Threat Of Annihilation Research Articles

Going Insane: Battered Muslim Women Reclaim a Positive Identity.

This study examines the process of identity negotiation of 15 Muslim women who resisted severe abuse by their husbands and extended family by becoming mentally ill and thereafter, divorcing. Content analysis of the interview narratives shows that these women were poor, married young, and endured years of battering, isolation, and silencing for the sake of family honor and children's well-being. Entrapped within a web of sociocultural norms legitimizing wife beating, and abusive extended family relationships that annihilate their voice by branding them as maj'nuna/insane, these women explained that they were terrorized helpless victims fearing the stigma of being labeled insane and the resultant harm to their children. With the deterioration of their health, threat of annihilation, and imminent danger to themselves and their children, these women broke through the normative oppressive framework by becoming maj'nuna/mentally ill. Detached from the extended family and no longer caring to endorse a label that discredited what they said or did, these women overtly resisted by escaping to the family of origin and/or mental health clinic to reveal the abuse, divorce, and seek treatment. Severing all family ties, and now residing in public housing, these women felt safe to renegotiate a favorable identity and reclaim the right to live with dignity. Implications/recommendations: (1) The criminalization of battering and prosecution of batterers is not enough to deter when cultural norms sanction battering, (2) additional diagnostic categories are needed to identify the precursors of battering within the strategies of overt and covert resistance battered women adopt in collectivistic cultures such as mental and neurophysiological dysfunctions, and (3) it is necessary to transcend the individualistic model titling battered women within the false dichotomy of victimization or agency as it fails to reflect battered women's experience in collectivistic cultures and their resistant strategies to abuse in the extended family.

Silences of Memory: Liberator Sexual Assault in the East at the End of World War II

ABSTRACT Allied accounts of the liberation of Jewish survivors of Nazi camps and forced marches near the end of World War II highlight the long-awaited release of prisoners from captivity and the threat of annihilation. Missing from most accounts, however, are the voices of women whose victimization did not end with the arrival of their liberators. This article examines the phenomenon of sexual violence at liberation, specifically, assaults committed by Soviet soldiers against Jewish women survivors of Nazi camps. It posits that most accounts of camp liberation contain a memory void, that is, a space in historical narratives that obscures events or actors that are an ill fit with the dominant collective memory. This work fills this gendered memory void with the voices of Jewish women survivors and witnesses and seeks to construct a more nuanced account of liberation in the East. It draws on testimonies and memoirs which reveal that sexual violence against Jewish survivors has commonalities and differences with the mass rapes committed by the Soviet army against non-Jewish German women. The voices of Jewish women confirm that Soviet troops often viewed the fact that women had survived Nazi persecution as evidence of complicity with the Nazis, fueling a thirst for revenge. Many Jewish women became victims of sexual violence at liberation, yet they also exercised agency in protecting themselves, family, friends, and sometimes strangers. After the war, stories of women helping women to hide, escape, and survive are more central in many testimonies than those of men helping women.

History as Seen Through Postcards: A Story of the Lodz Ghetto—Total Isolation

Thesis. This study explores the role of postcards as a historical, documentary, and artistic source depicting the events of the Holocaust, focusing on postcards written or received by inhabitants of the Lodz Ghetto. 78 postcards were translated into Hebrew and on exhibition at the Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Museum in Israel. Research indicates that the postcards served as an authentic and rare source of information as well as understanding the emotions of Jews whose lives were overshadowed by the threat of annihilation. Methods. The study is a qualitative one, based on the grounded theory approach. Analysis is established on identifying and characterising recurrences in the raw material of findings, with a clear definition of the unit of analysis, to build a hierarchy of the recurrences and themes, and to construct a theoretical model that explains the reality under investigation. Researchers in this method gather information about the life patterns of their subjects as well as the organizational and social structures. Grounded theory assumes that all people who have shared life circumstances also have shared social and psychological patterns, which even if not consciously formulated or expressed grow from the shared experiences. Results and conclusion. In-depth analysis reveals the historical events from the perspective of the postcard writers, as they experienced them in the ghetto. The postcards sent to the ghetto by relatives and acquaintances reveal their writers’ hopes of reuniting with their family or their extreme despair as they cope with the loss of their family.

