Violation Of Taboo Research Articles

О НЕКОТОРЫХ СПОРНЫХ СЕМАНТИКАХ В НАРТИАДЕ

Along with the “fragments” of ancient myths Nart sagas contain the “pieces of history” - epic names constituting the basis of epic anthroponymy. The article proposes an interpretation of the name “Satana” - epic heroine - through the Indo-Iranian beliefs. The author interprets the motive of incest with a sister as Uryzmag’s retribution for violation of marital taboo in the form of riding donkey in public, with his back to front. This motif in the heroic myths is interpreted in two ways: on the one hand, the beginning in the history of the hero, as in the history of the world, is associated with chaos; on the other hand, incest marks both the maturity and oneness of the hero.

Naruszanie tabu jako źródło komizmu we francuskich przysłowiach i zagadkach

Naruszanie tabu jako źródło komizmu we francuskich przysłowiach i zagadkach

Don’t Hurt Anybody, or You’ll Get the Mare: Connections between Common Cold and the Mythical Being slogutis in Lithuanian Folklore

In the Lithuanian folk medicine, classification of illnesses rests on several aspects, including separation of sicknesses affecting children and grownups, or discerning conditions caused by other untreated troubles (like fright). Based on the level of contagiousness, infectious and noncommunicable illnesses are discerned. Those considered infectious encompass a rather broad range: from epidemic (like plague and cholera) to skin complaints (warts and scabies). The article is centered on the Lithuanian folk belief (LTR 1415/119/) attributing common cold to the infectious illnesses. Since this is an unprecedented case, the research aims at finding out if common cold was considered an infectious decease in the Lithuanian folk medicine and if so, on what grounds. The author attempts establishing a potential connection between cold (Lith. sloga) and the mythical being incubus (Lith. slogutis); also her aim is finding out if common cold meant the same thing in the 19th – 20th centuries as it does in the 21st one.According to the data from the “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language”, other vernacular names for the cold (viral rhinitis) are established. This prompts deeper investigation of other possible meanings of the word sloga, thus leading to further examination of its fourth meaning – namely, the mythical being slogutis.According to etiological and folk belief legends, slogutis (incubus, or nightmare), a being that tortures people in their sleep, most frequently evolves from the dead unbaptized children. This being can appear both in anthropomorphic (child, man, woman, Jew) or zoomorphic (cat, dog, hen, pig) shape. Although in terms of gender slogutis correlates with the general European notion of succubus / incubus, it does not quite correspond to it. Motivation for choosing the victim could include disregard for the rules of the community life or violation of taboos, or perpetrating some wrongs (with slogutis as a punishment). There are references to oppression by slogutis as a form of revenge. Of course, in some cases the reasons for this torture remain unclear. Surveying of folklore and international contexts elucidates the notion of slogutis as a being threatening human health and life. Further analysis reveals that experiencing such nightmares was diagnosed as a decease, therefore slogutis could have been perceived not only as a supernatural being, but also as a sickness.The last part of the article deals with the notion of cold against the background of folk medicine. Apparently, some ways of treatment imply the notion of cold as something alien: there are attempts at creating a cold-unfriendly environment and mocking at the cold in hope it would feel offended and leave the patient alone. Sometimes people resorted to active measures and employed the pars pro toto principle attempting to destruct the sickness or to pass it onto somebody else. The research revealed that the notion of cold (rhinitis) is in some cases supplemented with elements of slogutis. This enables deeper understanding of the connection between those two sicknesses. Both synonymous usage (confusion) of the names and means of treatment allow asserting that cold and incubus (sloga and slogutis) could have been perceived as two sides of the same trouble – the external and the internal one. Although the data to prove the systematic status of cold / slogutis as an infectious decease in the folk medicine is scarce, the hypothetic possibility remains, encouraging further investigation of these materials.

『포의교집(布衣交集)』에 드러나는 금기 위반의 양상과 초옥의 욕망

『포의교집(布衣交集)』에 드러나는 금기 위반의 양상과 초옥의 욕망

Lager – literature – zones of silence

The article reconstructs the most important issues on the map of Polish lager prose, those that are ignored, inconvenient for readers or authors, and sometimes for both. The author of the essay also presents the zones of silence that resulted not from the threat of violation of social taboos and political prohibitions, but from the negligence of researchers. They characterize the most important tasks faced by scholars of Polish lager prose.

