Symbolic Narrative Research Articles

La construcción simbólica de los fueros en Navarra

The Traditional Laws (the so called Fueros ) are at the center of the system of symbols of Navarre. This centrality is not the consequence of a metaphysical property but the result of a cultural and political process that by its own nature is open. According to some theoretical and methodological categories introduced by Victor Turner, used in several fields of research of the social sciences, this contribution analyze the grand symbolic narratives of the Traditional Laws in Navarre that fueled the own contemporary procesess of social and political mobilization of the community, from the statutory crisis of the late 19th century to the consecration of the direction which deals to the democracy in Navarre at the end of the xxth. The analysis of the main established contexts allows to consider the important role of the already mentioned system of symbols, which not only promoted the political discourse on the Traditional Laws in Navarre, but transformed as well, making them stronger, the own statutory institutions in Navarre, and last but not least the own myth of the 'Fueros'.

The Mobilization of the Dead: The Cult of the Dead and War Culture in France during the Great War

As early as August 1914, commemorative action honoring the dead served to sustain the war effort and encourage national mobilization. Based on a system of values celebrating sacrificial heroism, commemoration aimed at justifying the conflict and at giving sense to violent death on the battlefield. During the Great War, commemorative homage gave rise to a symbolic narration about the past, the present and the future which was seeking to conceptualize collective mourning and mobilize civilians in favor of the pursuit of the war until final victory.

Drawing the city: a proposal for an ethnographic study in Rio de Janeiro

Drawing the city is a proposal for an ethnographic research project in Rio de Janeiro. I begin by mapping the production of an international group calling themselves ‘urban sketchers,' whose collective project extols drawing as a form of looking, knowing and registering the experience of living in cities. Next I show the connections between art and anthropology, as well as their relation to cities and to Rio de Janeiro in particular. The sources and bibliography on the themes of the social history of art, drawing, visual anthropology and urban anthropology are also discussed. Setting out from the latter area, I present the possibilities for undertaking an ethnography that contributes to our comprehension of the graphic and symbolic narratives of urban life.

Culture and liberty in the age of the American Revolution

In his new book, Michal Jan Rozbicki undertakes to bridge the gap between the political and the cultural histories of the American Revolution. Through a careful examination of liberty as both the ideological axis and the central metaphor of the age, he is able to offer a fresh model for interpreting the Revolution. By establishing systemic linkages between the histories of the free and the unfree, and between the factual and the symbolic, this framework points to a fundamental reassessment of the ways we think about the American Founding.Rozbicki moves beyond the two dominant interpretations of Revolutionary liberty one assuming the Founders invested it with a modern meaning that has in essence continued to the present day, the other highlighting its apparent betrayal by their commitment to inequality. Through a consistent focus on the interplay between culture and power, Rozbicki demonstrates that liberty existed as an intricate fusion of political practices and symbolic forms. His deeply historicized reconstruction of its contemporary meanings makes it clear that liberty was still understood as a set of privileges distributed according to social rank rather than a universal right. In fact, it was because the Founders considered this assumption self-evident that they felt confident in publicizing a highly liberal, symbolic narrative of equal liberty to represent the Revolutionary endeavor. The uncontainable success of this narrative went far beyond the circumstances that gave birth to it because it put new cultural capital a conceptual arsenal of rights and freedoms at the disposal of ordinary people as well as political factions competing for their support, providing priceless legitimacy to all those who would insist that its nominal inclusiveness include them in fact.

Symbolic narratives and the legacy of the Great War: the celebration of Armistice Day in France in the 1920s

Over the two past decades, a new approach to the Great War has progressively developed. Shifting their focus of inquiry to the social and the cultural, away from the economic and the political, the historians of the Great War are particularly attached to the study of the legacy of the war on the cultural and social structures of European societies. The study of war's memory has therefore been placed at the heart of historical research in most of the countries that took part in the war. In France, the mnemonic turn of the cultural historiography of the Great War is thus seen in several works which, through the various forms of commemoration such as the war memorials or the cult of the Unknown Soldier, examine the relationship between memory and identity as well as between remembrance and mourning at both the public and individual levels. This article about Armistice Day in France explores the difficulties of the transmission of memory in the aftermath of war. It questions the persistence and the abandonment of war values and culture in the years that succeeded the Great War. It aims to demonstrate the interaction between memory, trauma, and the creation of symbolic narratives. It also argues that the celebration of Armistice Day should be seen as a public sphere of discussion where two different conceptions about the past, the present, and the future, of the national community are confronted. It finally claims that the mnemonic practices should consequently be treated as a network of cross-perspectives among the expectations of the future, the reception of the past, and the experience of the present.

