Universal Identity Research Articles

Demon est Deus Inversus: Honoring the Daemonic in Iamblichean Theurgy

Iamblichus’s doctrine that the immortal soul becomes mortal is puzzling for Platonic scholars. According to Iamblichus, the embodied soul not only becomes mortal; as human, it also becomes “alienated” (allotriōthen) from divinity. Iamblichus maintains that the alienation and mortality of the soul are effected by daemons that channel the soul’s universal and immortal identity into a singular and mortal self. Yet, while daemons alienate the soul from divinity they also outline the path to recover it. Iamblichus maintains that daemons unfold the will of the Demiurge into material manifestation and thus reveal its divine signatures (sunthēmata) in nature. According to Iamblichus’s theurgical itinerary, the human soul—materialized, alienated, and mortal—must learn to embrace its alienated and mortal condition as a form of demiurgic activity. By ritually entering this demiurgy the soul transforms its alienation and mortality into theurgy. The embodied soul becomes an icon of divinity.

Pembelajaran Berkarakter dalam Masyarakat Ekonomi Asean (MEA)

In the middle of technology advances, transportation and communication. Various south east asia country is facing crisis of cultural values of nationalities identity, this issue not only make a nation loses dignity as an independent, this even prediction to born a new universal identity that dull the old characters.As a framework to fortify young generations from globalization development that eroded cultural values character of nation, hopefully characters learning is an alternative way to face various kinds of multi demention problem faced by Indonesian and southeast asia.

Alien life matters: reflections on cosmopolitanism, otherness, and astrobiology

This is a synaptic paper that invites the reader to take a stroll on the edges of cross-disciplinary knowledge. We will walk the roads of anthropology, history, philosophy, astronomy and biology. It is mainly a theoretical article, where I attempt to provide links between authors and theories that were, at first sight, unrelated. In doing so, this paper is aimed at making one controversial claim: ideologically and politically speaking, cosmopolitanism may never fully transcend itself beyond a debate until and unless humankind encounters alien life forms. The argument is based on a simple equation. Despite all the quarrels and debates around the concept, it seems innocuous to assume that cosmopolitanism is the search for a certain universal identity or, at least, a search for a common culturalia, i.e. the cultural grounds wherein local and global senses of universalism come into being (section 2). In spite of the fact that identities are built in opposition and supported by difference (section 3), cosmopolitanism might only be possible as a political project (cosmopolitics) when humankind is faced with life forms that are capable of providing true Otherness. I believe that this may explain why we have been fascinated by the utopias of extra-terrestrials for many centuries now (section 4). These utopias are present in a diverse array of knowledges, ranging from science to art, literature or even religion. They have been around for at least 500 years. Until now, all of them have been trapped in the realm of imagination, but there is one concrete cluster of knowledge that has attempted to transpose these imaginings into reality: the promising discipline of astrobiology. Astrobiology is mainly troubled by the de-naturalisation of Earth in order to create analogues for the study of life elsewhere in the cosmos. Provocatively, I end up this paper stating that this may well be the most cosmopolitical practice available to us (section 5).

Albrecht Dürer’s The Men’s Bathhouse of 1496–1497: Problems of Sexual Signification

This essay synthesizes the historiography of art history and sexuality/gender studies, while carefully navigating the difficulties inherent in historical sexual signification, in order to reveal the complexity of Albrecht Durer’s The Men’s Bathhouse (Das Mannerbad) (1496–97). Over time, the woodcut has accrued a wide variety of critical responses. Within this fortuna critica, some scholars have attempted to reduce the print to evidence of Durer’s cognizance of classical aesthetics prior to his first trip to Venice in 1494–95, in that it seems to provide a stylistic precursor to his later, more overtly classicizing The Fall of Man (1506, engraving). Other scholars have implicitly or explicitly sought to employ the woodcut as supportive of arguments for the existence of a universal homosexual identity, in that the artwork proves Durer’s homosexuality ergo an early modern homosexuality consonant with the way the modern terms “homosexual”/“heterosexual” conflate sexuality with identity. Arguably, classicism and eroticism simultaneously inform the full iconographic potentiality of Durer’s print; and an analysis of it shows how he inverted the traditional imagery of bathers by imagining men as the sole object of display within an all-male space and then veiled that socially proscribed, same-sex desire behind the plausible deniability of the classically-derived, nude male figure.

