Late Texts Research Articles

The Keep. Uncanny Propriation: Derrida’s Marrano Objection

This essay attempts to offer some reflections on what it is that Jacques Derrida found uncomfortable in Martin Heidegger’s thought at the level of fundamental gestures. The region of disagreement is located in Derrida’s self-identification in a marrano register at an autographic level. This paper studies the notions of propriation and expropriation in Heidegger’s late texts and compares them to Derrida’s ‘uncanny propriation’ as a marrano notion. I offer four propositions regarding Derrida’s marranismo, which I align with Derrida’s proposal for desecularization, tentatively described as a ‘messianic engagement with the khora’. I conclude with a proposal for the development of ontic models of marrano action that would antecede the theory/practice divide.

When to Text? How the Timing of Text Message Contacts in Mixed-Mode Surveys Impacts Response

Abstract Using multiple modes of contact has been found to increase survey participation over a single contact mode. Text messaging has emerged as a new mode to contact survey participants in mixed-mode survey designs, especially for surveys that include web and/or phone data collection. However, it is unclear how to best combine text messages with mailings and other outreach contacts to improve response rates and data quality. To explore the effectiveness of using text messaging as a contact mode, we conducted a full factorial experiment that varies the sequencing of text messages with mailing contacts (early versus late reminder) and the time text messages were sent (morning versus afternoon). The experiment was implemented in a follow-up wave of a mixed-mode nationally representative longitudinal survey with two sample groups (Cooperative versus Other Respondents). For Cooperative Respondents, text reminders seemed to be effective at increasing completion rates, with the early text reminder being somewhat more effective than the late text reminder, at least early in the field period. For Other Respondents, text invitations were effective at improving the completion rate, but effects diminished quickly once the invitation letter was sent. Additionally, the early text reminder appears to be more effective than the late text reminder at increasing completion rates for Other Respondents. The sequencing of text messages did not affect data quality across sample groups or substantially impact nonresponse. The time of day the text messages were sent did not affect any of the outcome measures examined.

INVENTION OF “ROMAN”, IMAGINATION OF “BARBARIAN”: THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE IMPERIAL IDENTITY OF ROME IN THE LATER TEXTS OF OVID

Purpose. The author in the presented article considers the late texts of Ovid, presented by Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. The purpose of the article is to analyze how the texts reflect the processes of formation of the imperial political culture and identity.
 Research novelty. The novelty of the study lies in the analysis of the late texts of Ovid not as literary, but as political narratives that inspired the transformation of Roman identity, contributing to the actualization of the concepts of Self and Otherness.
 Materials and methods. Methodologically, the article is based on the principles of interdisciplinarity proposed in the framework of studies of nationalism, intellectual and cultural history, transplanted into the contexts of the literary history of Rome in the 1st century AD.
 Results. The article analyzes 1) Ovid’s attempts to form an ideal and positive image of power, 2) Ovid’s contribution to the development of Roman ideas about barbarians, 3) peculiarities of Ovid’s geographical perception of the formation of Roman territory as an imperial heterogeneous space. The contribution of the later texts of Ovid, represented by Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto and written in exile, to the formation of political imperial culture and identity is shown. The results of the study suggest that 1) Ovid was one of the first Roman authors who textualized the transformations of political power, contributing to the genesis of the cult of imperial power as an element of political culture; 2) in the formation and imagination of the images of the barbarians, Ovid continued the earlier tendencies of hierarchization and idealization of the inhabitants of the peripheral provinces: 3) the later texts of Ovid, written in exile, became a contribution to the development of the cultural geography of the emerging Roman Empire, based on the glorification and positive idealization of Italy through the prism of its opposition to the provinces.

Franz Kafka: "Der Hungerkünstler"-Zyklus und die kleine Prosa von 1920–1924: Freiheit-Judentum-Kunst by Marcel Krings