Beliefs and perception of ill-health causation: a socio-cultural qualitative study in rural North-Eastern Ethiopia

BackgroundUnderstanding perceptions of the causes of ill-health common in indigenous communities may help policy makers to design effective integrated primary health care strategies to serve these communities. This study explored the indigenous beliefs of ill-health causation among those living in the Tehuledere Woreda /district/ in North East Ethiopia from a socio-cultural perspective.MethodsThe study employed a qualitative ethnographic method informed by Murdock’s Theory of Illness. Participatory observation, over a total of 5 months during the span of one year, was supplemented by focus group discussions (n = 96 participants in 10 groups) and in-depth interviews (n = 20) conducted with key informants. Data were analyzed thematically using narrative strategies.ResultsIn these communities, illness is perceived to have supernatural (e.g., almighty God/ Allah, nature spirits, and human agents of the supernatural), natural (e.g., environmental sanitation and personal hygiene, poverty, biological and psychological factors) and societal causes (e.g., social trust, experiences of family support and harmony; and violation of social taboos). Therefore, the explanatory model of illness causation in this community was very similar to that of the Murdock model with one key difference: social elements need to be added to the model.ConclusionMembers of the study community believes that supernatural, natural and social elements are linked to ill-health causation. A successful integrated primary health care strategy should include strategies for supporting patients’ needs in all three of these domains.

Moral decision-making among young muslim adults on harmless taboo violations: The effects of gender, religiosity, and political affiliation

Shweder's Big Three Theory of Intuitive moral approach has not yet been investigated in Muslim culture. We aim at replicating Haidt and his colleagues' (1993) work using harmless taboo violation stories with a Muslim population of 167 young adults in Turkey. Participants' justifications and victim references were examined in terms of the three ethics of morality and their subsequent link to perceived harmfulness. Results revealed that moral judgments differed by participants' gender, political affiliation, and religiosity. Women were more supportive of interference and felt more bothered than men. Secularists, Islamists, and also highly religious people were similar on most of the dimensions of moral decision making. Consequently, influences of moral intuitions varied by culture, political affiliation, religiosity level, and gender, while perceived harmfulness was most correlated to the ethic of divinity.

Influence of food taboos on nutritional patterns in rural communities in Cameroon

AbstractFood taboos are observed in all traditional societies. In Cameroon, various taboos ranging from food to religious and social have significant impact on the diet of the people. Specific food items are regarded differently by different communities. While in certain communities, some food items are seen as fit for consumption, others deem it unfit. Although food taboos related to culture are more subject to change due to the level of literacy that prevails in the society and due to cultural contacts, violators of taboos suffer grievous consequences. Methods used included key informant interviews, focus group discussions and observations in all studied communities. The objective of the study is to understand how culture (food taboos) influences consumption patterns in traditional communities and the impact of disobedience on the people. This study of Cameroon food taboos has showed that dietary rules and regulations govern particular phases of life and is associated with special events like pregnancy, childbirth, lactation etc. In traditional societies, festivities such as hunting, wedding, and funeral are marked by specific food items. Punishments to violation of food taboos vary across food items and communities as what are considered a taboo in one community is not a taboo in another. Food taboo in some communities is considered as a way to maintain identity creating a sense of belonging.

The self in moral judgement: How self-affirmation affects the moral condemnation of harmless sexual taboo violations

People frequently condemn harmless sexual taboo behaviours. Based on self-affirmation theory, we predicted that providing an opportunity to self-affirm decreases the tendency to morally condemn harmless sexual taboos. In Experiment 1, we found evidence that self-affirmation decreases the moral condemnation of harmless sexual taboos and ruled out that this was due to a decrease in how disgusting participants considered taboo acts. In Experiment 2, we replicated this effect and demonstrated the mediating role of self-directed threat emotions. These results demonstrate that the tendency to morally condemn harmless sexual taboos arises in part from the need to protect self-integrity. We discuss the implications for the role of the self and emotions in moral judgements and interventions aimed at increasing the acceptability of harmless sexual taboos.

