Imaginative Interpretation Research Articles

The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy (review)

Reviewed by: The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy Ann Garry (bio) The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy. Edited by Miranda Fricker and Jennifer Hornsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2000. Seeing the word companion in a title, a reader may imagine an expensive seven-hundred page book. However, do not confuse the Cambridge series of companions, the slimmer volumes, with the big ones from Blackwell. Miranda Fricker and Jennifer Hornsby have focused their volume of thirteen essays to engage with the philosophical issues and fields most familiar in Anglophone philosophy. The essays cover ethics and political philosophy as well as the various subfields of metaphysics and epistemology. Each author has been asked to both introduce a specific field and contribute to it. Amazingly, they are able do so in very clearly written essays that run between fourteen and seventeen pages. The standard format is to review major themes and currents of feminist philosophy in one's field and to develop an example in more detail (or, in the case of Alison Wylie's essay, to explicate common ground in feminist philosophy of science). It is a fine book. The focus of the book is not feminist philosophy in general, but the ways in which feminism makes its mark on traditional philosophy. Although more emphasis is given to the possibilities for reconstructing or transforming philosophy in a feminist spirit, authors also explain the ways in which male bias, sexism, or cultural androcentrism has affected the allegedly gender-neutral abstract subject. Two authors illustrate well the way the essays conceive the relation between feminist and traditional philosophy. Sabina Lovibond calls upon the image of Neurath's boat. Feminist philosophers are (among those) repairing the philosophical boat while at sea (17). Alison Jaggar modifies Audre Lorde: "Rather than scrapping the master's tools, many feminist philosophers are working to transform them so that we may build a moral household that has no head nor master" (242). The editors' introduction spells out very clearly the scope and aims of the volume: it is founded on the belief that philosophy can be redeemed; it is aimed at nonfeminist students and teachers as well as feminists; and it focuses on analytic philosophy because this tradition has been deemed the least hospitable to feminism. (Despite the volume's analytic focus, individual authors discuss Irigaray, Le Doeuff, Foucault, Habermas, and others as needed.) [End Page 230] Two essays focus on history of philosophy: Sabina Lovibond's "Feminism in Ancient Philosophy: The Feminist Stake in Greek Rationalism" begins the volume, and Genevieve Lloyd's "Feminism in History of Philosophy: Appropriating the Past" finishes it. Lovibond argues that feminist philosophers need to rely on the Greek rationalist tradition in spite of its misogyny. She sets her argument in the context of the choice between our inherited "Hellenism and Hebraism" and in a discussion of care/justice ethics. Lovibond's essay is a good example of what Lloyd might cite as a feminist conversation with the past for the purpose of engaging in the present. Lloyd's own focus here is on the methodology of history of philosophy rather than on history itself. She rejects a dichotomy between past-centered and present-centered history, wanting feminists instead "to balance imaginative interpretation of cultural meanings with painstaking close reading of texts in the context of their own philosophical concerns" (260) and to be explicit in discussing their methodology. The rest of the essays focus on contemporary issues. Ethics: Marilyn Friedman on autonomy and Alison Jaggar on moral justification; political philosophy: Diemut Bubeck on women's difference; metaphysics: Sally Haslanger on negotiating the natural; epistemology: Rae Langton on exclusion and objectification and Miranda Fricker on pluralism without postmodernism; philosophy of science: Alison Wylie on making sense of contingency and constraint; philosophy of language: Jennifer Hornsby on communicative speech acts; philosophy of mind: Susan James on personal identity and Naomi Scheman against physicalism; psychoanalysis: Sarah Richmond on the value of Melanie Klein for feminist philosophers. Where two essays are included in one field, the range of topics is good—with remarkably little repetition even as authors quickly highlight feminist themes in the area. Obviously each author has her own point of view on...

