Confessions of a premature constructivist

2006 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 689-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAWRENCE FREEDMAN

In his book Small World, David Lodge has the globe-trotting Maurice Zapp explain the revolution that had taken place in academic life during the 1970s. Two things had become more portable – information and people – and three things had made this possible ‘jet travel, direct-dialling telephone and the Xerox machine’. As long as you have access to these, Zapp explains, ‘you're plugged into the only university that actually matters – the global campus. A young man in a hurry can see the world by conference-hopping’. That is the theme of Lodge's book.

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Qassim Alwan Saeed ◽  
Khairallah Sabhan Abdullah Al-Jubouri

Social media sites have recently gain an essential importance in the contemporary societies، actually، these sites isn't simply a personal or social tool of communication among people، its role had been expanded to become "political"، words such as "Facebook، Twitter and YouTube" are common words in political fields of our modern days since the uprisings of Arab spring، which sometimes called (Facebook revolutions) as a result of the major impact of these sites in broadcasting process of the revolution message over the world by organize and manage the revolution progresses in spite of the governmental ascendance and official prohibition.


2019 ◽  
Vol 118 (11) ◽  
pp. 533-541
Author(s):  
Dr. Premila Koppalakrishnan

The world stands on the precarious edge of an innovative transformation that will on a very basic level modify the manner in which we live, work, and identify with each other. In its scale, degree, and unpredictability, the change will be not normal for anything mankind has encountered previously. We don't yet know exactly how it will unfurl, however one thing is clear: the reaction to it should be incorporated and exhaustive, including all partners of the worldwide nation, from the general population and private segments to the scholarly community and common society. It is The Fourth Industrial Revolution, the digital revolution. The digital revolution has opened way for many impacts. All of the emirates are experiencing the effects of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” This revolution reflects the velocity, scope, and systems impact of a digital transformation that is changing economies, jobs, and work as it is currently known. Characteristics of the revolution include a fusion of technologies across the physical, digital, and biological spheres.


Slavic Review ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 608-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal

He [Chulkov] says to me, “mystical anarchism,” I say to him, “non-acceptance of the world, supra-individualism, mystical energism,” and we understand each other. . . .Viacheslav IvanovThe Revolution of 1905 challenged the symbolists’ belief that they could seclude themselves from the rest of society. Forced to reexamine their previous ideas, values, and attitudes, they developed new ideologies that took cognizance of the current crisis. Among the most prominent of the new ideologies was mystical anarchism, the doctrine of the symbolist writers Georgii Chulkov and Viacheslav Ivanov. Particularly attractive to the symbolists, mystical anarchism also influenced other artists and intellectuals; doctrines similar to it proliferated, and it engendered a polemic in which almost all the symbolists took part. Strikingly similar to the mystical anarchism of other periods of social upheaval, both in Russia and in the West, illuminating a facet of the little-known mystical and religious aspects of the Revolution of 1905, and providing an example of the response of apolitical writers and artists to revolutionary upheaval, Chulkov and Ivanov’s doctrine merits closer study than it has so far received.


1989 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 217
Author(s):  
Philip G. Altbach ◽  
Burton R. Clark
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Timothy Tackett

The book describes the life and the world of a small-time lawyer, Adrien-Joseph Colson, who lived in central Paris from the end of the Old Regime through the first eight years of the French Revolution. It is based on over a thousand letters written by Colson about twice a week to his best friend living in the French province of Berry. By means of this correspondence, and of a variety of other sources, the book examines what it was like for an “ordinary citizen” to live through extraordinary times, and how Colson, in his position as a “social and cultural intermediary,” can provide insight into the life of a whole neighborhood on the central Right Bank, both before and during the Revolution. It explores the day-to-day experience of the Revolution: not only the thrill, the joy, and the enthusiasm, but also the uncertainty, the confusion, the anxiety, the disappointments—often all mixed together. It also throws light on some of the questions long debated by historians concerning the origins, the radicalization, the growth of violence, and the end of that Revolution.