Die Gegenwart der Vergangenheit oder Die Grenzen des Sagbaren. Briefe, Tagebücher und fiktionale Texte von DDR-Autoren um 1970

Die Gegenwart der Vergangenheit oder Die Grenzen des Sagbaren. Briefe, Tagebücher und fiktionale Texte von DDR-Autoren um 1970

Carnivalesque Economies: Clowning and the Neoliberal Impasse

In Colombia, clowns are proliferating and thriving, particularly in the context of neoliberal political economies prevailing since the mid-1990s. This paper explores some reasons why this might have occurred, as well as theorizing a two-way relationship of domination and resistance between clown practices and the current iteration of late capitalist global economies; what I call “carnivalesque economies.” While Bakhtin described clowns as “the constant, accredited representatives of the carnival spirit in everyday life out of carnival season,” the Colombian case suggests that their breaching of norms and violations of taboos are all too easily co-opted by governments, corporations, and institutions to disseminate normative ideologies and coerce citizens. Nevertheless, these carnivalesque economies can never fully contain or account for the potential of clown performance to rupture and genuinely challenge neoliberal power relations. Rather than speak truth to power, clowns and clowning may speak truth about power, or point to its carnivalesque vulnerability, through play, through comic inversion, and through their particularly intense forms of communication. I focus on three performance moments from my fieldwork in Colombia in order to illustrate this argument about clowns’ ambivalent relationship to neoliberal political economies. The first of these is a performative intervention by clown-mimes in the streets of Bogotá in 1995, part of the “culture of citizenship” initiatives of Mayor Antanas Mockus; the second is a performance by “Buenavista Social Clown” that I witnessed in 2012, called “The Unknown Limit between the Public and the Private” commissioned and funded by a state department, “La Defensoria del Espacio Público;” and the third is a clown show produced by Clowns Without Borders (USA) and Pasos de Payasos (Colombia) in a school in Risaralda in which the audience invaded the stage.

Religiosity, Political Orientation, and Consequentialist Moral Thinking

Three studies demonstrated that the moral judgments of religious individuals and political conservatives are highly insensitive to consequentialist (i.e., outcome-based) considerations. In Study 1, both religiosity and political conservatism predicted a resistance toward consequentialist thinking concerning a range of transgressive acts, independent of other relevant dispositional factors (e.g., disgust sensitivity). Study 2 ruled out differences in welfare sensitivity as an explanation for these findings. In Study 3, religiosity and political conservatism predicted a commitment to judging “harmless” taboo violations morally impermissible, rather than discretionary, despite the lack of negative consequences rising from the act. Furthermore, non-consequentialist thinking style was shown to mediate the relationship religiosity/conservatism had with impermissibility judgments, while intuitive thinking style did not. These data provide further evidence for the influence of religious and political commitments in motivating divergent moral judgments, while highlighting a new dispositional factor, non-consequentialist thinking style, as a mediator of these effects.

Should gamespace be a taboo-free zone? Moral and psychological implications for single-player video games

When assessing the appropriateness of single-player video games, it is our contention that questions dealing with the morality of their content are the wrong sorts of questions to ask. Instead, a more informative strategy is to focus on what gamers are able to deal with psychologically, especially regarding taboo violation. Thus, we argue that there is nothing morally problematic with gamespace per se, no matter how prohibitive the actions engaged in are offline. Instead, we should concern ourselves with whether the potential moral freedom afforded within gamespace is psychologically healthy, for it is our contention that underlying any change to the gamer’s behaviour is the need to seek psychological parity across domains (between gamespace and the offline world). It is therefore not so much what games are doing to us that is of concern, but what we are doing to ourselves through the process of seeking psychological parity.

The Trouble with Thinking: People Want to Have Quick Reactions to Personal Taboos

If lay theories associate moral intuitions with deeply held values, people should feel uncomfortable relying on deliberative thinking when judging violations of personal taboos. In two preliminary studies, participants with siblings of the opposite sex were particularly troubled when evaluating a sibling incest scenario under instructions to think slowly and rationally, or when the scenario was presented in a hard-to-read font forcing them to employ deliberative processing. This suggests that we may be intuitive intuitionists, and opens the door for investigations of people’s preferred modes of moral judgment.