State Oppression and Adivasi Resistance in Mahasweta Devi’s Chotti Munda and His Arrow

The independence movement in India against the British colonizers was driven by the hopes of freedom of speech, freedom of life, and rights over the land. However, it can be argued that the fruits of independence, which India secured in 1947 after years of struggle, have not reached every corner of its multilayered society especially to the indigenous people. Mahasweta Devi in her Bangla novel Chotti Munda Ebong Tar Tir (1980), translated into English by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak as Chotti Munda and His Arrow (2003), exposes the hypocrisy of the West Bengal government that allows a systematic alienation of the subaltern tribes and the consequential threat of annihilation to their existence. This paper analyzes how the indigenous Munda community in the novel was forced to remain outside the narrative of national development and repeatedly experienced violence at the hands of the corrupt people in power. The aim of this paper is to discuss the hypocritical grand narrative of a national independence and how a national culture prompts marginalization and exclusion of the minority citizens in policy making in Mahasweta Devi’s novel. The paper also explores various forms of struggle and resistance on the part of the adivasi to achieve their freedom in the already independent India and the way Devi’s protagonist resists the repressive core by using the powerful cultural identity of the adivasi inhabiting the social periphery.

Scholarship and Introspection in the Time of War

The outbreak of war on 27 September 2020 in Artsakh/Karabagh led many scholars – especially those among us at the crossroads of Armenian, Turkish, Ottoman, Caucasian and Middle Eastern studies – towards reflection upon the legitimacy, goals, practices and ethics of scholarly research in a context of full-scale war, naked hatred and unveiled threats of annihilation. The unleashing of extreme violence that raged uninterrupted for 44 continuous days caused much distress. The war also brought hom...

Threat Asymmetry and Transition in Deterrence: Technical Assessment of India’s Ballistic Missile Defense Shield

The global change in perception following the Cold War from deterrence by punishment in the form of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) to deterrence by denial has multiplied the utility of the Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD). India’s willingness to acquire and develop the advanced BMD shield is inspired, especially by Reagan’s Star Wars and the global shift in using it as an instrument of deterrence by denial. But as the application of its offensive-defensive paradox, India is raising a multi-layer air defense system to enhance its freedom of action and to acquire impunity in carrying out what New Delhi believes as its ‘limited war’ strategy against Pakistan. However, despite having a number of air defense systems in place including the recently acquired advanced S-400 air defense system, India is unable to shield itself completely from the counter-force or counter-value strikes by Pakistan as evident by the Balakot debacle. This is not only because India lags behind in BMD technology but also because of its inability to afford a comprehensive pan-national BMD shield. Therefore, the paper argues that, India’s attempt to build a multi-layer air defense system, rather than ensuring balance of power, destabilizes it and the delicate deterrence in place. This is because the threat asymmetry allows Pakistan to develop advanced nuclear capabilities including BMD evading delivery vehicles like MIRV as the offensive firepower to communicate the threat as an effective deterrence. Resultantly, the employment of BMD in South Asia disturbs strategic parity, fractures deterrence, drags down nuclear threshold and hence raises the cost of conflict between Pakistan and India with an elevated threat of annihilation.

Specialized antiplasmodial secondary metabolites from Aspergillus niger 58, an endophytic fungus from Terminalia catappa

Ethnopharmacological relevanceTerminalia catappa L. (West Indian-Almond) is a medicinal plant used in traditional medicine for the treatment of infectious diseases. Moreover, various organic extracts prepared from this plant have been reported to exhibit antiplasmodial activity. Aim of the studyThe need for new antimalarials is still an urgency driven by the alarmingly high burden of malaria in endemic regions, with multitude of people dying annually. We have previously identified an endophytic fungus Aspergillus niger 58 harboured by T. catappa as having promising specialized secondary metabolites against the malaria parasites. In the present study, we report the antiplasmodial activity-guided chromatographic isolation of some metabolites secreted by this endophytic fungus. Materials and methodsThe SYBR Green I-based fluorescence microtiter plate assay was used to monitor the growth of Plasmodium falciparum parasites in culture in the presence and absence of inhibitors and results were validated by microscopic analysis of Giemsa-stained culture smears. Giemsa-stain microscopy was also used to study the cell cycle stage-specific action of selected fractions. ResultsThe results revealed that the multidimensional purification of the crude extract (IC50: 4.03 μg/mL) provided RPHPLC F17 (IC50: 0.09 μg/mL) and RPHPLC F18 (IC50: 0.1 μg/mL) with activity against P. falciparum 3D7 (Pf3D7) strain. Moreover, both fractions at IC99 (0.5 μg/mL) exhibited multi-stages action by targeting all the three stages of the life cycle of blood-stage Pf3D7. Two compounds, flavasperone (1) and aurasperone A (2) were isolated, of which aurasperone A exhibited good potency against Pf3D7 (IC50: 4.17 μM) and P. falciparum INDO (PfINDO) (IC50: 3.08 μM). ConclusionOur study adds credence to the notion that endophytic extracts are potential storehouses for potent specialized secondary metabolites that can be harnessed to fight the malaria parasite and reduce the burden of this disease worldwide. An endophyte that can be cultured in laboratory with ability to secrete promising metabolites of medicinal value holds the promise of conserving Nature from the threat of annihilation of flora for medicinal purposes.

