Narratives Of Destruction Research Articles

Ландшафт меняющихся идентичностей на фоне военного вторжения: роман Тамары Дуды Доця сквозь призму перевода

In the environment of Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine, literary translation acquires critical significance as a way to get Ukraine’s narratives of destruction and urbicide across cultural and political borders. This article will focus on Daisy Gibbons’s 2021 translation of Tamara Duda’s 2019 novel Daughter, set in the Eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, to examine the translator’s project of reconstructing the complex interplay of Eastern and Western Ukrainian identities embroiled in the narrative of crawling occupation. Daughter tells the story of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Donetsk, dissecting the city’s fragmented identity along cultural and linguistic divides and exploring internal tensions and propaganda-fueled conflicts leading to its eventual downfall. The storyline adopts the female protagonist’s insider/outsider perspective, tracing her gradual evolution from an invisible observer to a fearless insurgent fighting for the survival of her unravelling home. The analysis will centre on the translator’s approach, which combines textual and paratextual techniques to highlight the processes of division and destruction – with their transformative impact on the urban space – and to enter into a visible dialogue with the narrator/protagonist’s voice to amplify and reinforce its distinctly pro-Ukrainian perspective.

MIGRATION AND NARRATION: HOW EUROPEAN HISTORIANS IN THE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES TOLD THE HISTORY OF HUMAN MASS MIGRATIONS OR VÖLKERWANDERUNGEN

ABSTRACTHistorians’ interest in the history of human migrations is not limited to recent years. Migrations had already figured as explanatory factors in connection with cultural and historical change in the work of classical and ancient studies scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the writings of these scholars, migrations acted as historical landmarks or epochal thresholds and played a key role in the construction of geo‐historical areas. This model has been called “migrationism” and cannot be explained simply on the basis of the history of individual disciplines, but must be seen in its complex interaction with scientific and historical contexts. However, “migrationism” does not relate to fixed political and scientific positions or movements. For this reason, it cannot be explained adequately by using a historically or ideologically based approach. Relying on narratological approaches, this article examines migration narratives that historians of this period used to explain the rise and fall of ancient civilizations. Referring to contemporary historiographical representations of the ancient Near East, it distinguishes three main narratives that are still common today: narratives of foundation, narratives of destruction, and narratives of mixtures. In this sense, analyzing older migration narratives helps us to sharpen the critical view on the genealogy of our own views on the history—and present—of human migrations.

Dystopias in the Kingdom of Israel: Prophetic Narratives of Destruction in Recent Hebrew Literature

Abstract This article is about a recent wave of literary dystopias published in Israel, most of which center on the soon-to-come destruction of the Jewish state. Notable among these are The Third (Ha-shlishi) by Yishai Sarid (2015), Mud (Tit) by Dror Burstein (2016), and Nuntia (Kfor) by Shimon Adaf (2010). These texts draw on biblical or Rabbinic Hebrew, Jewish sources, and Jewish historical events (specifically the destruction of the First and Second Temples), making them just as much about a dystopian past as they are about a dystopian future. They are, in other words, dystopias of a circular temporality: emerging from and moving toward (Jewish) dystopia. This recent wave of Israeli dystopian narratives is primarily preoccupied with the past and future of Judaism, the Jewish people, and Israel as a secular-yet-Jewish state. Most interesting, perhaps, is the complete absence of Palestinians from these texts and from this dystopic imagination. Despite their obvious presence in Israel’s current reality, Palestinians have no role whatsoever in these texts. We are dealing therefore with exclusively Jewish dystopias. Read against some of the dystopian white South African writings under Apartheid, the complete absence of Palestinians in the recently published Israeli dystopias, appears particularly disheartening. Neither partner nor enemy, Palestinians do not even share in a future nightmare with Israeli Jews. We are left with the following questions: Does writing a Jewish Israeli dystopia require eliminating Palestinians from the narrative? Is it possible (how is it possible?) to think of a Jewish (Israeli) future, present, and past without thinking about a Palestinian past, present, and future? Following the example of South African dystopias, this article concludes that for such literary and ethical concerns to be critically explored, Israel must first be (officially) recognized as an apartheid regime.

The cathedral’s ivory tower and the open education bazaar – catalyzing innovation in the higher education sector

ABSTRACT Will open education replace traditional higher education, or augment it? Digital innovation in the higher education sector is fuelling speculation about the transformation of higher education and the future role of universities. Much of the speculation makes questionable implicit assumptions about current and future business models in the higher education sector. This conceptual paper applies an innovation management perspective to critically examine the use and misuse of the business model concept in the context of digital innovation in the higher education sector. Using Raymond’s metaphor of the cathedral and the bazaar which contrasted traditional commercial software development (the cathedral) with open source software development (the bazaar). We analogise this relationship with the relationship between ‘cathedral-type’ business models in traditional higher education (e.g. universities) and ‘bazaar-type’ business models in open education (e.g. open educational resource publishers). Using the historical perspective we now have on the software industry’s evolution we critique the ubiquitous replacement narrative of destruction and disruption of the sector, and propose an alternative narrative of interdependence and mutual innovative catalysis. We predict that higher education ecosystems will be based on synergistic relationships between organisations that represent many gradations on the continuum between ‘cathedral-type’ and ‘bazaar-type’ organisations.

