Tragic Destiny Research Articles

Catastrophe Survived? The Failure of the Tragic in Moira Buffini'sWelcome to Thebes

In Moira Buffini's Welcome to Thebes (2010) Antigone fails to reach her tragic destiny, the city of Thebes fails to become an autonomous democratic state, and the audience fails to witness the splendour of the ancient heroine. In this paper I consider these three failures as interrelated and dependent upon one another, arguing, along psychoanalytic lines, that they register changing attitudes towards knowledge and the Other which ultimately determine the meaning of ‘failure’. However, in order to better appreciate the contemporary scope of failure, I draw on both Lacan and Baudrillard, highlighting convergences between the two theorists. In particular, I argue that Lacan's notion of the inconsistent Other can be supplemented by Baudrillard's notion of the impossible exchange. Further, the relevance of these notions for theatre and spectatorship is discussed in detail, as they both invite spectators to reflect on their own involvement in the scene they witness and the ontological conditions of (their own) absence and presence. Failure to do so possibly indicates an irreparable loss of the critical capacity which we have always considered central to radical thought.

Police Aesthetics: Literature, Film, and the Secret Police in Soviet Times by Cristina Vatulescu (review)

Cristina Vatulescu, Police Aesthetics: Literature, Film, and the Secret Police in Soviet Times. 247 pp. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010. ISBN13 978-080460805. $60.00. Communist regimes were obsessed with intellectuals. Enormous resources were mobilized to ensure their obedient regimentation and transformation into state artists. Lenin, who was himself a trained lawyer, held the intelligentsia in deep contempt, while trying to lure and enroll as many scientists and engineers as possible in support of Soviet power. Antonio Gramsci, in turn, described the Leninist vanguard party as a collective intellectual. Cristina Vatulescu's outstanding book focuses on the fate of the unregimented creative intelligentsia in Stalin's Russia and Stalinized Romania, the interplay between artistic creation and police supervision, coercion, and persecution. Drawing from secret police archives in Russia and Romania, this superbly researched and original book captures the tragic destinies of major artists caught at what Lionel Trilling called the bloody crossroads where politics and literature meet. thesis of the book is clearly spelled out: The secret police file emerged and acquired its overwhelming authority precisely at a time when the authority of literary texts was in deep crisis (7). book includes chapters on the nature of secret police files, their contents and their relationship to the two stages of surveillance and investigation; the invisible, often mysterious connections between the work of art, in this case Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, and the author's secret police file; the role of films and filmmakers (such as Dziga Vertov) in turning their professional output into an instrument for societal control of criminality (kino policing); cinematic representations of the Gulag done in collaboration with the secret police and the annexation of art by the voracious police-propaganda complex; and estrangement as an explanatory concept for understanding the relationship between literary theory and the secret police. In fact, as Vatulescu demonstrates, secret police files were the hidden counterpart to real biographies and genuine creations. They were constructed counternarratives inspired by the official demonology. (1) Secret police officers became co-authors of these hidden masterpieces. Isaak Babel', for instance, became a serial foreign agent of sorts, confessed to surreal charges, and was executed without a show trial. His main guilt was imprudent association with Evgeniia Ezhova and her fateful literary salon. (2) Others in the same accursed circle were not arrested, but undoubtedly they were closely watched by a myriad of enthusiastic informers. Stalin's personal literary interests and taste played a major role: this may explain why the cosmopolitan Ilya Ehrenburg (II'ia Erenburg) managed to survive, whereas others less involved with the West perished during the successive waves of terror, including the trial of the Jewish Antifascist Committee. (3) An epigraph from Vladimir Nabokov at the start of the introduction captures in a disturbingly luminous way what the author defines as zones of intersection among literature, film, and secret police in totalitarian environments: The history of Russia ... could be considered from two points of view: first, as the evolution of the police ... and second, as the development of a marvelous culture. Vatulescu develops provocative hypotheses regarding Soviet culture under Stalinism, including the role of the visual arts in constructing legitimizing discourses for the concentration camps. In other words, in some cases, before becoming zeks, some intellectuals were willing to endorse the Gulag through their work. (4) By placing the Romanian experience under scrutiny and exploring the cases of remarkable figures such as Constantin Noica and N. Steinhardt (both major thinkers arrested and jailed, both continuously watched by the Securitate), this book makes a major contribution to the comparative analysis of intellectual survival under communism. …

