Text Asks Research Articles

Epilogue: the ethico-politics of attention

ABSTRACT This epilogue moves from an autoethnographic reflection about interior design magazines to an interrogation of the workings of predatory capitalism in contemporary times of crisis. The text asks why in the context of ongoing global crises (including pandemics, environmental disaster, and extreme poverty) ‘our attention still fails to focus except very episodically, on the suffering of distant others’. Through mobilizing the aesthetic subject, and drawing on fictional works, the text argues that in order to ‘acknowledge those who are most vulnerable’ it is necessary to ‘come to intimate terms with global crises’, emphasizing the importance of the interventions in this special issue, as the subject of crisis needs first to question the very epistemology of being in crisis.

Some Considerations on the Socio-Political Aspects of the Law-Codification in the Province of Yehud in the Persian Period


 
 
 
 The article juxtaposes the process of law codification that took place in Rome in the mid-5th century BCE under the so-called Law of the Twelve Tables and the codification of law that took place around the same time in Palestine, known as Deuteronomy. According to the reconstruction of events in Rome, the codification of laws involved an attempt to limit the judicial omnipotence of the elite, due to pressure from a new elite that sought to diminish the power of the old elite. The text asks whether analogous political mechanisms could have led to the codification of law in the form of Deuteronomy, and if so, how to define the group whose judicial omnipotence would be curtailed.
 
 
 

Care & Custody: Past Responses to Mental Health, National Library of Medicine

<i>Care &amp; Custody: Past Responses to Mental Health</i>, National Library of Medicine

Being Seen after Going Stealth

Being Seen after Going Stealth

Immemorial (and native) customs in early modernity: Europe and the Americas

This text asks how a greater familiarity with European law would change our vision of colonial territories, most particularly, Latin America. Concentrating on the study of immemorial and native customs in both European and American territories, it argues that these customs were not necessarily ancient or authentic. Instead, they authorised making legal exceptions to the general rule in a legal universe that was dramatically different from our own. They sustained the existence and legitimacy of a local juridical sphere while also maintaining the importance of a common, cross-Christian, legal understanding. By showcasing what practitioners, jurists, theologians, and scholars have said about customs during the early modern period and since, the aim is not to criticise what had been done by others but to offer a useful framework that would allow us to meaningfully merge the multiplicity of voices historians have already recovered, as well as supply those who work on these issues with the necessary background.

Nights of Red and Gold

This paper considers hospitality on imagined nights in two clubs at the end of the 1970s. The text visits New York’s Studio 54, a permissive environment but with restricted access, and le Palace in Paris, frequented by Gilles Châtelet. In le Palace the partygoers anticipate the market boom of the 80s while the hedonistic crowd at Studio 54 is unprepared for the incipient AIDS epidemic. The text asks if there were patterns of alignment in the new clubs of entitlement and illness?

식민지근대와 ‘되받아쓰기’: 셰익스피어와 쎄제르

Given that colonial modernity is a highly complex historical phenomenon in which all kinds of binary oppositions are just superficially valid, overcoming coloniality demands a correspondingly arduous task; it should be analytical as well as synthetical. In the literary arena, the writing-back of the authors of the South is arguably one of the most challenging attempts to get the better of such modernity. Taking up Césaire’s subversive rewriting of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and facing right unto the mainstream of postcolonial study, this paper argues that his critical appropriation of Shakespeare’s text asks for a rigorously synthesizing reading. By comparing and contrasting the two texts, this paper reaches a tentative conclusion: in spite of the fact that Césaire’s reworking still has some worthwhile merits particularly germane to current ‘post’-colonial worldwide reality, his work of integrating shakespeare’s language into an artistico-political vision as a project of withstanding colonial modernity is carried over to the future. In this vein, postcolonial scholars’ academic bias and their consequent evaluative inflation of Césaire’s A Tempest are critically examined in passing.

