An Imaginary Saint for an Imagined Community: St. Henry and the Creation of Christian Identity in Finland, Thirteenth – Fifteenth Centuries

Author(s):  
Tuomas Heikkilä
Author(s):  
Farhad Khosrokhavar

The creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (ISIS) changed the nature of jihadism worldwide. For a few years (2014–2017) it exemplified the destructive capacity of jihadism and created a new utopia aimed at restoring the past greatness and glory of the former caliphate. It also attracted tens of thousands of young wannabe combatants of faith (mujahids, those who make jihad) toward Syria and Iraq from more than 100 countries. Its utopia was dual: not only re-creating the caliphate that would spread Islam all over the world but also creating a cohesive, imagined community (the neo-umma) that would restore patriarchal family and put an end to the crisis of modern society through an inflexible interpretation of shari‘a (Islamic laws and commandments). To achieve these goals, ISIS diversified its approach. It focused, in the West, on the rancor of the Muslim migrants’ sons and daughters, on exoticism, and on an imaginary dream world and, in the Middle East, on tribes and the Sunni/Shi‘a divide, particularly in the Iraqi and Syrian societies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-367
Author(s):  
Mark Stewart

This article argues that the live tweeting of reality television allows the creation of an imagined community, bounded by national borders. In an era of audience fragmentation and time-shifting of television engagement, live reality television encourages audiences to watch at time of broadcast; this is amplified by the move of some audience members to live-tweet the broadcast, communicating amongst themselves within a dispersed backchannel. A crucial result of the digital conversation is to reinstate the importance of the nation as a space for the reading and reception of culture. The article utilizes a discursive analysis of the concurrent Twitter conversation around the second season of The X Factor NZ in New Zealand in order to highlight the ongoing role that is played by the nation as a cultural formation in such discussions, as well as the ways that it makes understandings of national cultural identity visible.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Iantorno

Established almost 100 years ago, the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team is known for their large, dedicated fan base called Leafs Nation. I am a devoted member of this nation and, as such, the team’s communication practices speak both to me, and about me. This major research paper (MRP) is an analysis of e-mails sent to a subscriber-only list in the context of marketing. Researching the e-mail communication from the Toronto Maple Leafs to their fan base lends itself to an understanding of the communication that occurs in a professional setting. Not only do the Toronto Maple Leafs communicate directly with their proactive fan base but I argue that the way in which they do this instills a sense of community within Leafs Nation through the use of themes, metaphors and rhetorical tropes. Communicating effectively with a fan base is an essential component in running a sports organization. Texts in the form of words and images do not only assist in getting an organization’s message to the supporters, but their connotative meanings can also contribute to the senses of community and belonging. This paper will examine how the Toronto Maple Leafs employ rhetorical devices in the e-mail newsletters sent out to Leafs Nation, as well as analyzing the rhetorical connotations in these devices. Also, I will be examining the way in which the use of rhetorical devices contributes to the creation of an online ‘imagined community,’ a concept first introduced by Benedict Anderson in 1936 in the context of nations and nationalism. Anderson stated that an imagined community does not conform to traditional ideals of a community and is constructed by those that see themselves as being a part of this community, and I see the Leafs Nation as conforming to the ideals detailed by Anderson. As such, I will be completing a qualitative textual analysis of 43 e-mails that have gone out to the subscriber-only fan list since 2012. By examining these e-mails I will attempt to identify the presence of the rhetorical devices of pathopoeia, scesis onomaton and principle of scarcity and the overall frequency with which they appear. Based on the data that emerges from my research, I will then attempt to draw correlations between the findings and attempt to link the presence of rhetorical devices as a contributing factor to the creation of Leafs Nation as an online imagined community through a qualitative textual analysis.


Traditio ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 76 ◽  
pp. 157-184
Author(s):  
STEVEN VANDERPUTTEN

This article analyses the Life of St. Deicolus of Lure, a monastery in the Alsace region of east France, written by the cleric Theodoric in the 970s or 980s. It argues that the text contains a notable amount of information on the existence, methodology, and limitations of an ill-understood aspect of monastic integration around the year 1000. Relying on an analysis of the narrative's second prologue as well as scattered comments elsewhere in the text, it reconstructs three phenomena. The first is attempts to (re-)establish a Luxeuil-centered imagined community of institutions with a shared Columbanian legacy through the creation and circulation of hagiographic narratives. A second is the co-creation across institutional boundaries of texts and manuscripts that were designed to facilitate these integration attempts. And the third phenomenon is the limits of this integration effort, which did not tempt those involved to propose the establishment of a distinct ‘neo-Columbanian’ observance. As such, the Life represents an attempt to reconcile the legacy of Columbanus and his real or alleged followers as celebrated at late tenth-century Luxeuil and Lure with a contemporary understanding of reformed Benedictine identity.


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