Reviewed by: Franz Kafka: "Der Hungerkünstler"-Zyklus und die kleine Prosa von 1920–1924: Freiheit-Judentum-Kunst by Marcel Krings Ruth V. Gross Marcel Krings, Franz Kafka: "Der Hungerkünstler"-Zyklus und die kleine Prosa von 1920–1924: Freiheit-Judentum-Kunst. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2022. 497 pp. Taking up the same idea as in his earlier book Franz Kafka: Der "Landarzt"-Zyklus: Freiheit-Schrift-Judentum (2017) of reading various texts written within a specific time period as a unit, Marcel Krings focuses in this volume on Kafka's late writings, starting with the "Er" aphorisms from 1920 and progressing through his last period of creativity before his death in 1924. The amount of research and innovative thought that has gone into this volume is breathtaking. Krings is an excellent scholar, and his extensive readings provide the basis for his overarching perspective of Kafka's oeuvre as circling around two main themes—freedom and Judaism. His approach is, however, both the strength and the weakness of this volume. I will explain my ambivalence below. In his first chapter, Krings lays out his thesis: to read Kafka's individual texts without the context of the larger oeuvre, in Krings's opinion, is to miss that Kafka's works have an underlying unity—that it is incorrect to think of his works as open-ended. Krings believes that the theme of death that was already prevalent in the earlier Landarzt volume takes on far greater intensity in Kafka's later work. The idea of wanting to leave this world behind clearly permeates the late stories like "Investigations of a Dog," "Josephine," and "The Hunger Artist." Furthermore, Krings sees Kafka's literary project as messianic, since his interest is in a new Judaism that reveals the decline of true religion as practiced by the assimilated Jews, whom he imagines, for example, as dogs or mice. Kafka's new Judaism does away with concrete images and obscures the referent. Therefore, so much of the late writing is in the form of parable whose point is to critique any kind of earthbound religion. [End Page 116] The rest of Krings's book presents close readings of the late texts, including the "Er" aphorisms, a collection of various pieces called Das Konvolut 1920, Das "Hungerkünstler"-Heft, and finally, Der "Hungerkünstler"-Zyklus, to support his thesis of a unified thematic. Each successive reading alludes to other scholarly interpretations of the work but then settles in to explain the particular text in light of the two main themes Krings understands to be omnipresent in Kafka's works. He dismisses any kind of biographical or philological approach as missing Kafka's true meaning. As an example, I would like to focus on his reading of "Ein Kommentar (Gib's Auf)": a short text that I personally always begin with when I teach Kafka to students. Because the text is short and easily understood at the literal level, it is ideal for presenting to students the open-ended, multidirectional Kafka that makes his works so fascinating, puzzling, and ultimately enjoyable to read and re-read. Krings is, of course, familiar with the reading so brilliantly laid out and explained by Heinz Politzer in his seminal work from 1962 on Kafka and paradox, but Krings contends that Politzer's reading of this text as a paradox is untenable, if not totally misleading. According to Krings, readers should instead be asking themselves about "Kafkas Diagnose über den Zustand des zeitgenössischen Judentums" (336). To my mind, this is not an obvious query that occurs to the reader when confronted with Kafka's short text. Over the years, it has been read many ways, and it is often interesting to compare readings, but Krings's view suggests there can be no correct reading other than his own. This is a position I, as a Kafka scholar, find very troubling. That is not to say that Krings's reading is wrong—it is viable and it fits well into his overall discussion. But to me, it is simply another way of reading the text—to Krings, it seems, it would be the only way. That is what makes this volume so...

A Tale of Wonders in Performance: The Precious Scroll of Wang Hua in the Storytelling Tradition of Changshu, Jiangsu, China

Baojuan (precious scrolls) are a type of prosimetric literature in the vernacular language that flourished in the lower Yangzi valley between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most baojuan texts are devoted to religious themes, often involving wondrous figures and events which can be characterized as “supernatural”. The Precious Scroll of Wang Hua (Wang Hua baojuan 王花寶卷) is a comparatively late text centered on the marvelous apparitions leading to the salvation of a lay person. It is a widespread text of the southern “scroll recitation” tradition as it survives in Changshu, Jiangsu, but to date, it has not received attention from scholars of Chinese popular literature and religion. Still, it is important for understanding the origins, development, and functions of precious scrolls and their contribution to the field of Chinese popular religion. The original text of the Precious Scroll of Wang Hua formed ca. end of the nineteenth century, but the present research mainly uses the manuscript version of a modern performer from the vicinity of Changshu (ca. 1995). This narrative combines two major topics of the wondrous manifestation of Bodhisattva Guanyin and the descent to Hell. Both topics can be traced back to the early “miracle tales”. Here, they have been adapted to the local life and cultural setting. The figure of the skeptical and egoistic Wang Hua who initially rejected the injunctions of Guanyin is a type well known to the modern audiences of baojuan. Thus, the supernatural elements serve the purpose of reconfirming traditional beliefs and values in the contemporary society.