The human right to housing and community empowerment: home occupation, eviction defence and community land trusts

Critics of human rights are hesitant to reject them outright for fear of undermining the work they may do in resisting oppression. This pragmatic justification is central to celebrations of human rights as well, but is it more than a failure to move beyond liberal hegemony? I argue that human rights have radical potential because the act of claiming such rights uses the ambiguous but universal identity of ‘humanity’ to make claims on the established terms of legitimate authority. The potential of human rights to fight for social change is examined by looking at the movement for a human right to housing in the USA. I explore how homeless individuals, public housing tenants and low-income urban residents realise their human right to housing through eviction defences, the occupation of ‘people-less’ homes, and attempts to remake the structure of home ownership through community land trusts.

The measure of disability: Towards an inclusive method for the evaluation of systems of visual communications and infographics

Abstract Data, both qualitative and quantitative, which represents the physical, cognitive and situational abilities of the global population are inconsistent and are not centrally collected by any one international source. Moreover, the definition of ‘disability’ is relative and is linked uniquely to culture. This fluidity makes difficult the standardization of a definitive definition of disability, problematic to quantify and the goal of universal design elusive. Some statistical estimates place the number of disabled persons between 20 and 60 per cent of the world population, the normalization and aggregation of disability statistics remains a low priority for most international governing bodies and this gap in knowledge impacts the ability of designers to adequately consider the needs and abilities of all users when designing places, spaces, products, services and systems. This research note puts forth one potential testing model for systems of visual communication and information-based graphics and graphic systems for a universal design identity system as well as a discussion of the results from the first use of this testing model.

Multidimensional smooth loops with universal elasticity

Let be a universal (isotopically invariant) identity that is derived from the elasticity identity . One of the authors has previously shown that a) each local loop of dimension with identity (briefly, a loop ) is a smooth middle Bol loop of dimension ; b) smooth two-dimensional loops are Lie groups; c) up to isotopy, there exist only two three-dimensional loops : the loops and . In this paper, the loops and are extended to the multidimensional case. The fact that each smooth loop of dimension corresponds to a unique multidimensional three-web on a manifold of dimension is key to our work. In addition, the class of loops under investigation is characterized by the fact that the torsion tensor of the corresponding web has rank 1 (that is, the algebra generated by this tensor has a one-dimensional derived algebra). This enables us to express the differential equations of the problem in an invariant form. The system of equations thus obtained was found to be amenable to integration in the most general case, and the equations of the required loops have been obtained in local coordinates. Bibliography: 17 titles.

On the universal identity in second order hydrodynamics

We compute the 't Hooft coupling correction to the infinite coupling expression for the second order transport coefficient $\lambda_2$ in ${\cal N}=4$ $SU(N_c)$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory at finite temperature in the limit of infinite $N_c$, which originates from the $R^4$ terms in the low energy effective action of the dual type IIB string theory. Using this result, we show that the identity involving the three second order transport coefficients, $2 \eta \tau_\Pi - 4 \lambda_1 - \lambda_2 =0$, previously shown by Haack and Yarom to hold universally in relativistic conformal field theories with string dual descriptions to leading order in supergravity approximation, holds also at next to leading order in this theory. We also compute corrections to transport coefficients in a (hypothetical) strongly interacting conformal fluid arising from the generic curvature squared terms in the corresponding dual gravity action (in particular, Gauss-Bonnet action), and show that the identity holds to linear order in the higher-derivative couplings. We discuss potential implications of these results for the near-equilibrium entropy production rate at strong coupling.

Проповеди в стихах Уйгуров и Хуэй: сравнительный анализ социорелигиозных представлений мусульманских меньшинств в Китае

In this paper, I mean to undertake comparison analyses on the religious representations appearing in the sermon poems composed by those mosque preachers both in the Uyghurs and Huis. By doing these, I aim at unfolding the process of the symbolic constructions in their sermon poems, and as a result, shedding lights onto their rich ways, different in literate styles and composition forms but similar in religious ideologies, to use Islam as a logic base. From the descriptions and discussions of this paper, we also can get useful information for understanding the Islamization of folk traditions in the localities of the Uyghurs and the Huis, and examine the methodological possibility of studying Muslim community constructions in terms of their universal Islamic identity.