The Origins of Totalitarianism: Not History, but Politics

DURING the summer of 1950, when Hannah Arendt was on vacation, she was reading proofs for The Origins of Totalitarianism. In a letter to her mentor and beloved friend, Karl Jaspers, she wrote: A lot of work here, of course, but also swimming and walks. Reading proofs is awful, that is boring. I’ve taken a different epigraph from Logik from the one I mentioned to you before: “Give yourself up neither to the past nor to the future. The important thing is to remain wholly in the present .” That sentence struck me right in the heart, so I’m entitled to have it (Arendt and Jaspers, 1992: 153). We know just how deeply that sentence struck Arendt, because she not only used it as the epigraph for The Origins of Totalitarianism , she also adopted a variation of it for one of her most important collections of political essays, Between Past and Future. In the preface to that collection, she gives an extraordinarily imaginative interpretation of a Kafka parable, a parable intended to illuminate “the gap between past and future”—the gap for exercise in political thinking—the gap in which we gain experience in how to think. This is the “place” where Arendt located all genuine thinking, and it has special significance for this symposium, “Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism—Fifty Years Later.” There is a temptaSOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 69, No. 2 (Summer 2002) The Origins of Totalitarianism: Not History, but Politics BY RICHARD J. BERNSTEIN tion on such occasions to look back, to praise (or criticize) what she said then—to show the ways in which she was perhaps insightful and/or misguided in her understanding of the phenomenon she was struggling to comprehend: totalitarianism. I hope to resist this temptation, to view the book not as a past document but as an aid in our own present thinking, in our own attempt to live in the gap between past and future. I know from personal experience that this is the way in which she would have wanted her work discussed. I had the good fortune to participate in what, I believe, was the first conference that was exclusively devoted to her thought. It took place in Toronto almost 30 years ago, and Hannah Arendt was present . Characteristically, she was not at all interested in honorific speeches. She wanted to discuss the issues, and she actively engaged in discussion and argument with all the speakers. But let me remind you that in her preface to The Origins of Totalitarianism , she already indicated that this is the way in which she wanted the book to be read. She concluded the preface by declaring , “all efforts to escape from the grimness of the present into nostalgia for a still intact past, or into the anticipated oblivion of a better future, are vain.”1 Perhaps the most grim, disturbing, but realistic sentence in the entire book comes near its conclusion, when she says, “Totalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of strong temptations which will come up whenever it seems impossible to alleviate political, social, or economic misery in a manner worthy of man” (439). Anyone who has lived through the uses of terror and torture, the massacres , genocides and “ethnic cleansings” that have occurred all over the world during the past few decades is painfully aware of how strong and ever present these temptations are. The Origins of Totalitarianism is a difficult, complex, disjointed book. At times it reads more like a series of independent essays loosely related to each other. It ranges over the most diverse topics , from observations about various aspects of anti-Semitism to a discussion of nineteenth-century British imperialism, from the 382 SOCIAL RESEARCH nature of rights to the decline of the nation-state and the logic of total domination. Some of her claims appear to be outrageous and perverse. For example, she tells us that anti-Semitism, “a secular nineteenth-century ideology,” did not exist prior to the 1870s. Or again, she asserts that the notorious forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” served the Nazis “as a textbook for global conquest.” The Origins of...

Hypnotic mirrors and phantom pain: a single case study

AbstractUsing hypnosis, two main approaches to modifying phantom limb pain experience can be identified: ipsative imagery, which makes use of the patient's own imaginative interpretation of how the pain is generated, and a simulated movement approach. The latter approach shares many similarities with the ‘mirror’ technique recently advocated and used by Ramachandran (in non‐hypnotic settings) to create the experience of movement and in some (but not all cases) relief from pain in patients with a phantom limb. In this case study, we report the use of a hypnotically induced ‘virtual’ mirror experience that modified long standing intractable phantom limb pain despite generating a qualitatively inferior experience of movement in the phantom limb compared to that produced with an actual mirror. These preliminary findings suggest that the use of hypnotic movement imagery for the management of phantom limb pain is worth further investigation both in terms of its comparative ease of use and because of its potential for informing discussion as to the possible neurocognitive mechanisms involved. Copyright © 2002 British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis

Pictorial images, lexical phrases and culture

Foreign language teaching materials tend to use pictorial images in contrived ways in order to elicit target language (TL) knowledge, with the consequence that the image itself is often largely incidental. An excessive use of ‘convergent’ tasks may cause learners to scan illustrations merely for clues to linguistic puzzles. However, ‘divergent’ tasks may encourage imaginative interpretations of illustrations and offer insights into TL society and culture. One way of organising ‘divergent’ tasks is to combine them with lexical phrases. The latter, if used judiciously, can provide an early and gradual introduction to competence in discourse, itself an aspect of culture.

Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What We Know and Don't Know about Cancer (review)

Reviewed by: Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What We Know and Don’t Know about Cancer Daniel M. Fox Robert N. Proctor. Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What We Know and Don’t Know about Cancer. New York: Basic Books, 1995. ix + 356 pp. Ill. $U.S. 25.00; $Can. 35.00. Robert Proctor describes the interaction of science and interest-group politics in the prevention and treatment of cancer, mainly in the United States during the [End Page 747] past generation, in a book that combines advocacy with incisive and often imaginative interpretations of primary sources. The author’s message is that many cancers have behavioral and economic causes that can be eliminated. Therefore, government should more strictly regulate corporations that pollute or that sell products containing carcinogens, and should educate individuals more aggressively about the risks caused by their work, their residence, or their habits. Each chapter offers a persuasive account of particular disputes about the causes of leading cancers. Perhaps the most engaging analysis is in chapter 7, “The Political Morphology of Dose-Response Curves,” in which Proctor discusses why the standard leftist and rightist ideological models do not explain how interest groups have behaved on issues related to cancer. But the author repeatedly undercuts such disciplined use of the methods of history and political science, telling a conventional story that contradicts his own analysis. Proctor frequently describes how heroic advocates for the public health have struggled against agents of industrial greed, as well as against scientists who either were kept by industry or were prisoners of narrow biomedical concepts. Moreover, he repeatedly uses the diction of political debate to go beyond his evidence; for instance, he insists that the “environmental malice of Reagan and his administrators is notorious” (p. 75), calls President Reagan himself a “potent new carcinogen” (p. 100), and dismisses Bruce Ames’s controversial conclusions about biochemistry by speculating that the “overheated, sometimes crazy atmosphere of Berkeley may have also played a role” (p. 143). Such zeal also leads to careless citations, most often to uncritical acceptance of secondary accounts of the views of scientists or polemicists of whom the author approves. For example, on page 100 Proctor summarizes an important study that offers evidence against a policy of the Reagan administration—but he cites only an article about the study in the New York Times. Four pages later, he accuses an industry group of making a self-interested response to this study, again citing only the same newspaper account. Such errors make suspect what might merely be the author’s misunderstandings. For instance, he equates cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis, which are very different methods of informing policy (p. 84). Is he ignorant of the applicable social science, or is he, as an advocate for unlimited public spending to prevent cancer, dismissing both methods because they compare, however differently, costs and results? This is an important book for contemporary historians, both for its information and interpretation and because Proctor invites readers to applaud his biases as well as his immense learning. Many readers who are not historians may react to the biases and ignore the historical analysis. Unfortunately, many scientists and many officials of government and of interest groups will not read the book at all. This reviewer asked a scientist and former director of the National Cancer Institute whom Proctor quotes at length, and with whose views about science and policy he agrees, what he thought of the book; he replied: “Proctor interviewed me, on the telephone, but I don’t read books of this kind.” For this scientist and [End Page 748] many of his colleagues, science is in journals, polemics in books. This book, alas, confirms their expectation. Daniel M. Fox Milbank Memorial Fund Copyright © 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Drawing what you see

We all love our child's first attempts at painting or drawing - the blob with green and orange hair labelled ‘mummy’, the trees with purple leaves or the rainbow coloured houses. These imaginative interpretations of the world form an important stage in children's development. However, children also need to learn to see things as they really are and to look at things in their environment carefully.

