Troubled Times Research Articles

Intimacy in a violent context: photographs from Mbouda (Cameroon) in a time of troubles

AbstractAll archives have silences, which may come to resonate, even if they may never speak. What is unsaid or unsayable may be understood and appreciated even if never enunciated and never heard. The photographs of the Cameroonian photographer Jacques Toussele from 1960 to 1980 were taken against a background of violence: the uprising of the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC), which started before Cameroonian independence and continued for the next decade. The fight against UPC ‘terrorists’ by the Cameroonian state and the French military was marked by violence on all sides. There is no evidence of this in the Toussele archive, which consists of administrative ID portraits and recreational shots depicting friends and family and various displays of intimacy. The Toussele photographic archive shows young people in Mbouda exhibiting the global tropes of modernity. Soon after independence in Ouest Cameroon, both the violence and the promises of 1960s modernity were challenges to traditional sociality. A local reading makes it clear that the violence was ever present in its absence and denial: to perform an event was no small achievement and, like the birth of a child, was to be celebrated and marked by photography. Intimacy was achieved against a background of violence and celebrated for this very reason.

God as a House Spirit in Joseph Brodsky’s Poem “God Does Not Live in Village Corners...”

The article proposes an interpretation of the well-known, but rarely analyzed elegy by I. Brodsky, “In the village, God does not live in corners...” (1964). While traditional analyses of Brodsky’s text focus on its “dark places,” “difficulties,” and “inconsistencies,” and note its “eclecticism of worldview,” the authors suggest a different perspective — the need to view the text as the realization of a verbal metaphor, which allows us to abandon notions of “secret writing” and “encryption” in the text. This approach removes critics’ claims regarding the “chaotic” and “overloaded” nature of the verse, and instead demonstrates the coherence and clarity of the lyrical subject’s reflections. According to Brodsky, in villages, God lives in the hearts of ordinary people, participating in all the most mundane events of life (construction, plowing, cooking, weddings, etc.), sharing their joy, helping them in times of trouble, and comforting them in grief. Brodsky creates a unique image not of the canonized biblical God, but of a “folk” house spirit, a host God, a friendly and companionable God who accompanies the Russian person in all their endeavors. It is argued that the poem “In the village, God does not live in corners...” was not an attempt at “seeking God,” but rather an awareness of a “sense of community” with the common people and an understanding of important “foundations of life” for the young poet.

Health packages and affective infrastructures: promises of (Im)mobility in pandemic times

ABSTRACT In spring 2020, during the peak of the first wave of the coronavirus outbreak across Europe, special COVID-19 health packages started to reach tens of thousands of overseas Chinese students. Ordered and distributed by Chinese Consulates and affiliated student and scholar associations, these health packages were delivered with a special message attached – “the homeland is always by your side”. Meanwhile, Chinese students found themselves stranded in various pandemic hotspots due to prolonged national lockdowns mandated by China’s stringent zero-Covid policies and persistent international travel restrictions. How did Chinese students continue to celebrate a sense of being cared for by the state when millions were forcibly stopped by heightened infrastructural barriers and denied the possibility of returning home? Focusing on Covid health packages, this paper explores the many layers of infrastructural processes at play – logistical, socio-cultural, technological, and emotional. Affective attachments are activated as patchwork remedies for halted physical infrastructures, serving to align and redirect individual hope while normalising rejections, failures, and neglect. Covid health packages offer insight into how nationalist affect is made infrastructural to stabilize and uphold a tightly controlled (im)mobility regime during troubled times. Overseas students are drawn towards specific Chinese attachments infused with state promises of provision and care, with which many find special meanings in their own immobility and prolonged isolation.

ELIS REGINA'S TRAJECTORY IN BRAZILIAN MUSIC

Elis Regina had a very short and very productive career, being considered today, more than 35 years after her death, one of the greatest Brazilian singers. He lived in a troubled time for artists, of military dictatorship, in which it was very difficult to position himself and to continue his work, in an impartial way. Owner of a strong personality, she was remarkable as a defender of the artistic class and women's rights. His trajectory in Brazilian music is the object of this article that addresses both his technical and scenic development and his maturity from the point of view of behavior and relationship with the media and politics.