Practical wisdom for turbulent times: exegesis beyond historical and canonical concerns

PurposeIn turbulent times like these, practical wisdom from the religious and spiritual traditions can provide new grounding. In the Christian tradition, practical wisdom can be derived from exegesis of New Testament texts. Text exegesis can be integrated in executive education/formation, even in secular settings. This paper aims to discuss the issues.Design/methodology/approachA symbolic narrative method is applied to demonstrate how practical wisdom can be discerned from religious texts. Transposed to an interfaith or secular environment, the use of exegesis in executive formation is explained based on Winnicott's theory of transitional objects.FindingsChristian social ethics could be enriched by a renewed interest in wisdom that sources itself in biblical exegesis. This interdisciplinary paper explores the nature of practical wisdom as inspired by biblical exegesis applying a symbolic‐narrative method. This method is applied within the context of a humanistic Christology that reveals the wisdom of Jesus in his human capacity. This is illustrated by the exegesis of the New Testament text “The feeding of the five thousand”. In a conclusion and outlook the value of interfaith text exegesis in management education in a secular context is explored based on the personal experience of the author in executive formation.Originality/valueInterdisciplinarity combined with methodological rigor in a biblical approach to practical wisdom is highlighted in the paper.

“Having fellowship with God” according to 1 John: dealing with the intermediation and environment through which and in which it is constituted

For believers to have fellowship (koinwniva) with one another and corporately with God, is one of the main objectives stated for the proclamation of the gospel by the author of 1 John. This article investigates the intermediation and environment through which and in which fellowship is constituted between God and his children. From the prooemium (1:1-4) of the epistle, which is used as the basic text in this research, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has been designated (as iJlasmov~ in 2:2; 4:10 and as paravklhto~ in 2:1) to accomplish a fundamental revelatory-salvific act to enable believers to have fellowship with God and one another. This concept of fellowship, used in a familial sense, is described from the symbolic narrative of family life where God is the “Father” (patrov), Jesus is “his only Son” (uiJov~ aujtou` oJ monogenhv~) and believers are the “children of God” (tevkna qeou`). 1 John underlines the autonomy of the individual child of God (2:20, 27; 5:20), but qualifies this emphasis with the thematic development of the concept of fellowship (koinwniva in 1:3, 6, 7) with other believers in the familia dei. The joy of believers in this familia dei, as an outcome of this fellowship, only becomes “complete” (peplhrwmevnh) where fellowship is constituted both among God’s children and corporately with God.

Narratives and Symbols in Violent Mobilization: The Palestinian-Israeli Case

According to symbolic politics theory, group fears and narratives of group identity that justify hostility are key causes of violent ethno-national conflict. In the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, widely accepted narratives on each side define group identity and group relations in ways that generate incompatible demands on Jerusalem, territory, refugees, security, and other issues. Historical memories of the Holocaust, the Nakba, and other tragedies generate fears of extinction on both sides, and stereotypes encourage beliefs on each side that the other responds only to force. These narratives enable hard-line leaders on both sides to manipulate emotive symbols to block compromise and escalate conflict. Thus the cause of both the failure of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations in 2000-01 and the simultaneous outbreak of the latest Palestinian-Israeli war lies in the irreconcilable demands that are rooted in each side's competing narratives of national identity.