Violence Reframed: Constructing Subjugated Individuals as Agents, Not Images, through Screen Narratives

Violence Reframed: Constructing Subjugated Individuals as Agents, Not Images, through Screen Narratives

L'ange du patriarche by Kettly Mars

Reviewed by: L'ange du patriarche by Kettly Mars Linda Alcott Mars, Kettly. L'ange du patriarche. Mercure de France, 2018. ISBN 978-2-7152-4695-9. Pp. 304. In this latest fictional work by one of Haiti's most prominent female authors, that country's Voodoo culture and Christianity clash in a gripping modern-day tale of spiritual warfare. In the fast-moving narrative, we are presented with a family's tortured battle with a seemingly inviolable curse put in place by a malevolent angel. This malediction, due to a sacrifice gone wrong and initiated by one of the family's shortsighted and selfish ancestors, Horacius Melfort, drives the text from beginning to end. With a wide geographical reach, Mars's depiction of the physical and personal wreckage brought on by the curse touches family members both young and old alike living in Haiti, France, and the United States. The text's principal protagonist, Emmanuela, first must evaluate her own insouciance with respect to the risks this curse may have on her and her family, as well as filter through the contemptuous opinions of her lover, Serge, the voodoo counteractions offered by her best friend, Patricia, and the biblically-based guidance espoused by her elderly cousin, Couz, whose destiny as a spiritual servant is central to the text's conclusion. Focusing primarily on the threat of incestuous relations between witting and unwitting victims, Mars paints the consequences of the curse on multiple levels with powerful depictions of encroaching and unavoidable harm. A ticking time bomb of opportunity propels the text forward, ensnaring the novel's characters into its otherworldly wake. Emmanuela's son, Alain, who suffers from nightmares and insomnia, becomes especially vulnerable when Vanika, the daughter fathered in secret by Emmanuela's now deceased husband and Alain's father, André Lenois, sets her sights on Alain as a potential lover. The curse's malevolent hand is also imposed upon twins, Samantha and Beverly Longway, whose grisly death at age 17 is orchestrated by the evil spirits that have been prowling around their home, waiting to inflict "la dette de haine" (269) on their birthday. Indeed, sinister signs of pending demise proliferate in the novel, such as mysterious burnt odors, paintings regularly askew on the walls, and a computer screen taken over by invisible forces. As a counter to the mounting threats of annihilation, Emmanuela undergoes the voodoo act of "le lavé tèt" (91) and seeks refuge and strength from the Bible, reciting portions of psalms 23, 46 and 91, repeatedly referencing them as a call for [End Page 261] help to the Archangel Michael as Couz directed: "Quand je marche dans la vallée de l'ombre de la mort, je ne crains aucun mal, car tu es avec moi... Ces mots lui viennent à l'esprit et lui donnent de la force " (150). In the end, Mars completes the narrative as she often has done in other works by offering her readers a bit of shelter from the storm. From a broad lens perspective, her text emphasizes the religious complexities in Haiti which continue to influence many of its citizens. It also points to the highly charged energy with which contemporary Haitian authors portray their country's conflictual and/or complementary spiritual leanings. Linda Alcott University of Colorado, Denver Copyright © 2019 American Association of Teachers of French