Observational art work

Children's drawings have a universal appeal. We all enjoy looking at their drawings of parents with green and orange hair or the blob labelled ‘mummy’. These imaginative interpretations of the world form an important stage in children's development. However, children also need to learn to see things as they really are and how to make accurate observations of their environment. Close observation work is a method of developing visual awareness in the framework of art and craft sessions.

The Aesthetics of Collaboration

Modernist aesthetics is certainly predicated upon the concept of an individualized vision or oeuvre, but it also subsumes under the Western canon modes of collective production in ancient and medieval cultures, as well as from tribal cultures and contemporary Western consumer culture. In the later stages of modernism—Surrealism, Dada, and Pop art for example—and in postmodern practices, this individualized concept has been under attack from many quarters. With the rise of community arts practices in the U.S. and the U.K., the re-articulations of women artists and artists of color, public art, and the increasing use of new technology, group practices and collaborations have increased dramatically. Sometimes these have been driven by ideology, sometimes by sheer necessity. In certain practices the process of collaboration has been paramount, the growth or enabling of individuals or groups being the goal.1 However, in situations where there are ideas to be communicated more widely, aesthetic power becomes especially important—it is central to the work's ability to speak beyond the confines of any single group. The “beauty” of such images derives from the imaginative interpretation of meanings embodied in the ideas, in the distillation of the desires of a constituency in a form that expresses those ideas effectively.

Chambered Cephalopod Shells, Buoyancy, Structure and Decoupling: History and Red Herrings

The chambered shells of cephalopods have inspired scientists for over 3 centuries. However some of these imaginative interpretations, of both historical and more recent vintage, have proved to be herrings, distracting, or having the potential to distract, researchers from more fruitful avenues of inquiry. The gas pressure hypothesis of Hooke is the original granddaddy of the cephalopodous red herrings. More modern red herrings include the decoupling hypothesis originated by Denton and GilpinBrown (1966), the use of historical straw men by Saunders (1995) and the cartesian diver hypothesis of Seilacher and LaBarbera (1995). These last two, in that they are relatively new, have yet to significantly mislead. Herein this list will be explored in order of publication, the gas pressure hypothesis first and the cartesian diver notion last.

The Irish Penitentials and Their Significance for the Sacrament of Penance Today by Hugh Connolly

