor of the general human condition.

An experimental study of parental castration phantasies.

Thirty-two male subjects, with no history of psychiatric disorder, having had both mother and father figures in their childhood, were examined with a modified Blacky technique to discover which parent was the castrator in their phantasies. The striking finding was that typically the classical phantasy of the father as castrator exists, but that it exists as a defensive phantasy, defending against the deeper, more frightening phantasy of the mother as the castrator. This was similar to previous findings with schizophrenic patients, indicating that such a constellation is not specific to schizophrenia, but is, as suggested by Fairbairn and others, characteristic of the general human condition.

ДОМАШНЕЕ НАСИЛИЕ КАК ФЕНОМЕН СОВРЕМЕННОЙ КУЛЬТУРЫ

The Declaration on the elimination of violence against women adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 December, 1993 defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or islikely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrarydeprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life”. In fact, in order to cover all situations connected with acts of violence against women, some international legal documents use the term “domestic violence”, which implies that an act has occurred within the family or at home, between the former or the current spouses or partners. The psychology of men and women, along with their mentality differ in their nature inherent to the psychological and genetic aspects. These differences are applicable to the question of domestic violence, which men practically or expressively use as a way of letting out their emotions. In this regard, women are those who mainly suffer from forms of violence, which could be identified, becoming seriously injured by their partners. Above all, domestic violence by men presents an imminent threat to the life and health of a woman, since she often has to continue to live together with a man even after being divorced or while investigative activities are being conducted. Moreover, the consequences of this phenomenon have not only a physical component, but also a psychological one, diminishing the fundamental rights of a woman, as well as negatively affecting the formation of her personality. Additionally to internal factors, which influence on the occurrence of such situations within a family, there are external ones conducive to the spread and increase of the abovementioned phenomenon, turning a fight against it into an overall mission, which is actual for all countries. Nowadays the world community faces a range of global challenges, threats and risks, which could have negative impacts of various scales, resulting in deterioration of general human condition. Poverty, underdevelopment of the population and mostly the European migration crisis, which adversely affects women making them more vulnerable are among them. Migrant women, irrespective of the presence or absence of a legal status, as well as women asylum-seekers are at increased risk of violence and face the same difficulties while addressing it. Taking into account the urgency of the problem for all countries, the phenomenon of domestic violence prevalence remains a subject to in-depth international legal review. In this article there are statutory and actual materials; the factors influencing on the occurrence of such situations are being explored; the philosophical inquire is presented; the international legal tools as a way to address violence against women and domestic violence are presented.

Sarah Kane’s Blasted – Genesis of the Subject

Sarah Kane’s debut Blasted depicts the main character Ian in a state of existential crisis at the end of the play. He dies and is later reborn, which can be analysed as a complex staging of the process of subject formation when approached from a psychoanalytical point of view. Julia Kristeva’s conception of the subject’s development and especially her notion of the abject are well suited to describe some of the gruesome actions that occur in Kane’s plays. Applying Kristeva’s psychoanalytical theory may serve to show that underlying these actions of horror is more than a rebellious will to shock the audience. In this article, I want to explore the incidents of abjection in Blasted in regard to Ian’s development, focusing on the final scene where a breakdown and (re)formation of the subject takes place. The staging of a genesis of the subject in this scene is furthermore underscored by strong references to the biblical account of creation through God in seven days. By facing abjection, the subject comes into contact with the semiotic stage of being: a pre–linguistic state, a state of crisis. Religious structures serve as the symbolic order that tries to deal with this situation. Ian vividly portrays the subject’s struggle between the semiotic and the symbolic, the abject and the religious order – a struggle that is inherent in the general human condition.