Symbolic Narratives: The Dangers of Being an Intertextually Inclined Character

John Fowles's first published novel was The Collector (1963), and since its publication, critics have offered a variety of reasons for the failure of the relationship between its two main characters, Frederick Clegg and Miranda Grey. Since Miranda's first experience of Clegg is being kidnapped by him, perhaps we should not expect too much out of this relationship. But readers do expect something. The reading of a plot, as Peter Brooks points out, is a form of desire, an arousal that initiates the sense-making process in the reader (37-38), and given the conventional fictional situation of a young man and a young woman meeting under unusual circumstances, only some progression in the relationship-whether negative or positive-will make sense. (1) We also expect some significant development in the relationship because there are only two physically present in this novel. Miranda and Clegg are all the reader has to work with--to identify with, or anticipate an outcome for, or wish an outcome for--and the narrative makes it clear that the themselves realize that the two of them are all they have to work with. As Miranda puts it in her diary, It is not that I have forgotten what other people are like. But other people seem to have lost reality. The only real person in my world is Caliban (148). The two do fail to produce one of the outcomes most readers might expect, however-friendship, love (even if it turns out to be the Stockholm syndrome variety), or at least understanding-and the usual reasons given for that failure to connect are social, philosophical, psychological, or some combination of these. Thus Thomas Foster sees the primary obstacles to mutual understanding as gender and social class. Miranda is better educated, not to mention sane (20, 26-27). Katherine Tarbox separates them according to their reactions to experience: Clegg gains no insight, while Miranda's diary represents real self-examination (44). Carol Barnum agrees that Miranda acquires self-knowledge while Clegg is frozen, without the vitality needed to match Miranda's development (41-42). Pamela Cooper (19-20) and Mahmoud Salami (49) both see the physical power Clegg exercises over Miranda as a main stumbling block to the development of any fruitful relationship. But there is another cause that has received relatively light treatment from the critics and that may be more important than the others, and that is the adoption by its of different narrative strategies, in particular strategies that allow them to reconstruct themselves and each other. (2) Virginia Woolf, through the character of Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse, established what we have come to recognize as a central about the way we think about other people: as in a fabula we are either narrating or authoring. Alan Palmer describes this practice among fictional as doubly embedded which he defines as versions of [that] exist within the minds of other characters (15). In Woolf's novel, Lily catches herself writing others as she thinks about the Rayleys, Paul and Minta, and what had come of their marriage: And this, Lily thought ... this making up scenes about them, is what we call 'knowing' people.... Not a word of it was true; she had made it up; but it was what she knew them by all the (173). So Lily, to use a term from Lisa Zunshine's recent book on theory of mind in narrative, metarepresents; that is, she keeps track of herself as the source of her representations of the Rayleys and avoids the danger of treating these representations as architectural truth (48)--information about which there are no suspicions regarding its source, or even any identification of a source, the information simply existing as reality. At the same time, Woolf made clear what had always been true in fiction-that construct their own narratives, and that they can be as cleverly intertextual in their creative endeavors as any author or reader. …

