Midst Of Destruction Research Articles

Борьба с беспризорностью несовершеннолетних в Енисейской губернии в контексте деятельности Комиссии по улучшению жизни детей. 1921 г.

Early years of the Soviet regime were a period of implementation of the ideological doctrine that stated that children welfare should be the exclusive remit of the State. The study of the entire range of solutions for the so called children’s problem in early Soviet state requires involvement of multiple kinds of sources. The object of our interest was the report of Robert Krishyanovich Lepsis (1896–1942), a representative of Yenisseyskii Provincial Executive Committee on the Improvement of Children’s Lives, about the condition of childcare facilities by July 1921. The report was prepared for the Commission for the Improvement of Children’s Lives under the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. The document included into the publication was identified as part of Fund P-93 “Department of National Education of the Yenisseyskii Provincial Executive Committee” in State Archive of Krasnoyarsk Territory. The document is reliable and informative; it provides details of geographical location and regional aspects of formation and activities of Soviet machinery during its establishment. The document also gives an idea of searching for humane mechanisms to eliminate juvenile homelessness. We failed to find papers that would highlight organization and initial steps of the Commission for the Improvement of Children’s Lives in Yenisseyskaya Province. The published document the data on the condition and supply of orphanages and shelters in Yenisseyskaya Province; it evaluates the activities of the representatives for the improvement of children’s lives and mechanisms of solution for the problem of juvenile homelessness. The author of the report does not hide the fact that the problems of homeless and neglected children are not a priority in the activities of all the Soviet institutions or administrative organizations. However, due to his being at the same time a Chairman of the Provincial Extraordinary Commission, he manages to solve some urgent issues of childcare facilities. We applied diachronic method to analyze information from the source. As a result we came to a conclusion that they did not manage to change the situation with children’s homelessness in Yenisseyskaya Province radically by July 1921. But a process of introduction of newly formed Soviet institutions into the solution of the above mentioned problem started. Due to the lack of financial and material resources, as well as poor staffing, orphanages and shelters were in poverty. They did not properly solve the educational tasks assigned to them, but at least they served as feeding stations where one could survive in the midst of destruction and famine. The information from the source may be of interest to those who study Soviet society, forms and practical activities of addressing the problems of children’s homelessness.

The Subject Construction and Role Mental Model Construction of Erotic Movies Based on Lacan's Desire Theory.

Jacques Lacan is a famous French psychoanalyst, but his influence has long gone beyond the scope of psychoanalysis and has affected almost all fields of “human science.” Film and psychoanalysis coincided almost simultaneously and influenced each other. But with the development of film, researchers found that film studies in the period of classic film and film semiotics have come to an end. It has certain theoretical value to explore the construction of the subject and the mental model of the erotic film based on Lacan's desire theory. Method. The body in the film and video described in this paper includes both the material body as an aesthetic object and the spiritual body with aesthetic consciousness. The so-called artistic presentation of the body element means that the beauty of the body form displayed by the actor's body in the film video is perceived by the audience, and the desire to stare is captured by the audience, thereby completing the audience's entire body composed of eyes, body, and mind. The body is not only an aesthetic object but also an aesthetic subject, and the human cognitive system is not just a closed brain. Because the nervous system, body, and environment are constantly changing and interacting, true cognition is a unified system of all three. The main part of this paper uses Lacan's psychoanalytic theory to deeply analyze the relationship between the characters shown in the film. From the cognitive impairment of the self to the failure of communication between characters, the language of uncertainty entangled by desire is removed, and the behavior and facial expressions of the movie characters are used as the analysis basis to fully interpret the inner world of the characters. This includes love, hatred, pain, struggle, and many other contradictory emotions. In addition, this paper also analyzes the metaphor of the relationship between the characters from the perspective of semiotics and discusses the description of the relationship between the characters from the lens language from the perspective of cinematography. The special meaning conveyed by the recurring elements in the film is emphasized, and the correlation between the pictures is explained from the less mentioned photographic aspect of the film. Results/Discussion. Looking at Lacan's theory, the subject, the other, and desire are linked by the subject spirit, which is the core of the connection between the three, and only through the resistance and struggle of the subject spirit can the illusion of the subject be broken. Bewilderment and the suppression of the other and desire finally become the self. And the embodiment of this true self is particularly prominent in film art. Lacan's purpose is not merely to dissolve the subject but to seek a stand in the midst of destruction, pursuing the ultimate transcendence of man's desire for the external other and internal desire.

Lamenting Back to Life

The confessions of Jeremiah are prayers for people mired in loss and play a major role in the theological and spiritual process of healing. They keep communication with God alive in the midst of destruction and despair.