The Choruses of Sophokles' Antigone and Philoktetes: A Dance of Words (review)

Reviewed by: The Choruses of Sophokles' Antigone and Philoktetes: A Dance of Words Markus Dubischar Margaret Rachel Kitzinger . The Choruses of Sophokles' Antigone and Philoktetes: A Dance of Words. Mnemosyne Supplements, 292. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Pp. vii, 146. $113.00. ISBN 978-90-04-16514-4. Kitzinger studies the choruses in Sophocles' Antigone and Philoctetes, combining the perspectives of a philologist with those of a practitioner of the theater. She proceeds song by song, her method of treatment being "close reading" (1). The book's many detailed analyses cannot be summarized here, but Kitzinger's clearly articulated vision of the nature of the Sophoclean chorus can. It is the book's thematic core and the basis throughout for Kitzinger's interpretations. First, a paraphrase of Kitzinger's approach: The chorus' mode of expression is fundamentally different from that of the actors. Actors speak and act, while the chorus sings and dances. This distinctly choral mode of expression is connected with a distinctly choral worldview, also different from that of the actors. Sophocles thus presents the action of his plays from two different, irreconcilable but complementary, viewpoints. Neither of them is superior to the other; instead they reflect different ways of understanding and responding to the world. The actors' words and actions are situated on the level of the plot. The notions of causality and responsibility and of time and place are fundamental to them in their decisions and their actions. The chorus, on the other hand, is essentially situated outside the plot. Its performance refers to other traditions of choral lyric and their ritual contexts. The chorus recognizes and expresses the divine order of things and the human condition, namely the limitations of men's reasoning and actions. This choral worldview can be expressed only through its singing and dancing. The chorus in Antigone and actually in most Sophoclean plays (Kitzinger claims that her approach has a general validity) is mostly true to its typical function. Philoctetes is chosen as a second test case because of the chorus' close, if sometimes questionable or unclear, involvement in the action. But it too serves to confirm the outlined understanding. Rejecting common explanations (psychological realism, decline of the chorus' importance), Kitzinger argues that in this pessimistic play Sophocles has intentionally undermined and fragmented the usual choral perspective, depriving the audience of a worldview that would meaningfully complement that of the actors. Kitzinger's approach, to put it briefly, works for some choral passages and songs, but for others it does not. In any given Greek tragedy, the chorus' multifaceted role is among its most striking features. Kitzinger rightly argues (72 n.6) against an approach that "reduces the complexity and variety of the playwrights' uses of the chorus to a single issue [ . . . ]," but in allowing only one genuine function for the Sophoclean chorus she has done precisely that. As a result, her close reading oftentimes turns into a reductionist reading. Some random examples: For the sake of her argument, Kitzinger prefers an unlikely manuscript reading and understanding against the communis opinio (51 with n.77). Dionysus' special relations with the city of Thebes are unduly played down (65–67). The general human condition is hardly an issue when [End Page 269] the chorus sings in the parodos of Philoctetes that they hear "a sound which is like the companion of some desperate man" (transl. Kitzinger, 84–85). On the other hand, Philoctetes' explicit remarks about the general human condition (Phil. 501–502, maybe up to 506) are not mentioned, even though they immediately precede a choral passage (discussed on 92). But it must also be said that whenever the chorus does sing what according to Kitzinger it should, she makes insightful observations on differences and tensions between the action on stage and the choral performance. The book is a powerful reminder to take seriously the chorus' special role and the distinct nature of choral performance. It is clearly organized and written in a pleasant and elegant style, with hardly any misprints (40 n.59 Greek font, n.60 German orthography). Relevant scholarship is well taken into account (Th. Paulsen, Die Rolle des Chors in den späten Sophokles-Tragödien, Bari 1989, is...

'von einen sprachen'. Poetologische Untersuchungen zum Werk Ernst Jandls by Michael Hammerschmid, Helmut Neundlinger