An Anguillid lens: how Eels reconnect people and waterways

The population decline of American Eels (Anguilla rostrata) in North America represents multiple crises: ecosystem destruction, industrial impact, forced relocation, cultural disenfranchisement, water degradation, and biodiversity loss. Once a key component of Indigenous societies, trade routes, economies, and ceremonial cycles, today Eels experience migration barriers and habitat degradation stemming from waterway abuse and land use alteration. The development of agricultural and industrial social norms has led to dramatic reductions in Eel populations across North America. Fishery agencies familiar with Eel life cycles often list species as depleted, and disappearance of Eels is well-accepted in all sectors. Related species of Anguillid Eels are in decline globally. Yet, in some areas, American Eels continue to migrate, grow, and even thrive. This article proposes Eel continuity as powerful survivorship in troubled times, a counter-narrative to overwhelming stories of environmental pessimism. Although Eels are often discredited, reviled, and disrespected by Americans and Canadians alike, their contributions to marine and aquatic zones are underestimated and poorly understood. This article employs a reflexive method of dialogue and commentary from two Eel advocates with interdisciplinary training and backgrounds, who envision relational, wisdom-based practices that meaningfully integrate Indigenous, community, academic, and other forms of knowledge about Eels and about water.

ОБРАЗНИЙ КОМПОНЕНТ КОНЦЕПТУ «ALGARROBO» В АРГЕНТИНСЬКОМУ ФОЛЬКЛОРІ

The concept of algarrobo in Argentine folklore is a mental structure that reflects an understanding of reality. It affects the way in which the surrounding world is perceived and facilitates interaction with this surrounding world. The article clarifies the role of the figurative component of the concept of algarrobo in the formation of the linguistic picture of the world of Argentines through folklore, studies the interpretations through which this influence takes place, investigates how language and the concept of algarrobo interact and are interconnected. In the cognitive space of every country there are plants which are symbols of the homeland. They symbolize her beauty, serve as talismans in times of trouble, protect, give health, strength and inspiration, comfort during being in other lands. Such is the carob tree (algarrobo) in Argentine folklore. The algarrobo concept occupies a prominent place in the Argentine cognitive-linguistic picture of the world, because it is a universal national and spiritual cognitive unit. The use of the algarrobo concept gives the discourse a certain cognitive coloring, namely, it conveys such images as: homesickness, a symbol of the native area, "my home", "my yard", "my little homeland", "my area where these trees grow", definition of national identification. As a symbol of the native place, algarrobo evokes images of happiness, joy, satisfaction, inner warmth. In addition, algarrobo is a sign of certain events in the homeland. Also, in the language picture of the world of Argentine folklore, the algarrobo concept has inherent anthropomorphic features. "A tree is a person." A tree can feel everything that a person feels, make human movements. The use of age-related epithets añoso, añejo, viejo indicates that the image of the algarrobo concept has a stable symbolic counterpart: associatively with a person, one can talk about old age, wisdom, experience and memory.

Voices of Women Public Healthcare Workers amidst the Armed Conflict in Southern Philippines

Healthcare workers face hazards and risks that are inherent in their job. However, the most tragic and perilous encounter for these professionals in the Southern Philippines occurred when Maute-ISIS insurgents took over the Islamic City of Marawi in the Province of Lanao del Sur. Methods:This study delves into the experiences of women public healthcare workers at the time of human-induced conflict using a qualitative phenomenological research design. Results:Data revealed that they experienced fear, anxiety, flashbacks, and trauma, though they were accustomed to hearing gunshots, as claimed. Furthermore, they have exhausted all means to survive, helped one another, and served their constituents despite being in a terrible situation.Conclusion:Disturbances can be seen on the physical, emotional, and mental levels as typical reactions to an unwelcome and terrifying situation. Camaraderie among Muslims and Christians became evident in times of trouble, suchasthearmedconflict.Inaddition,therespondentsdemonstratedtheirzealtoserve, notwithstanding the perilous situation. Setting up institutional policies on disaster preparedness for human-induced crises is beneficial for sound crisis management.