The Liberatory Event in Paul of Tarsus

The Liberatory Event in Paul of Tarsus Enrique Dussel (bio) Translated by George Ciccariello-Maher [Correction] In this work we hope to rethink a very timely subject for political philosophy in recent years.1 For epistemological reasons, however, we must deal in a different way with some themes common to the philosophy currently in vogue in Europe and the United States. Today political philosophy has unexpectedly taken up a subject that had been ignored since the Enlightenment. Kant himself, in Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason, addressed the subject with some degree of precision.2 In The Conflict of the Faculties he distinguished clearly between the tasks of the faculty of theology and the faculty of philosophy (W, 9:263ff.). In his time the great university faculties (or disciplines)-both those of Latin-Germanic Europe and those in the Byzantine and Muslim worlds-had always consisted of theology and law. It was only with the Enlightenment (and above all with Humboldt's founding of the University of Berlin) that the faculty of philosophy would gain the status of the fundamental faculty within the university. In an appendix (W, 1, 2:300ff.) to chapter 1 of the latter work, Kant sketches out the conflict between the faculties of theology and philosophy as a question of "interpretations." For the philosopher from Königsberg, "the biblical theologian is, properly speaking, he who is learned in the Scripture (der Schriftgelehrte) of the Church's faith," (W, [End Page 111] 1, A44:300) while with regard to Scripture (or the Bible) the philosopher "is he who is learned in reason (der Vernunftgelehrte) . . . based on the internal laws that can be deduced from the very reason of each human being." (W, 1, A44: 300). And after an extensive argument he concludes that "this is how one must conduct all interpretations of Scripture (Schriftauslegungen)" (300)-that is, of the texts of Judeo-Christian Scripture (and the same could be said of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Indian Upanishads, the corpus of Buddhist texts, the Islamic Qur'an, or other texts considered sacred, and often held to be direct revelation, by their respective communities). Within the structure of the university, scripture resides within the faculty of theology (in Germano-Anglo-Saxon universities at least, because in Latin Europe these faculties would disappear from public universities for well-known historic reasons). Within the faculty of philosophy-since the Enlightenment-one could teach with reference to texts consisting of extensive, symbolically based rational narratives like Homer's Iliad and Odyssey or Hesiod's Theogony, which are religious texts "full of gods," but which were nevertheless considered suitable for philosophical interpretation. On the contrary, it was strictly forbidden to philosophically use or interpret texts from the Judeo-Christian Bible such as Exodus, the Gospel of John, or Paul of Tarsus's Epistle to the Romans, as though these were intrinsically theological. The present task is to haul out these moth-eaten symbolic narratives (considered "theological" by enlightened Jacobin secularism) that are housed and studied in the faculty of theology, and to situate them for the first time within the faculty of philosophy as well. This would entail subjecting these texts to a hermeneutics, a "strictly philosophical" interpretation. And yet, going beyond Kant's meditations on the subject, we wish to clarify the question in a different and more precise manner. In the first place, (a) since they belong to everyday languages of the past, these symbolic, religious, and even in some cases mystical texts ought to be defined as "symbolically based rational narratives," in the sense that they constitute myths, as Paul Ricoeur defines the term.3 These narratives, in the second place, can undergo a double-hermeneutic or interpretation: on the one hand, (b.1) [End Page 112] theologically, that is, and as Kant indicated, executed from a position of subjective conviction (what we could call "religious faith"), and (c.1) with reference to a religious community (what Kant calls a "Church"). Or, on the other hand, philosophically (b.2), to take up these symbolically based rational texts or narratives toward the goal of discovering their full rational meaning and the implicit theoretical-universal categories embedded within...

Ghostly Children: The Spectre of Melancholy in Sonya Hartnett’s The Ghost’s Child

Images of alienation in young adult fictions are common, arguably because they mirror the cultural discourses around adolescence as displaced between two (constructed) 'knowable' states: childhood and adulthood. The connection between displacement and melancholy in texts for young adults provides a vast array of narrative symbolism that often blurs reality and fantasy as knowable versus unknowable states respectively. Sonya Hartnett's approach to adolescent introspection and states of melancholy-depression is often confrontational and her (critically acclaimed) young adult fiction interleaves often destructive narratives of incest, familial violence, murder and suicide with contemporary and historical landscapes.'The Ghost's Child' (2007), is a fictionalized and historicized account of individual alienation and sadness whereby, melancholy and depression serve as powerful forces (of lossdesire) able to induce spectral presences in the life of the protagonist in ways that allow fantasy to become a means to negotiate loss and combat alienation. The overt psychological dimensions of the narrative are obviated through images of melancholy, madness, abjection and death. This paper initiates a discussion of the text's psychoanalytic connotations through the ideas of both Freud and Kristeva. However, in order to question if/how the narrative moves beyond the traditional parameters that construct melancholy as either a clinical pathology or a useful literary/aesthetic device, melancholy is also discussed through the ideas of Gilles Deleuze. The incorporation of Deleuze's work enables a way to re-think conventional representations of the melancholic as an essentially abject and marginalised subject position.

A Funeral Liturgy: Death Rituals as Symbolic Communication

This performative ethnography pulls together ethnography, autoethnography, and interview accounts to explore and exemplify the liturgical and narrative symbolism inherent in funerals. Funerals are the ultimate in final stories. This article looks at funerals as a communicative event and addresses questions of the performative nature of funerals and the meaning and reality constructed by funerals. The author concludes with an argument for seeing funerals as an opportunity to bridge the liminal space between dead and alive and the sacred and the human, and to bring together the past, present, and future of the deceased and their “surviving” loved ones.

