Can the Sublime Be Postcolonial? Aesthetics, Politics, and Environment in Amitav Ghosh’sThe Hungry Tide

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana María Giles
Keyword(s):  
Mangrove Forest ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Postcolonial State ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The World ◽  
Sundarban Mangrove ◽  
Ethics And Politics

AbstractSet in the vast Sundarban mangrove forest of Bangladesh in the shadow of the colonial past and the 1979 Morichjhapi massacre,The Hungry Tidetraces the transformation of three metropolitan characters from disengaged spectators to invested insiders. The novel may be read as elaborating the theories of Jean-François Lyotard, whose revision of the sublime as the “differend” in both aesthetics and politics provides a compelling context for exploring the postcolonial sublime. Suggesting ecocentric ways of engaging the world that loosen the bonds of the colonial past and critiquing the failure of the postcolonial state and the new cosmopolitanism, Ghosh rewrites aesthetics as interconnected with ethics and politics. In his novel, the postcolonial sublime no longer reifies metaphysical or anthropocentric pure reason, but instead enables discovery of our interpenetration with the natural world, spurring us to witnessing and activism in partnership with those who have been rendered silent and invisible.

Ч. АЙТМАТОВДУН «ТООЛОР КУЛАГАНДА» РОМАНЫНДАГЫ ПЕЙЗАЖДЫК СҮРӨТТӨӨЛӨР

2020 ◽  
pp. 92-94
Author(s):  
Н. Алтыкеева ◽  
Б. Ниясалиева
Keyword(s):  
Full Moon ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Additional Tool ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The World ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Aesthetic Values

Аннотация. Макалада романдын мазмунунан орун алган пейзаждык сүрөттөөлөр талкууланат. Пейзаждык сүрөттөөлөр чыгарманын көркөмдүүлүгүн, эстетикалык баалуулугун арттыруу менен катар эле каармандардын образын тереңден ачып берүүдө, окуялардын өнүгүп-өсүшү жана алдыда боло турган окуялар тууралуу окурманга маалымат берүүдө кошумча каражат катары колдонулат. Жазуучу романда пейзаждык сүрөттөөлөрдү өтө кылдат колдонгону байкалат. Алсак, тоо адамдагы улуулук жана бийиктикти айгинелейт, толукшуган ай жан- дүйнөнүн бөксөрбөй толуп турушун көрсөтөт, ачык асмандын алай-дүлөй түшкөн көрүнүшкө айланышы - каармандын ички сезими, уйгу-туйгу ойлонуусу, жан дүйнөсүнүн бурганак болушун ачып көрсөтүүдө маанилүү болсо, чабалекейлердин тынымсыз учуп чабалакташы, жан алакетке түшүп чыйпылдашы – алдыда боло турган кырсыктуу окуя тууралуу кабар берсе, согуштун апааты жашыл шибердин, бак-дарактардын күлгө айланышы, чымчык-куштардын күздү күтпөй кайдадыр учуп кетип жатышы менен түшүндүрүлөт. Tүйүндүү сөздөр: пейзаж. роман, идея, легенда, эпилог, каарман, негизги окуялар. Аннотация. В статье дается пейзажное описание. Пейзажное описание используется в произведении как дополнительное средство эстетических ценностей и помогает раскрыть образы героев, и действия произведения. Писатель в романе тонко использует пейзажное описание. Например горы возвышенное и самое ценное в человеке, а полная луна – счастливое душевное состояние человека, а превращение безоблачного неба в бущующий вид – указывает, как неспокойно в душе главного героя, его беспокойные мысли, как бушует его внутренний мир, а ласточки неспокойно летающие, предвещают несчастье, птицы улетающие раньше времени, превращение зелёной травы, деревьев в пепел предвещают ужасы войны. Ключевые слова: пейзаж. роман, идея, легенда, эпилог, герой, главное событие Annotation. The article discusses the landscape description. The landscape description is used in the work as an additional tool for aesthetic values and helps to reveal the images of heroes, and in the development of the action of the work/ The writer in the novel subtly uses the landscape description. The mountains are the sublime and the most valuable in a person, and the full moon is a happy state of mind of a person, and the transformation of a cloudless sky into a raging view indicates how restless the soul of the protagonist is, his restless thoughts. How his inner world is raging, and the swallows are restlessly flying, foreshadow the misfortune, the birds flying away ahead of time, the transformation of green grass, trees in the forehead the horrors of war. This article describes the idea of the story "Do not kill" which is given instead of the epilogue in the novel "When the mountains fall" which was written by Ch.Aitmatov. It considers the role of a story that calls to live in peace and to end wars that are occurring in the world. Keywords: Landscapе, novel, idea, legend, epilogue, hero, main event.

