Imagination Of People Research Articles

A Stereotypical Mode of Creativity

There is a character in a particular drama called Chen Shimei.1 This intellectual of ancient times became quite learned, obtained a "degree," and then became "too good" for his wife who had been with him through thick and thin. Eventually, he even attempted to murder his wife and his own son. That is why he is despised and scorned by people throughout history. It is said that there was truly such a person in history. But the Chen Shimei in real life was not like this. Today, people in his village continue to ban the showing and performance of the drama Qin Xianglian. 2 The simplistic and stereotyped method of portraying the hypocrisy, falsehood, and evil of the intellectual Chen Shimei in order to show off the truth, goodness, and beauty of Qin Xianglian is no longer a method that captures people's hearts and imaginations.

A world of difference

Abstract Art and science share common characteristics: they are both based on the initiative and imagination of individual human beings. They are universal in their relevance and appeal. The policy question is: to what extent can either art or science flourish in societies where people's individual initiative and imagination are repressed by a cultural citizenship requiring every citizen's loyalty to a creed, or in societies where people are culturally excommunicated as ethnic outsiders or minorities.

Re-Poe Man A Problem of Pleasure

DENNIS A. FOSTER Re-Poe Man A Problem of Pleasure Ordinary fucking people. I hate them.—Repo Man The plots of poe's stories are too shallow to bury the bodies he needs to cover up. The bodies return, a tell-tale part always there to betray the alibis of his narrators. Roderick Usher's friend happily buries the blushing Madeline; Dupin's sidekick believes the police would really overlook the filthy letter; Legrand's friend in "The GoldBug " listens wide-eyed to a story ofan ancient cryptographic note found fluttering on the beach. The narrators insist on their own reason and sanity, but they readily put common sense aside. Luckily, we are not such fools. We see the lapses, the riddles, and diddles, and we work at them until we find some way to cover over the limbs that still stick out—or we dig them up. We like our fictions to end with all accounts squared, in marriage or death, though Poe leans toward the latter. Many of his tales end in imminent death—or even in posthumous narration as in "Ms. Found in a Bottle" and The Narrative ofArthur Gordon Pym—apparently demonstrating the claim made by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle that all life tends toward a return to an earlier, inanimate state. Our lifelong struggles for knowledge, power, satisfaction, and certainty lead inevitably to the dust from which we arose. Or as John Irwin says of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, "we see the quest for fixed certainty . . . for what it is—a death wish" (235). But whether we see this quest as the meaning of a story, or the impossibility ofmeaning, there is someArizorui Quarterly Volume 46 Number 4, Winter 1990 Copyright © 1 990 by Arizona Board of Regents issn 0004- 16 1 o Dennis A. Foster thing too closed in this formulation. Freud at least knew he was in trouble throughout Beyond the Pleasure Principle: Why is the death drive so slow? Why is the arousal (called "unpleasure") produced by repetition sought so much more fiercely than satisfaction, the extinction of "unpleasure"? The pattern in Poe's stories seems to suggest, contrary to Irwin's reading, that desire is divorced from truth and "unpleasure" is its own reward: characters pursue paths with a perverse insistence that has little apparent motive. Pursuit and perversity: following and turning away, digging up what was buried. For Poe, the move toward death leaves nothing squared. In the film "Repo Man," the old pro—old con, rather—sits with his protege watching people arguing in a parking lot and comments, "Ordinary fucking people. I hate them." He hates them because they are always trying to get out offense situations—not your repo man. He has an interest in tense situations that we would have to call perverse. Jean Clavreul, noting that "on the whole, erotic literature has been made up of writings by perverts," comments on the banality of ordinary people fucking: "from the point of view of eroticism, the 'normal individual' is presented, next to the pervert, as an inept yokel unable to raise his love above a routine" (216). The pleasure of perverts begins where ordinary people's imaginations stop dead. It is as if some pleasure we traded in long ago for the practical adult model were suddenty repossessed and we were offered one more spin, one more peek into childhood's crypt. In Jacques Derrida's exploration of the crypt, he says some things that could help explain this unsettled nature of buried pleasures. "The inhabitant of a crypt is always a living dead, a dead entity we are perfectly willing to keep alive, but as dead" (xxi). The crypt, that is, is not a place to be finally rid of something, but to preserve it where it will remain safe, neither dangerous nor endangered. In the particular case of Freud's "Wolf Man" that inspires Derrida's analysis, the thing encrypted is a word that preserves a dangerous pleasure that rests in the Wolf Man's presymbolic past: "It is the very tombstone of the illicit, and marks the spot of an extreme pleasure [jouissance], a pleasure entirely real though walled...