Re-thinking the Haitian Other in Relation as prochain : A Reading of Édouard Glissant and Lyonel Trouillot

Re-thinking the Haitian Other in Relation as prochain:A Reading of Édouard Glissant and Lyonel Trouillot Julia Borst “Rares, les États ayant cultivé le long de leur histoire une telle somme de déshonneurs” (Rare are the states that have cultivated in their history such an abundance of dishonor).1 With this ironic statement Haitian writer Lyonel Trouillot criticizes the long tradition of neverending prejudices and sterotypes about Haiti. In Western discourse the country is still frequently represented as the “barbaric” antipole of modernity, condemned to an endless story of chaos and violence. From this notion arises the perpetuity of a (neo)colonial construction of the Haitian Other in strict opposition to a Western identity, a construction that has left its mark on Haiti’s reputation in the global opinion until the present.2 Lyonel Trouillot and other Haitian intellectuals have vehemently criticized this vision of Haiti based on stereotypes and binaries because it results in a distorted view of the country that largely ignores the complexity of both the Haitian past and its present. Therefore, Trouillot envisions transcending such binary thinking in order to assign Haiti a new place in the global public perception. And this can be achieved by re-thinking the Haitian Other as “prochain” (a concept related to “fellow human” but enveloping an ethical component) (cf. EH 14). This paper explores Lyonel Trouillot’s idea of the “prochain” as an innovative vision of the Other, using Éduard Glissant’s Poétique de la Relation (Poetics of Relation),3 which permits the recognition of the Other as entangled in a network of identité-relation (relation identity) in an (ethical) relation to the Self (cf. PR 158, 169). Furthermore, based on a decolonial critique of the discourse of Western modernity, this paper will analyze to what extent the current vision of Haiti is based on a dichotomy of Western identity and Haitian alterity that imagines the country as the “uncivilized Other” and as such dominates the global perception of this Caribbean nation. Subsequently, this paper examines how Édouard Glissant transcends binary constructions of identity and alterity in his Poétique de la Relation and asks us to envision the Other “in relation” to ourselves. Finally, Glissant’s [End Page 139] idea of the Other “in relation” will be linked to Trouillot’s request to inscribe Haiti as “prochain” into global knowledge; thus enabling us to think of the difference of the Other in relation to our own identity. Haiti as an “Uncivilized Alterity”? Stereotyping and Coloniality of Power Beverly Bell depicts the popularity of a distorted vision of Haiti as a hopeless case: “The nation is often characterized, overtly or through inference, as a troubled, Godforsaken place, where troubling, Godforsaken things happen.”4 Such a bias stems from colonial times and the allegedly “unthinkable” event of the Haitian Revolution, which according to Michel-Rolph Trouillot defied Western categories of thinking of the time.5 Such a stereotypically affected perception of Haitian history has for the most part persisted until the present. It has become manifest in the country’s reputation as a “place of violence” and in the consideration of its history as a “neverending story of carnage and brutality.”6 This view then became evident again following the earthquake of 2010, when in a “plethora of ill-informed speculation,”7 the topoi of the “cliché d’une Haïti maudite” (cliché of a cursed Haiti)8 and its “unending tragic destiny”9 joined in the tradition of the global North’s stereotypical and prejudiced discourse about Haiti: The news that emerged in the first few days after the earthquake salivated over ‘looters’ and ‘criminals’ set loose on a post-apocalyptic wasteland. This is the same story that has always been told about Haiti, … since the slaves had the temerity to not want to be slaves anymore.10 However, the persistence of such a discourse, which still imagines Haiti in terms of “unthinkability” and “malediction,” fails to recognize the complexity and multifacetedness of the country’s past and present-day situation. The discourse therefore seems to downright refuse to believe in ways out of the violence. In analogy to the event of the Haitian Revolution during the...

