Spiritual Affinity Research Articles

Women’s Religious Agency and the Positioning of the Mosque: a Case Study of State-Sponsored Female Preaching in Egypt

Abstract This paper captures women’s religious agency and their bonding with the mosque by taking a snapshot of the discourse and experiences of female preachers, appointed by the Egyptian Ministry of Endowments, who were confronted with the closure of mosques within the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic. Though these female preachers have managed to perform their preaching roles while being detached from the mosque, their spiritual affinity to the mosque could not escape notice. This paper argues that the detachment of the female preachers from the mosque due to covid-19 offers a novel conceptualization of ‘religious’ agency that could be partially ascribed to their attachment to the mosque, not as a locale for their ‘official’ or ‘semi-official’ affiliation with the state, but as a ‘sacred’ extension of the private space of the home.

Translation and Transmission

Translation and Transmission

“Beauty and the Beast”: Romance, Reform, and Mystery in the Films of Lon Chaney

“Beauty and the Beast”: Romance, Reform, and Mystery in the Films of Lon Chaney

Pluralism and a Spirituality of the (Im)possible

The relationship between pluralism and spirituality is explored in the context of a specific understanding of humanism, developed by the political philosopher William Connolly. He uses the term ‘entangled humanism’ to express his ecological view on how humans relate to other forms of being, stressing the need for an attitude of partnership and care in the face of ecological crisis. To realize this non-anthropocentric form of humanism, we need our creativity and imagination, and a spiritual affinity characterized by openness and a commitment to shared goals. According to Connolly, we need a deep pluralism in which people are ready to defend their creed in public while realizing a productive ethos of political engagement with others of different convictions. We need to find one another in imaginative ideas and creative actions with regard to problems that confront us all and that are so urgent as to force us to collective action. According to Connolly, in working together, a connecting spiritual affinity can emerge. This view is elaborated upon with the help of John Dewey’s notions of moral imagination and religious trust, understood here as key elements of an entangled humanism. The article closes by describing a spirituality of the (im)possible that can be a source of inspiration for an entangled humanism that really makes a difference in our complex but rich world.

Dylan Thomas'ın Hayvan Benliği: Dylan Thomas'ın Şiirlerinin Zoopoetik Okuması / Dylan Thomas' Animalized Self: A Zoopoetical Reading of Dylan Thomas' Poetry

Zoopoetics emerges as a reaction to the conventional poetic tradition that represents animals as silenced objects and symbolic elements of literature. Aligning animals with agency, subjectivity, and self-consciousness, zoopoetics treats animals as the essential and dynamic actors of the literary activity and refuses to perceive them as simple background materials. Hence, rising awareness towards animals and reconfiguring a more intimate and interdependent relationship between humans and nonhuman animals are the substantial issues, put forward by zoopoetics. Animals, undeniably, occupy a predominant place in the poetry of Dylan Thomas who incessantly emphasizes material and spiritual affinity between human and nonhuman animals. In this respect, zoopoetical scrutiny of Dylan Thomas’ poetry will be the prevailing concern of this study to unravel the poet's unconventional identification with animals as his spiritual partners and companions. Reading Dylan Thomas’ poetry from the perspective of zoopoetical criticism will provide a wider insight to Thomas' notion of animality, immersed in the human self as well as the agentic capacity of animals in the making of his poetry.

Sketching Spirit in Everything: Exploring Spirituality, Interconnectivity, and Creativity in Gloria Anzaldúa’s Archived Drawings

Gloria Anzaldúa drew important connections between spirituality, interconnectivity, and creativity when she stated, “the idea that everything is spiritual, that I’m a speck of this soul, this creative consciousness, this creative life force; and so is a dog, a rock, a bird, this bedspread, and this wall…Everything is relative, I’m related to everything” (Interviews 2000). In asserting a universal relation between all beings based on spiritual affinity, Anzaldúa places spirituality at the core of social justice work. Furthermore, she expands the scope and applications of spirituality to includes all forms of beings and unsettles the separation and hierarchy between humans and nonhumans. In the introduction, I establish Anzaldúa’s articulation of spirituality as social justice oriented, inclusive of all forms of being, and connected to creativity. Next, I examine three of Anzaldúa’s archived sketches of animals and nature and place these images into conversation with her written theories. While the archive holds numerous sketches that incorporate an animal or nature, I select drawings that contain nature and at least one animal rendered in a complex patterning style. In my analysis I explore the questions: How can we read Anzaldúa’s sketches through her writings on spirituality? And conversely, what can we learn about Anzaldúa’s theory of spirituality from her archived sketches? Through compositional analysis, I unpack Anzaldúa uses of imagination to articulate a spirituality that indicates interconnections between humans and our environment. In conclusion, I reflect on the contributions Anzaldúa’s artwork makes in developing her theory of spirituality that creates personal and social change. I argue that academic disciplines invested in analyzing social issues can benefit from examining both Anzaldúa's written and visual theories because she presents a spirituality that is deeply enmeshed with, not removed from, the concerns of marginalized groups.

