Thematic Level Research Articles

Las imágenes teatrales de Tadeusz Kantor y el teatro surrealista español

En la primera parte del presente artículo se hace un resumen de los trabajos cuyo objetivo es el análisis de la relación que unía a Tadeusz Kantor con la cultura española que en su mayoría se centran en los motivos pictóricos españoles en la obra tanto plástica como teatral del artista polaco. Más tarde se compara el teatro imposible de García Lorca con el teatro imposible de Kantor a nivel temático, pero sobre todo a nivel estético centrándose en el lugar que en ambos escenarios ocupan los objetos que aparecen abstraídos del sistema de signos establecido y se vuelven incomprensibles e insólitos. En concreto, se comparan dos objetos de Wielopole, Wielopole y de El Público, respectivamente. Se trata de dos camas giratorias que al mismo tiempo son camas mortuorias. Se analiza su simbolismo y su significación en sendas escenas y obras.

Experience copycats: the Compostela case

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the phenomenon of experience copycats. Despite being a growing problem for organisations selling extraordinary experiences, it remains a largely under-researched field of study. By analysing consumers’ sense of the extraordinary brand experience copycats in which they have participated, it becomes possible to detect the meanings they ascribe to imitations of experiential features as opposed to experiential themes.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on the ethnographic study of a group of individuals who spent 12 days on a Québec copycat of the Way to Compostela. The methods include participant observation, photos, non-directive interviews, semi-directive interviews and introspection.FindingsThe paper’s main contribution is to demonstrate that participants in extraordinary experience copycats do not ascribe meanings to them based solely on their own personal feelings. Instead, their appraisals tend to be intersubjective, with each individual judgment being influenced by other participants’ opinions. This explains why copycat experiences can, for instance, be valued very positively at a thematic level even as consumers’ individual appraisals might hightlight negative differences in terms of features.Practical implicationsThe battle against experience copycats does not, on the face of things, seem very useful insofar as consumers attribute copycats a meaning that complements the way in which they view original brands. Consumers tend to neither conflate nor contrast the two but instead consider them complementary. The end result is that original brands should seek more to cohabit with these copycats than to treat them aggressively, even as they develop a defensive posture to avoid excessive value slippage.Social implicationsThe study demonstrates that the battle against experience copycats becomes more difficult once participants who appreciate and defend the imitation have developed a sense of communityOriginality/valueThis paper focuses on copycats, a topic where very little research exists. It seeks to transcend customary economic and socio-psychological approaches by examining deliberate lookalike uses and experiences via the ethnographic method.

Monkey Wrench?: Virtues of a Weak Posthumanism

Monkey Wrench?:Virtues of a Weak Posthumanism Mads Rosendahl Thomsen (bio) Monkey Trouble: The Scandal of Posthumanism by Christopher Peterson. Fordham University Press, 2018. 160 pp. Hardcover: $95.00, Paperback: $28.00. Posthumanism comes in many varieties. Some theories are focused on the importance of technology that could lead to transhumans, others engage in the decentering of the subject and the problematic privileged position of the human race, both epistemologically and morally. In addition, there are numerous ways by which human-animal-matter divisions are being criticized. It is often telling if it is possible to spot a hero in a theory: Is it other large animals that display emotions, or all of Earth's fauna? Should flora be included, or is matter as such the real new hero? Obviously, the human is not a hero, but not always a villain either. In Monkey Trouble, a lively and passionate book, Christopher Peterson asks how this can be, and criticizes work in the field of posthumanism for having thrown out a lot with the bath water of anthropocentrism. Some of the motives behind radical discourses may be the urge to create a strong position in academia, Peterson argues in the opening, and suggests that an element of academic branding is taking place (21). On the other hand, we certainly live in a time where both the future of the Earth's ecosystem and the question of human identity, and its possible interventions into its own nature, makes it difficult to blame anyone who wants to tackle these issues for being overly [End Page 271] grandiose. Peterson's suggestion that a "'weak' posthumanism" is worth pursuing, implicitly following Gianni Vattimo's call for a "weak thought," is a sympathetic proposal, not least in the light of Peterson's critique of the tendency to go for the paradigmatic shifts. Peterson deftly shows how one of the foremost scholars of the field, Cary Wolfe, evades the temptation of building a strong thinking but keeps the aporia open. Monkey Trouble's four chapters take up questions of language and ontology. Chapter 1 argues that the advanced stage of human language does make a difference and separates humanity from other species without giving it a higher moral status, and Chapter 2 continues in this track but shifts the perspective to the silence of the others. Object Oriented Ontology is criticized in Chapter 3 for going all in on a flat ontology that preaches immanence, which Peterson is not the only one to be skeptical about, also getting in a few zingers: "Size apparently doesn't matter for OOO (unlike its XXX counterpart)" (71). However, Monkey Trouble is a short book, and Peterson has wanted to bring too much into it. Art, literature, and film are drawn on frequently but mostly in a way that does not go beyond the thematic level. J. M. Coetzee's novel Foe, the poetry of Walt Whitman, and the films Gravity and Melancholia are all quite relevant to explore the discourses of posthumanism, but they neither provide the basis for a new and convincing argument nor are they analyzed in a way that does justice to the works themselves. The human-animal divide seen through Coetzee, immanence seen through Lars von Trier's and Alfonso Cuarón's films, and the totality of everything seen through Whitman all makes sense, but also seems to evade a more thorough discussion as well as a clearer engagement with the political dimension of posthumanism. Nonetheless, there is of course an elegant rhetorical point in juxtaposing the arguments of works of fiction and their distinctive viewpoints with the positions taken in posthumanist theory, not least because the artistic visions are not based on undisturbed abstractions but engage with fully-fleshed worlds. Peterson also seeks to clear up arguments concerning posthumanism through recurrent references to the work of Jacques Derrida. He shows how Derrida's work today remains relevant for understanding discourses of post-humanism, and Derrida's regular but scattered presence in the book shows the value of pushing conventional wisdom out of its comfort zone. There are number of important issues that are touched upon but are not developed more thoroughly. Race, which Peterson...