Filles d’albums, les représentations du féminin dans l’album (review)

Reviewed by: Filles d’albums, les représentations du féminin dans l’album Christa Delahaye (bio) Filles d’albums, les représentations du féminin dans l’album [Girls in Picture Books: Representations of Girls and Women in Picture Books]. Nelly Chabrol-Gagne. Le-Puy-en-Velay: L’Atelier du poisson soluble, 2011. 240 pages. Nelly Chabrol-Gagne’s long anticipated book on the issue of gender in picture books uses a corpus of 250 books published between 1990 and 2009. The works were selected from the annual selections of La Revue des livres pour enfants [The Journal of Children’s Books]. Chabrol-Gagne paints a picture of women’s issues and their representation, which demonstrates that, despite the seemingly sophisticated artistic attire, picture books have a hard time modernizing girls. Chabrol-Gagne organizes her subject chronologically. The first chapter deals with New-borns. At birth, girls and boys are uniformly designated “infants.” In many of the picture books she examined, she found that the baby does not actually become a girl or a boy until it is a few years old. This first deceptive assessment suggests that initiatives to counter the stereotype of the asexual baby are nonexistent, even among the most enlightened publishers. The following chapter is dedicated to «les fillettes» [“little girls”]. The study focuses on works produced by the publishing house Talents hauts, which claim to address gender issues, but the results do not appear to match the statements of intent. An unexpected revaluation of Martine à la foire [Martine at the Fair] (1958) is to be noted; it shows the little girl driving a scooter on a merry-go-round, while the boy is relegated to the back seat. [End Page 114] “Young girls in high heels” are the subject of the third chapter. The girl has grown up; she is not “little” anymore. The girls who are “engaged in a maturing process” appear only in a few picture books (67). Which heroines, asks Chabrol-Gagne, can join the lineage of Antigone, of Juliette, these two figures of young girls willing to die rather than give in to archaic laws imposed on them, or Agnès with a less tragic destiny? It is to be noted that finding rebel heroines or great women lovers in picture books is very difficult. The risk of contesting the adults’ power is too high. As we move further ahead in the ages of female life, we reach the “mothers.” They are expansive in the corpus studied: “The mother is the real heroine in picture books”, states Chabrol-Gagne in an article published on the Ricochet website. The fourth chapter starts with a presentation of works centered on Adam and Eve with a special mention of La Famille Adam [The Adam Family] by Michel Tournier (2003). Chabrol-Gagne then shows that the portrait of the mother is still too often a copy of role models from the nineteenth century—like the model of Mère Barberin [Mother Barberin], the adoptive mother of Rémi in Sans famille [Without a Family] by Hector Malot: a loving and reassuring woman who is always present. In fact, as in Une vraie Maman [A Real Mother] (2008), the mother in picture books “has 18 pairs of arms and legs” (99). Very few imperfect mothers emerge. The fifth chapter begins by exclaiming, “After Mom, long live Grandma!” The grandmothers are either young and beautiful, or are “cake” grandmothers: cooks, gardeners and guardians of their grandchildren. The image of old age is typically outdated in the visual images. It is sometimes easier for picture book creators to stage a “physically beat” man rather than a woman (Michael Rosen and Quentin Blake, Quand je suis triste [Sad Book], 2005). While Chabrol-Gagne emphasizes the existence of picture books depicting the self-managed, solidarity-based and public-spirited “Babayagas” initiatives,1 she regrets the absence of grandmothers in love, of lesbian and sexy grannies, or of women who live only for themselves (Sonja Bougaeva, Deux Sœurs reçoivent de la visite [Two Sisters Receive a Visit], 2007). The final chapter is dedicated to the “forgotten” and the “survivors,” to girls who appear in the corpus as if...