A Persian Perception of Two French Stories

ABSTRACT Modern Persian fiction initially emerged in Iran through translation of western literature, especially from French. The translation movement in Iran was simultaneous with the emergence of Romanticism in Europe; therefore, writers of this literary school are outstanding in translation of western literature into Persian. Using a descriptive, analytic, and comparative method, this article attempts to make a comparison between Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Le Café de Surate (Coffee House of Surat) and La Chaumière Indienne (Indian Cottage) and Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kermānī’s Haftād o do Mellat (Seventy-Two Nations). Motivated by Pierre’s broad worldview, Kermānī found intellectual and spiritual affinity with his attitude and translated two of his stories into Persian. Despite the popularity of romance stories among Persian readers, Kermānī was not quite successful to sustain the attraction of Pierre’s original stories in his adaptation due to his lack of acquaintance with modern fiction and scientific methods of translation, revolutionary zeal, extreme Iranian nationalism, religious prejudice, and manipulative outlook on literature Nevertheless, his good translation choice and its due time period gave him a special place in the realm of Persian fiction and also introduced de Saint-Pierre’s works to the Iranians.

Indian Ethics: Essence, Theory and Praxis

The paper aims at sculpting out the practice of ethics by comparing and contrasting it with morals, religion, metaphysics, among others in turn highlighting the praxis of ethics in India. It also aims to differentiate between the western concept of morals and ethics while drawing out an argument in favour of Indian ethics or Niti. Though ancient, Nitishastra is still as relevant as ever and teaches righteousness by balancing Karma with Dharma where Dharma is the cosmic order that upholds the world. Nitishastra inclines more in favour of ethics which are intuitive than morals which are law-bound. Furthermore, Indian ethics come close to values that are innate, inherent and inclusive; thus, possessing spiritual affinity which one attains only by exploring one’s self or the Self. The awareness of the Self fortifies one by empowering against the vulnerability of emotions and impulses adding further to the tenets of Indian ethics. The value of the paper lies in the use of Indian Folktales to highlight the uniqueness of Indian Ethics.

Concepts of mysticism of the poetry of William Blake

Mysticism is often accepted as a spiritual quest for the hidden truth or wisdom, the goal of which is union with the transcendent realm. Mystic experiences are said to be unique for each individual. Yet we find that there is a marked resemblance between the experiences of mystics, not merely of the same race or cult, but also of diverse social orders and religions. Born in different lands they seemed to share a spiritual affinity. William Blake’s works, though largely Biblical in its imagery, is apocalyptic in style and scope. The most prominent theme in their poetic works is that of mysticism and transcendentalism. Though their ways of depicting this is very different and diverse and their symbolism is also at variance, yet their poems bear a similar thematic purpose, which is mysticism.

From Transformative Travels to Translingual Poetics: the "Ultime voyage" of Victor Segalen and François Cheng

François Cheng and Victor Segalen are widely acknowledged for their common role of “cultural ambassador” between China and France. However, according to Jean Mouttapa who wrote the preface for Cheng’s book L’Un vers l’autre. En voyage avec Victor Segalen (2008), there exists a “spiritual affinity” between the two authors that connects them in a fundamental way. Focusing on this unusual bond, this article examines how the dual destinations of travel – lieu (Other/Elsewhere) and milieu (Self/Home) – are represented in two poetic creations, namely “Perdre le Midi Quotidien” by Segalen and “Ultime voyage” by Cheng. At the intersection of French and Chinese, the travelers-poets trace and translate the courses of their internal progress through their physical displacements. Drawing on essential concepts from Segalen’s theory such as the Divers and the Exote, my analysis reveals the extent to which Segalen and Cheng’s translingual poetics serve as a powerful vehicle to display and disseminate their positive view of the Self-Other bond.