"Without a Cross": The Cultural Significance of the Sublime and Beautiful in Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans

1997 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Blakemore
Keyword(s):  
James Fenimore Cooper ◽  
Racial Ideology ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The World ◽  
Indian Tribes ◽  
Last Of The Mohicans ◽  
Historical Moment

This essay demonstrates that James Fenimore Cooper was incorporating the language and values of Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) into the "world" of The Last of the Mohicans (1826). In the Enquiry Burke's distinction between the sublime and beautiful centers on traditional distinctions between men and women-an "eternal distinction" that Burke continually underscores. In Mohicans Cooper initially incorporates the beautiful into the sublime, in an intentionally illusive "mix" that corresponds to the illusory mixing of the white and Indian races. He then reinscribes Burke's distinction between the sublime and beautiful as an eternal distinction between whites and Indians-writing "out" the problem of the "Other" (gendered "femininity" and alien, "red" beauty) in a meditation of the significance of culture and race in America. In retrospect, Mohicans is a novel of ambiguous "crosses" and complicitous combinations-a novel of fatal and fruitful mixes comprising a series of covert traces telling a secret story contradicting Cooper's overt, racial ideology. Yet it is this "pristine" ideology that finally overpowers and double-crosses the novel's "other" message. Written in 1826, at a specific historical moment when the Indian tribes were being removed or destroyed, the novel reaffirms a racial ideology tortured with its own historical ambiguities.

scholarly journals Cartographic Sublime

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances Hsu ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The World ◽  
Cognitive Faculties ◽  
The Face ◽  
Political Philosopher ◽  
Rational Side

Kant distinguishes two notions of the sublime: the mathematically sublime and the dynamically sublime. In the case of both notions, the experience of the sublime consists in a feeling of the superiority of our own power of reason, as a super sensible faculty, over nature. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) The concept of the sublime was associated with nature in late 18th and early 19th century aesthetics. Political philosopher and states-man Edmund Burke evoked human mortality in A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, defining the sublime as experience of the overwhelming magnitude of phenomena in the natural world which causes “a sort of delightful horror, a sort of tranquility tinged with terror; which, as it belongs to self-preservation, is one of the strongest of all the passions.” Kant, in contrast to Burke, defines rationality is an important component of the experience of the sublime: “The sublime is to be found in an object even devoid of form, so far as it immediately involves, or else by its presence provokes a representation of limitlessness, yet with a super-added thought of its totality.” That is, reason--super-added thought--allows us to comprehend and challenge the entirety of that which is beyond comprehension. He writes that “the feeling of the sublime in nature is respect for our own vocation . . . this feeling renders as it were intuitable the supremacy of our cognitive faculties on the rational side over the greatest faculty of sensibility.” For Kant, in other words, the experience of the sublime was the oscillation between sensation and rationality in the face of the overwhelming-ness of phenomena in the world.

scholarly journals The Logos between psychology, ontology, and Divinity: Fundamental aspects of the concept of Logos in the early thought of Slavoj Žižek

2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Corneliu C. Simuț
Keyword(s):  
Special Interest ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Psychological Aspects ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
Fundamental Feature ◽  
Slavoj Žižek ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The World ◽  
Modern Thought

Slavoj Žižek’s philosophy spans over more than three decades, which is confirmed by the numerous books he published since the late 1980s. Since his thinking about the idea of logos is no exception, this article focuses on what can be termed Žižek’s early philosophy, and especially that depicted in his The sublime object of ideology (1989) and The metastases of enjoyment (1994). Whilst the former underlines the psychological aspects of the logos, the latter focuses more on theories about being, as well as on theological considerations. This is why, three uses of the logos were identified in Žižek’s thought: psychological, ontological and theological, all three with a clear focus on the human being as conceived in modern thought, which for Žižek seems to be utterly opposed to traditional thinking about man and his relationship with God. It is clear from Žižek that whilst the notion of God does appear in this thought, it only refers to the human being which encapsulates the essence of Žižek’s philosophy to the point that the logos itself is a fundamental feature of the human being’s material existence in the natural world. Regardless of whether the logos points to psychology, ontology or divinity (theology), it always emerges as an idea which centres on the human being, with a special interest in how it exists as well as how it works in the world.

scholarly journals The Last Man and ‘The First Woman’: Unmanly Images of Unhuman Nature in Mary Shelley’s Ecocriticism

Perichoresis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-15
Author(s):  
Éva Antal
Keyword(s):  
Mary Shelley ◽  
The Other ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The World ◽  
Last Man ◽  
The One ◽  
The Last Man