Hegel et la tragédie grecque (review)

Reviewed by: Hegel et la tragédie grecque Henry Southgate Martin Thibodeau. Hegel et la tragédie grecque. Aesthetica. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2011. Pp. 240. Paper, €16. Despite Hegel’s infamous contention that art is a “thing of the past,” a way station on the road to absolute idealism, in this book Martin Thibodeau attempts to show how Hegel’s reflections on Greek tragedy not only develop in tandem with his philosophical system, but also contribute to its development. This ambitious interpretive goal is motivated in part by Thibodeau’s concern to exhibit the abiding philosophical relevance of key Hegelian concepts to the resolution of the “acute and profound crisis that affects the modern Western world” (29). This crisis—now well into its third century—is none other than man’s alienation from himself, society, and political institutions. And its resolution, schematically at least, lies in the proper relation of concepts—e.g. universal and particular, identity and difference, necessity and contingency—that are made manifest in the tragic personages of Orestes, Oedipus, and Antigone. Hegel’s developing apprehension of these concepts via his study of Greek tragedy is the core subject matter of Thibodeau’s study. That development follows a trajectory familiar to scholars: in his youth, Hegel, like his co-seminarians Hölderlin and Schelling, found in the Greek polis a “model” society and an accord between mortals and gods, which stood in stark contrast to the godless, divided world of late eighteenth-century Europe (119; cf. 126–27). By the writing of the Phenomenology of Spirit (1806/7), however, this notion had lost its hold on Hegel. He came to realize not only that we moderns could not be Greeks, but that the Greeks themselves could not be either—they could not live as a “beautiful totality” (119) because the tensions inherent between their secular and religious norms made stable and harmonious social relations impossible. That, for the mature Hegel, is what Antigone paradigmatically reveals. For all that, Hegel’s esteem for Greek society remains a constant throughout his thought, and Thibodeau succeeds in showing this, albeit in spite of himself. Through his study of Hegel’s early works, The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate and The Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Law—to which the first and chapters of his book are devoted, respectively—Thibodeau lucidly presents how Hegel found in Greek tragedy a depiction of a world in which individuals felt themselves to be at one with nature, their fellow men, and the gods because they took themselves to be first of all determined by that network of relations; i.e. they saw themselves as parts of an organic whole. Now this ideal of unity with the whole is one that Hegel certainly never abandons, even if, as Thibodeau rightly observes, he comes to believe that modernity’s problems must be solved in terms of the post-Kantian conception of the individual as autonomous subject that is modernity’s “very principle” (119; cf. 126–27). The task, for Hegel, from his early days on, is to show that such individualism is compatible with an ideal of social holism, because the individual is, in the final analysis, always already [End Page 301] conditioned, but not determined, by the whole set of normative and material relations given in society. This idea—that there can be holism without a thoroughgoing determination of the individual because the individual preserves himself in the face of the universal whole that he reciprocally determines—is what is missing from the Greek conception of “ethical life,” where the individual, and, emblematically, the tragic hero, is “above all a character, a pathos determined by the law to which he naturally belongs” (169). Regrettably, this idea is also somewhat missing from Thibodeau’s presentation, as his recurring treatment of Hegel’s discussion of the paired concepts of tragic destiny and guilt makes clear. The holistic outlook of Greek society is accompanied by a wider and more severe conception of responsibility or guilt (Schuld), of which the tragic fate marks the most shocking instance. The conception is that, because all of life constitutes a unity, any assault on life, any transgression—even unintentional...

The Glory on the Mountain: The Episode of the Transfiguration of Jesus

The starting point of the transfiguration of Jesus is the choice of Jesus himself. He had announced a destiny of suffering and death and, then, was faced with rejection of his words by his disciples, especially Peter. Now, they must know by themselves what ‘God's views’ are. The fundamental issue is whether Jesus' announcement really corresponds to the divine will. The answer will come from heaven: the disciples will be the privileged witnesses of the transfiguration granted to Jesus. He will appear as a heavenly figure, flanked by Moses and Elijah and thus preceding them. Peter would like to honour the three figures and prolong the wonderful vision making three dwelling-places, which recall the heavenly dwellings. But he does not realize that Jesus had announced a tragic destiny that falls within God's design. So, God has to speak. After the cloud will cover the three heavenly figures, the divine voice will address the disciples making it clear to them who Jesus is (God's Son) and what they must do (listen to Jesus, namely, accept his announcement of suffering and death).