Identidad híbrida y andrógina y el desarrollo latinoamericano en los sesentas: dos respuestas literarias

Focusing on the apprenticeship of adolescent characters in José Lezama Lima's novel Paradiso (Cuba, 1966) and Clarice Lispector' short story A mensagem (Brazil, 1964), this article reads comparatively and from an interdisciplinary perspective that androgyny and hybridism play a significant role in Latin American cultural debate on identity. Within the time frame of the sixties and through two highly recognized examples such as Cuba and Brazil, this article explores particularly the relationship between those narratives and one of the most noteworthy social discourse of the period, the “development.” In this perspective, the adolescent character represents symbolically the future of a nation and “development” is read as a symbolic narrative of the apprenticeship of nations. The result of this relationship reflects problematic social negotiations as well as challenging disruptions based on androgyny and hybridism as “fluctuations of gender” and their role in the development.

Identidad híbrida y andrógina y el desarrollo latinoamericano en los sesentas: dos respuestas literarias

Focusing on the apprenticeship of adolescent characters in José Lezama Lima’s novel Paradiso (Cuba, 1966) and Clarice Lispector’ short story A mensagem (Brazil, 1964), this article reads comparatively and from an interdisciplinary perspective that androgyny and hybridism play a significant role in Latin American cultural debate on identity. Within the time frame of the sixties and through two highly recognized examples such as Cuba and Brazil, this article explores particularly the relationship between those narratives and one of the most noteworthy social discourse of the period, the “development.” In this perspective, the adolescent character represents symbolically the future of a nation and “development” is read as a symbolic narrative of the apprenticeship of nations. The result of this relationship reflects problematic social negotiations as well as challenging disruptions based on androgyny and hybridism as “fluctuations of gender” and their role in the development.

Ineradicable Stain

Ineradicable Stain

Rationality, Culture, and Structure in the Making of Suicide Bombers: A Preliminary Theoretical Synthesis and Illustrative Case Study

Suicidal violence involves three levels of analysis: individual motivations, organizational strategies, and societal conflicts. Using rationalist, culturalist, and structuralist approaches to contentious politics, this article explores the intersection of rationality, norms, and conflict in the making of extreme violence. The case of Palestinian suicide bombers demonstrates the interdependence of the three approaches to explaining suicidal violence. For individuals, self-sacrifice is conceived as an act of personal redemption rooted in religious morality and national salvation. For organizations, human bombs provide strategic advantages in the context of asymmetrical warfare. For collectivities, martyrs are venerated when three conditions converge: (1) cultural norms encompass symbolic narratives that honor martyrdom; (2) legitimate authorities acquiesce to extreme violence; and (3) conflicts generate feelings of victimization and threat by external enemies.

War is over ! Pour une iconographie des fins de guerre

War Is Over ! For an iconography of war endings. In comparison with other forms of making images, photography has a narrative symbolism which provides the onlooker with messages where he accepts the meaning from his own unequivocal point of view. People, architecture, artefacts and landscapes that we believe are real, strengthen the symbolic value of images. However, this value relies above all on a reference to an iconographic tradition inherited from Ancient Times and Christian art, which structures our perception of images. All variants of photography, whether they are for art, reports, documentaries or amateur pictures, take up motifs from a collective visual memory which we find in art history. Old art themes are captured by the photograph, and interpreted and up-dated into new visual models. The article gives the example of war photographs about the end of the war, which have produced icons that generate long-term effects in the collective memory. It examines their characteristics and the mode of their impact by showing that the icons borrow from previous motifs found in Classical and Christian paintings.