Die christliche Hoffnung über den Tod hinaus

Summary Based on the dynamics of hope and the protest against hope, as both can be found especially in literature, this text asks how Christian faith grounds its own eschatological statements of a hope beyond death.

Rutas contra el silencio: análisis de los mecanismos para el manejo y prevención del acoso sexual al interior de la Universidad de Antioquia (Colombia)

En un momento histórico para el feminismo en el que la conversación sobre el acoso sexual toma fuerza, este trabajo decide indagar sobre el papel de las universidades como instituciones que deben garantizar la seguridad, integridad y salud de sus estudiantes; específicamente la Universidad de Antioquia. El texto se pregunta por la existencia de un protocolo que apoye a los estudiantes víctimas de acoso sexual en la universidad y utiliza una metodología que está dividida en tres etapas: la primera etapa hace una exploración de conceptos académicos y jurídicos que provean una guía acerca de los protocolos que deberían encontrarse; en la segunda etapa se analizan los hallazgos de la primera etapa de una forma crítica, en la tercera etapa se realiza la construcción y sugerencia de un protocolo que se ajuste al contexto de la universidad de Antioquia. Finalmente, se presentan una serie de conclusiones en torno a dichos protocolos y la importancia de una política formal institucional que prevenga, sancione y sensibilice en el tema.

Wsparcie społeczne dla osób z niepełnosprawnością a refleksja nad „dobrą” i „złą” charytatywnością

Difference/disability is associated with limitations in social contacts and the risk of social exclusion. Charity and philanthropy not only are an opportunity for people with disabilities but also pose a threat. The article deals with “positive” and “negative” charities, as well as ethical guidance to these activities. The text asks about the 21st century model of NGOs support for people at risk of social exclusion.

MACHADO DE ASSIS E O ECO FONOGRÁFICO

Esse ensaio analisa a imbricação entre morte e nascimento na estrutura do romance de Machado de Assis, e indaga sobre a relação da escuta com a morte na forma inaugural de Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas. Qual a relação entre a escrita da morte (“memórias póstumas”) e a escuta da vida ou entre a escrita da vida (autobiografia) e a escuta da morte, que compõem a revolução estética de Memórias póstumas? Para responder, estabeleço uma analogia entre o surgimento simultâneo desse romance, em 1880/1881, e o aparecer das novas tecnologias na mesma década, em especial aquela que desde seu anúncio mais se aproxima da morte – o fonógrafo, patenteado por Thomas Edison em 1877. A partir dessa coincidência histórica, indaga-se se seria possível ler Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas como um “romance-fonógrafo”?

Listening to color: a set of propositions on pain as feminist aesthetic

This performative text asks whether it is possible to imagine an antisocial feminist aesthetic that does not invoke the wounded body. Its form – numbered propositions that engage with critical theory, literature, and memoir – riffs on that of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, a key interlocutor for this question of aestheticizing embodied pain. How does Nelson’s genealogy of blue model a methodology for a “queer genealogy of femininity,” to borrow Jack Halberstam’s term? How does looking at color in this way offer an approach to narrating trauma, one that displaces the primacy of the visual? Turning to the work of Christina Crosby, Toni Morrison, Fred Moten, and José Esteban Muñoz, as well as drawing upon the author’s experience as a volunteer for a peer listening hotline, this essay considers the implications of “listening to color” for minoritarian knowledge formations and feminist praxis.

Muslim Women, Transnational Feminism and the Ethics of Pedagogy: Contested Imaginaries in Post‐9/11 Cultural PracticeLisa K.Taylor and JasminZine, Editors. Routledge, 2014.