Utah History Textbooks and Utah History

Utah History Textbooks and Utah History

Being Is Relating: Continuity-in-Change in the Sambandhasiddhi of Utpaladeva

Relation-theories—theories on the metaphysical status of relations—have for some time stood at the center of disputes between realism and idealism. To such disputes, this paper contributes insights from an understudied premodern source, the Sambandhasiddhi (Proof of Relation). Its author Utpaladeva (c. 925–975 C.E.) is the Śaiva philosopher of India best known as an innovator in the Pratyabhijñā (Doctrine of Recognition) school of Kashmiri Śaivism. This lesser-known late text shows Utpaladeva deploying an even more explicitly Bhartṛharian grammatical view of reality than he had previously. He argues against his chief rival and predecessor, the Buddhist epistemologist, Dharmakīrti (c. 6th or 7th C.E.), while modifying the latter’s epistemic idealism to an objective idealism. This text differs from Utpaladeva’s prior works in its sustained attack on Dharmakīrti’s nominalism and citation of the Buddhist’s own writings. The Sambandhasiddhi accordingly offers an interesting glimpse at a sustained treatment on relations, a topic that is important to Utpaladeva’s prior arguments, but that he considered perhaps not sufficiently developed, so as to warrant a separate treatment. A few brief comments are also offered on how Utpaladeva’s relation-theory might fit alongside Russell’s disputes with Bradley over relations, and Utpaladeva’s affinity with Peircean semiosis.

Kant on the future of representative democracy

Kant’s Staatsrecht in his “Metaphysics of Morals” likely represents the sharpest analysis and critique of democratic modernity after 1789. At the same time, it provides a unique outlook on the future of modern representative democracy. This has gone largely unnoticed, with scholars often lamenting the problematic nature of the late text, blamed either on the author’s supposed senility or on the inscrutable composition resulting from confusion during the printing process. Rather than affirming these readings, I will argue that they are merely attempts to wrestle with the brilliance of Kant’s philosophical rhetoric. Through a new reading of a key passage in the Staatsrecht, I substantiate this claim by reconstructing Kant’s late account of repres- entative democracy and its future.

The Origin and Character of God: Ancient Israelite Religion through the Lens of Divinity, Yahweh before Israel: Glimpses of History in a Divine Name and Yahweh: Origin of a Desert God

The Origin and Character of God: Ancient Israelite Religion through the Lens of Divinity, Yahweh before Israel: Glimpses of History in a Divine Name and Yahweh: Origin of a Desert God

“Forging a New Language”

This article examines James Baldwin’s late text The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985) as one of his substantial attempts at “forging a new language,” which he tentatively mentions in his late essays and interviews. As an unpopular and difficult text in Baldwin’s oeuvre, Evidence carries the imprint of a new economy of time, casting the past into the present, and a new economy of space, navigating across other geographies in appraising the serial killings of children in one of Atlanta’s poorest Black neighborhoods. This article suggests that a new economy of time emerges earlier in No Name in the Street (1972), as a result of Baldwin’s self-imposed exile in Europe. The article then analyzes his spatiotemporal logic in the specifics of Evidence with reference to a Black middle class, urbanization, the ghetto, gentrification, and other colonized spaces.

Ambivalences of a Tour de Force: “Istoria Literaturii Române Contemporane” as Critique and as Literature

"Ambivalences of a Tour de Force: Istoria Literaturii Române Contemporane as Critique and as Literature. This essay starts from hypothesizing a double dimension of Mihai Iovănel’s History: critical and literary (or, as Matei says, poetic). The idea of such an interpretation is given by Iovănel’s quoting a late text by Louis Althusser, in which the French philosopher defines the figure of an “aleatory materialist,” as opposed to a “dialectical” materialist. While critics have already discussed the critical dimension of Iovănel’s project, an aspect Matei also examines in the last part of his contribution, less has been said, he maintains, about the History as a literary project, as “writing.” Matei thus attends to the qualities and shortcomings of Iovănel’s project, which stem, he claims, from the aforementioned double dimension of the History. Keywords: Mihai Iovănel, poetics of literary history, aleatory materialism, contemporary Romanian literature"