Reviews 215 at times, the book nevertheless combines detailed analyses with an eloquent overview of the relationship between national identity and art from thedistanced expert perspective of a British scholar. Furthermore, itmanages to address most of thediverse tendencies thatbecome part of the Second Republic's new identity, thus inspiring stillmore interest in this period ofAustrian literaryhistory and its heterogeneous ways of expressing the cultural climate through text. Queen Mary, University of London Heide Kunzelmann 'von einen sprachen'. Poetologische Untersuchungen zum Werk ErnstJandls. By Michael Hammerschmid and Helmut Neundlinger. Innsbruck: StudienVerlag. 2008. 226 pp. 24,90. isbn 978-3-7065-4411-5. Ernst Jandl was probably best known in his day for his visual-cum-acoustic concrete poems and witty 'surface translations': i.e. as the author of mat hart lieb zapfen eibe hold (1963), Laut und Luise (1966), der k?nstlicheb?um (1970), and such powerful Sprechgedichte as schtzngrmm and ode auf N. Yet as his prize-winning radio play F?nfMann Menschen, written in collaboration with Friederike Mayr?cker in 1968, suggests, there were more sides to this ever-metamorphosing writer than the received image reflects.One of the achievements of Hammerschmid's and Neundlinger's poetological investigations is to have established the parameters for a clearer appreciation of the range, diversity and ingenuity ofJandl's various phases of intense creativity, from Andere Augen (1956) to his swansong: the rigorously constructed stanzen in dialect (1992). The early poems of his transitional period in the 1950s, Chapter 2 argues, need to be seen in historical context as 'ein Innehalten und Bestandsaufnahme der Verh?ltnisse' (p. 57). After a brief evaluation of the early work, Hammerschmid and Neundlinger offer a likewise brief account of Jandl's concrete poetry in order to proceed to the bigger picture presented in their introduction: 'W?hrend in der experimentellen Poesie die Sprache selbst auf dem Spiel steht, um in Laut und Schrift permanent erweitert und in ihren Ausdrucksm?glichkeiten ausgelotet zu werden, leitet die heruntergekommene Sprache zu einer poetisch-spielerischen (Selbst-)Kritik des Schreibens alsT?tigkeit ?ber' (p. 13).The firsthalf of their studyfleshes out this claim by offering a series of evaluative and contextualizing 'Untersuchungen zur heruntergekommenen Sprache und zu ihrenQuerverbindungen innerhalb von Jandls Werk' (p. 15). The allusion in the present study's deliberately ungrammatical title to what Jandl called 'die heruntergekommene Sprache' reflects the authors' thesis that this inventive form of quasi Austro-German pidgin, with itsoftenmisunderstood echoes o? Gastarbeiterdeutsch, offersa key to all the ensuing paradigm shiftsinJandl's 'Poetik des existentiellen und literarischenNullpunkts' (p. 11).As the authors point out, the afterword to gedichte an die kindheit (1977) already emphasizes the programmatic importance of Jandl's interest in 'fehlerhaftes,widerspr?chliches in der Sprache' for his ongoing experiments with poetry and related genres. The present study demonstrates this through close readings of his principal works written in 'die heruntergekommene Sprache' (tagenglas [1976], die bearbeitungder m?tze [1978] and dergelbe hund [1980]), aswell as his play die humanisten (1976), the 2l6 Reviews Sprechoperin 7 Szenen: Aus derFremde (1978), and the stanzen cycle which brought to an abrupt conclusion the systematic experimentation with new linguistic possibilities and literary sub-genres. Hammerschmid and Neundlinger highlight many of the advantages of 'die heruntergekommene Sprache* as a major breakthrough after Jandl's anxiety that with concrete poetry his writing had somehow reached a dead-end. They present his work written in such a seemingly dysfunctional discourse as essentially a deliberate dual strategy: 'Man muss sie gleichzeitig als elaborierten, hochliterarischen Code und als antiliterarischeKetzerei untersuchen' (p. 15).Their interpretationsbring out the individuality, thematic range and linguistic diversity of Jandl's poems in 'heruntergekommene Sprache', where the protagonist of each Rollengedichtbecomes unique in terms of diction, predicament and response. The medium is shown to illuminate various facets of the general human condition, while at the same time offering Jandl a new way of compensating for various personal and artistic crises. As any reader of thepresent study soon discovers, Jandl's innovative deployment of 'heruntergekommene Sprache' is a source of both amusement and language renewal, the resultant poems being characterized by a vein of social criticism as well as functioning as an indirect form of artistic introspection. The same...

What Do Humans Get to Know about the Gods and Their Plans? On Prophecies and Their Deficiencies in Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica

AbstractThis article discusses aspects of the communication between gods and humans in Valerius Flaccus' Flavian epic Argonautica by focusing on the situation of Jason and the Argonauts as well as on the Phineus episode in the fourth Book: although the gods in this poem, and Jupiter in particular, have specific plans for the fate of humans and the development of world history, they do not want humans to know those. As humans therefore receive only scattered and unclear information about the future, they remain uncertain and terrified, while retaining their confidence in the gods. The gods at least save humans from unnecessary, excessive suffering and allow them to entertain an unspecific hope of improvement in the future. Hence Valerius Flaccus' depiction of the attitude of the gods to humans and of its consequences for the lives of humans differs, in different ways, from both Apollonius Rhodius and Vergil and indicates how the poet interprets the general human condition. Recipients of the poem do get some idea of the larger framework in which the action is set (in contrast to characters), but the outlook remains gloomy.