Tecniche di risemantizzazione. Il verso lungo nella lirica tedesca del 'fine secolo'

This paper aims to analyze certain features in the use of long verse by a few German language poets in the early twentieth century. Particular attention will be devoted to two collections: Der Weltfreund by Franz Werfel (1911) and Der Aufbruch by Ernst Stadler (1913). Our conclusion is that this technique was given preference in order to support a critical representation of modernization processes affecting all European societies, but especially Wilhelmine Germany between the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. With regard to the acceleration and contraction imposed by mechanized production, long verse assumes an extended and quantitatively irregular size. For the authors being considered here, this is above all due to the influence of Whitman via a device destined to evoke a sort of primitive and universal human identity, liberated to spread out beyond codified boundaries.

Współczesne wizje podmiotu zbiorowej emancypacji: Ernesto Laclau, Jacques Rancière i inni

W artykule przedstawiono wybrane sposoby określania zbiorowego podmiotu emancypacyjnego we współczesnych teoriach politycznych. Jak pokazano, część z nich jednostronnie uprzywilejowuje uniwersalny wymiar emancypacyjnej podmiotowości, na skutek czego wszelka partykularność roszczeń traci na znaczeniu. Inne zaś, posługując się zgoła odmienną logiką, ogłaszają śmierć wszelkiego podmiotu politycznego przez duże „P”. Pod tym kątem szczegółowo zbadane zostały projekty Jacques’a Rancière’a oraz Ernesta Laclau, które uznać można za rozwiązania kompromisowe. Na końcu autor wskazuje na pewne słabości omawianych propozycji.

The otherness of a Barbarianess: Euripides’ Medea and Medea by Velimir Lukic

Belonging to a social community, a nation, a culture or a religion, can be expressed by stressing differences and borders between us and others, between our collective self and their otherness. Achievements of classical Greek culture for us are primarily bound to the polis, city-state, but classical Greek literature gives quite significance to the definition of universal Greek identity by creating the figure of a barbarian on the opposite side. This contrast between Greeks and barbarians, not noticeable in the literature of archaic period, grows more and more important (while the notion of the word barbarian becomes more pejorative) with gradual intrusion of Persian domination over west area of Asia Minor from the middle of VI BC and with successful resistance of many Greek states in the first half of V BC. The basic feature that defines the notion βάρβαρος is a lack of moral responsibility indispensable for enjoying (but active enjoying, applying, engaging in, practicing) political freedom. Moral responsibility and political freedom are closely connected through λόγος - which is ability to reason and also ability to speak (in Greek). The image of barbarian is further elaborated with features of cruelty and excessiveness of all kinds (especially when it comes to somatic pleasures), i.e. a lack of moderation, so essential to Greeks. On the other hand, “to be Greek” meant: to be a citizen of a Greek polis having full civic rights. This further means: exclusively men. Otherness in being a barbarian, hence, goes hand in hand with Otherness of a woman in ancient Greek world. This polarity also includes the tension between πόλις and οἶκος, i.e. the tension between public-political and private-family life. Bearing this dichotomy in mind, I am re-reading two theatric plays: Euripides’ (cca 480-406 BC) tragedy Medea and radio-drama Medea of Serbian writer Velimir Lukić (1936-1937), one of many literary and art-works inspired by Euripides’ tragedy and Greek myth. Euripides’ Medea influenced on the tradition of this famous barbarian woman from Colchis, passionate and cruel sorceress, more than any other text did. If this writer didn’t make up Medea’s infanticide (performed in order to punish her unfaithful husband) on his own, then it was him who gave a fixed form to this variant of the myth. She is a refugee from her own home and country, a newcomer in Greece on the other side; she is a dangerous foreigner, a barbarian, passionate woman and sorceress; a threat and an ill omen to the manliness and male principle (and ambiguously a potential help to it). In order to avenge to her infidel husband, Greek Jason, this Colchian woman becomes a murderer of her own (two male!) children in the Euripides’ tragedy. The bloody epilogue of love between Greek and Colchian is described by Velimir Lukić as well. In his radio-drama Medea, eternal and varible, male and female, Greek and barbarian (in a particular aspect) are juxtaposed. Lukić constantly has in mind an abyss that gapes between hellenic and barbarian world, a gap that (in his interpretation) is so terrific that Medea will murder her own offspring saying: „So that I prevent my sons from becoming Greek, / To prevent them to reject their barbarian mother…”

<em>Black France / France Noire: The History and Politics of Blackness</em>, Trica Danielle Keaton, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, and Tyler Stovall, eds.