God in the Mystic Poetry of Khawaja Ghulam Farid and American Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson

The poetry of Khawaja Ghulam Farid has a world of meanings. Contemporaneously in the West, there was a parallel line of poets who were greatly influenced by Eastern thought and philosophy in their Transcendentalist poetry. Their poetry also contains ideas about the reality of God. Ralph Waldo Emerson is considered as ‘The Father of Transcendentalism'. The present study attempts to explore how far the poetic thought of Khawaja Farid is reflected in the transcendentalist poetry of Emerson who is the leading poet of this movement. The affinities between the mystic philosophy of the Unity of Being embraced by Khawaja Farid and Transcendentalist Monism have been traced and it has been explored how this philosophy places man about God. This comparative study highlights the philosophical and spiritual affinities between Khawaja Farid and Transcendentalist Emerson and points out the differences of thought as expressed through their respective poetry.

Institution versus Charism? The Emmanuel Community, the Catholic Church and John Paul II’s World Youth Days

This archive-based study aims to enlighten the way the Emmanuel Community, which is one of the most important Catholic charismatic international community, founded in France in 1973, participated in World Youth Days, the global mega gatherings of young Catholics initiated by Pope John Paul II in 1984. In doing so, it questions the complicated coexistence within Catholicism between geographical structures, including parishes, dioceses and national conferences of bishops, and transnational charismatic movements, which aggregate the faithful on the basis of spiritual affinities (and not according to the place they live in). It is argued that, despite initial failures and tensions, World Youth Days were an opportunity for the Emmanuel Community to be more included within traditional Catholic institutions, first in Rome and then in France.

Juana of Castile’s Book of Hours: An Archduchess at Prayer

This article examines one of Juana of Castile’s books of hours (London, BL Add. MS 18852) comparing it with those written for members of Juana’s family and seeking to discern how it was used, in order to reassess her peers’ evaluation of her spiritual affinities. It considers how Juana customized her book of hours with a miniature of the Virgin and Child, comparing it with a gifted panel painted by Rogier van der Weyden that Juana treasured to show how she placed herself under the protection of the Virgin. Numbered precepts would be intended for her to instruct any future children and are replicated in Isabel, her daughter’s, book. The office of the Guardian Angel is compared with similar ones in Spain and Burgundy and, like devotion to St Veronica, such prayer is another means of protection. The striking mirror of conscience with its reflected skull, like other similar objects decorated with a skull that Juana possessed, sought to lift her from the decay and sinfulness of the world to the spiritual realm.

Riflessioni su percorsi spirituali ed ecclesiali di brasiliani immigrati in Italia

Immigration in Italy is a constant call to hospitality, no less than to openness to build a physical and symbolic space for all people and groups, cultural and religious, in which immigrants come together for both linguistic and spiritual affinity. These groups and communities represent a challenge and an opportunity for the Italian church. With the aim of knowing in order to enhance and make known in the Italian local church a little of the experience of Christian and ecclesial life of Brazilians in Italy, in the first semester of 2017 a research was conducted among immigrants from Brazil. The article presents the main results of an interactive listening with dozens of people, in fifteen cities, where believers of Brazilian origin actively participate in the local Christian community, in parishes or in ethnic communities.

اردو میں عربی الفاظ کا املا

Arabic language and literature has influenced Urdu language and literature in terms of fonts, grammar as well as orthography .linguists have different opinions about orthography of Arabic words in Urdu. Some of them hold favorable opinion, some have opined against it, while some of the linguists have maintained a balance point of view in terms of orthography. The holy Qur’an is Arabic and perhaps that is the reason Muslims have spiritual affinity with Arabic. But language also sacred the way religion is? Can we relate languages with religion? Moreover, sociolinguistics cannot be ignored and that linguists provides concrete notions based on based on scientific study of languages.in this article, the author has analyzed and discussed the contradictory debates of different academic and applied in Urdu orthography of Arabic words in Urdu.

Pomeranus non cantat. Uwe Johnson i Pomorze. Topos utraconej (pierwszej) ojczyzny lub: skąd pochodzę, tego już nie ma

Uwe Johnson was perceived before 1989 exclusively as a writer of the division of Germany. Born in Pomerania (Kamień Pomorski), he spent his childhood and early youth in Mecklenburg. After obtaining his university degree in German philology in the German Democratic Republic, he moved to West Berlin. In the same year he published his first novel Mutmaßungen über Jakob (the Polish edition Domniemania w sprawie Jakuba appeared in 2008), which besides the reflection on the division of Germany in the context of the Cold War, dividing Europe into two political camps, extensively describes his holidays he spent until 10 years of age in Darzewice near Wolin. It was, looking through the prism of the author’s whole biography, the most happy period in his life and therefore a point of reference for forming a worldview in a bipolar world of the ideological indoctrination. The characters of his novels written in prose, like Jakob Abs, the main character of the novel mentioned above, hail from Pomerania. The article provides an analysis of determinants of the author’s regional identity from the perspective of self-reflection in which a central position occupies the category of small homeland as understood in the theory of concrete utopia (Ernst Bloch), as well that of spiritual affinity (Johann Wolfgang Goethe), and spiritual homelessness (Siegfried Kracauer).