Existential concerns and narrative techniques in the novels of Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Wools and Aldous Huxley

The article addresses the issue of the close relationship between the nexistential concem and the narrative techniques used by English writers Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf and Aldous Huxley to present the general human condition. The selected authors had introduced narrative techniques that influenced the entire development of the modern novel and that are stili highly relevant and widely used in the contemporary novel, including the Slovene modern novel.

Introduction: The Dialogical Self in a Global and Digital Age

In this article, culture and self, like society and identity, are conceived as mutually inclusive. On the basis of this premise, self and identity are discussed in the context of an evolution toward a global and digital society. The core concept is the "dialogical self" that is described as a spatial and temporal process of positioning. Examples of multivoiced and dialogical selves are given in communities and cultures that lack advanced technological means. Apparently, the dialogical self is not an exclusive feature of the present era but a general human condition. Specific to the era is that dialogue is becoming increasingly mediated as a result of technological advances. Closely related to these advances, one can witness an increasing cultural complexity, mobility, and hybridization. It is argued that technological developments and global interconnectedness provide new opportunities for innovation of the self as multivoiced and dialogical. At the same time, such developments evoke counter forces that can close the self off from such opportunities. This article ends with a short introduction to the several contributions in this special issue.

African American Intellectuals Symposium

When I was invited present this symposium I accepted with great enthusiasm for occasions when we can gather together as feminist critics and engage with the work of black female intellectuals as the main focus of our attention, celebrate one of our own as it were, have been few and far between. In particular, the chance publicly engage and celebrate the work of Claudia Tate was particularly attractive me. Claudia's contributions literary and cultural criticism have been important and original in so many public ways, but I also want signal at the outset that her intellectual presence in the academy is also of personal significance me. The body of Claudia's work is so substantial, conceptually complex and varied, that when I sat down write, my excitement vanished and was replaced by anxiety. If I had twenty minutes, which essays or books, or issues, or themes should I, or could I select? Claudia brought an understanding of the working lives of black women writers my desk and into my consciousness: she made me stop short and ask myself why I had avoided or neglected discuss, in my own writing, the crucially important issues of narrative pleasure and desire; and she made me realize how careless my own readings were when I found the novels of black women in the post-Reconstruction period opaque, opaque, that is, when I was not finding them downright indigestible. I remember my first encounter with this statement: For a decade black women writers of the post-Reconstruction era reaffirmed in novels their belief that virtuous women like themselves could reform society by domesticating Claudia's argument in Domestic Allegories of Po litical Desire was a revelation and a gift, and it helped me read differently. Claudia is also a non-conformist and I have always identified with and taken great pleasure in her acts of critical rebellion, which are numerous. She breaks down barriers of critical parochialism and safety, challenges the limits of conventional paradigms, and refuses bend beneath the sibboleths of the field. In fact, Claudia is a perfect fit for my favorite split infinitive, to boldly go where no woman has gone before. First, she has been an intellectual leader in the detailed excavation of texts that have been too long ignored by the American critical establishment. Ignored is a very polite way of putting it. While canons of African American fiction have been slowly and methodically built, Claudia's cannons have been wheeled into the arena, fused and discharged. After the dust has cleared we have all been able see that these traditions were built by denying the validity of the texts which did not fit the paradigm being used. Claudia has been irresistibly drawn, it seems, the texts that no one wa nts talk about. A tenacious and meticulous researcher, in addition being an innovative close reader, she is also something of a magician. We think the swords drawn through the box on stage are going draw blood but she inevitably shows us that there is nothing fear from, but much learn by, confronting post-Reconstruction fiction, W. E. B. Du Bois's Dark Princess, Zora Neale Hurston's Seraph on the Suwanee or Richard Wright's Savage Holiday, for example. I have also felt from the earliest of Claudia's essays that we shared a mission, that we both were desperate de-parochialize departments of English and destroy, forever, the narrow ethnic definitions within which traditions of English literature have been reproduced in the academy. In this task, as in all her work, Claudia has always refused reductive visions, seeking instead articulate the complexly different black voices that speak a general or universal human condition. The interaction of race and gender in the work of black women is for Claudia a site of an increased breadth of vision rather than a cause of narrowing our focus, as many English department critics mistakenly claim. …