BOOK REVIEWS 477 communicating Queen Elizabeth, a controversial act about which the author brooks no debate. The current revisionist (and pro-Catholic) reading ofthe English Reformation, led by Eamon Duffy, Christopher Haigh, andJ. J. Scarisbrick, is not mentioned. Cardinal Newman's Second Spring—an admission that the Oxford Movement could not work—is never cited, although Catholic revivals in several countries besides England are given honorable mention. What is worse is the author's inability to resist the occasional irreverent remark , as when he mentions "mating calls"being emitted by cardinals at one conclave (p. 109), and the comment that Cardinal Spellman "owed [Sr. Pasqualina] more favors than we may ever know" (p. 258). This tendency is unfortunate and mars what should have been a helpful book. JohnVidmar, O.P Dominican House ofStudies Washington, D.C. The Irish Penitentials and Their Significance for the Sacrament ofPenance Today. By Hugh Connolly. (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Four Courts Press. Distributed by International Specialized Book Services, Inc., 5804 N.E. Hassalo Street, Portland, OR 97213-3644. 1995. Pp. xii,256. $45.00.) In five chapters Father Connolly makes his case for the contemporary relevance and significance of the ancient Irish handbooks of penance. After placing the penitentials in their cultural and historical context he undertakes a lengthy textual analysis of the works from the point of view of one of their central organizing principles—the eight capital sins that were inherited from John Cassian (gluttony, avarice, anger, dejection, lust, languor, vainglory, and pride). The fourth chapter reads the penitentials through the perspective and within the framework afforded by the Ordopaenitentiae of the modern Irish Church. He puts it somewhat differently, "an analysis of the sacrament of penance and its parts passed through the filter, as it were, of Celtic penitential theology" (p. 124). Here he shows that the conception and spirit of penance and confession evidenced in the traditional elements of contrition (of heart), confession (by mouth),and satisfaction (through works) are reflected in the penitentials. In the final chapter Connolly takes a broad, interpretative approach to the symbolism of the penitentials through a discussion of three models of penance that run through the texts—the judicial model, the medical model of disease and healing , and the pilgrimage model. The penitentials appeared in Western Europe when the harsh system ofnonrepeatable public penance was waning, to be replaced with repeatable, private penance or confession. It is likely that they both encouraged and facilitated the transition to the more humane system, and it is certain that they set the tone and content for confessional manuals for at least five hundred years (up to the twelfth century). It is ironic that Connolly's book would appear now, at a time 478 BOOK REVIEWS when repeatable, private penance is tending to give way to public, communal penance in many quarters ofthe Roman Church. However ironic it may be, I believe that the author succeeds in showing that the pivotal period of the Irish penitentials has some valuable lessons for the present pivotal period in the history of the development of the sacrament of penance. He demonstrates an insightful reading of the texts and an imaginative interpretation of their (of course limited) contemporary significance. Having said this, I must add that it is disappointing to read a book published in 1995 that shows such little awareness of the careful work that is being done on the textual history of the penitentials. None of the works of the leading scholar in this field (Professor Raymund Kottje) are even listed in the bibliography . Connolly's book is not the book to read if one wants to gain any critical, historical knowledge of the penitentials, Irish or otherwise. It is, however, a reflective , insightful meditation on the theology of the penitentials, and a perceptive guide to their limited significance for today. Pierre J. Payer Mount Saint Vincent University Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Stratégie Missionnaire du Saint-Siège sous Léon XIII (1878-1903)- Centralisation romaine et défis culturels. By Claude Prudhomme. [Collection de l'École Française de Rome, 186.] (Rome: École Française de Rome, Palais Farnèse. 1994. Pp. iv,621. Paperback.) This very long and detailed...

Stratégie Missionnaire du Saint-Siège sous Léon XIII (1878-1903). Centralisation romaine et défis culturels by Claude Prudhomme