Nuclear weapons, existential threats, and the stability–instability paradox

Recent scholarship has largely ignored systematic differences in the existential threats that nuclear-weapon possessors pose to other states. This study theorizes that the capacity to pose existential threats shapes nuclear-armed states’ willingness to use military force against one another. We explore three hypotheses regarding how nuclear-based existential threats can deter conflict or encourage it, including under the conditions proposed by the stability–instability paradox. We rely on a statistical analysis of nuclear-armed dyads from 1950 to 2001 and employ the Nuclear Annihilation Threat (NAT) Index to capture variation in the existential threats nuclear-armed states pose to one another. We find that being able to pose an existential threat to another state emboldens potential initiators to use military force but does not deter attacks. The emboldening effects are particularly strong under the hypothesized conditions of the stability–instability paradox. Our study provides unique contributions to ongoing debates over the political effects of nuclear weapons.

Four-Phased Dynamic Therapy Model in Treating Trauma-Induced Dissociation

Traumatic memories are highly emotional, life-altering events that would appear to have the best chance of persisting into the entire life. In complex trauma syndrome, they are usually endless causing often dissociative phenomena—the alterations in one’s consciousness. Thus, traumatic memories may cause a constant feeling of intense fears, helplessness, loss of control, affliction of the powerlessness, and threat of annihilation. Traumatised person usually reports loss of the basic sense of self and bodily integrity. The principle of healing is empowerment of the patient’s ability to re-create the basic capacities for trust, autonomy, competence, identity, and intimacy. The dissociative PTSD subtype is characterised by overmodulation of the affects—predominance of reexperiencing and hyperarousal symptoms with “hidden” and deeply unconscious traumatic memories. Although there are many ways to conceptualise dissociation, in this article we have emphasised the trauma-induced dissociation that involves detachment from the overwhelming emotional content of the experience during and in the aftermath of trauma experience. It has been hypothesised that such experiences elicit dissociation, promoting discontinuity of one’s conscious experience and narrative memory. Four-phased patient oriented Dynamic Therapy model in treating trauma-induced dissociation targets three main goals: 1) restoration of a form of the relatedness (Interconnectivity), 2) restoration of a sense of the aliveness/vitality (Dynamism), and 3) restoration of an awareness of the self and inner events (Insight).

Missives and Other Un-Notes

Beginning his series of disorienting and theatrical vignettes with an extended introduction, Gamboa describes his childhood and young adulthood coming of age in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 70s. It is through these stories of prejudice in elementary school and of mass action against police brutality and the national government’s neglect of communities of color, Gamboa implies, that readers should approach his text. Missives and other Un-notes skewers myths of US national identity, masculinity, and whiteness, placing readers in a dystopic world of violence, surveillance, and the constant threat of annihilation.

A new perspective on Holocaust art: women’s artistic expression of the female Holocaust experience (1939–49)

ABSTRACTSince the second half of the 1970s, a corpus of studies focusing on the history of women during the Holocaust has been produced. These studies assert that even though Jewish women shared the annihilation threat with the men, Jewish women also underwent unique experiences resulting from their female physiology, their female socialization, and the National Socialist Weltanschauung directed against them. These different experiences were also expressed visually in numerous works of art made by women during the Holocaust era (1939–49). Their art is rife with images of pregnancy, motherhood, feminine crafts such as domestic chores, cooking, female solidarity and mutual assistance, loss of femininity, and sexual violence. This article focuses especially on women’s artistic expression of three of these topics: mutual assistance among women, loss of femininity, and sexual violence, all of which have received little attention in Holocaust art research.