Muslim Women, Transnational Feminism and Ethics of Pedagogy: Contested Imaginaries in Post-9/11 Cultural Practice Lisa K. Taylor and Jasmin Zine, Editors. Routledge, 2014.In Muslim Women, Transnational Feminism and Ethics of Pedagogy, editors Lisa K. Taylor and Jasmin Zine have produced a pedagogical intervention. .. concerned with how of Muslim women are taken up in various educational sites and within diverse publics with a view to addressing politics and ethics of reading within and against these various constructs (3). Their main concern argues that academics and teachers have reified concept of Muslim women as the Other by using Orientalist rhetoric in classrooms. With sections on reading practices, text production, pedagogies, and interviews with key figures in arts and scholarship, this collection works to disrupt such orientalist readings by offering strategies to problematize, demystify, and dismantle [such] representations (6). An extensive introduction an overview of feminist, postcolonial, and gender theory related to study of transnational issues facing Muslim women and their representations.The editors' main audience is those who teach within interdisciplinary fields of study that focus on gender, feminism, arts, and popular culture and who both seek to approach their classrooms with a deeper understanding of challenges of teaching topics focused on Muslim women and wish to challenge their students' perceptions of these women and their needs. This text asks those educators to reconsider framing of courses to align with a less Western-centered approach when teaching about Muslim women around globe.Those teaching such texts in Western classrooms will find several articles most useful. Dana M. Olwan's Pedagogies of Solidarity in Sheir Hammad's 'First Writing Since' introduces poem as a work that engages, performs, and teaches politics of (111). Olwan then examines such works that remember 9/11 complicate narratives of American victimhood, singularity, and innocence (111). Finally, Olwan describes how Hammad's poem presents a transformative politics of solidarity that transcends national borders (111). Moving reader through a close reading of poem and then offering ideas for teaching it, Olwan ultimately shows that Hammad's poem offers a substantive and cogent challenge to dominant narratives of Arab American unbelonging (128).Scholars interested in cultural importance of book in West will find Catherine Burwell's 'A Too Quick Enthusiasm for Other': North American Women's Book Clubs and Politics of Reading a useful voice in conversation about ways in which Third World women's texts are framed and presented to First World women's book clubs (134). …

A Narrativa que vende: a narrativa como mercadoria e como propaganda

Este artigo pretende explorar o sentido duplo da narrativa que vende. Por um lado, parte da pergunta sobre o que faz o sucesso de certas narrativas ficcionais que se vendem bem enquanto produtos, os best sellers; por outro, pergunta-se sobre a natureza das narrativas que são construídas para vender algo, a narrativa publicitária, também conhecida pelo termo storytelling. A partir disso, busca-se a verificação de uma possível confluência entre os dois tipos de narrativas. Para a construção de hipóteses para tais questões, parte-se do modelo teórico e metodológico da narratologia.

Tending-toward-Blackness

In response to “A Question on Materialisms” (October 155), this text asks anew for a consideration of how blackness—as site, sign, sensibility, and subject position—productively recalibrates both recent and longstanding approaches to the unfolding of the sensible world.

"The Deceptively Strategic Narrator of Rebecca"