And They Created Him in Their Image: David Hartman's Soloveitchik and the Battle for a Teachers Legacy

“And They Created Him in Their Image”: David Hartman’s Soloveitchik and the Battle for a Teachers’ Legacy Shaul Magid (bio) Love and Terror in the God Encounter: The Theological Legacy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, by Vol. I, David Hartman. Woodstock VT: Jewish Lights, 2001. 212 pp. $25.00. Those of us who are students and sometime teachers of modern Jewish philosophy and theology owe a great deal to David Hartman. Since the 1970s Hartman’s books and essays have explored central themes and figures in Jewish philosophy, offering creative and provocative ways of understanding, interpreting, and utilizing Jewish philosophy and theology for constructive purposes. While his new book Love and Terror in the God Encounter: The Theological Legacy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Volume I is no exception, it also offers a more focused portrait of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, one of Hartman’s most important influences. A reader of Hartman’s earlier works can justifiably ask the question, “Aren’t all David Hartman’s books about Soloveitchik?” The answer is both yes and no. Yes, Soloveitchik plays a major, perhaps even dominant, role in Hartman’s oeuvre. No, Hartman’s other books are more widely construed, Soloveitchik being one of many voices that inform his theological thinking. In this book Hartman becomes a reader, defender, and critic of Soloveitchik’s approach to religiosity in general and Judaism in particular. More to the point, Hartman seeks to defend his thesis, argued in earlier works, that (a) Soloveitchik is more than an apologist for Orthodoxy and (b) that his “theology” should not be viewed as secondary and subordinate to his legal and Talmudic essays and lectures. There are two important prefatory remarks for the interested reader. First, this is not an academic book. That is, Hartman does not engage the myriad of secondary sources on Soloveitchik’s theological works nor does he seek to place Soloveitchik in the larger philosophical discourse of the twentieth century. For Hartman, Soloveitchik is a thoroughly Jewish thinker, even though he suggests in places that he uses Judaism to make claims about the general human condition. Yet, while it is Judaism alone that [End Page 134] concerns him, Judaism, argues Hartman, is only possible for Soloveitchik by venturing outside it through philosophy. Second, this book is, in many ways, a book for insiders. It is engaged in a polemic in the Orthodox world (and also to some extent in learned non-Orthodoxy) concerning the legacy, viability, and contribution of Soloveitchik as a meta-halakhic thinker. This agenda consistently underlies (and sometimes undermines) Hartman’s analysis of Soloveitchik’s writings. It is, therefore, not an introduction to his work (even though it sometimes reads as such) but a focused attempt to vindicate Soloveitchik (and, by extension, Hartman) against his critics from the right and the left. Hartman makes the context and agenda of this book clear at the outset. Hartman’s context, as he explains it, is the polar opposite of what was likely the context that inspired Soloveitchik originally to write these works. Whereas Soloveitchik lived and wrote in a world (mid-twentieth- century America) where traditionalism was dying and both humanism and liberalism (including non-Orthodox Judaisms) were thriving, Hartman states that his context (late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century Jewry) is the upsurge of traditionalism, even ultra-traditionalism, perhaps the “haredization” of world Jewry (pp. 4, 5). While Soloveitchik wrote to enable Orthodox Jews to be “modern” and remain “traditional,” Hartman writes to temper and even counter the popularity of ultra-traditionalism among modern traditional Jews. Soloveitchik wrote to create Modern Orthodoxy as a response to a turn to the “left”; Hartman writes to save it from collapsing to the “right.” Implied in this stance, I think, is that the failure of Modern Orthodoxy is due either to the marginalization of Soloveitchik’s theological writings or to a misunderstanding of them. As I will argue in my conclusion, this theory is only partially correct. Hartman delineates four major readings of Soloveitchik and bases his analysis against these readings. The first is largely the voice of the right (citing, e.g. Soloveitchik’s brother, p. 7) that his theological works are...