Orphan Black and Extant

Extant: The First Season (Mickey Fisher US 2013). Paramount 2014. Region 1. 16:9 (1.78:1). US$27.00.Extant: The Second Season (Mickey Fisher USA 2014). Paramount 2015. Region 1. 16:9 (1.85:1). US$50.00Orphan Black: Season 1 (John Fawcett Canada 2013). BBC Home Entertainment 2013. Region 1. 16:9 (1.78:1). US$30.00.Orphan Black: Season 2 (John Fawcett Canada 2014). BBC Home Entertainment 2014. Region 1. 16:9 (1.78:1). US$30.00.Orphan Black: Season 3 (John Fawcett Canada 2015). BBC Home Entertainment 2015. Region 1. 16:9 (1.78:1). US$30.00.Orphan Black and Extant have arisen out of a particular set of historical and political realities, as evidenced by the composition of their casts, their characters and the themes explored in each series. Together they reflect an overlapping set of contemporary social and cultural anxieties, both those originating from within the dominant culture and those originating on its margin. They also each represent a potential for boundary transgressions which can test those cultural anxieties in alternative speculative landscapes. In Orphan Black, the ethical and moral consequences of human cloning and its impact on human identity development are explored throughout the series from the perspective of the clones, all played by the same actress, Tatiana Maslany. In Extant, artificial intelligence and human-alien hybrids confront the characters with fundamental philosophical questions about autonomy, personhood, free will and the right to life. While Orphan Black seems to have achieved a level of cultural importance in the zeitgeist that Extant never did, each show adds to current conversations about diversity and representation in visual media, whose lives and bodies matter and, by extension, whose stories are worthy of telling.Set in the present, Orphan Black is a Canadian television programme created by screenwriter Graeme Manson and director John Fawcett, which aired in the USA on BBC America for three seasons and is now slated for a fourth season beginning spring 2016. Orphan Black takes its name from the status of the main character: Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany) is a literal orphan, though her status as a genetic clone has been unknown to her throughout her life; she was living off-the-grid, hidden in black shadows, and therefore not tracked and monitored throughout her life like her clone sisters. Manning has grown up to become a small-time con artist and rebellious young mother, looking for one last score. The series begins when Manning assumes the identity of Elizabeth Childs, her doppelganger, after she witnesses Childs's suicide. Manning initiates the impersonation with a mind towards a payout that will allow Manning to start a new life with the daughter Kira Manning (Skyler Wexler) and her foster brother Felix 'Fee' Dawkins (Jordon Gavaris), whom she enlists to help her assume Childs's identity by faking her own death. But Childs turns out to be more than just a lookalike; she is actually Manning's genetic clone. Manning discovers she is in fact a living genetic experiment, one of an unspecified number of clones secretly implanted and born to various women in Europe and the United States via in vitro fertilisation beginning in 1984 as part of 'Project Leda'.Extant, which has a title that toggles with the word 'extinct', has the heightened and constant sense of an eminent annihilation threat. During the opening credits of Extant's first season, the voice over of astronaut and scientist Dr Molly Woods (Halle Berry) says, 'I went to space on a 13-month solo mission. I didn't come home alone. My husband created a life-like android called a Humanich. His name is Ethan: he's the prototype. This is a story about Earth, a story about family, a story about surviving.' Ethan (Pierce Gagnon) looks like a little boy and learns as a child does, through experiences in his environment and family - but he is not human. Now Molly has returned from space inexplicably pregnant; safety, autonomy and agency cannot be taken for granted by any of the characters, nor can the usual contours of American upper middle-class life. …

Transmitting the sum of all fears: Iranian nuclear threat salience among offspring of Holocaust survivors.

Many Israelis are preoccupied with the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, frequently associating it with the danger of annihilation that existed during the Holocaust. The current article examined whether offspring of Holocaust survivors (OHS) are especially preoccupied and sensitive to the Iranian threat, and whether this susceptibility is a part of their increased general image of actual and potential threats, defined as the hostile world scenario (HWS). Study 1 (N = 106) showed that relative to comparisons, OHS reported more preoccupation with the Iranian nuclear threat. Moreover, the positive relationship between the salience of the Iranian threat and symptoms of anxiety was stronger among OHS. Study 2 (N = 450) replicated these findings, while focusing on the Iranian nuclear threat salience and symptoms of psychological distress. It further showed that OHS reported more negative engagement with the HWS (i.e., feeling that surrounding threats decrease one's sense of competence), which in turn mediated their increased preoccupation with the Iranian threat. The results suggest that intergenerational transmission of the Holocaust trauma includes heightened preoccupation with and sensitivity to potential threats of annihilation, and that the specific preoccupation with threats of annihilation reflects a part of a more general preoccupation with surrounding threats.