СИМВОЛИЗМ И УГОЛОВНОЕ ПРАВО XVI–XVII ВЕКОВ В МОСКОВСКОМ ГОСУДАРСТВЕ

the article considers the process of symbolism development in the criminal law of the Moscow state of XVI–XVII centuries. In its development it passes two stages. At the first stage, covering the time from Ivan IV to the end of the Time of Troubles, symbolism had supra-legal character. The first most widespread use of supra-legal symbolism was during the Oprichnina. During this period, Ivan IV abandoned the traditional dogmas of orthodoxy, according to which the monarch had the right to torture the body, but not the soul. Moreover, he was obliged to take care of the legality of the transition to the afterlife. Mass executions with the use of drowning, mauling by animals and hanging without observing funeral rites became an opportunity for the tzar not only to intimidate his enemies, but also to subject the souls of the executed to “ordeal”. The Time of Troubles added to the already proven methods of intimidation and punishment of souls through the death penalty a new kind of symbolism – self-harming punishments. The second stage of the development of symbolism begins after the end of the Time of Troubles. The search for various forms that affirmed the principles of justice of criminal law without regard to estates led to the state’s concern about ensuring a Christian transition to the afterlife for the executed and giving legal forms to symbolism.

Perceptions of the Time of Troubles in Russian Social and Political Thought in the Late 18th — Early 19th Centuries

This article examines the changing perceptions of the Time of Troubles in Russian political culture between the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The author draws on the methods of the Cambridge school of ‘intellectual history’, represented by the works of J. Pocock and Q. Skinner, which allow the historical materials involved to be considered within the framework of the approach of ‘cultural glossaries’ and rhetorical strategies. The study focuses on debates about the ideal form of government, including historical plots of the Time of Troubles, in Russian socio-political thought of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including those based on historical plots of the Time of Troubles. The article demonstrates that the appeal to these plots was connected with the foreign and domestic political spheres relevant to the contemporaries, and with the attempt to change the form of government in Russia or the threat of its change from outside during the Napoleonic Wars in the early nineteenth century. The analysis shows that eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Russian authors reinterpreted the historical events and personalities of the Time of Troubles using the Aristotelian glossary of forms of government. The application of this glossary to the historical themes of the Time of Troubles in Russian social and political thought effectively ‘reinvented’ the history of the Time of Troubles. In this ‘invention of the Time of Troubles’, the themes of ‘tyranny’ and ‘tyrannicide’ and speculation about the most appropriate form of government for Russia emerged. It is concluded that the emergence of these rhetorical strategies in references to the Time of Troubles played the role of historical argument and evidence in favour of the Russian monarchy for eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century authors.

The Troyan War at the Court of Ivan the Terrible (transl. from English by O.V. Dmitrieva)

The Illustrated Chronicle Compilation, one of the great projects of Ivan the Terrible’s reign, included a full Russian translation of the History of the Destruction of Troy by the thirteenth century Sicilian judge, Guido delle Colonne. A prose version of a French romance of chivalry, the text fits poorly with our conceptions of sixteenth century Russian culture. Was it history or fiction? Was it secular, or is that term not useful? Partial answers come from references to the text by the boyar V. M. Tuchkov, Ivan himself, and the use of the text by later authors after the Time of Troubles.

Ecozoic Leadership: The Next Adjacent Possible for a Flourishing Earth Community

The age of the Anthropocene, climate change crisis, growing polarizations, and inequities call for a leadership that will enable movement from devastation and degradation to a flourishing earth community with organizations becoming integral members of the earth community. To this end, this paper suggests an ecozoic way of leading rooted in cosmic interdependence, power equity, and our biological reality of love. Our suggestion is based on the idea of the ecozoic by Thomas Berry, a cultural historian, and the concept of the adjacent possible from evolutionary biology. We propose that ecozoic leadership approach is the next adjacent possible to evolve into, in these troubled times. We explore ecozoic leadership in detail and put forward the metaskills required for such leadership. We discuss how ecozoic leadership is in line with the call for organizations driven by the notion of flourishing, thereby moving towards a new Eden and a post-materialistic society.