478 BOOK REVIEWS when repeatable, private penance is tending to give way to public, communal penance in many quarters ofthe Roman Church. However ironic it may be, I believe that the author succeeds in showing that the pivotal period of the Irish penitentials has some valuable lessons for the present pivotal period in the history of the development of the sacrament of penance. He demonstrates an insightful reading of the texts and an imaginative interpretation of their (of course limited) contemporary significance. Having said this, I must add that it is disappointing to read a book published in 1995 that shows such little awareness of the careful work that is being done on the textual history of the penitentials. None of the works of the leading scholar in this field (Professor Raymund Kottje) are even listed in the bibliography . Connolly's book is not the book to read if one wants to gain any critical, historical knowledge of the penitentials, Irish or otherwise. It is, however, a reflective , insightful meditation on the theology of the penitentials, and a perceptive guide to their limited significance for today. Pierre J. Payer Mount Saint Vincent University Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Stratégie Missionnaire du Saint-Siège sous Léon XIII (1878-1903)- Centralisation romaine et défis culturels. By Claude Prudhomme. [Collection de l'École Française de Rome, 186.] (Rome: École Française de Rome, Palais Farnèse. 1994. Pp. iv,621. Paperback.) This very long and detailed study of the missionary movement during the pontificate of Leo XIII is a substantial contribution to the mission history of the nineteenth century. Its major theme is the centralization, Romanization, and "papal-ization" of the missionary movement at this time. The book is divided into three major parts. The first describes the Congregation of the Propaganda during Leo's pontificate. The author provides not only the names ofthe prefects and secretaries of the Congregation but also of its members and consultors and describes both their tasks and how they came to be chosen. He has an interesting description of the ordinary path a Roman cleric would take in pursuit of an ecclesiastical career. He also shows with striking detail the bonds that existed between the various Congregations themselves and between them and the Pope,for the cardinals ofthe Propaganda were the Pope's chosen men and they invariably served on more than one Congregation. This guaranteed loyalty, uniformity , and Romanization in every detail. The second part of the book deals with the activity of the Propaganda during this time, describing how they developed a tradition of mission theory, controlled missionary action through questionnaires, synods, and apostolic delegates, assigned territories and chose mission congregations to serve there, and controlled the work of the missionary societies and the appointment of heads of the mission. Loyalty to the Pope, BOOK REVIEWS 479 submission to Rome, and uniformity in doctrine were expected of all missionaries —this permeates all decisions and communications. The third part of the book addresses the missionary strategy of Leo XIII as expressed by him and the Congregation. The centralization and "papal-ization" of missionary activity was pursued even though there were many obstacles along the way. The author treats well and in detail the struggles Rome had with Portugal over the Padroado in Asia and Africa, with the European Powers following the Berlin Conference on Africa in 1885, with France over the Religious Protectorate in China, and with Italy over the protection of missionaries in China and Africa. The author suggests that Leo's preferred interest was union with the Eastern Churches,but Leo also was concerned that missionary expansion should fit into his global plan for the Church. While centralization developed greatly during this period, there were two checks on its development: Rome could not persuade France to give up its religious protectorate in China and thus had to abandon its plan for an apostolic delegation; and Rome could not persuade the Society for the Propagation of the Faith to move its offices from Lyons to Rome and to entrust the distribution of funds to the Propaganda. These were minor setbacks when compared with the major accomplishments in this area. The author...

WILLEM JACOB LUYTEN (1899-1994)

ABSTRACT With the death of Willem Jacob Luyten on November 21, 1994 at the age of 95, the astronomical community lost one of its most distinguished, productive and colorful members. His activity spanned over three quarters of a century in a variety of topics, but above all in the astronomy of position and of galactic kinematics. His personal productivity in the area of proper motions was unequaled, and with the advent of automatic measuring devices, may never be surpassed. His imaginative interpretation of the data he obtained provided an entirely new picture of the stellar composition of the Milky Way. His relations with others of his profession were often sparked by controversy, but throughout his career he remained a teacher to the young in the fullest sense of the word.

Stories of an Imaginary Childhood (review)