Nuclear Weapons and Existential Threats: Insights from a Comparative Analysis of Nuclear-Armed States

Nuclear weapons are uniquely capable of threatening entire countries’ existences, but not all nuclear weapons possessors are equally capable of posing such threats. This article explores the existential threats that nuclear weapons possessors pose with a new, empirically based metric called the Nuclear Annihilation Threat (NAT) Index. Using the NAT Index, we comparatively analyze the existential threats and vulnerabilities that nuclear-armed states face from one another. In particular, we apply these insights to gain a better understanding of the nuclear security threats and vulnerabilities of the United States and Israel and explore the implications of Iran going nuclear for both countries.

Trwoga 10/04 w świetle badań opinii publicznej

The Fear of 10.04 in the Light of Opinion Polls
 April 10th 2010 is undoubtedly one of the most important dates in modern Polish political history. 96 high Polish officials, including President Lech Kaczynski, died in an airplane crash in Smolensk. It can be assumed that this tragedy had a great impact on political attitudes. Unfortunately, very few authors in Poland conducted empirical research on this topic. The paper addressed the issue of probable psychological consequences of Smolensk Crash on political attitudes in the light of terror management theory. On this ground it can be said that arousing of mortality awareness after April 10th should result in a widespread feeling of terror. In other words, “threat of annihilation” should occur as a consequence of recalling those who died in Smolensk in the media. One of the major mechanisms to manage such anxiety is construction and maintenance of cultural worldviews, like ideologies. It leads to the hypothesis that when threatened, people are more likely to think and act in accordance with the cultural worldviews they share. Political leaders can be seen as guards of these cultural worldviews and if it is so, then trust and support for the politicians should increase when mortality salience occurs. Some of the public opinion research conducted in the first days after Smolensk crash are used to illustrate this hypothesis.

Speaking a ‘Stammering Speech’: Tadeusz Kantor as ‘Poor’ Messenger

On the eighth of April 1978 Tadeusz Kantor was awarded the Rembrandt Prize for outstanding contributions to art. It might be expected that an artist, upon public recognition of his greatness, would have something to say concerning the essence of his art that might aid public understanding. However, Kantor's presentation of this manifesto represents a somewhat puzzling performance. Instead of thanking the international panel of the Goethe Foundation for the award, Kantor painted a strange picture of the artist ‘on trial’. The manifesto appears to end with a sort of disappearing act: Kantor stands before his audience and makes seemingly profound statements about fear and the nature of the artist; he attempts to redefine Dada for his audience and suddenly finds that he has turned himself into the accused, has become a schoolboy once again, has forgotten what he had to say and appears to fade away to the nothingness of the closing ellipsis.This discussion uses Kantor's ‘Little Manifesto’ to explore the problematic of the artist's experience in terms that parallel the concepts that Heidegger and Gadamer developed in their philosophy. It draws on certain themes from post-Heideggerian philosophy, in particular, Agamben's account of negativity in the metaphysics of presence and his radical critique of aesthetics. I will further suggest that, as well as providing a useful framework for ‘understanding Tadeusz Kantor’, such a philosophical hermeneutic framework resonates productively with Kantor's own aesthetic and metaphysical concerns in a way that more conventional frameworks based on the idea of art-as-representation do not.In his regression to childhood from the defiant stance at the beginning of the manifesto Kantor enacts a move from the status of award-winning artist to something more abject. But, paradoxically, that very state of humiliation in the return to the immaturity of childhood, and of the absence of memory, is a return to potentiality, and, this apparently humiliating regression becomes a potentially positive beginning rather than a humiliating end. As Kantor's ‘poor objects’ became a form of resistance against the threat of annihilation during the occupation, this regression to childhood and the potentiality of the informe of immaturity become a form of resistance, even though futile, against the encroachment of the final annihilation of death. It is as if by embracing the nothingness of forgetfulness as a conscious, intentional gesture, Kantor is able to suggest the potential continuation of the performance of himself.