Tiempo e historia en De cuando en cuando Saturnina

Este texto surge de una reflexión sobre la noción de ‘tiempo’, ‘historia’ y ‘pasado’ a partir del análisis de la novela de ciencia ficción De cuando en cuando Saturnina -Saturnina from time to time- Una historia oral del futuro (2004) de Alison Spedding (Belper, Inglaterra, 1962). En particular, se mostrará cómo la novela no se limita a cuestionar el relato histórico y la linealidad del narrar temporal occidental, sino que avanza una aguda crítica social de la Bolivia actual y, sobre todo, en contra de las jerarquías de poder en su intersección de ‘raza’, clase y género, en cuanto construcciones históricas que legitiman las desigualdades sociales. Finalmente, este artículo se propone explorar los mecanismos narrativos mediante los cuales las ideas de “contra-historia” oral y de “concentricidad” temporal aymara, se reflejan en la novela, a nivel estructural y temático.

EFEKTIVITAS TEMA KEPARIWISATAAN DALAM PENDIDIKAN DAN PELATIHAN KEPEMIMPINAN TINGKAT II PROVINSI BALI DALAM PENGEMBANGAN KEPEMIMPINAN ADAPTIF

Tourism Thematic of Level II Leadership Training and Education organized by the Agency for Human Resource Development of Bali Province is intended to improve leadership competence as the Regulation of the Head of Nasional Institut Public Administration (NIPA) Number 15 Year 2015 which also has a tourism mindset, which ultimately increases the competence of adaptive leadership. The question in this study is how is the effectiveness of the theme of tourism in improving managerial competence and adaptive leadership? By using qualitative descriptive explanatory analysis method can be concluded learning process of thematic training of tourism effective in developing competency of adaptive leadership of training participants with some things that still need to be improved. Furthermore, it can be recommended to prepare the standard implementation of Thematic Leadership Level II Training of Tourism, which provides reinforcement of substance and material insertion process of tourism into the existing curriculum according to Regulation of the Head of NIPA Number 15 Year 2015 Number 15 Year 2015. Keywords: training, tourism, adaptive leadership

UNCONTROL ON RUBEN ÖSTLUND’S FORCE MAJEURE


 
 
 Ruben Östlund’s film Force Majeure (2014) was mostly received as a depiction of the crisis of masculinity. And it is, but that particular theme is also placed within a larger context concerning questions of value, understanding, order, and control, questions asked not only on a thematic level but also through cutting, framing, and the use of camera views. Not accepting any simple dichotomy between form and meaning, Force Majeure places itself firmly in an avant- garde and modernist tradition.
 Thereby the film is also related to this tradition’s ambition of investigating Western thought, knowledge and art anew, problematising given forms of rational thinking in order for something new to emerge. In the wake of World War II it was, for thinkers like Adorno, Foucault, Stockhausen, and Boulez, seen as unavoidable and urgent to deconstruct the conventions and norms that had made Auschwitz possible. It is still urgent. This article takes its starting point in the connections between avant-garde serialism in music, Foucault’s serialist methods of research and Deleuze’s theories of modernist film, in order to grasp how the aesthetics of Force Majeure continues to deconstruct.
 