Post-Communist Lavender Menace: Lesbians in Mainstream East European Film

The article examines four films—Károly Makk's Egymásra nézve (Another Way, Hungary, 1982), Maja Weiss's Varuh meje (Guardian of the Frontier, Slovenia 2002), Dalibor Matanić's Fine mrtve djevojke (Fine Dead Girls, Croatia, 2002), and Dragan Marinković's Diši duboko (Take a Deep Breath, Serbia, 2004)—as post-communist or dissident national allegories. In all of these films by straight directors the lesbians represent a metaphorical threat to the hetero/sexist national order, but they are unfortunately little more than simulacra. They can be emotionally real (and fun for the straight male audience to ogle), but that ultimately works against them, because instead of representing real lesbian communities, they still have to affirm the stereotype of tragic lesbian destiny straight audiences find comforting.

New Historical Space in Anne Hébert's Le Premier jardin

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. “There are times when the surplus of memory finally makes one believe in the end of things, drying up hope instead of generating it, and weakening the individual and collective capacity to project oneself into the future. To some extent, this is the situation now in Québec. It is wrong to think that people in general, young people in particular—I am talking here about Québeckers of French--Canadian heritage—are ignorant of their history. On the contrary, they know it quite well, in the sense that they have grasped the central principle and the main framework of one narrative of Québec and Québeckers, namely the one of a people with a tragic destiny, a people that was for a long time backward, oppressed by the clergy and by the English, and that has succeeded in part in averting the terrible fate looming over it by re-founding itself through the Quiet Revolution, a great collective move forward.”

A Hero’s Tragic Destiny Meets Ordinary Psychology

Location: Format Availablability: Format Covered: Publication Type: Document Type: Release Date: Correction Date: Digital Object Identifier: PsycINFO AN: Accession Number: Number of Citations in Source: Cover Image(s): Record: 1 A hero’s tragic destiny meets ordinary psychology. Krueger, Joachim I. Rummel, Jan PsycCRITIQUES, Vol 54(20), 2009. US: American Psychological Association Singer, Bryan (Dir) (2008). Valkyrie 1554-0138 (Electronic) English Operation Valkyrie; Hitler; assassination attempts; Nazi Germany Reviews the film, Valkyrie by Bryan Singer (2008). Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was a hero of the 20th century. Long misunderstood and denigrated in his own country and barely known outside of Germany, he fulfilled his destiny on July 20, 1944, when he blew up Hitler’s barracks but failed to kill the man himself. Shortly after midnight the next day, he was condemned by a kangaroo court-martial and shot. Operation Valkyrie was a sophisticated contingency plan the Wehrmacht had set up at the beginning of World War II to restore order in case of a breakdown of government and administration. When Stauffenberg arrived in Berlin, he and his conspirators redesigned Valkyrie; in their hands, a mechanism meant to preserve existing executive power became an instrument for a coup d’etat. Now, Valkyrie’s purpose became the installment of a military– civilian administration that could immediately negotiate with the allies and sue for peace. Stauffenberg and his closest ally, Henning von Tresckow, hoped to end the slaughter and rescue what was left of the nation’s dignity. Yet, they were aware of the possibility that their attempt would amount to only a defiant if noble gesture. Even assuming failure, they must have hoped that their story would be told and lessons about human strength and courage be learned. Clinical and personality psychologists will be interested in Stauffenberg’s motives and the content of his character. Social psychologists will try to see Stauffenberg in context and ask how the situation drove his actions. There have been other films about Stauffenberg and the events of July 20, 1944, but few had a lasting impact. Valkyrie is another opportunity to bring Stauffenberg’s story to the public’s attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) *Fascism; *Government; *Political Assassination; *War Social Processes & Social Issues (2900) Human (10) Male (30) Germany Electronic Electronic Electronic Collection Review-Media 20090518 20091102 10.1037/a0015405 2009-03935-001 psq-2008-7353-1-2 10 Page 1 of 4 EBSCOhost