Understanding ‘sin’ in the Johannine epistles

The author of the Johannine Epistles has a good deal to say about sin. He abhors sin, seeing it as incompatible with God’ s character (oJ qeo;" fw`" ejstin, 1:5; [oJ qeo;"] divkaiov" ejstin, 2:29; and oJ qeo;" ajgavph ejstivn, 4:8) and with the status of believers as God’ s children. In this article attention is given to the following relevant aspects for understanding ‘hamartiology’ in the Johannine epistles from a ‘family perspective’: (1) the ‘family of God’ metaphor is used as the setting in which the author describes his symbolic narrative; (2) a differentiation is made between sin inside and sin outside the family; (3) sin outside the family is also described in terms of reciprocals to emphasize its condemnation; (4) finally, he focuses on the ‘forgiveness of sin’. This investigation is done against the socio-religious circumstances of the Johannine community in order to understand the Elder’ s ethical and doctrinal definitions of sin.

Psychic Transformation and the Regeneration of Language in Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn

Critical opinion about Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn (1968) remains sharply divided: there are those who deem the work a minor masterpiece and those who find it simplistic and severely flawed. The overwhelmingly positive audience response to The Last Unicorn, however, indicates that what appears to be a simple story is actually a complex revisioning of the fairy tale. This essay investigates The Last Unicorn as a self-reflexive symbolic narrative that is as much concerned with the regeneration of meaningful language as it is with the process of psychic transformation.

Editors' Introduction

Editors’ Introduction George Bodmer, Lissa Paul, and Jan Susina This issue features six articles that examine children's and adolescent literature from a wide range of critical perspectives. Suman Gupta provides an historical overview of the institutionalization and professionalization of the scholarly study of children's literature. The joint article by Bettina Kümmerling-Meibuer and Jörg Meibuer, as well as Cat Yampbell's article, carefully examine visual aspects of texts designed for children and young adults. The Meibauers provide a detailed examination of illustrations that appear in early concept books for the youngest of readers, or more appropriately pre-readers. Yampbell shows how publishers carefully construct the covers of adolescent novels to appeal to their readers; she uses the multiple jacket covers of Francesca Lia Block's Weetzie Bat as her example. Focusing on another aspect of teen fiction, teen romance, is the subject of Anne B. Thompson's essay in which she rereads the Tippy Parrish novels of Janet Lambert from the 1950s and situates them against Francine Pascal's "Sweet Valley" series. Noel Chevalier traces the political influences within J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series to William Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Sue Matheson explores Peter S. Beagle's cult fantasy novel The Last Unicorn as a self-reflexive symbolic narrative that is concerned with the regeneration of language as well as the process of psychic transformation. In addition to the wide diversity of topics, there is also a wide diversity among the contributors who submitted articles from Germany, England, Canada, as well as the United States. These are the sort of thought-provoking articles that The Lion and the Unicorn likes to publish, those which cause readers to reconsider their assumptions about texts. In this issue, we are also pleased to announce that the first Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry is given to Marilyn Nelson's Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem. The Johns Hopkins University Press provided a $500 honorarium as part of [End Page v] the award, which was presented during a ceremony at the Children's Literature Symposium at Simmons College in Boston in July 2005. The special feature essay, "It Could Be Verse," reviews the trends in children's poetry published in 2004. In addition to recognizing Fortune's Bones, the three judges also recommend additional Honor Books of children's poetry: Helen Frost's Spinning Through the Universe, JonArno Lawson's The Man in the Moon-Fixer's Mask, Walter Dean Myers's Here in Harlem, and Allan Wolf's New Found Land. We thank this year's judges: Richard Flynn, Kelly Hager, and Joseph T. Thomas, Jr., who carefully evaluated and selected these five outstanding books of poetry and wrote the essay. We also wish to thank the many publishers who submitted books to make this award possible. In keeping with Suman Gupta's article on the professionalization of children's literature, we also wish to recognize the recent publication of The Norton Anthology of Children's Literature: The Traditions in English (2005). Norton anthologies have a special status in literary studies. We are pleased to acknowledge that the five editors of the Norton Anthology of Children's Literature have affiliations with Lion & Unicorn. Jack Zipes, a former editor of Lion & Unicorn, is the general editor of NACL. The four other editors include Lissa Paul, one of the current editors of Lion & Unicorn; Lynne Vallone, a current member of the Editorial Board; and Peter Hunt and Gillian Avery, who have previously served on the Editorial Board. Copyright © 2005 The Johns Hopkins University Press