Reviewed by: Black France / France Noire: The History and Politics of Blackness ed. by Trica Danielle Keaton, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Tyler Stovall Yasmina Muthoki Martin Keaton, Trica Danielle, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, and Tyler Stovall, eds. 2012. Black France / France Noire: The History and Politics of Blackness. Durham, N.C., and London: Duke University Press. 322pp. $94.95 (cloth); $25.95 (paper). Black France / France Noire: The History and Politics of Blackness, edited by Trica Danielle Keaton, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, and Tyler Stovall, uses a nuanced approach to discuss and problematize variously identified questions by relying on solid contributions from a diverse group of authors to form a well-rounded interpretation of race issues in France. Among the questions asked are: How do we begin to understand the complexities of black identity in France? How is black defined in a country where myriad expressions of blackness exist, including African immigrants and their children, African Americans (who came to France as expatriates), and West Indians now residing in France? The volume is a product of France Noire—Black France: The History, Poetics, and Politics of Blackness, a conference held in June 2008 in Paris. The contributors expertly break down issues of race and racism in France from historical, sociological, political, and narrative standpoints. The editors have compiled an impressive collection of studies that deal with the paradoxical issue at the center of race in France: the French Republic denies race as an identifying category, yet racism and discrimination are apparent in French society, as evidenced by the 2005 Clichy-sous-Bois riots, dubbed the French Katrina by some observers. Positing that a distinct French form of blackness exists in social, cultural, and political forums in France as a response to antiblack racism, the editors accept that racialization in France can be compared to that in the United States in regard to housing discrimination, racial profiling, and xenophobia; however, they deny the imposition of US ideals of race on French society and maintain that French notions of blackness remain grounded in French and European histories. An attempt has been made to answer the question “What does it mean to be French now?” Accordingly, the editors have divided the book into three parts that approach distinct themes and expose the social, historical, and political importance of race in France. Part one, “Theorizing and Narrating Blackness and Belonging,” combines broad theoretical analyses of the meaning of blackness in France, the lasting effects of colonialism in postcolonial France, and past imaginings of relationships between black Africa and France, such as Léopold Senghor’s Eurafrique, with more personal narratives, which truly express what it means to black life in France. The second part, “The Politics of Blackness—Politicizing Blackness,” explores [End Page 140] the challenges and limitations involved in forming a universal black identity in France as a protest to antiblack discrimination, approaching issues of immigration, national identity, and even the definition of black, as opposed or in conjunction with noir. Part three, “Black Paris—Black France,” turns to the symbolic importance of Paris as a destination for black American expatriates and as a center for black diasporic culture. This section approaches issues of constructing a global black French identity, including Josephine Baker’s “rainbow tribe,” connections between antiimperialist activists in Paris and Marseilles, and the siting of black monuments in Paris. Certain chapters stand out. Gary Wilder’s “Eurafrique as the Future Past of ‘Black France’: Sarkozy’s Temporal Confusion and Senghor’s Postwar Vision” (pp. 57–87) utilizes Sarkozy’s 2007 address in Dakar, Senegal, as a lens through which the possibilities of a new and more honest postcolonial democracy can be examined. Sarkozy’s mention of Léopold Sédar Senghor’s Eurafrique, a notion that serves to support his accusations that Africa is backward and primitive, leads to a temporal confusion in his speech; his rhetoric harks back to a time when France was a colonial power. Wilder juxtaposes Sarkozy’s speech with Senghor’s vision of Eurafrique, which served as what he calls a social contract between France and French Africa, a mutual agreement for shared development and equality. Wilder links Senghor’s postcolonial ideals to the xenophobic...

‘Islam does not change’: young people narrating negotiations of religion and identity

There is growing interest in how diasporic Islam may be embraced by young people as a way of carving out space and identity in migratory contexts. Islamic identity may facilitate a critical stance in relation to both the ‘host’ society and also to parental authority and ‘traditional’ ethnic practices. However, there have been recent critiques of the tendency to oversimplify and exaggerate the extent of homogeneity in diasporic Islamic beliefs. This paper draws on lively focus group narratives of young people in London to explore the interactive presentation of Islamic selves. While on the surface these young people present themselves through ‘true’, ‘universal’ Islamic identity, on closer reading subtleties of difference and contingency become more apparent. By bringing together young people who practise Islam in different ways, this paper offers a deeper insight into how claims to a universal identity are actively constructed and contested through particular social relationships and interactions in specific structural contexts. In so doing, the paper takes up recent calls for more research on the personal meaning of religion for Muslim youngsters. I conclude by considering how religious identities can be understood as processes of youth identity formations.