 

Translation as destruction: Kezilahabi's adaptation of Heidegger's “Being”

AbstractTanzanian novelist and philosopher Euphrase Kezilahabi strives to “dismantle the resemblance of language to the world” (1985: 216) through challenging the fundamental philosophical dichotomy of subject and object. The result of this dismantling will be a new “language whose foundation is Being” (Kezilahabi 1991: 69; lugha ambayo msingi wake ni kuwako). This is an expression of a new relationship between humanity and Being built on a holistic epistemology of experience and embodiment. Through “kuwako”, Kezilahabi expresses in Swahili the Heideggerian concept of Sein (Being). His adherence to Heidegger, however, puts him at risk of compromising the very foundation of his own philosophy: his continued critique of essentialism. This article argues that Kezilahabi salvages his concept of “kuwako” from these essentialist pitfalls precisely through his declared “destructive rather than deconstructive stand vis-à-vis the Western philosophy of value and representation” (Kezilahabi 1985: 4). The destruction is implemented on the thematic level: a phase of “vurumai” (chaos) which destroys previous traditions of philosophy is staged in Nagona. However, translation is an even more powerful device to carry out this destruction: “kuwako” is not an innocent reiteration but a radical reformulation of Heidegger's central philosophical concept, decisively informed by Kezilahabi's lifelong propensity for existentialism.

John Banville’s “monstrous child”: freedom and inheritance in Shroud

ABSTRACTJohn Banville has described his novel Shroud (2002) – a fictionalised re-imagining of the 1988 scandal of Paul de Man, whose war-time publications for a collaborationist journal were discovered after his death – as his “monstrous child” that only he could love. This essay turns to Derrida’s thoughts on monstrosity, and in particular his framing of the future-to-come as an unforeseeable reckoning between Nietzsche and Rousseau, whose approaches to human freedom and authenticity remain philosophically irreconcilable. Shroud engages with these two inheritances on a thematic level, bringing them into conversation through the characters of Vander and Cass. The interruption of intergenerational love and the prospect of a child between them, however, makes Derridean monstrosity – that more properly deconstructive trope that opens to the future by unearthing traumatic inheritances from the past – into a structuring principle, and the means by which we might best understand the novel itself as a “monstrous child”.

Composing for Affect, Audience, and Identity: Toward a Multidimensional Understanding of Adolescents’ Multimodal Composing Goals and Designs

This study examined adolescents’ perspectives on their multimodal composing goals and designs when creating digital projects in the context of an English Language Arts class. Sociocultural and social semiotics theoretical frameworks were integrated to understand six 12th grade students’ viewpoints when composing three multimodal products—a website, hypertext literary analysis, and podcast—in response to a well-known literary text. Data sources included screen capture and video observations, design interviews, written reflections, and multimodal products. Findings revealed how adolescents concurrently composed for multiple purposes and audiences during the literature analysis unit. In particular, students viewed projects as a platform to emotionally affect and entertain a broader audience, as well as a conduit through which they could represent themselves as composers. Emphasis was placed on creating cohesive compositions—ranging from close modal matching to building meaning at a thematic level and creating a multisensory experience indicative of the novel’s narrative world. These findings contribute a multidimensional understanding of adolescents’ various and interacting multimodal composing goals and have implications for leveraging modal affordances in the classroom.

Sexual stereotypes and personality development in Federico Fellini’s 8½ and Juliet of the Spirits

This study aims to readdress Federico Fellini’s reputation in the feminist critical discussion. Feminist perspectives on Fellini’s cinema use his stereotypical depiction of women to make a strong case for the negative in assessing Fellini’s gender representation. Using 8ó and Juliet of the Spirits as points of reference, the argument will proceed that Fellini’s one-dimensional portrayal of women is directly linked to the theme of personal development. This is inspired by cultural trends of the time, amongst which the Jungian idea of individuation seemed to be the most influential on the film-maker. Fellini advocates the idea of personal development through the inner liberation of individuals from outmoded mythologies of the past. His cinematic exploration of these mythologies is invested in the stereotypical images of women that form an integral part of the aesthetic strategies and thematic concerns Fellini employs in these films to communicate the ills affecting Italians. Fellini achieves this critical position in two ways: on the level of cinematic representation that subverts dominant modes of spectatorship and on the thematic level through various textual events that dramatise the themes of the cultural determinism and the need for individual liberation.