The Orphanista Manifesto: Orphan Films and the Politics of Reproduction

In this essay, I review the works of filmmakers Bill Morrison and Gregorio Rocha and contextualize their work within a growing apocalyptic cultural movement of film preservationists who identify as “orphanistas.” As orphanistas they struggle to reshape and reproduce cultural memory and heritage through reviving “orphans”—films abandoned by their makers. Moving images mimic cognitive memory, yet, depending on reproductive technologies, copies of moving images may organize mass publics and influence cultural imaginaries. Traditionally considered conservative, preservation in the midst of destruction is not only a creative but also an avant-garde act of breathing new life into storytelling and the reproduction of cultural memory. In this essay, I discuss how the surrealist works of Morrison and Rocha radically confront dominant cultural imaginings of race and nation, and I argue that film preservation has the potential of being socially transformative. An interview with Gregorio Rocha follows.

LaFilière: En France Occupée 1942-1944 , and: Die Kinder von Schloss LaHille (review)

154 SHOFAR Winter 1996 Vol. 14, No.2 with greater importance as we attempt to understand day-to-dayactivities and organization in the midst of destruction. Stephen C. Feinstein History Department University of Wisconsin-River Falls LaFillere: En France Occu.,ee 1942-1944, byAnne-Marie 1m Hof-Piguet. Yverdon-Ies-Bains, Switzerland: Parcours Editions de la Thiele, 1985. 166 pp. ( Die Kinder von Schloss LaHille, by Sebastian Steiger. Basel: Switzerland: Brunnen Verlag, 1992. 379 pp. During World War II, the Swiss Red Cross's Aid to Children (CroixRouge Suisse, Secours aux Enfants) provided services for destitute children in Vichy France where refugees from the Spanish Civil War and Jews escaping the German army found themselves trapped. 1m Hof-Piguet and Steiger, two Swiss Red Cross volunteers who had offered to work with these stranded children, write about their experiences and actions under the most trying conditions as they struggle to support, teach, and protect the youth in their care. They reflect also on the reluctant support of some of their superiors and are critical of the Swiss Red Cross bureaucracy and the Cantonal governments which allowed themselves to be intimidated by the Nazis and their antisemitic, genocidal poliCies, ostensibly to protect Swiss neutrality. One of the authors, 1m Hof-Piguet, had the courage of her convictions to engage in dangerous illegal border crossings in order to saveJewish youth from deportation to extermination camps. Indeed, those few caught entering Switzerland through mountainous terrain to find asylum, without her help, terminated in their being handed back to the S.S. for the inevitable trip to their destruction. It is to the credit of1m HofPiguet and Stieger to tell the story of a few committed adults whose moral beliefs did not fail them in saving children despite the callousness of the various German, French, and Swiss authorities. In the wake of Kristallnacht, roughly one hundred Jewish children ranging in age between 4 and 16 years came to Belgium through the combined efforts of the Belgian Red Cross and a "Committee" of Belgian Jews. These fugitive children from Germany and Austria were gathered in children's homes in hopes of keeping them safe. When the German invasion occurred, these boys and girls were evacuated in two cattle cars Book Reviews 155 which were attached to a train in Brussels heading south on May 14,1940. Eventually the children were brought to Seyre, a hamlet in Southern France, where they were abandoned in the company of their two chaperons to exist in a ramshackle house under the most primitive liVing conditions. Over the next five months the group barely managed to survive before Alexander Frank, the man who had accompanied the children on the journey from Belgium, was able to attract the attention of the Swiss Red Cross. However, the children had to remain in Seyre through a bitter winter until they were translocated in June of 1941 to Chateau de LaHille in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains. Although the level of comfort improved somewhat, the Chateau had long been deserted and neglected so that it could hardly be considered a children's home. However, some one hundred Spanish, German-Jewish, and French children found an uncertain refuge there under the auspices of the Swiss Red Cross. LaFiliere and Die Kinder von Schloss LaHille depict the vicissitudes ofexistence under the Vichy regime and the later total German occupation ofFrance. The older teenage Jewish boys and girls were in constant danger of arrest and deportation. Placing some with local farmers as farmhands in order to keep them out of sight and hiding others in the environs of the Chateau did not always succeed in avoiding the inevitable discovery. Several boys joined the Maquis, resulting in the death ofone, Egon Berlin, and in injury to others. A few escaped to Spain over the Pyrenees Mountains. The highlight of these two memoirs, which also contain touching diaries and recollections by some of the youth, are the exploits of 1m HofPiguet in circumventing the vigil of German, French, and Swiss border guards as she shepherded several Jewish young people over Alpine paths of her homeland. Steiger's contribution to the life of LaHille was as a young educator...

Criteria of Periodization in Economic History

We economic historians can sympathize fully with Professor Gerhard in his search for criteria that will help to cut political history into meaningful periods. Like him, we are fully aware that periodizing seems an artificial intellectual trick in face of the fact that life continues even in the midst of destruction. We would add, “So do human wants and the efforts that have to be made for their satisfaction.”