The marketing of ideas advertising and road safety

The modern-day marketing concept makes a global reference to the set of symbolic transactions that characterize human exchanges. One of the best known forms of such expression is advertising. By assigning values to the objects that surround us, advertising molds people's imaginations through its creation of authentic myths. It is appropriate, therefore, in a marketing survey that tries to discern the personality of consumers, to analyze the symbolic configurations that are generated by advertising messages. We were commissioned to undertake such a psycho-semiotic content analysis for the Régie de l'assurance automobile du Québec (RAAQ), a Government of Québec agency that, among other things, regulates the provision of automobile insurance and maintains statistics on road accidents in the province of Quebec, Canada. An increase in motorcycle accidents has spurred RAAQ officials to take stronger measures to promote road safety. The objective of our analysis was to evaluate the way in which motorcycle advertisements might be responsible — at least in part — for this increase. Although one cannot draw the unequivocal conclusion that these advertisements lead to carelessness in motorcyclists, this analysis nonetheless indicates that there does exist a certain number of elements in these ads that promote ‘recklessness’ on the road. The constant references to power, to overtaking other motorists, and to euphoria — ‘Pour un moment d'éternité, ne faites pas de compromis’ (’for one moment of eternity, make no compromises’), insists one of the slogans — can only raise some concerns.

Religion and Procedure

When I began telling my colleagues at Notre Dame that I had been invited to prepare a paper on religion and procedure, some of them said How interesting, and looked vague. Others, more forthright, came straight out and asked what on earth I was going to say. The reaction is understandable. Since God made everything, there is nothing that cannot be related to religion if you work at it, but procedure seems to be harder going than most things. It is all very well to talk about God ruling the world and the state exercising authority on His behalf. But God does not seem to have any procedure.1 It is fairly easy, if you go in for analogies of that kind, to think of God as a lawgiver, even as a judge. But to think of Him as a sheriff or a process server stretches most people's imaginations farther than they will comfortably stretch. But it does not follow that the attempt to relate religion and procedure is futile. It is the business of human authority to do justice on behalf of God. If I were talking about substantive law, I would have to say what I mean by justice; but when I am talking about procedure, I can use it without defining it, as the framers of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure did.2 The point is that when God chooses to do justice on His own behalf, He has facilities human beings lack. This is

The Enigma of Veiled Iranian Women

The mass struggles in Iran, which took place over a year and a half ago and which culminated in the overthrow of the Iranian monarchy, had many unusual features which attracted international attention. For one thing the sheer scale of the mass movement was unique. In the few months prior to February 1979 it practically embraced the whole of society with the exception of a very small minority loyal to the Bakhtiar government. The numbers involved in street demonstrations were unprecedented. Time and again millions took to the streets, in organized and disciplined marches. The militancy and single-mindedness of these demonstrations expressed itself in all the variations given to the slogan 'death to the Shah'. The tactics used at these demonstrations to demoralize and also to win over the soldiers were impressive, ranging from mass sit-ins in front of tanks to throwing flowers and shouting fraternal slogans to confused soldiers. The general strike which almost paralysed the state for four months was another feature which attracted attention. The role of the Shi'ite clergy and Islamic ideology posed new and puzzling questions for many. Some of these have now been forgotten or overshadowed by events, particularly as a result of the further developments since February 1979. Others have come to the fore. And one particularly unique and striking feature which from the very beginning captured people's imagination and puzzled many was the mass participation of women in the mobilization. To date this remains one of the least explored, most misunderstood, and yet widely noted aspect of recent Iranian history.

On Anna Akhmatova on the Ninetieth Anniversary of Her Birth

The unique and highly original image of Anna Akhmatova, in whom personality and fate merged so fluidly and expressively, was an image that excited, disturbed, and touched many thousands of her reader contemporaries. Her poetry is read greedily even today. New generations, already decades removed from the poet, read her. All say that Anna Akhmatova's poetic heritage withstands the test of time and remains not only a remarkable page in the history of literature but true art, living and influencing people's hearts and imaginations. Scholars have much work before them in re-creating the biography of this poet and in illuminating the evolution of her creativity. Our students of literature have thus far taken only the first steps in this respect. There is much that is mysterious and unexplained even in the question of the very genesis and appearance of Anna Akhmatova's poetic style.