La potencia de la copia: una lectura agambeniana de la poética de Gustave Flaubert

The aim of this article is to analyse the poetics of Gustave Flaubert from the point of view of Giorgio Agamben’s concept of potentiality. In this regard, it can be said that the novels of Flaubert make of the philosophical problem of potentiality (as developed by Agamben in such articles as «The power of thought» or Bartleby or on contingence) a basic dimension of the literary construction. This is true in a thematic level (for instance, the multiplication of life forms in La Tentation de Saint Antoine) but also in a formal level (the use of conditional mode as a grammatical device to express potentiality). Paradoxically, it is by means of Bouvard and Pecuchet’s copy that potentiality finds its most distinctive form in Flaubert’s work.

Examination of Pre-service Teacher’s Training through Tutoring Approach

Pre-service teacher preparation in the United States is becoming progressively more challenging with respect to the demands on teachers. This study examined the impact of tutoring approach on pre-service teachers’ skills to work with English language learners through a qualitative research design. Content analysis was used at the thematic level on student journals written to accompany the semester-long experience of tutoring. Thirty pre-service teachers participated and data was collected from 300 written journal reflections for two semesters. Overall, the pre-service teachers gained an understanding of challenges of working ELLs and other positive impacts through tutoring. The findings suggest that pre-service teachers have perceived value of the use of tutoring approach in the teacher preparation program, use of strategies during field-based experiences, instructional realizations, cultural sensitivity, and professionalism. This paper concluded by discussing the need for teacher education program to assist pre-service teachers to assimilate pedagogies and apply through a tutoring approach.

Ett återbruk av verket

Re-using the work. Sonja Åkesson’s ”A visit at Sandviken’s Ironworks” and the tradition of proletarian realism
 This article examines Sonja Åkesson’s poem ”Besök på Sandvikens Jernverk” (”A visit at Sandviken’s Ironworks”, 1970), and its relation to the tradition of Swedish proletarian realism. By exploring its relations to Stig Sjödin’s collection of poems Sotfragment (Fragments of soot, 1949), and its configuration of male industrial work, the analysis shows several intertextual relations between Åkesson and Sjödin, especially at the thematic level, as they both connect to a tradition in Swedish literature critical against industrial work and capitalism. At the same time, Åkesson adds a critical gender perspective while problematizing class and the role of the poet in ways different from Sjödin.

Materialism Versus Human Values in the Victorian Novels: The Case of Great Expectations and Wuthering Heights

Dickens’ Great Expectations and Bronte's Wuthering Heights share similar concerns at the thematic level. Both novels are critiques of the Victorian society since they show the differences between the upper and lower classes of the 19th century in England. Poor people are depicted as good characters while the rich are demonstrated as evil characters who find pleasure in manipulating and tormenting others. Poor Characters strive to be rich to achieve high social status, happiness and love. Once they become rich, they got plagued by the evil of materialism and thus become a replica of the upper- class characters who happened to inflict pain on them. In their turn, they become fake, snobbish, corrupt and revengeful. Through this recurrent vicious circle, in Great Expectations and Wuthering Heights, Dickens and Bronte emphasize the idea that no amount of money is enough to buy true happiness and true love. On the contrary, money is continuously trapping its owners throughout the novels.

From initial dissemination to consolidated impact: the concept of crisis in the field of tourism

Bibliometric indicators, used appropriately with other indicators, provide a valuable tool for the evaluation of scientific activity. The article focuses on the review of the scientific literature on crisis and tourism by means of these indicators, using sources provided by the Institute for Scientific Information. The aim is to prove the consolidation of this field by designing a Thematic Level of the Field (TLF) that demonstrates its continuity, collaboration, visibility and impact, while identifying any trends and changes. Bibliographic citations have been obtained by examining information from the Web of Science, using the titles of articles from 1956 to 2013 from the databases of the Social Sciences Citation Index and the Science Citation Index Expanded. The end product is the result of processing this information with different proximity measurements and the application of weighting factors, which lead to the creation of the TLF, classified according to different value-words.