"The Deceptively Strategic Narrator of Rebecca" Harriet Kramer Linkin (bio) Since 1982, a rich body of criticism has emerged on Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, often arguing against the perception of the novel as merely a popular vehicle of entertainment. Scholars have found value in its revision of the Cinderella or Bluebeard tale (with Jane Eyre as its signal predecessor), its re-analysis of the Oedipal drama, its treatment of the feminine masquerade, its queerness, its Gothicism, its critique of gender, nation, and class, and more.1 Most critics pay sharp attention to the transformation that the narrator describes herself undergoing as she wrestles with her identity at Manderley, first threatened by, and then desiring to become Rebecca, until Maxim opens the door to his past, which enables her to claim her new present: "I am Mrs. de Winter now" (295). There has been little discussion of the narrator's representation of her earlier, pre-Manderley self at Monte Carlo, or, more surprisingly, any narratological analysis of the older narrator's reliability in insistently characterizing herself, at the age of 21, as a powerless, innocent young woman. This essay views that characterization as a deliberately deceptive instance of dual focalization, or a situation in which "the perceptions of two agents are communicated simultaneously," the most relevant being when "character narration involves a narrator perceiving his former self's perceptions," as James Phelan proposes in Living to Tell about It (215). Scholars tend to take the narrator's characterization of her younger self at face value, sometimes underscoring that credulity by calling her "the [End Page 223] girl" (Light, Harbord, Simons), the "girl-wife" (Nollen 145), "the newly wedded girl" (Ferreira 229), or "the innocent, girlish protagonist" (Chow 147). Most see her as a "timid childlike creature" (Meyers 34), a "naïve, orphaned heroine" (Ferreira 235), who is "frightened, unknowing, and powerless" (Jagose 358), "virtuous" (Auerbach 121), "timid" (Habermann), and "unwitting" (Horner and Zlosnik 117)—although Maurel is an exception in wondering "whether she plays the role of the child" (105). Nonetheless, given du Maurier's creation of a narrator who projects elaborate fantasies, frames multiple episodes as theatrical performances, frequently alludes to games, and persistently refrains from revealing her "lovely and unusual" first name (24), this character begs to be regarded as a classic unreliable narrator.2 While Nina Auerbach suggests that the narrator conceals her first name, and "blocks our reading of her because she spends most of her time trying vainly to read her still more inscrutable husband" (121), she more likely means to make herself inscrutable. Like all first-person or internally focalized narrators, she filters the details of her story; moreover, as she produces her confessional memoir, she engages in paralipsis, or omission, to exonerate her questionable actions in Monte Carlo, in Manderley, and in exile, generating what Phelan describes as a "bonding unreliability" through her underreporting or misreporting, which reduces the distance between herself and her readers ("Estranging Unreliability" 223). She also makes sure to represent characters who cast doubt on her reliability as so odious that crediting their contrasting perspectives becomes impossible: Mrs. Van Hopper, with her with "small pig's eyes" (10), Jack Favell, whose mouth is "too soft, too pink" (161), or Mrs. Danvers, with her "skull's face, parchment-white, set on a skeleton's frame" (67). The few critics who query the narrator's trustworthiness point to her false consciousness, her belief in a cultural narrative that promotes bourgeois femininity—what Monika Fludernik terms "ideological unreliability" (76–77) and Dorrit Cohn terms "discordant narration" (307). Alison Light sees the narrator as "a kind of Ancient Mariner of her story of middle-class femininity, as much the victim as the producer of its fictionality" (18); Auba Llompart Pons states that the narrator is unreliable because "she attempts to trick the reader into believing her story is an ideal romance" (81); and Nicola Watson notes that while the text asks "readers to identify unproblematically with the heroine via first-person narration," the [End Page 224] narrator's willingness to cover up Rebecca's murder as part of "romance's investment in marriage . . . solicits the alert reader to stand slightly awry to the...

Embracing Dionysius in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing

In the second issue of Alan Moore’s mid-1980s run on DC comics’ Swamp Thing , Alec Holland learns that he is not simply a mild-mannered botanist who has been miraculously transformed into a super-powered “moss man.” The Swamp Thing is a plant, a plant who borrowed Holland’s identity, a plant who only thought it was a man, all along. This essay examines how Moore’s run on Swamp Thing embraces the challenges of depiction that come with making a plant—not just a “plant-man”—the hero of a comic book. How, the text asks, might the forms of plant-thought differ from a man’s? How does it think, and what might those thoughts “look like” on a comic page? Through the run, the writing and art overcomes the confining linearity of the comic’s paneled structure and conventional points-of-view, as well as the commercial demands of writing for a presumptively adolescent audience.

NEW BELGRADE AFTER 1999: Spatial Violence as De-Socialisation, De-Romanisation, and De-Historisation

New Belgrade after 1999 is associated with the transition from a socialist and single-party state to a consumer capitalist and multi-party system, these latter features perceived as indicators of democracy. This text asks if and how this transitional period points to NATO's 1999 bombing campaign still being in-operation through spatial violence by other means, with these means related to the negation of difference and the transformation of everyday life and social values. Might this spatial violence be even more coercive than that of the war as it manifests through the convergence of military, legal, governmental, and economic entities of international “redevelopment” agencies working in the name of “security” along with the Serbian government? The focus here is on the post-1999 transformation and re-modernisation of New Belgrade as an elimination of difference through processes of de-socialisation, de-Romanisation, and de-historisation connected with neo-liberal privatisation.