Conradian contracts: exchange and identity in the immigrant imagination

Conradian Contracts: Exchange and Identity in the Immigrant Imagination Tamas Juhasz Lanham: Lexington, 2011. xiv + 218 pp.Themes of displacement, alienation, and feature heavily throughout the terrain of Conrad's works, and Conrad's own sense of exile as a Polish native has been well documented. In addition, many have noted that Conrad as a struggling writer experienced disappointment in low commercial sales, constantly in debt for most of his career. In Conradian Contracts: Exchange and Identity in the Immigrant Imagination, Tamas Juhasz combines these two aspects of rejection-the social and the economic-to suggest that Conrad considered economic success as an avenue towards social integration for the displaced, foreign individual, an interpretation that, Juhasz argues, manifests within Conrad's novels and short stories through varied forms of transactions, pacts, and systems that mingle the financial-commercial sphere and the personal-social sphere in an individual's problematic attempt to (re)gain a lost sense of fulfillment and unity.Relying heavily on Jacques Lacan, Juhasz considers the concept of commerce to include any relationship that encompasses sites of desire, recognition, and reciprocity, defining exchange as the substitution or replacement of one thing for another. In this way, connections between dissimilar objects (and people) can be made, connections which are also dependent on dialogue, or some type of communication, and on a metaphorical agreement of value. Juhasz believes Conrad's works display an understanding of trade and commerce as sites of desire and that his characters express a yearning to return to, in a Lacanian sense, a unified, complete self. This desire for wholeness, particularly evident in the imagination of diasporic and marginalized subjects, constitutes a narcissistic search for an ideal self that is both unattainable and illusory. According to Juhasz, the tension among the realms of the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real is expressed primarily through systems of exchange: Conrad's characters avoid the Real through engagement with cultural transactions within the Symbolic order which also is incompatible with the Imaginary because transactions are purely dualistic manifestations (32). Equipped with a broad, psychoanalytic definition of commerce and reciprocity, Juhasz includes five novels (Almayer's Folly, Under Western Eyes, Secret Agent, Lord Jim, and Nostromo) and three short stories (Typhoon, The Secret Sharer, and The Duel) in his analysis. Juhasz fully outlines his interdisciplinary approach in Chapter Two, but he begins his first chapter with an analysis of Almayer's Folly in order to portray how Conrad's first novel anticipates the motif that will become dominant in Conrad's later works. Juhasz analyzes Almayer's various failed attempts to achieve social connection and recognition, including through his quasi-incestuous relationship with daughter Nina. Contesting Thomas Moser's infamous dismissal of Almayer's Folly's romance as an uncongenial subject (qtd. in Juhasz 9), Juhasz instead views the narrative romance as an integral parallel to Almayer's trading relationships, or another version of the motif that promises personal fulfillment, of easing the pain of isolation (32), to the displaced individual in much the same way trade promises economic fulfillment. However, Juhasz contends that Almayer's withdrawal and ultimate death speaks to his inability to establish a successful system of reciprocity, attributed to Almayer's failure to adjust to a nonWestern community but also represents the fractured ties of the modern self with community. only return Almayer receives is an absolute (but unprofitable) act of return to the state of non-being (20). Juhasz's in-depth analysis of Almayer's Folly sets up thematic elements such as the threat of annihilation, broken community, subversive desires, and commodity that will reappear in subsequent chapters, and prepares readers for a comprehensive study that will bring together postcolonial, gender, and psychoanalytical-linguistic criticisms. …

"[T]hings among the ruins" : les choses contre le roc dans The Song of the Lark et

Exploring the vast expanses of the American wilderness in her fiction, Willa Cather had to find a new mode of nature-writing. Facing the threat of annihilation of discourse and "erasure of personality" in the vastness of the land, the author skilfully adjusts her language to the surface of the landscape. In The Song of the Lark (1915) and The Professor’s House (1925), Cather evokes the hostile yet mesmerizing canyons and mesas of the American Southwest. In order to face the alienating immensity of the landscape, Cather draws on the mediating power of material things and objects harboured in the cliff-dwellings. The radiating presence of sculpted jars, instruments and jewels set in the recesses of the rock reveals the possibility of a gentle insertion of man’s hand in nature. The relics of tools and pottery moulded in the earth or carved in stone by ancient potters become metascriptural emblems. Like a sculptor chiselling marble, the author fashions the raw material of language in order to create a simple and concrete prose linking the literariness of discourse and the literalness of the world. Cather’s crafted writing engages in the physical world. If material things pave the way to a gentle taming of the wilderness, the objects modelled by cliff-dwellers epitomize the homology between the writer’s and the potter’s gestures. Altering her signifiers by referring to natural substances, such as clay, sand, gems and metals, Cather succeeds in creating a harmonious and respectful dialogue between her writing and the surrounding world