Bakhtin and Multicuturalism-Bakhtin revisited in Paoulo Coehlo

Mikhail Bakhtin(1895-1975),a Russian philosopher, thinker and above all a discourse theorist with his own linguistic philosophy was brought into the limelight in 1960s from the attic memory is considered to be a stir in the town. Bakhtinian philosophy of language can be defined in terms of his concepts about linguistic ability. His dialogism. a specie specific(‘human not atomized’), considered to be a continuous dialogue(‘dialogism’)that is ever going never finalized(‘unfinalizable’),created(‘creative’),developed(‘action and response’), evolved(‘evolution’) in a context(‘social phenomenon’), bounded by a spatio-temporal frame(‘chronotopes’) between interlocutors(‘I’, ‘me’,’other’,and ‘others’) generates response in the listener by motivating the others to reflect their thoughts in the form of a live event(‘heteroglossia’-‘polyphony’ The pivotal feature of this polyphony is the independence of different voices giving individuality to an expression. Paulo Coelho born in 1947 at Brazil as a ‘dead boy’ brought Bakhtin’s dialogics in action in its fullest. He spent his early life in Brazil as a warrior’s l while struggling for survival. This was this struggle that equates him with Bakhtin who was also an epitome of resistance against odds both physical and social . Multiculturalism in a broader sense is an amalgamation of different cultures where each allows the other a space for self expression as well as respect to preserve the identity of their community or nation on their own terms. The present study has compared both philosophers on thematic level to show that a multicultural society is the solution of today’s extremism in attitudes on global level. The sample taken for comparison of themes is one novel ‘The Zahir’ of Coelho. It reflects some of the major themes of the writer which are in the same vein of the philosophical genius of Bakhtin.

Thematic Framing: Creating Healthcare Innovations1

Thematic Framing: Creating Healthcare Innovations1

A Sciento-text framework to characterize research strength of institutions at fine-grained thematic area level

This paper presents a Sciento-text framework to characterize and assess research performance of leading world institutions in fine-grained thematic areas. While most of the popular university research rankings rank universities either on their overall research performance or on a particular subject, we have tried to devise a system to identify strong research centres at a more fine-grained level of research themes of a subject. Computer science (CS) research output of more than 400 universities in the world is taken as the case in point to demonstrate the working of the framework. The Sciento-text framework comprises of standard scientometric and text analytics components. First of all every research paper in the data is classified into different thematic areas in a systematic manner and then standard scientometric methodology is used to identify and assess research strengths of different institutions in a particular research theme (say Artificial Intelligence for CS domain). The performance of framework components is evaluated and the complete system is deployed on the Web at url: www.universityselectplus.com. The framework is extendable to other subject domains with little modification.

LENGUAJES JUVENILES: EL DANCEHALL, ¿RUPTURA O AFIANZAMIENTO IDEOLÓGICO? YOUTH LANGUAGES: THE DANCEHALL, RUPTURE OR IDEOLOGICAL STRENGTHENING?

En este artículo se discute sobre el vínculo entre el lenguaje y la ideología en los jóvenes y su posiblerelación con una mentalidad estereotípica en la sociedad costarricense, a partir de una aproximaciónanalítico-temática a la letra de una canción perteneciente al género musical llamado Dancehall. Seplantea que el lenguaje de este tipo de música: a) manifiesta una estrategia de encriptado que limita elacceso de otros grupos sociales a esta cultura juvenil y gesta modificaciones lingüísticas y culturales delargo plazo, aunque, b) en el nivel temático no discrepa de otras expresiones culturales costarricensespor cuanto perpetúa ciertas visiones de mundo estereotipadas. Para este análisis se seguirá una perspectiva histórico-cultural sobre la relación entre pensamiento y lenguaje, y se aplicará un método deanálisis temático para la interpretación de la letra de la canción seleccionada. Por tratarse del estudiode una expresión cultural específica y del análisis de una canción particular, las conclusiones derivadasde este estudio forman parte de una hipótesis de trabajo para ulteriores investigaciones sobre la relaciónentre el lenguaje y la ideología en colectivos juveniles.

Feeling grateful and envious: adolescents’ narratives of social emotions in identity and social development

Although the ubiquity of gratitude and envy would suggest they are important in the daily lives of adolescents, those social emotions have been relatively unexplored by psychologists. Interviews of 25 adolescents (ages 14 through 16) from the Midwestern US provided narrative accounts that revealed the contexts, antecedents, consequences and meanings of gratitude and envy in their daily lives. Transcripts were coded using an established procedure in the literature, and we present the findings at the thematic level. Adolescent gratitude was characterised by feeling cared for and special, while envy was driven by the desire for material possessions. Both emotions may reflect cultural individualism and contribute to social and identity development; for those adolescents gratitude provides recognition and validation of one’s personhood, and envy creates negative social comparisons that can either diminish self-worth or provide the impetus for improvement.