On Experimental Criticism: Cognition, Evolution, and Literary Theory

On Experimental Criticism:Cognition, Evolution, and Literary Theory Laurent Dubreuil (bio) Brian Boyd . On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2009. Creating a dialogue of some sort between "the sciences" and "the humanities" is not exactly a new project, but in recent years, it has once again become the talk of the (college) town. If reasons for this renewed concern are too numerous and heterogeneous to be listed exhaustively, I would nevertheless like to quote three main motivations: the durable success of a techno-scientific model of knowledge and intellectual organization, prompting some "humanists" to reform themselves; the considerable findings coming from the brain sciences and experimental psychology, allowing a precise description of "mental life" in much more positive terms; and, among scholars in literature, philosophy, or the social sciences, especially younger ones, a widely shared desire to bypass relativism or radical differentialism, the scientific element being perceived as possibly providing more assured "truths." The need for "dialogue" might be widespread, but it remains a relatively fuzzy, or plastic, entity. In fact, it is as vague as the ritual description of "the two cultures." But, as is the case with C. P. Snow's category,1 this half-baked slogan has some effective consequences—since approximate definitions or sheer misunderstandings are always apt to be operative nevertheless. The present article is by no means an attempt to discourage scholars from thinking and elaborating beyond the usual divisions of knowledge. However, if we want to connect, say, some aspect of biology with a part of literary studies, we ought to refrain from accepting theoretical clichés such as "the two cultures," or the suddenly triumphant new era of "consilience." What follows is a reflection on the forces and limits of the disciplines, as well as a general theory of interdisciplinarity and polymathy.2 Furthermore, we must examine what both the sciences and the humanities could bring to the debate, without preemptively ensuring the success of one "camp" over the other. The facticity and the inner plurality of each "culture" have to be acknowledged, even by those who believe in [End Page 3] Snow's simplifications. As for "the unity of knowledge" that Edward Wilson and others are promising to a growing crowd of adepts, let me just say that I have my doubts.3 After all, even the Enlightenment's encyclopedism was nothing more than a discontinuous juxtaposition (alphabetically organized in Diderot and d'Alembert's collective project). What we could dream of is, at best, a mosaic knowledge, where a big picture would be seen both as a whole and as a composite collection of discrete pieces. At any rate, for the time being, the contemporary proponents of consilience, or of the mythical bridge between cultures, are above all interested in more local intersections. This is certainly true of cognitive studies, experimental philosophy, or Darwinian literary criticism. The latter (emerging) specialty will be the focal point of the present article. My primary aim is to point out both the relative success and the critical pitfalls of this endeavor. Such a failure is not the inevitable result of an "inappropriate" encounter between two separate logics (as a certain institutional conservatism would argue); I rather believe it to be the direct consequence of a naïve understanding of the sciences, coupled with a lack of the critical self-theorization that has been the hallmark of disciplines such as philology, historiography, literary studies, or philosophy. In other words, what we have now in the guise of a grandiose "evolutionary paradigm for literary study" is mainly a downsizing of scholarly objectives and practices to bolster an opportunistic academic strategy, bearing few "discoveries." 4 This situation, while regrettable, does not represent the tragic destiny of all interdisciplinary endeavors. Many interrelations between literary criticism, neuroscience, and biology are possible, as long as the enterprise is sufficiently thought through, and if we avoid some "metaphysical" preconceptions about the unity of the human mind.5 From there, a better articulation of some scientific fields with some discursive disciplines would be a welcome addition to our body of knowledge, and may even be a very appealing path, so I will end with a few...