Beckett and Buddhism

Beckett and Buddhism

Forgetting to Remember: Theorizing the Role of the Forgotten In the Production of Biblical Text and Tradition

Abstract This article examines Exod 34:11–17 by utilizing theory of cultural memory, enriched with theory of metaphor and allusion. As the author of a late text, the scribe responsible for this insertion remembers other various biblical texts via allusion, creating synthetic categories that are useful for carrying the texts forward in time. The synthesis occurs, however, not just by remembering but also by forgetting parts of the evoked texts. The fact that they can be read together strengthens the idea that multiple texts could be considered a conceptual whole. Forgetting is therefore not just about loss; it is as a result of loss extremely productive in creating and maintaining conceptual links between texts within the tradition.

‘[A]nother kind of rain’: Aesthetic Ontology and Contagious Imaginations in Althusser’s Aleatory Materialism

Abstract One of the remarkable features of recent interest in the work of Louis Althusser has been the prominence granted to Althusser’s cultural criticism. However, aside from one notable exception, Althusser’s cultural criticism has not figured prominently in discussions of his late work, and the absence of Althusser’s cultural criticism from those discussions has perhaps unwittingly obscured both the genealogy of Althusser’s late aesthetic ontology and the logic of his last texts, of ‘The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter’ and related writings on aleatory materialism. By tracing the genealogy of the aleatory impulse in Althusser’s cultural criticism, it is possible to show how that work resonates in Althusser’s late texts including the larger unpublished manuscript from which ‘The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter’ has been drawn. This reading of the philosophy of the encounter also allows us to understand the importance of Nicolas Malebranche for Althusser’s aleatory materialism.

SACRED TEXTS AND DISPARATE INTERPRETATIONS: QUMRAN MANUSCRIPTS SEVENTY YEARS LATER, PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE HELD AT THE JOHN PAUL II CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF LUBLIN, 24‐26 OCTOBER 2017. Edited by HenrykDrawnel. Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 133. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Pp. xiv + 478. Hardback, $159.00.

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 48, Issue 1 p. 134-134 Short Reviews of Recent Publications: Judaism: Hellenistic Through Late Antiquity SACRED TEXTS AND DISPARATE INTERPRETATIONS: QUMRAN MANUSCRIPTS SEVENTY YEARS LATER, PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE HELD AT THE JOHN PAUL II CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF LUBLIN, 24-26 OCTOBER 2017. Edited by Henryk Drawnel. Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 133. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Pp. xiv + 478. Hardback, $159.00. First published: 28 April 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.15724Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume48, Issue1Georges Bataille and the SacredMarch 2022Pages 134-134 RelatedInformation

Peircean semiosis as the process for the making of meaning

Abstract One domain in which one would expect to find enlightenment concerning the nature of meaning is the pragmatism of C. S. Peirce and, in particular, the various versions of the pragmatic maxim that he refined over the years. For the maxim was, he claimed in a late text, really nothing more than a sort of protocol for determining the meaning of “hard words.” However, at the same time, Peirce saw the communication of meaning as a process that necessarily involved signs, thereby placing the onus of meaning-making within the scope of semiotics. The paper begins by examining the possible contributions to our understanding of the nature of meaning provided by Peirce’s pragmatism and the well-known ten-class classificatory system of 1903 derived from his theory of universal phenomenological categories. However, finding that both present structural limitations for such a study, the paper proceeds to develop the hexadic, 28-class sign-system of 1908 – based, in this case, on three modal universes of existence – and the process of semiosis in order to show how a neo-Peircean conception of semiosis enables the researcher not only to demonstrate the way meaning is communicated but also to hypothesize the way meaning is made through mediatization.

‘Thinking Ontologically’: Ontology Development as the Basis for the Systematic Analysis of a Corpus of Late Antique Aramaic Magic Texts

This article describes the process of developing an ontology of the domain of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic magic bowls and offers some reflections on its significance in the analysis of these materials. Examples are highlighted to illustrate where the work builds on existing conceptualisations of the domain in secondary literature and where magical and religious materials from the Ancient Near East might stimulate some specialised extension of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (ICOM/CIDOC Documentation Standards Group, 2020). The analogy of ‘bridge building’ is offered as a way for humanities researchers to conceive of the work to produce ontologies of specific domains. This reflection is intended to capture the experience of ‘thinking ontologically’ about sources for the first time and of overcoming misconceptions about the nature and significance of this work.