114 SHOFAR Fall 1993 Vol. 12, No. 1 Mandel skillfully blends these incongruent themes into lyrical verses which give voice to the sensuality of Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah. Pastoral allusions are interwoven with descriptions of the inner life as if the surroundings were extensions of their selves. Fusion and boundlessness oscillate throughout this work, perhaps best typified by the allegorical meeting of Jacob and the nocturnal visitor with whom he struggles until the unnamed other fades into the ether with the dawn. However, because the figure of Jacob is drawn rather larger than life, Mandel is not as successful in picturing his essence in the dynamic terms which she achieves for the women. The poem-novella is divided into three parts and subdivided into ninety short "chapters," each consisting of a few verse lines rarely exceeding one page. Direct and indirect Biblical references suffuse the text without detracting the flow of poetic narrative or obscuring its meaning. Only the names of the handmaidens' pagan gods appear as artifactual contributions to the work, as if to jar the reader. For the poetry aficionado, The Marriages ofJacob is an enjoyable way of appreciating a well-crafted poem and of obtaining a woman's imaginative interpretation of Biblical lore. Werner I. Halpern, M.D. Rochester, New York Stories of an Imaginary Childhood, by Melvin Jules Bukiet. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1992. 197 pp. $12.95 (p). Melvin Jules Bukiet's Stories of an Imaginary Childhood is a bold attempt to imagine what it would have been like to be a Jewish child on the eve of the Shoah. The present collection is a "Back to the Future" work with a tragic difference. Unlike the Back to the Future movies, Bukiet's work does not and cannot undo or alterJewish fate. Rather, these stories serve to emphasize the innocence of the Jews and the inescapability of their doom. Bukiet's father, a Polish survivor who immigrated to America in 1948, spoke constantly of Proszowice his boyhood shtetl. In fact, as a child Bukiet believed that Europe comprised four major cities: London, Paris, Rome, and Proszowice. Consequently, Stories of an Imaginary Childhoodcombines survivor knowledge and second-generation imagination. In twelve interrelated short stories a nameless twelve-year-old boy introduces various characters from a vanished world, including Isaac the Book Reviews 115 Millionaire, a pauper whom the narrator's parents were "proud to be owed money by"; Rebecca the 300-pound Jewish whore-with whom the narrator is in love-who recites the story of Channuka in a bar before giving birth to an illegitimate child in the Proszowice mikvehj Shivka Bellet, a shrew who nagged her husband to death and discovered that she could not live without himj and Zalman the philosophical grave digger. In effect, the book leaps backward, across the abyss of the Shoah. But the power of his tales, like the stories of Aaron Appelfeld, lies in the fact that the audience, unlike his fictional characters, knows what history has in store for the Jewish people. Bukiet, 1993 winner of the Edward Lewis Wallant award, portrays the shtetl as separated from the outside, i.e., secular and Christian, world by an invisible yet enduring mehitza. The narrator wears a kippa and has payot, his father sells food and studies the Talmud. The tales' narrator tells of the fears, hopes, dreams, superstitions, and prayers of a people whose fate had already been sealed. The narrator, a precocious aQd religiously ambivalent youth nearing his Bar Mitzvah, feels both the weight of the past and the tug of the present. He seeks to find his own Jewish ground. Bukiet writes that his stories are an attempt to "inscribe myself in the life that might have been mine." Like many in the second generation, Bukiet takes a post-Holocaust journey to Europe, travelling both to Proszowice and to Auschwitz. Reflecting on his trip and his role as a second-generation witness, the author writes: Seeing and thinking about the Holocaust may be as difficult as living it, not in the hurt of the body, not in the specific searing memories, but in having to face a universe that will allow such evil. Life is...

Oakeshott's Hobbesian Myth: Pride, Character and the Limits of Reason

We are apt to think of a civilization as something solid and external, but at bottom is a collective dream. In so far as the soul is in the body, says Plotinus, it lies in deep sleep. What a people dreams in this earthly sleep is its civilization. And the substance of this dream is a myth, an imaginative interpretation of human existence, the perception (not the solution) of the mystery of human life. (Oakeshott 1975: 150)

George McBean

A study currently underway in Nepal aims to discover how quickly standards of visual literacy can be improved by teaching several key clues to picture interpretation. Among non-literate populations, this could help to bring improvement to the effectiveness of extension workers in health, and many other areas. It is noted that research in the visual literacy field has given clear indications of the type of illustration most likely to be understood by people with limited exposure to printed materials. Such research has led to emphasis on a particular style of simplistic illustration typical of health and other development programmes in many third world countries. However, it is hypothesized that increased exposure to illustrated materials affects response. Making illustrations merely ‘understandable’ may not then be sufficient to challenge entrenched behaviour patterns which require more creative and imaginative interpretations.

Chaos to Cosmos: Studies in Biblical Patterns of Creation

This is originally Published by Scholars Press. It is now Available from Duke University Press. It is a fresh look at Genesis 1-11 from the perspectives of comparative literature and cultural anthropology. Susan Niditch reveals how Hebrew narratives of chaos, creation, and cosmos structure a mythic-literary world and create an order for human existence. Both the scholar and the student will find Niditch's imaginative interpretation illuminating.