Sudbina žene u kontekstu društva i dviju kultura (Ivo Andrić, "Mara milosnica")

U radu se raspravlja o statusu i sudbini žene u društvu koje se nalazi na križištu dviju velikih civilizacija (Istoka i Zapada) odnosno dviju religija [islama i kršćanstva (katoličanstva)]. Rad se usredotočuje na djelo Ive Andrića, "Mara milosnica", i nesretnu sudbinu istoimene junakinje. Sudbina mlade djevojke analizirana je kroz tri parametra: ja i drugi; svoje i tuđe te identitet i razlika koje pronalazimo u Kovača(2001). Analizirajući sudbinu mlade žene prema tim parametrima dolazi se do zaključka da se iz neprevladanih razlika, koje postoje između dviju kultura, javlja nerazumijevanje i prijezir spram svega što ne pripada vlastitoj kulturi ili je različito od nje.

Witch or demon? Fairies, vampires, and nightmares in Early Modern Spain

Any scholar devoted to the study of the witch figure in Early Modern Spain will soon realize that the Iberian bruja is a peculiar character in European folklore. The Spanish bruja was a malevolent agent specialized, almost exclusively, in the murder of newborn babies. Her infanticide compulsion was associated with vampirism. She possessed the extraordinary capacity to enter rooms through the smallest chinks in doors or walls. She had amazing metamorphic powers. When she attacked the sleeping adults, she threw herself upon them, crushing them with her weight. On occasions, she was considered the victim of a tragic destiny from which it was impossible to escape. Some specific behavior, such as drinking the wine kept in cellars or washing clothes at the side of rivers, was also attributed to her. In these traits, the specialist in Mediterranean folklore and comparative mythology inmediately discovers the basic characteristics of a series of clearly identified mythical figures: the child-killing demon, the va...

Jacques, frère du Seigneur, dans les écrits gnostiques

The tradition about James, the brother of the Lord, was known to the Gnostics, and they made use of it in order to legitimate their own practices and teachings in their constant polemics against the Great Church. The theme of the brotherhood between James and Jesus, normally employed within the ecclesiastic tradition in order to emphasize the differences between the two, is used by the Gnostics in order to emphasize their similarity: the two share the same origin, nature, mission and in the end the same tragic destiny. All of this results in a perfect assimilation of James to the Saviour. However, James belongs to the circle of Jesus’ family, and not to that of his disciples or the Twelve. This circumstance makes it possible for the Gnostics to exploit the persona of James in their polemics against the Great Church, which is represented by Peter. James becomes an important link in the esoteric chain of tradition of the Gnostic teachings and helps to guarantee its authenticity. The presence of Peter by James’ side as a recipient of the special revelations transmitted by the risen Saviour in EpIacApoc is not at all a sign of respect and deference due to the chief of the Twelve; rather it emphasizes his inferiority in comparison to James. His astonishment and incredulity before the paradoxical revelations of the Saviour demonstrate the inability of the Great Church, which he represents in his person, to understand the deep meaning of the teachings of the Lord.

Das dritte Leben des Viktor Agartz

In the context of an increasing catching up of the history of German left socialism in the 1950s Viktor Agartz is also rediscovered. Agartz was the most important economic politician of the Westgerman Workers Movement in the first decade after war and fascism, beside of Kurt Schuhmacher and Hans Bockler. He was the longstanding head of the institute of scientific economy (WWI) of the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB) and is regarded as the embodiment of the tradeunion radicalism. Climax as much as turning point of his career was the programmatic speech on the Frankfurt congress of the DGB in October 1954, which made him a person on whom popular hopes are pinnend. This was isolating him inside the leadership of the tradeunion movement and caused his retirement. But in contrast of the historical narratives, he wasn’t a political dead man after that. With his dismissal from the WWI at the end of 1955 and the foundation of the biweekly journal “WISO. Korrespondenz fur Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften” at the beginning of 1956 the “third life” of Viktor Agartz began. Christoph Junke portraits these last ten years and shows Agartz as a mentor of the first New Left, which raised in the years 1954/55 and collapsed at the end of the 1950s. He explores the biographical and contemporary context of that episode and clarifies the tragic destiny of the most distinguished left socialist before “1968” – a man who was made “persona non grata”.