How College Students Respond to Climate Change in Troubled Times: Four Takeaways from Project Information Literacy’s Latest Study

How College Students Respond to Climate Change in Troubled Times: Four Takeaways from Project Information Literacy’s Latest Study

Curbing the Time of Troubles: commemoration practices in the Russian provinces in 1918, based on materials from the State Archive of the Penza Region

Curbing the Time of Troubles: commemoration practices in the Russian provinces in 1918, based on materials from the State Archive of the Penza Region

The Imposter by Jurgis Karnavicius: A Ballet-Fantasy on a Historical Plot

One of the first Lithuanian composers to work in the genre of ballet was Jurgis Karnavičius (1884–1941). In 1928 he introduced a choreographic scene based on his tone poem The Lithuanian Rhapsody, that engaged interest in the genre of ballet among Lithuanian composers. Afterwords Karnavičius composed four full-length ballets that were offered to a variety of European theatres. Unfortunately, due to the events of World War II, there had not been any production of the ballet organized. Fortunately, the musical material of the ballet was preserved, including The Imposter (1940). The libretto written by Elena Pavlovna France is based on historical events in Russian history of the first decade of the 17th century — the beginning of the Time of Troubles. The main characters of the ballet are the future tsar-imposter False Dmitry I and Marina Mniszech, whose fates are tied to both Russian, Polish and Lithuanian history. The ballet was influenced by the works of great Russian composers, such as Boris Godunov by Modest Mussorgsky and A Life for the Tsar by Mikhail Glinka, most specifically, their “Polish acts.” At the same time, The Imposter added new plot motives that allow us to see the uprising of False Dmitry from a different perspective. Karnavičius’ ballet continues to be preserved in the Lithuanian Archive of Literature and Music up to the present day. The hope remains that these materials shall not only be published, but also performed.

Рукопись князя С. И. Шаховского из собрания российской государственной библиотеки: содержательный анализ

Introduction. The article is a brief substantive analysis of the handwritten collection of works by Prince Semen Shakhovskoy. The collection consists of several dozen works of various genres, including historical, hymnographic, religious and philosophical, etc. The relevance of text analysis lies in obtaining a more complete understanding of the development of events of the period under study to which the manuscript belongs, including the Time of Troubles, through the restoration of biography and eyewitness testimony. Materials and methods. The main source of the work was a manuscript dating from 1652 from the collections of the Russian State Library, as well as its alleged copy (F. 173.1 No. 213 and No. 214). When writing the article, the following methods were used: the biographical method gave a clearer understanding of the life path and personality characteristics of Shakhovskoy; the paleographic method allowed to determine the distinctive features of the manuscript itself; the descriptive method allowed to reveal its content and classify the presented works. This classification is proposed for the first time. Results. The author managed to identify 5 types of texts in the collection: prayer, theological, hymnographic, historical and epistolary (epistles). An indication is also made of the preservation of authorship and the formation of a corpus of works for the memory of subsequent generations. This tradition, in many ways, was laid down by Maxim the Greek, references to whose works are in the Shakhovsky manuscript. Conclusion. Prince and voivode Shakhovskoy devoted his whole life to public service, but he gained the main fame thanks to the works that became historical and literary property. The collection under study does not contain all the works of Shakhovskoy known to researchers, but probably those that were of the greatest value to the author.

Rimutė Jablonskytė-Rimantienė (1920–2023) Remembered

Sadly, a great and famous Lithuanian archaeologist, Dr. Rimutė-Jablonskytė Rimantienė, passed away on July 4, 2023, aged 102. Her legacy is defined by an endless love of archaeology and a philosophical attitude, which encourages us to rethink the meaning of archaeology in these troubled times. Rimantienė underwent good and bad phases during her long life.

‘Asset-based welfare’: The social policy corollary of the Anglo-liberal growth model?

In the wake of the deepest and longest recession that the United Kingdom has experienced since the 1930s, the consequences of Brexit and now COVID too, this article examines the origins, sustenance and puncturing of the growth dynamic it enjoyed since the early 1990s. It identifies what is termed the ‘Anglo-liberal growth model’ and its social policy corollary, ‘asset-based welfare’, considering the symbiotic yet increasingly tense and dynamic interdependence of the two. It argues that although both are compromised by the compound shocks of the crisis, Brexit and COVID, they have in fact become more not less intertwined and interdependent in these more troubled times. It considers the implications for the long-term sustainability of this fractious coupling and the wider consequences for UK economic performance and social welfare in the years ahead.