Picnic by John Burningham (review)

Reviewed by: Picnic by John Burningham Jeannette Hulick Burningham, John Picnic; written and illus. by John Burningham. Candlewick, 2014 32p ISBN 978-0-7636-6945-4 $16.99 R 2-4 yrs Who knew having a picnic could be such a challenge? When Boy, Girl, Sheep, Pig, and Duck attempt an al fresco meal, they first encounter a bull and must hide out in the woods until the bull leaves. Then they chase down Sheep’s blown-away hat and search for Pig’s missing soccer ball and Duck’s lost scarf. Afterwards, the picnic proceeds, until it’s time to go home to Boy’s and Girl’s house for an impromptu sleepover. The simplicity of the short, streamlined text and the large, clear illustrations make it easy to successfully share this with little ones. Direct addresses to the reader increase the interactivity: when the kids and animals hide from the bull, for example, the text asks, “Can you find Boy, Girl, Pig, Sheep, and Duck?” Even toddlers will be able to respond with a confident “Yes!” because all the characters are mostly visible with only a small portion of each hidden behind the trees. The tale ends with the unseen narrator asking viewers to identify which character is in each bed, and then prompting, “Shall we see if we can find your bed?” Burning-ham’s trademark lively and unaffected painting style continues here, with squiggly outlines, spots of bright color, and slightly mottled backgrounds adding vigor to the clean, open compositions; the nattily attired pig is particularly winning. This isn’t at the classic level of Burningham’s Mr. Gumpy’s Outing (BCCB 1/72) and others, but it’s still cheerful and entertaining, and parents will appreciate the sly segue into bedtime. Share this at a picnic-themed story hour or use it to wind down after a summer day spent outdoors. Copyright © 2014 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Transnational Feminism in the United States: Knowledge, Ethics, and Power LeelaFernandes. New York: New York University Press, 2013.

Transnational Feminism in the United States: Knowledge, Ethics, and Power Leela Fernandes. New York: New York University Press, 2013.In Transnational Feminism in the United States: Knowledge, Ethics, and Power Leela Fernandes asks the academy to reconsider the concept of feminism, a term has become, according to Fernandes, a catchall phrase for the paradigm within which [f]eminist scholars have increasingly sought to develop transnational perspectives in order to break free from national narratives and decenter US-oriented approaches (2). Her main concern is the way academics in the United States have failed at such a decentering and have instead appropriated the concept of feminism to fit into an American narrative. Using case studies and extensive engagement with current research, Fernandes puts forth a strong call for academics to reevaluate their relationship with the construction of feminism and their study of it.Her main audience is those who work within interdisciplinary fields of study, which she lists as specifically postcolonial, women's, and cultural studies. Those working within those fields, who created the term feminism, Fernandes claims, also have the opportunity to deconstruct the concept and make it servile to an American narrative of liberation and freedom, a challenge that continually arises for feminists who write and teach about women, gender, and sexuality in locations want to move outside of a national American narrative, an idea she thoroughly explicates in her introduction (2).With a clear introduction offers each chapter's argument, this text is simultaneously challenging and approachable. It is accessible for specific purposes, as each essay can stand alone. The arguments are clearly and systematically laid out in this thoroughly researched and articulate text. Transnational Feminism in the United States would be most useful to those who write about and teach within the interdisciplinary disciplines previously mentioned. This text asks those educators to reconsider the framing of courses to align with a Americancentered approach when teaching about women from around the world. Her primary concern for such educators is to show less attention has been paid to such national framings of interdisciplinary knowledge and the ways in which these framings produce 'the world' within the United States, i.e., focusing on female genital circumcision or veiling as a way of teaching about women beyond American borders (9). …