조르주 바타이유의 ‘에로티즘’과 소설『내 어머니』(Ma mère) 연구 = Georges Bataille’s “érotisme” in Ma mère

This article examines the notion of erotisme in Georges Bataille’s philosophy and in his novel Ma mere . The primary aspect that Bataille’s unique concept of erotisme shows is the annihilation of limits. All individuals, as purportedly discontinuous beings, experience continuity by losing themselves at the summit of erotisme , which leads them to abolish the boundary between themselves and the other. And through erotic acts, those very individuals dissolve themselves and no longer recognize themselves as subjects and their partner an object. In other words, they stop distinguishing one from the other. And by examining the second aspect of erotisme , the violation of taboos, we will be able to grasp Bataille’s original definition of erotisme : the affirmation of life even until the moment of death. For Bataille, literature is the space where erotisme is shown, and an erotic deed in itself, because, similarly to executors and victims of the rite of sacrifice, the writer dissipates himself in his work, while the readers abandon themselves to the lecture. With this view of erotisme , we try to understand the movements of the protagonists in Ma mere . Pierre, an innocent boy who is bound to follow the path of debauchery prepared by his mother, Helene, becomes a man who himself leads a dissolute life. Having experienced decadent feasts and erotic rites with his lovers, Rea and Hansi, Pierre finally ends up making love with his own mother and witnessing her suicide. In this story of destruction, we can see how Bataille’s autobiographical protagonist grows into a writer, overcoming his mother’s fatal love and her death. His writing represents the debauchery and the death that he has experienced.

What I won’t do in pixels: Examining the limits of taboo violation in MMORPGs

This paper examined the emotional impact that engaging in or witnessing Symbolic Taboo Activities (STAs), as represented in MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing game), such as killing, torture and rape, has on adults. We focused our study on two games: World of Warcraft and Sociolotron. The study employed Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), which was chosen because of its emphasis on ‘lived experienced’ and how participants make sense of their experiences. Five participants, all over the age of 18 years, were interviewed via Instant Messenger, four of which were men. Most of our participants felt they could easily separate gamespace from the real world; however, when asked to examine specific actions in-depth, we found this was not the case for all STAs. Activities that did not have a sanctioned equivalence (e.g., rape) were found by most to be more difficult to separate, especially emotionally. However, this was not the case for all participants. The findings suggest that not all individuals can psychologically cope with engaging in and/or witnessing certain STAs in MMORPGs. The results, we believe are important for game designers, censoring bodies of video games and psychologists.

Games without frontiers: On the moral and psychological implications of violating taboos within multi-player virtual spaces

When assessing the appropriateness of massively multiplayer online role-playing games, it is our contention that questions dealing with the morality of their content – especially regarding the more ‘adult’ nature of potential interactions – are the wrong sorts of questions to ask. Instead, when considering the permissibility of such games, a more informative strategy is to focus on what gamers are able to deal with, psychologically, especially regarding taboo violation. Thus, we argue that there is nothing morally problematic with online gamespace per se, no matter how prohibitive the simulated behaviour is offline (as long as the space is frequented by adults only). Instead, we should concern ourselves with whether the potential moral freedoms afforded the online gaming community are psychologically healthy: For it is our contention that underlying any change to the gamer’s behaviour offline is the need (in some) to seek psychological parity across domains (making congruent one’s identity and actions in both the virtual and offline worlds). It is therefore not so much what games are doing to us that is of concern, here, but what we are doing to ourselves through the process of seeking psychological parity.

Overkill

In popular understandings, both excess and conflict are understood as compelling, even ‘sexy’. Drawing from the perspectives of feminist theory, history, and theology, I consider the ways that patriarchal cultures eroticize possession, domination, and taboo violation, leading to this popular apprehension. I critique some of the ways that patriarchal conceptions of sex and God, both founded in a gendered conception of power as domination, intersect to influence significantly and foment harms including environmental devastation.