Neurological Assessment During the First Year of Life

Remember the scarf sign , the square window , the lateral propping reaction , and the Recamier position ? These terms Were coined by the Claudine Amiel-Tison, the mother of the neonatal neurologic examination. small monograph is the English translation of Drs Amiel-Tison and Grenier's 1984 French publication. Sections are devoted to the clinical neurologic evaluation of the neonate, the use of Amiel-Tison's grid, evaluation of neuromotor sequelae, the significance of transient neuromotor anomalies, and the use of developmental scales and sensory evaluation. As Harvey Sarnat notes in the introduction, This concise monograph summarizes and integrates meticulous observations of these two dedicated physicians, formulating their data into thoughtful generalizations, at times evoking imaginative interpretations. While not a standard part of the conventional neurologic assessment of young infants, Amiel-Tison's approach clearly reflects her wealth of experience with both healthy and neurologically impaired infants. The translation is excellent and captures the flavor of the original

A History of American Higher Education

Colleges and universities are among the most cherished institutions in American society-and also among the most controversial. Yet affirmative action and skyrocketing tuition are only the most recent dissonant issues to emerge. Recounting the many crises and triumphs in the long history of American higher education, historian John Thelin provides welcome perspective on this influential aspect of American life. In A History of American Higher Education, Thelin offers a wide-ranging and engaging account of the origins and evolution of America's public and private colleges and universities, emphasizing the notion of saga-the proposition that institutions are heirs to numerous historical strands and numerous attempts to address such volatile topics as institutional cost and effectiveness, admissions and access, and the character of the curriculum. Thelin draws on both official institutional histories and the informal memories that constitute legends and lore to offer a fresh interpretation of an institutional past that reaches back to the colonial era and encompasses both well-known colleges and universities and such understudied institutions as community, women's, and historically black colleges, proprietary schools, and freestanding professional colleges. Thelin's lively history has particular relevance for a society still struggling to determine what constitutes a legitimate field of study, reminding readers that Harvard once used its medical school as a safe place to admit the sons of wealthy alumni who could not pass the undergraduate college admissions examination and that the University of Pennsylvania once considered the study of history, government, and economics unworthy of addition to the liberal arts curriculum. Thelin also addresses the role of local, state, and federal governments in colleges and universities, as well as the influence of private foundations and other organizations. And through imaginative interpretation of films, novels, and popular magazines, he illuminates the convoluted relationship between higher education and American culture. For anyone attempting to understand America's colleges and universities, A History of American Higher Education offers a much-needed challenge to conventional wisdom about how these institutions developed and functioned in the past.

Gibbon in Church

Church is not the first place we should think of looking for ‘the historian of the Roman Empire’. He is more usually thought of as the opponent of organised Christianity and of the established church whether under Constantine or the Hanoverians. Yet we know that he dutifully sat in the family pew at Buriton, occasionally attended services elsewhere and was indeed something of a connoisseur of sermons. Our aim is to seek him out during times of worship and, by an imaginative interpretation of certain known facts, to enter as far as possible into his mind. Such informed reading between the lines, using the documents which reveal to complement those which leave things unsaid, is hardly going beyond what the historian does when he deduces probable causes or demonstrable effects from a set of well-documented facts.

The Role of Cooperatives in the Development of the Movement Culture of Populism

Lawrence Goodwyn's Democratic Promise and The Populist Moment have been popular and influential works among American historians.' Reviewers have been favorable to Goodwyn's imaginative interpretation and comprehensive coverage of the American farmers greatest political protest movement, and several recent texts have either adopted Goodwyn's interpretation or listed it as the new standard history of Populism.2 After two decades of scholarly reactions to Richard Hofstadter's charges of anti-Semitism and paranoia, it is useful to have an interpretation that focuses on a broader view of Populism and contains important insights into the nature of radical movements in general. Goodwyn's interpretation is a strong statement that will provide topics for revisionist studies for years to come. This is one of the first. Both Democratic Promise and its somewhat more explicit paperback version, Populist Moment, offer a new interpretation of Populism that pictures