Secure data sharing across portals: experiences from OneVRE

Research and higher education are facing an on-going transformation of practice resulting in the need for effective collaboration and sharing of resources within and across disciplinary and geographical boundaries. Portal technologies and portal-based virtual research and learning environments (VREs and VLEs) already have become standard infrastructures within a large number of research communities and institutions. From 2004, a series of research and development projects began to ask the question whether an open source videoconferencing and collaboration system could be used as a complete, or as a part of, VRE. This study presents the evolution of these projects and at the same time, describes the definition of a VRE and their future possible integration. The OneVRE portlet integration project attempted to create missing components, including adding secure and universal identity management. This moves the idea of shared data to a different level by creating a new administrative domain that is outside the control of a single local institution portal and resolves certain administrative virtual organizations problems. We explain some of the hurdles that still need to be overcome to make this venture truly successful, when a complete toolkit can be designed for the researcher of the future.

The dynamics of negation: identity formation among Palestinian Arab college students inside the green line

How does granting certificates of ‘business clean of Arab workers’ to owners of shops, stores, and Jewish businesses who prove they are not employing Arab workers shape identity? Identity development involves making sense of, and coming to terms with, the social world one inhabits, recognizing choices and making decisions within contexts, and finding a sense of unity within one's self while claiming a place in the world. Since there is no objective, ahistoric, universal trans-cultural identity, views of identity must be historically and culturally situated. This paper explores identity issues among members of the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel. While there is a body of literature exploring this subject, we will offer a different perspective by contextualizing the political and economic contexts that form an essential foundation for understanding identity formation among this minority group. We argue that, as a genre of settler colonialism, ‘pure settlement colonies’ involve the conquering not only of land, but of labor as well, excluding the natives from the economy. Such an exclusion from the economy is significant for its cultural, social, and ideological consequences, and therefore is especially significant in identity formation discussed in the paper. We briefly review existing approaches to the study of identity among Palestinian Arabs in Israel, and illustrate our theoretical contextual framework. Finally, we present and discuss findings from a new study of identity among Palestinian Arab college students in Israel through the lens of this framework.

Action du groupe des opérateurs de gamétisation sur les identités ω-polynomiales

The gametization process reduces the study of non-commutative and non-associative algebras satisfying non-homogeneous polynomial identities with variables in X={x1,…,xn} to algebras verifying simpler identities. However after a gametization, certain identities remain invariant and other identities, said universal invariant, are invariant for every gametization. Now in the case n=1, for all algebras satisfying a universal invariant polynomial identity studied until now, we know that the existence of an idempotent is not certain. Using an action of the gametization operators group on the non-commutative and non-associative algebra of polynomials K〈X〉, we give all identities which are invariant and universal invariant by gametization.

THE DYNAMICS OF THE FORM OF NUSANTARA MOSQUE: ARCHITECTURAL HOMOGENEITY VIS A VIS ARCHITECTURAL HYBRIDITY

<p>There are two points of departure in the design of mosque architecture in Nusantara, namely architectural homogeneity and architectural hybridity. Each provides the legitimacy of the architecture of identity formation. This paper seeks to explore the comparative, the concept of homogeneity and hybridity <br />architecture, with a critical theory approach. The results of this search is, the concept of architectural homogeneity establishing assumption that certain architectural forms are supposed to represent "universal identity and modernity" of Muslim architecture. Meanwhile, the concept of architectural hybridity to show enrichment architecture identity because of the attempt to combine aspects of the universality of Islam with locality of Nusantara. Both these aspects can be positioned as the two subjects of mutual dialogue in a parallel position. As architecture strategy, the concept of hybridity reflects the effort or ijtihad in interpreting local and universal contextuality in the contemporary conditions that are constantly evolving and open.</p><p><br />Keywords: Nusantara mosque, hybridity of architecture, homogeneity of architecture, architecture strategy</p>

Afro-Brazilian Religions and Ethnic Identity Politics in the Brazilian Public Health Arena

In this article, I examine the ways in which health activists from Afro-Brazilian religions deploy ethnic identity politics within the Brazilian public health arena to gain recognition and respect for their beliefs and practices, as well as public health goods for their communities. I also discuss the creation and enactment of “culturally competent” healthcare initiatives for members of Afro-Brazilian religions. Finally, I examine the tension between universal particular identity frames that emerges within the political discourses of health activists from Afro-Brazilian religions. Throughout, I place this case study in dialogue with similar scholarship on minority health politics and cultural competence initiatives in other parts of the world.

Reciprocity as Mutual Recognition

Reciprocity as Mutual Recognition