Territoriality Disputes, Pollution and Abjection in Nathalie Sarraute and Hélène Lenoir

Despite the number of surveys of contemporary French fiction that have appeared in the last decade or so, (1) the emergence of journal series such as Ecritures contemporaines (2) and the publication of journal special numbers devoted to contemporary fiction, (3) the question of Nathalie Sarraute's literary legacy remains largely uncharted territory. In some respects this is not surprising. Notwithstanding the valiant efforts and intelligent readings of critics such as Sarah Barbour and John Philips, (4) Sarraute does not fit comfortably within the category of ecriture feminine, (5) Moreover, the concept of tropismes that is so central to her work and her extension of its application to include human behaviour have perhaps been perceived as too idiosyncratically sarrautian for it to have been taken up by subsequent generations of writers. Of the very few contemporary writers whose names have figured alongside that of Sarraute, Helene Lenoir is one of the more frequently mentioned. In their reviews of Lenoir's Le Repit and Bourrasque, both Celine Geoffroy and Pierre Lepape cite Sarraute as the principal comparator, (6) while Dominique Viart's very useful survey chapter on the contemporary French literary scene identifies Lenoir, Laurent Mauvignier and Gisele Fournier as the most obvious heirs of Sarraute. (7) Lenoir, in one of her infrequent public statements--a short article entitled La Litterature contre la betise--quotes an anecdote told by Sarraute concerning the sense of the title of disent les imbeciles (8). However, these references remain very brief and to date there has been no substantial comparative analysis of the work of the two authors. This article aims to open up a potentially rewarding topic of enquiry through the comparative study of two texts--Sarraute's Vous les entendez? (9) and Lenoir's Bourrasque (10)--which, on detailed analysis, reveal a quite remarkable pattern of thematic and structural correspondences. Here, the application of concepts derived from anthropological and psychoanalytical theory will provide the conceptual framework for the reading of a novel (Bourrasque) that has hitherto received only scant critical attention, and the rereading of another (Vous les entendez?) that has tended to be somewhat eclipsed by the novels that preceded and followed it (Entre la vie et la mort, 1968, and disent les imbeciles, 1976). Thus, in addition to itemising the main similarities between the fictional situations and forms of the two texts, the first part of the article will also examine the ways in which the apparently trivial quarrels over domestic space and privacy and the minor infractions of codes relating, for example, to hospitality, commensality, aggregation, separation, and the crossing of boundaries between public and personal spaces act as pretexts for the exploration of much more serious territorial battles and taboo violations. The second part will focus more precisely on the presence in both texts of a dynamic centred on the relationship between purity anal pollution, between the act of abjecting and the abject state. This section of the article will take its cue from Ann Jefferson's ground-breaking analysis of difference and the denial of difference in Sarraute's work. Here, in two incisive chapters that draw, albeit briefly, on the theory of Mary Douglas and, rather more fully, on that of Julia Kristeva, Jefferson traces the recurrence, across Sarraute's work, of motifs relating to pollution, contamination and abjection in order to demonstrate Sarraute's commitment [...] to [...] indistinction (11) in her depiction of intersubjectivity and to illustrate her conception of the work of art as a means of transcending intersubjective relations through the transformation of difference into sameness. (12) The present study accepts Jefferson's conclusions and will build upon this foundation, but--in addition to extending the models to the study of Lenoir's text--will also argue that the motifs of pollution and abjection are part of a more generalised fascination in Vous les entendez? …

Der Holocaust als »kolonialer Genozid«?

This essay critically engageswith the current scholarly debate about 'connecting lines' and structural similarities between European colonialism and German National Socialism. Following the recent publication of books on the allegedly genocidal nature of German colonialism and the role of the Herero and Nama wars (1904-07) as a precursor of and model for the German war of extermination in Eastern Europe (1939-45), the essay will critically examine the allegedly 'exceptional' character of the German colonial wars within the broader trans-national context of colonial violence. It will be argued that the taboo violation of 1904 was in fact very much in line with common European colonial standards. Furthermore, the essay will critically engage with the question of direct continuities between 'Windhoek and Auschwitz', arguing that the German war of annihilation constituted a break with European traditions of colonialism rather than a continuation.