AbstractMary Shelley in her writings relies on the romanticised notions of nature: in addition to its beauties, the sublime quality is highlighted in its overwhelming greatness. In her ecological fiction, The Last Man (1826), the dystopian view of man results in the presentation of the declining civilization and the catastrophic destruction of infested mankind. In the novel, all of the characters are associated with forces of culture and history. On the one hand, Mary Shelley, focussing on different human bonds, warns against the sickening discord and dissonance, the lack of harmony in the world, while, on the other hand, she calls for the respect of nature and natural order. The prophetic caring female characters ‘foresee’ the events but cannot help the beloved men to control their building and destroying powers. Mary Shelley expresses her unmanly view of nature and the author’s utopian hope seems to lie in ‘unhuman’ nature. While the epidemic, having been unleashed by the pests of patriarchal society and being accelerated by global warming, sweeps away humanity, Mother Nature flourishes and gains back her original ‘dwelling place’.

scholarly journals Carnival Anthropocene: Myth and Cultural Memory in Monique Roffey's Archipelago // Antropoceno Carnaval: El mito y memoria cultural en Archipelago de Monique Roffey

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-55
Author(s):  
C. Parker Krieg
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

      This essay examines the role of myth in and as cultural memory through a reading of the novel, Archipelago (2013), by the Trinidadian-British author Monique Roffey. Against conceptions of the Anthropocene as a break from the past—a break that repeats the myth of modernity—I argue that Roffey’s use of cultural memory offers a carnivalesque relation to the world in response to the narrative’s account of climate change trauma. Drawing on Bakhtin’s classic study of the carnival as an occasion for contestation and renewal, as well as Cheryl Lousely’s call for a “carnivalesque ecocriticism,” this essay expands on the recent ecocritical turn to the field of Memory Studies (Buell; Goodbody; Kennedy) to illustrate the way literature mediates between mythic and historical relations to the natural world. As literary expressions, the carnivalesque and the grotesque evoke myth and play in order to expose and transform the social myths which govern relations and administrate difference. Since literature acts as both a producer and reflector of cultural memory, this essay seeks to highlight the literary potential of myth for connecting past traumas to affirmational modes of political engagement. Resumen     Este ensayo examina el papel del mito en y como memoria cultural analizando la novela Archipelago (2013), escrita por la autora trinitense-británica Monique Roffey. Frente a la idea del Antropoceno como una ruptura con el pasado—una ruptura que repite el mito de la modernidad—este trabajo argumenta que el uso de la memoria cultural de Roffey ofrece una relación carnavalesca con el mundo en respuesta al trauma del cambio climático detallado en la novela. Basando mi argumento en la teoría clásica de Bakhtin sobre el carnaval como una ocasión para la contestación y la renovación, así como la llamada de Cheryl Lousely por una “ecocrítica carnavalesca,” este ensayo amplía el reciente giro de la ecocrítica hacia el campo de los estudios de memoria (Buell; Goodbody; Kennedy) para ilustrar cómo la literatura media entre las relaciones míticas e históricas con el mundo natural. Como expresiones literarias, lo carnavalesco y lo grotesco evocan el mito y el juego para revelar y transformar los mitos sociales que gobiernan las relaciones y gestionan la diferencia. Ya que la literatura actúa tanto como productora y como espejo de la memoria cultural, este ensayo busca destacar el potencial literario del mito para conectar traumas del pasado con modos de compromiso político más afirmativos.

scholarly journals IMPACTS OF COVID-19 ON GEOMORPHOLOGICAL FIELDWORK: EXPLORATION OF NEW INITIATIVES AND DIMENSIONS

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 01-03
Author(s):  
Temitope D. Timothy Oyedotun
Keyword(s):  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Dynamic Nature ◽  
Field Training ◽  
Signature Pedagogy ◽  
The World ◽  
Site Field ◽  
Novel Coronavirus

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has already changed the world in many respects, and its impact cuts across many fields of human endeavours. An area of temporary setbacks in geomorphological research posed by the pandemic is in the restriction placed on fieldwork exercise. Apart from bringing a lot of constraints to fieldwork, the need to meet the learning outcomes ensured that the already in-use technologies were easily adapted to simulate the necessary fieldwork in evaluating dynamics in geomorphological environment and the natural world. Despite the success, however, the fieldwork remains ‘signature pedagogy’ for geography, geomorphology and any other Earth Science disciplines. The dynamic nature of landforms, the serendipity of on-site field training and exercises, the ability to have a first-hand experience of field phenomenon, etc. are some of the expected rewards that could not be simulated remotely. Hence, when COVID-19 pandemic is over, the aspects of fieldwork should not be jettisoned for the simulated alternatives embraced in the pandemic. The two should work hand-in-hand for the diverse fields of geomorphological research.