TroublingGAN: generated visual ambiguity as a speculative alternative to photojournalism

This exposition documents artistic research that engages with generative neural networks and artificial intelligence-driven visual synthesis, the goal being to challenge the limits of the research and question the value of the generated visual outcomes. We present here our experiment with a customised StyleGAN model. In contrast to its utilisation by computer scientists, it has been trained on a heterogeneous dataset, voluntarily exposing the generative neural network to failure while focusing on the unexpected moments of surprise that arise from such a process. Led by the critical thoughts of The Nooscope Manifested (Pasquinelli and Joler 2020), this experiment questions what kind of knowledge generative neural networks produce, whether they could change one’s perspective on studied objects (the dataset) and whether they could function as a viable tool for artistic research. The observed object in this project is the concept of ‘troubling times’ (inspired by ‘Designing in Troubling Times’, the theme of the 2021 Uroboros Festival) — rapid socio-ecological changes caused by shifts in global economic, political and technological power and the subsequent series of troubling events, including the COVID-19 pandemic, violent conflicts and environmental catastrophes. StyleGAN is used as a pattern-recognition and knowledge-production tool to create an intuitive understanding of what this ambiguous term ‘troubling times’ actually means today. During the experimentation process, multiple unforeseen moments and twists happened, offering valuable insights into the nature of synthetic media, generating ethical questions concerning the use of generative neural networks and spawning new propositions for further research.

The Fifth Kingdom, Yuri Buida’s Historiographical Metafiction: Mystification of Historical Conceptualisation

This article considers the trends that determine the development of Russian historiographical metafiction at the turn of the twenty-first century, examining its inclusion in the context of modern Russian literature. Also, the author reveals the specifics of the conceptualisation of history in historiographical metafiction and its interaction with the tradition of Russian conceptualism and the Western European tradition (U. Eco and P. Ackroyd). The article studies Yu. Buida’s The Fifth Kingdom as the most representative text that reflects the features of this phenomenon. An analysis of the novel makes it possible to draw a conclusion about the peculiarities of the functioning of the third wave of Russian postmodernism and consider the nature of the deconstruction of the traditional concept of historical knowledge in Russian literature of the turn of the century. The palimpsest in the structure of The Fifth Kingdom acts as the chief method of deconstructing the historical narrative and modelling a new concept of historical knowledge as “feeling into history”. The author reveals the peculiarities of the functioning of this technique in comparison with the general picture of its use in the literature of the time. The author’s appeal to the detective genre strategy consistently profanes the historiosophical approach to constructing the narrative of history, thereby exposing the failure of one of the most popular variants of the national episteme. The analysis focuses on the nature of the deconstruction of the concept of the Troubles, the main vectors being the profanation of the mythologemes the Fifth Kingdom and the Pretender, which form the core of the ideologeme of the Troubles, as well as the consistent textualisation of the historical narrative, exposing its “corporeal’ nature. The conclusion is made about Yu. Buida’s extensive use of the plot schemes of Western European historiographical prose and the simultaneous development of the traditions of Russian conceptualism. The first aspect is represented by the interaction of historical and detective genre strategies and the assimilation of the historical palimpsest model, which is relevant to P. Ackroyd’s work. In addition, the golemic plot also becomes one of the representations of P. Ackroyd’s “trace”. At the same time, the nature of the deconstruction of the concept of the Time of Troubles is built in the tradition of Russian conceptualism and – already – Socialist Art. At the same time, Yu. Buida avoids the predominant profaning of the system of ideological myths, emphasising them as the key markers of the national episteme of history.

Supporting the festival industry in troubled times: Higher education research and collaboration with festivals in South Africa during COVID-19

This case study presents a critical reflection on the way COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020-2022 brought the festival industry in South Africa closer to higher education (HE) via a new and innovative collaboration. The research design allowed an international team to facilitate knowledge sharing and research support during a very challenging time for the industry. The project saw the development of a collaboration with seven festivals across South Africa. During the 15 months project, the collaboration allowed participants to build a new knowledge base - and a collaborative network - to survive the challenging times. Rather than a more extractive, top-down approach that saw festivals as “research subjects”, they were involved as research partners. Cultural organisations and members of the South African team acted as intermediaries, who used their existing networks and reputations to build a collaborative, trust-based relationship between industry partners and researchers where mutually beneficial outcomes were possible. The project thus became part of the South Africa festival ecosystem, creating opportunities for collaboration and knowledge exchange between festivals, cultural producers and academic researchers. The outcomes of the research helped to build a stronger creative economy and support its future development.