“Not a Word about Politics, but What Agitation! What Propaganda!”: Soviet Cultural Diplomacy in Latvia in the Interwar Period

The article discusses some aspects of Soviet cultural diplomacy in Latvia during the interwar period. Using the example of work in Latvia it is shown that Soviet cultural diplomacy is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, including state propaganda and interaction between people in addition to official state relations. Various means were used to propagate and disseminate the achievements of the Soviet Union — controlled scientific contacts, organized exhibitions and book exchange, supervised cultural ties of creative intelligentsia, provided tours for Soviet artists, etc. All this made it possible to go beyond the diplomatic sphere and carry out a whole range of tasks to influence the “Western intelligentsia”. The Baltic States and particularly Latvia provided multifold possibilities for such work since common past gave rise to a certain spiritual affinity with Russian culture among the Latvian intelligentsia. Also NKID wanted to use the means of cultural diplomacy for political rapprochement with neighbors — Baltic States and Finland. These efforts were consistent and coordinated with foreign policy goals: in 1925—1929 it was closely connected with the negotiations on the conclusion of the guarantee and trade treaties. The internal political situation in Latvia also influenced the intensity of cultural contacts: after the 1934 Latvian coup d’état and establishment of the authoritarian regime of K. Ulmanis the possibilities of cultural and propaganda activities in Latvia were reduced. In 1930s VOKS’ activity in Latvia was aimed at maintaining a positive image of the USSR on the eve of the conclusion of the mutual aid pact (October 5, 1939), resisting German influence, searching loyal intelligentsia. Moscow often placed stake on those who were connected with Russian culture, and — after Ulmanis’ coup d’état — opposed the authoritarian regime. For many of them the contacts with VOKS and Latvian Society of cultural rapprochement with USSR identified their political, scientific or artistic career after the annexation of Latvia by the USSR.

La relación de identidad de los cristianos del norte de África con la ejercitación espiritual, en las cartas de Agustín

In contributing to the debate on the transformation of late Roman world, some scholars have claimed that the boundaries between religious groups were fluid with external and internal factors. Christian identity was not characterised by clear indications of religious belief, observance, and practice. Some intriguing surveys have shown that the difference between Christians and pagans can be seen as part of a discursive binary. While the North African evidence of their identity allows us to consider the question of what it means to be a Christian, it is noteworthy that there is a comprehensive framework for the understanding of human behavior and thought: the ‘spiritual exercises’ in the Greco-Roman tradition. In the fourth and fifth centuries, Christian thinkers began to pursue the matter in question as being linked with the context of his concern for Christianness in late North Africa, the correlation still remains in question. In this article, therefore, first I examine how he referred to the Christian code of behavior in his letters. In particular, focusing my attention on epistolary correspondence of Augustine with two seemingly ‘pagans’, I show how he tried to impose the idea of ehe Christian norms of behavior on his correspondence –with Dioscorus (epp. 117 and 118) and with Volusianus (epp. 132, 135, and 137). Then I ask what Augustine understood by spiritual training. For the sake of clarity, I have divided the letters along he thematic line into three groups –the intellectual and therapeutic (ep. 26, 37, 56, 102, 162, 193, 202A, and 2*), the religious and eschatological (ep. 92, 130, 131, 137, and 157), and the exegetical aspect (ep. 28, 137, 149, 199, and 213). In each group I consider them chronologically as far as possible. Finally, I consider the principal feature of spiritual training, thereby coming to the enhancement of spiritual affinities, and mutual relationships of which he made use in speaking about Christian identity.