scholarly journals Ethnographic and mythopoetic space of the novel “Big Argish” by Mikhail Osharov

Litera ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 12-21
Author(s):  
Erzhen Gendenovna Sangadieva
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
Soviet Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Artistic Heritage

The problem of studying the traditional cultures of the peoples of Russia is relevant in the modern social science and humanities research. A significant role in this process is played by literature that reveals the peculiarities of ethnopoetics, worldview, and perception of the world. In fiction writing, the ethnic specificities are reflected in depiction in the natural world, everyday life, mentality, as well ethnographic features of lifestyle of a certain community. Based on the novel by Mikhail Osharov (1894-1937), the article examines the ethnographic peculiarities of depicting the world and man. Analysis is conducted on images of the characters through the specificity of their ethnopsychological consciousness and traditional worldview. The research employs semantic and axiological methods. The scientific novelty consists in the analysis of the national concept of the world through ethnographic peculiarities of depicting literary mages in the novel “Big Argish” by Mikhail Osharov. The novel was written in the Russian language, describing the unique culture, traditions and customs of the Evenki people of the early 1930s. During the political repressions, Mikhail Osharov was shot, and his artistic heritage was eliminated from the sociocultural space of the Soviet literature and literary studies. In the context of returning the names and heritage of the repressed writers, develops a new perspective of the literary works. In his novel, Mikhail Osharov preserved the peculiarities of traditional culture and everyday life of the Evenki people of the early XX century.

scholarly journals OVERCOMING THE BOUNDARIES OF EVERYDAYNESS IN NIALL GRIFFITHS`S NOVEL «STUMP»

2021 ◽  
pp. 121-127
Author(s):  
Ganna Stovba
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Open Space ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

The paper presents the research of poetics of the fourth novel «Stump» (2004) written by contemporary Welsh Anglophone author Niall Griffiths. The early works of Niall Griffiths have long been associated with the off-center tendency in contemporary British fiction, with novels written by Scottish authors such as Irvine Welsh, James Kelman, John King. This study attempts to demonstrate that Welsh writer doesn’t merely articulate the problems of the fringe groups of the society as well as shocking and taboo topics. Also to overcome the common postcolonial approach to Griffiths`s works which focuses on the concepts of «colonial othering», «forms of disability» etc. in the novels, the author of the article proposes the existential philosophy as methodological basis for this research. The study concentrates over the central problem of the human Being-in-the-world, the human life in the world of everydayness in Griffiths`s novel «Stump». Understanding «the everyday life», «everydayness» as common, routine life, full of daily automatic human actions (according to B. Waldenfels) the author aims to consider the boundaries of everyday life and the experience of overcoming the borders of everydayness in the novel discussed.The analysis demonstrates that narrative structure of the novel combines several modes and forms of narration. Interior monologue with steam of consciousness fragments is the form of representing the first plot line focusing on the one day of nameless recovering alcoholic who has lost his left arm to gangrene. «Style indirect libre» in first person plural form is used to finish each of the chapter devoted to one-armed hero and expresses his contradictory point of view on the «12 steps addiction recovery» program. The non-diegetic impersonal narrator (according to V. Shmid classification) introduces the second plot line devoted to the two gangsters who have set out from Liverpool on a mission to find and punish the one-armed man for a past misdeed. Their continual dialog sometimes is interrupted by the omnipresent narrator voice who conveys in form of indirect speech one of the gangster`s thoughts and his perceptive and ideological «point of view». A Griffiths`s fictional space can be divided on close/open, secular/sacral, everyday/non-everyday types. In the novel Wales natural world is opposed to any closed and narrow spaces. One-armed protagonist fills himself free and happy in the open space, where he communicates with birds, animals and meets a pantheistic God. Oppositely, two gangsters are afraid of open space in the middle of dangerous nature of Wales, when they leave native Liverpool. Having the works of K. Jaspers and M. Merleau-Ponty as the basis for our research, we conclude that the body for one-armed hero is an existential and temporal border, which transforms each moment of his life into an endless «boundary situation» (germ. Grenzsituation, according to K. Jaspers). A journey to unknown Wales gives a start to personal transformations for one of the gangsters – Alastair. Crossing the geographical border becomes a time of «boundarysituation» in Alastair`s existence. Consequently, the motives of the real Being, existential self-identity, meeting with the transcendent are concerned with the experience of overcoming the everydayness, crossing its boundaries.

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