Management and outcomes of extreme preterm birth.

### What you need to know Extreme preterm birth, defined as birth before 28 weeks’ gestational age (box 1),1 affects about two to five in every 1000 pregnancies, and varies slightly by country and by definitions used. Severe maternal morbidity, including sepsis and peripartum haemorrhage, affects around a quarter of mothers delivering at these gestations.2 For the babies, survival and morbidity rates vary, particularly by gestational age at delivery but also according to other risk factors (birth weight and sex, for example) and by country.34 In this update, we focus on high income countries and provide a broad overview of extreme preterm birth epidemiology, recent changes, and best practices in obstetric and neonatal management, including new treatments such as antenatal magnesium sulphate or changes in delivery management such as delayed cord clamping and placental transfusion. We cover short and long term medical, psychological, and experiential consequences for individuals born extremely preterm, their mothers and families, as well as preventive measures that may reduce the incidence of extreme preterm birth. Box 1 ### Key definitions #### World Health Organization definitions relating to preterm birth #### Preterm #### Moderate to late pretermRETURN TO TEXT

Talmudic Torment: Late Antique Jewish Texts on Pain and Suffering Between Medicine, Martyrdom, and Askesis

According to recent studies, pain can be conceptualised both as a bodily sensation and as a complex sociocultural phenomenon shaped by experience, expectations, and presumptions. This article analyses descriptions of agonising intestinal and inflammatory ailments with their various sensual and socio-religious implications as specific rabbinic expressions of and reactions to broader ancient understandings of pain. The study of two talmudic narratives explores a complex network of late antique Jewish ideas about pain, especially connected to bodily swellings and bowel disease, in which religious, legal, ethical, cognitive, and medical aspects intertwine. I submit that the depiction of eminent rabbinic scholars as “suffering selves” fits well into the broader cultures of pain in the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean and the ancient Near East. In these traditions, the always mediated (re)presentations of pain and experiences of suffering were often torn between fascination and aversion. Up to a certain point, the rabbis shared a cultural matrix and ideas on illness and agony with their contemporaries, especially religious experts like Christian authors, monastics, and ascetics. Therefore, these stories about self-afflicted pain and suffering were possibly formed as alternative Jewish answers reacting to and interacting with Graeco-Roman “cultures of pain” as well as emerging Jewish and Christian conceptions of martyrdom, asceticism, and the suffering self in late antiquity. Through a comparison with earlier texts, this article examines how this rabbinic counter-discourse feeds on and appropriates but also rejects Graeco-Roman and early Christian traditions about the punitive, refining, ascetic, and sanctifying purposes of bodily suffering and abdominal agony.

Метафорические истолкования алхимического языка в позднедаосском тексте (по «Лун мэнь синь фа», XVII в.)

The article is devoted to the history of the hermeneutics of the language of Taoist alchemy. Traditional Taoist practices, which in European scientific literature are usually called «Taoist alchemy», are divided into two types in Chinese culture, namely, wai dan («external alchemy») and nei dan («internal alchemy»). Both branches are united by the declared goal (achievement of «immortality») and spe­cific alchemical terminology and imagery. The article deals with the metaphorical interpretation of the terms and expressions of the alchemical language in the late Taoist text. The main source text is the text of the 17th century Lun men xin fa (The Law of the Heart-Consciousness [according to the Tradition] Longmen), which outlined the views of Wang Changyue (Kunyang-zi), master of the Taoist school Quanzhen/Longmen. A notable feature of Wang Changyue's sermons is that he in­terprets expressions typical of the language of the Taoist, and in particular, the al­chemical tradition, through the language of the Buddhist tradition. In the later pe­riod, as can be seen in the text under study, the expressions and terms of internal alchemy, metaphorical in nature, underwent a secondary metaphorical interpreta­tion. It is called «secondary» for the reason that the language of inner alchemy was already metaphorical in nature. The article examines two examples of the interpre­tation of the alchemical language in the sermons of Wang Changyue. The article also provides a historical and philosophical assessment of the interpretation of the alchemical language proposed by Wang Changyue. This interpretation represents a spiritualized and “Buddhized” version of Taoism. The article includes fragments of Long men xin fa, first translated in Russian, illustrating the observations of the author of the article.