УКРАЇНСЬКА ДОСЛІДНИЦЬКА ПЕРСПЕКТИВА В КОНТЕКСТІ СТИЛІСТИЧНИХ ДИСКУСІЙ ХVІ МІЖНАРОДНОГО КОНГРЕСУ СЛАВІСТІВ

The article analyzes "state and status" of functional stylistics in Ukraine in the beginning of the 21st century in the categories and concepts of modern linguistics. The research context of the analysis is determined by comparison with the stylistic issues of the XVI International Congress of Slavists, held on August 20-27, 2018 in Belgrade (Serbia). Issues of synchronization of scientific consciousness with time of culture, its chronological sections, configurations of development, evolution of cultural consciousness, changes of cultural verbalized patterns and reasons for emergence of new ideas and non-standard intellectual reflection in the scientific knowledge of linguistic consciousness are being actualized. It is stated that the triad "human - science - time of culture" is dominant in linguistics, defining at the same time the peculiarities of the information age: the synthesis of humanistic tradition and new, paradoxical scientific ideas is quite representative for world linguistics, which is clearly represented in Ukrainian stylistics. The author unfolds the thesis about the formation of scientific consciousness as an existential search for the spiritual affinity of researchers. Thus, in the development of functional stylistics, one can observe continuity from F. de Saussure to the linguists of the XXI century, where the Geneva, Baden or Prague schools ideologically formed various national scientific discourses. The problematic aspects in the development of modern stylistics with their projection into Ukrainian linguistics are considered: the systematic nature of operational stylistic terminology, the diffusion of the objectivity of various areas of linguistics, in particular, functional stylistics, communicative linguistics and genomics, logics of formation of neolinguistics as a subject area that relies on synthesis of linguistic functionalism and other branches of human sciences, etc. The criteria of the Ukrainian research perspective in modern stylistics are formulated.

Free Love Among the Ruins

In the month following the publication of Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance, a reviewer in the Oneida Circular (11 August 1852) was struck by the tragedy of Zenobia and Priscilla, both in love with the same man. In "The Romance of Disappointment," the reviewer notes that these love triangles are common in American life: Society is pretty thoroughly streaked with just such double loving and disappointment. ... It seems to us a better solution of this common problem might be found. The fact that nature permits and ordains the coinciding love of two persons for another, is evidence that there is some way for its innocent and harmonious adjustment, without the horrible duel that is involved in the single marriage of one of them. (158) The Oneida community, founded in 1848 by John Humphrey Noyes, had already proposed complex marriage as an "innocent and harmonious adjustment" for such competing desires. Polyamory may have been a fleeting fever-dream for Miles Coverdale in his tree turret, but then it was a complicated reality for free love communities like Oneida. In recent years, queer theorists have taken interest in the fluid eroticism of The Blithedale Romance: scholars such as Kent Bales, Benjamin Scott Grossberg and David Greven have argued that the novel represents Hawthorne's own polyamorous fantasies, his critique of traditional gender roles, or both. (1) However, these queer readings of the novel have not been fully historicized within the context of the nineteenth-century free-love movement. (2) When Hawthorne wrote The Blithedale Romance, he was less weighing in on socialism as entering a transatlantic debate on the future of love and marriage: Hawthorne chose to explore spiritual affinities rather than hard realities, the erotics rather than the logistics of a Utopian community. (3) My article situates The Blithedale Romance within a transatlantic web of influences, from Utopian socialists like Fourier and Horace Greeley to feminists like Margaret Fuller and Harriet Martineau, from bachelor-heroes like Wilhelm Meister and Ik Marvel to free lovers like Noyes and George Sand. In particular, the erotic dimensions of Hawthorne's romance require that our interpretations of Zenobia must move beyond the feminism of Margaret Fuller to consider the free love of George Sand. Within this context, I argue that The Blithedale Romance is, in fact, more radical than it first appears: despite his sexual conservatism, Hawthorne aligned his novel with the concerns of free-love activists, particularly on the subject of marriage. (4) As the reviewer in the Oneida Circular suggests with his title, Hawthorne's Utopian novel is a "romance of disappointment," be the love free or fettered by matrimony. At its publication, Hawthorne's Blithedale was placed alongside a transatlantic array of reform novels. In his review "A Socialist Romance in America" (December 1852), the French critic Emile Monegut compared the romance to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, several British works about the "condition of the English working or rural classes," and William Godwin's political novels (129). However, if some critics believed Blithedale to be a straight reform novel, they were often disappointed. In the Boston Daily Times (21 July 1852), Charles C. Hazewell asked, "Why Brook Farm? The romance of the story has as much to do with liquor-selling as socialism," while a reviewer presumed to be George Eliot wrote in the Westminster Review (October 1852) that "the frame of socialism is not well-fitted to Zenobia's story, the two do not mix, and Socialism is entangled in responsibilities for which it is never truly responsible" (129). In staging the romance at a socialist community but not focusing on socialism, The Blithedale Romance irritated many realist critics: why would Hawthorne choose such a subject--modern, political, quasi-auto-biographical--and then inject it with a melodramatic love story, full of Gothic flourishes? …