Verhale oor die Anglo-Boereoorlog

Fiction on the Anglo-Boer War This article gives an overview of fictional prose about the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. In contrast to the desire of many people to “forgive and forget" this past war, some authors for example Gustav Preller and D.F. Malherbe, told stories to remind the reader of the suffering of the past. Stereotypical patterns in a number of conventional war stories are mentioned in the article, followed by a discussion of fictional texts deviating from these conventional patterns - inter alia, works by Johannes van Melle and J.R.L. van Bruggen. In conclusion, texts are analysed which use the war experience to illuminate the general human condition: works by Etienne Leroux, Elsa Joubert and others.

The Significance of Mathematics: The Mathematicians' Share in the General Human Condition

(1997). The Significance of Mathematics: The Mathematicians' Share in the General Human Condition. The American Mathematical Monthly: Vol. 104, No. 3, pp. 261-269.

The Significance of Mathematics: The Mathematicians' Share in the General Human Condition

(1997). The Significance of Mathematics: The Mathematicians' Share in the General Human Condition. The American Mathematical Monthly: Vol. 104, No. 3, pp. 261-269.

Enfants et adolescents mixtes : une identité spécifique?

The identity question is uppermost in Europe today, where « monolingualism » and cc monoculturalism » are the received norm. Little has been said, however, about the identities produced in families in which fathers and mothers come from different countries. Thirty-two binational children living in France or Germany are presented here. The author studies the objective factors of their education as well as the experience of biculturalism described by « mixed » teenagers. While bilingualism is theoretically the most distinctive element of the children's « dual identity », real conditions vary vastly according to the social standing in a given country of foreign groups and the languages they speak. Not all binational families have the same opportunities for raising their children bilingually. The question thus arises as to whether someone can be bicultural without being bilingual. The children's bilingualism and biculturalism are important stakes : for the parents, they represent the survival of their own language-and-culture- linked identities. As for the children, even before knowing if bilingualism is important to themselves, they know it is of great value to their parents. When they consider themselves bilingual, they feel proud but when they do not, they express regret and sometimes resentment. A special feeling of identity appears to exist among mixed children though in different ways. However, a child is always a stake between hisjher parents and their kin; the mixed child illustrates the general human condition, that of all individuals, who have to build their « identity » out of a double or multiple heritage.

Urban development and death: Bombay City, 1870-1914.

Historians, statesmen, administrators, nationalists and others have disagreed sharply about the impact of modernization in the era of Western domination. Did Western rule provide the tools for Indian progress but did economically medieval, ‘other-worldly’ Indians fail to maximize the benefits of modernization and even thwart advances? Conversely, did Western imperialism systematically impoverish India by making it a ‘satellite,’ freezing the subcontinent into a neo-feudal social pattern while sucking up its wealth? Finally, is a ‘new revisionist’ interpretation correct that India experienced real if undramatic economic growth during the Western era and that notions of exploitation or Indian suffering induced by development were myths? Interpretations expressing either the great success and benign innovations of Western rule, or its exploitiveness both appear flawed, according to Bombay's modernizing experience. Bombay underwent a great expansion of wealth and became the source of India's new factory textile production, the hub of a great newwork of trasport and trade, and the cosmopolitan abode of wealth Indian merchants, industrialist and professionals, whose affluence, modernity, industrializing activies and eventual nationalist orientation distinguished them from a supine or neo-feudal comprador class, cooperating with Western masters in exploiting ‘natives’ for a myrmidon's share of the profits. Alternatively, Bombay's prosperity did not flow down to the masses; its modernization was complex, dynamically helping to produce progress and wealth, but for some decades impoverishing and destroying many lives. In the half-century of rapid development preceding the first world war, the great majority of Bombay's populace, its ordinary working classes, experienced significant declines in living standards, worsening environmental conditions and escalating death-rates. Diminished real income and increased mortality among Bombay's ordinary inhabitants warn against extrapolating from rising indices of material production an optimistic conclusion about the general human condition in the city or in British India.