The King and Us: Spectacle and Biography in Thai Epic Dramas

A large proportion of Thai films and of traditional and modern dramas are based on significant figures whose lives helped shape the trajectory of Thai history, but who are in the end overwhelmed by events. Some works are produced with obvious propaganda intent, reflecting the efforts of cultural reconstruction and historical reinterpretation. This paper suggests that the plays under discussion follow an epic and episodic form, depicting the full scope of the protagonist's life rather than focusing on a single dramatic event or examining a tragic destiny. This structure resembles the paradigmatic epic underwriting Thai royalty, the Ramakien, even while the role and nature of the king is being newly exemplified in annual spectacles.

De la maltraitance à la honte : vers une clinique psychopathologique du lien

Starting from a clinical situation where ill-treatment, abandonment and expatriation are combined like tragic destiny of a young girl whose meetings, by one of the two clinicians, fell under faintness. The authors after seeing tried to analyze the situation on the side of its tranferential dead ends and after having located the devastation which on listening a subject attacked by a permanent feeling of shame can produce, requested the conceptual and metapsychologic resources thereafter in order to clarify the problems of shame in the transfer.

On maltraite un enfant… De l'abject à la honte

Starting from a clinical situation where ill-treatment, abandonment and expatriation are combined like tragic destiny of a young girl whose meetings, by one of the two clinicians, fell under faintness. The authors after seeing tried to analyze the situation on the side of its tranferential dead ends and after having located the devastation which on listening a subject attacked by a permanent feeling of shame can produce, requested the conceptual and metapsychologic resources thereafter in order to clarify the problems of shame in the transfer.

Les novel·les morisques de Rafael Escobar

Though the Moriscs lived together with the Christians for more than fivehundred years, they are seldom taken into consideration by the modern Catalan literature. Only with the appearance of the so-called Valencian boom of the novel in the seventies comes a repeated treatment of Morisc matters in Catalan literature, especially in the territories where they had once settled – València and the valley of the Ebre. In the tragic destiny of the Moriscs, which ends in exile and in the destruction of their culture and language by the Christians, one sees the situation of the Catalan nation as reflected in a mirror, especially in the Valencian Country. This is shown in all detail in two novels by Rafael Escobar. Keywords: Catalan literature, novel, Land of València, Morisc history, Moors and Christians , exile, Rafael Escobar.

Martyrologe d'un genre nouveau: Le Denouement d' Escal-Vigor de Georges Eekhoud

Published in 1899, Escal-Vigor by Belgian author Georges Eekhoud offers an original portrayal of homosexuality at the turn of the century. Preceding Gide, Eekhoud writes a novel entirely devoted to a love story between two men. Interestingly, their tragic destiny is counterbalanced by a formidable enthusiasm inscribed in a final message of hope and faith. Homosexuality is characterized as an "absolute religion," and, in his novel, Eekhoud clearly aims to convert and reform his readers. This unusual and controversial vision of homosexuality is unambiguously articulated in the novel's denouement, when Henry de Kehlmark and his lover Guidon Govaertz are sacrificed by the inhabitants of the island where they had sought refuge. This ending, mirroring the common association in Western cultures between ideal love and death, makes use metaphorically of the legendary figures of Orpheus, Saint Sebastian, and Saint Blandina to instill the revelation of a new religion. The homosexual martyrs are equated with Christlike figures, whose wounded flesh becomes an object of adoration and, ultimately, reformation. Haunted by the necessity to legitimate his sexual orientation, Eekhoud offers in Escal-Vigor an interesting alternative to the moral condemnation of homosexuals in Christian societies, exemplifying a dual tendency between romantic idealism and the awakening of a political consciousness. (In French) (pc)

Professor Michailo Lozinsky – Author of the First Ukrainian Textbook on International Law: Tragic Destiny

Professor Michailo Lozinsky – Author of the First Ukrainian Textbook on International Law: Tragic Destiny