Film Games*

This paper presents data on how film students practice filmmaking skills by devising and playing games. In their games film students suggest images for films and correct one another's notions about the methods for or appropriateness of realizing these images on film. By using increasingly complex games as a series of exercises, students develop greater skill in anticipating programs in making films they imagine. The apparent effectiveness of these games suggests playful behaviors which may seem insignificant because they are not “serious” could be important mechanisms for socializing people's imaginations, tailoring them for a particular kind of problem and problem‐solving.

An Overview of Settlement Schemes in Sri Lanka

LAND SETTLEMENT AS a pioneering venture has fired many people's imaginations. As a measure for tackling socioeconomic problems, it has had broad appeal. Settlement schemes in the colonial period were initiated both in Asia and Africa, and were motivated by economic, humanitarian and political considerations. In the African territories this meant the separation of the indigenous population from the Europeans, evacuation of areas affected by sleeping sickness and overpopulation, and in some cases the achievement of the objectives of nation building. In Sri Lanka, such schemes originally sprang from the need for social amelioration of the people dispossessed of their lands by the development of plantations and for redressing the problems of overpopulation and landlessness in the more densely populated areas of the mid and low country wet-zone. More recently, the need for domestic food production due to increasing difficulties in securing food imports on favorable terms, population growth and unemployment have introduced new dimensions into the objectives of settlement. Sri Lanka's experiences with land settlement are quite unique due to the diversity of the organizational forms in existence. Settlement schemes have taken varied forms involving different classes of producers, tenurial patterns, varied farm enterprises and more recently different ideological considerations. These schemes which have evolved since the turn of the present century reflect the social and economic exigencies to which policy makers have had to address their minds from time to time. The evolution of land settlement and peasant agricultural development policy in Sri Lanka can be conveniently divided into five phases extending over the period 1815-1970. In the initial phase of settlement there was little by way of accomplishment until the enactment of the Land Development Ordinance of 1935. It was with the passing of this instrument of land policy that the framework for the establishment of agricultural settlements on a firm footing was made possible. All schemes established under the provisions of this ordinance

Dostoevskij's Use of Russian Folklore

HT HE folktales of Russia form one of the most extensive bodies of popular literature that has been preserved. In a country where the life of the spirit was for a long time largely in the hands of the church and where secular influences of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment came late or not at all, the folk literature provided a greatly needed medium for the independent self-expression of the people's imagination. It is no wonder that it was a cherished source for the Russian writers of the nineteenth century. In the works of Dostoevskij, regarded by many as the author most expressive of the depths of the Russian sensibility, we find more or less accurate reproductions of popular songs, theatrical performances, tales, and legends.' But more important than incorporations of direct borrowings are the many points of similarity between Dostoevskij's work and the conventions and spirit of Russian folklore. We cannot know all his contacts with it, but some of his sources have been recorded in his brother's memoirs and in his own writings. When he was a small boy in Moscow, the family had wet-nurses who continued to come to the house even after their employment had ended, and spend hours during their visits telling the children the stories of Alesha Popovich, the Firebird, Bluebeard, and others.2 Andrej Dostoevskij also mentions having discussed with Fedor the merits of the narrations of the two former

Impressions of Cambridge

A CORRESPONDENT writes: "Cambridge is the best of all places for the British Association to meet. There was an air of activity and exhilaration throughout the week, and the organization was carried out with extraordinary smoothness. There were almost too many receptions, dinners and garden parties ; perhaps one could wish for a little more time for those discussions behind the scenes which are the most valuable feature of these gatherings. The great novelty of the meeting was, of course, the formation of the Division for the Social and International Relations of Science. It was astonishing and encouraging to find the project so enthusiastically received by the widest variety of scientific workers. It has lit up many people's imaginations, and given them a chance to devote themselves intelligently to something which offers a hint of usefulness in an increasingly lunatic world. Perhaps the shadow of the world outside has never hung so menacingly over a scientific meeting ; many there felt that all they cared for intellectually might have vanished before long. It was noticeable that the most eager supporters of the new Division were often those whose own research happened to be particularly 'pure'. Those who complained in private that the cobbler ought to stick to his last usually turned out to be engaged on semi-applied research. It is, for example, interesting that the more abstract kind of physicists tend to be far more socially interested than people busy with traditional chemistry."