Mordecai Seter’s Midnight Vigil (Tikkun Ḥatzot, 1961): Deconstructing Israelism, National and Biographical Myths

ABSTRACTThe myth of Mordecai Seter (1916–94) as “a composers’ composer,” based on his abstract late style, ignores the exceptional public success of Seter’s magnum opus—the oratorio Tikkun Ḥatzot (Midnight Vigil, 1961), for which Seter, one of the Israeli Five, received public and critical acclaim and prominent national and international awards. The accessibility and resulting popularity of Midnight Vigil creates a contrasting myth. The oratorio draws on traditional Jewish-Yemenite materials and Western compositional techniques, and celebrates the national Zionist narrative of destruction, exile, and redemption. Ample primary sources present the Midnight Vigil as a national treasure, and oppose the image of the composer as the “Hidden Seter.”

Alien Invasions and Identity Crisis: Steven Spielberg’s The War of the Worlds (2005)

The idea of national identity as threatened by foreign invasions has been at the centre of many popular Science Fiction (SF) films in the United States of America. In alien invasion films, aggressive colonisers stand for collective anxieties and can be read “as metaphors for a range of perceived threats to humanity, or particular groups, ranging from 1950s communism to the AIDS virus and contemporary ‘illegal aliens’ of human origin” (King and Krzywinska, 2000: 31-2). Such films can effectively tell historical and cultural specificities, including gender concerns. In them, the characters’ sense of belonging to a nation is destabilised in a number of ways, resulting in identity crisis in most cases. A fervent need to defend the nation from the malevolent strangers is combined with an alienation of the self in the search of individual salvation or survival.The present analysis will attempt to illustrate how threats to configurations of power are employed in a contemporary alien invasion film: The War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005). Specifically, the film takes the narrative of destruction to suggest the destabilisation of US national power within the context of post September 11, together with a subtle disruption of the gender and sexual status quo. Indeed, new ways of understanding masculinity and fatherhood assault both the public and the private spaces of its white male heterosexual protagonist, Ray, performed by popular actor Tom Cruise. Ambiguous patriotism, identity crises and selfishness are at the core of this contemporary version of H.G. Wells’s landmark novel.

Post-disaster tourism: Towards a tourism of transition

‘Disaster tourism’ is usually conflated with ‘dark tourism’ and also is often linked with disaster recovery. This article contributes to discussion on these relationships by examining the post-disaster narratives which have played out through tourism in the central Canterbury city of Christchurch, New Zealand, following the major earthquakes of September 2010 and February 2011. Through an analysis of regional and national media and tourism promotion material related to the earthquakes, the post-disaster narratives which developed in relation to tourism were observed. The article thereby highlights how disasters become framed through tourism, showing how post-quake tourism narratives can transition from narratives of destruction and loss to narratives of renewal and hope. The notion of ‘transition’, having become a powerful tourism product in itself, sheds new light on the relationship between ‘disaster tourism’ and ‘dark tourism’ and also between tourism and disaster recovery.

Critique of Current Genocide Studies

The present article critiques the views that (1) modern genocide does not substantially differ from its historical predecessors, (2) that all genocide is a product of imperialism, and (3) that the study of genocide can be reduced to a study of perpetrators and collaborators, while the testimonies of victims and survivors need not be taken into account. In contrast, this article suggests (1) that there are significant differences between modern or contemporary genocide and the mass murders of the past, (2) that there is no single explanation for genocide since there are different types of genocide that require separate explanations, and (3) that the testimonies of victims and survivors must be taken into account in order to better understand the motives of the perpetrators and bystanders and give victims and survivors a voice in the narrative of destruction.

Critique of Current Genocide Studies

The present article critiques the views that (1) modern genocide does not substantially differ from its historical predecessors, (2) that all genocide is a product of imperialism, and (3) that the study of genocide can be reduced to a study of perpetrators and collaborators, while the testimonies of victims and survivors need not be taken into account. In contrast, this article suggests (1) that there are significant differences between modern or contemporary genocide and the mass murders of the past, (2) that there is no single explanation for genocide since there are different types of genocide that require separate explanations, and (3) that the testimonies of victims and survivors must be taken into account in order to better understand the motives of the perpetrators and bystanders and give victims and survivors a voice in the narrative of destruction.

Narratives of destruction and survival: writing and reading about life in urban war zones

Narratives of destruction and survival: writing and reading about life in urban war zones

Narratives of Destruction: Autobiographies and Autobiographical Writing after the Shoah

In recent decades, the subject has increasingly come under pressure from poststructuralist and deconstructive theory production. Indeed the postulate of the death of the subject seems to have caused autobiography to lose its referent, which Roland Barthes, among others, intended to demonstrate with his text Roland Barthes par roland barthes. For despite talk of a decentralized or discursively produced self, of the fragmented ego and bodies as text, what the debate ultimately involves is the production of meaning, history, experience and the relationship between the collective or society and the individual. Reviewing the witness accounts of the Shoah, read as autobiographical documents, calls for a new questioning of definitions of the self and the subject, to the extent that these accounts primarily are narratives of self-destruction which virtually contradicts a traditional definition of autobiography and must thus necessarily call the genre itself into question. Although the numerous autobiographies and witness accounts by survivors of the Shoah would seem to prove exactly the opposite, the question of the subject of speech is raised in a statement, for instance, in the autobiography of Charlotte Delbo: I died in Auschwitz but no one knows it.2 How and under which conditions is it possible to make a statement like this, on the one hand, and on the other, to understand it or at least think one does understand it? In the following investigation of the autobiographies or autobiographical writings by Charlotte Delbo, Jean Amery, Ruth Kluger, Aharon Appelfeld, Imre Kertesz, and others3,