Author(s):  
Valentina Kovaleva ◽  
Oleg Pokhalenkov

The article deals with such categories of carnivalization as a free familiar contact, eccentricity, profanation, carnival ambivalence, crowning, and debunking the carnival king. Taking these categories to the analysis of B. Vasilyev’s story «Tomorrow Was the War» into consideration allows not only to reveal the features of the carnival poetics of the work, but also to understand more deeply the atmos-phere of total Stalinist terror reigned in the country on the eve of the war. Turning to the theory of carnivalization helps to draw a conclusion about how heavy was the atmosphere of suspicion, informers, and unjustified repression created by the NKVD with the support ofthe state machine. B. Vasi-lyev makes the reader wonder whether the new world order that is being estab-lished can be considered better than the old one that has been swept away by the revolution. Thus, the main goal of the carnival is realized in the story–to turn inside out the usual ideas about the world as a reasonable hierarchical system, to turn the usual order of things upside down, to ridicule everything familiar and frozen, so that through denial, ridicule (symbolic death) to promote the re-vival and renewal of the world.


Author(s):  
Varvara A. Byachkova ◽  

The article raises the topic of space organization in writings by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The object of analysis is the novel A Little Princess. The novel, addressed primarily to children and teenagers, has many similarities with David Copperfield and the works of Charles Dickens in general. The writer largely follows the literary tradition created by Dickens. The space of the main character is divided into three levels: the Big world (states and borders), the Small world (home, school, city) and the World of imagination. The first two worlds give the reader a realistic picture of Edwardian England, the colonial Empire, through the eyes of a child reveal the themes of unprotected childhood, which the writer develops following the literary tradition of the 19th century. The Big and Small worlds also perform an educational function, being a source of experience and impressions for the main character. In the novel, the aesthetic of realism is combined with folklore and fairy-tale elements: the heroine does not completely transform the surrounding space, but she manages to change it partially and also to preserve her own personality and dignity while experiencing the Dickensian drama of child disenfranchisement, despair and loneliness. The World of imagination allows the reader to understand in full the character of Sarah Crewe, demonstrates the dynamics of her growing up, while for herself it is a powerful protective mechanism that enables her to pass all the tests of life and again become a happy child who can continue to grow up and develop.


Author(s):  
Alexander Nikulin

The Russian Revolution is the central theme of both A. Chayanov’s novel The Journey of My Brother Alexei to the Land of Peasant Utopia and A. Platonov’s novel Chevengur. The author of this article compares the chronicles and images of the Revolution in the biographies of Chayanov and Platonov as well as the main characters, genres, plots, and structures of the two utopian novels, and questions the very understanding of the history of the Russian Revolution and the possible alternatives of its development. The article focuses not only on the social-economic structure of utopian Moscow and Chevengur but also on the ethical-aesthetic foundations of both utopias. The author argues that the two utopias reconstruct, describe, and criticize the Revolution from different perspectives and positions. In general, Chayanov adheres to a relativistic and pluralistic perception of the Revolution and history, while Platonov, on the contrary, absolutizes the end of humankind history with the eschatological advent of Communism. In Chayanov‘s utopia, the Russian Revolution is presented as a viable alternative to the humanistic-progressive ideals of the metropolitan elites with the moderate populist-socialist ideas of the February Revolution. In Platonov’s utopia, the Revolution is presented as an alternative to the eschatological-ecological transformation of the world by provincial rebels inspired by the October Revolution. Thus, Chayanov’s liberal-cooperative utopia and Platonov’s anarchist-communist utopia contain both an apologia and a criticism of the Russian Revolution in the insights of its past and future victories and defeats, and opens new horizons for alternative interpretations of the Russian Revolution.


Author(s):  
Sibelan Forrester

One of the best-known and influential Russian modernist poets, Marina Tsvetaeva (1892–1941) wrote lyric and narrative poetry, plays, autobiographical and memoir prose, and essays in literary history and criticism. Her biography is so full of incident that it can tend to crowd out her poetry in studies of her life. Born in Moscow, she began her poetic career among the Moscow Symbolists but never joined a poetic school. She wrote all through the revolution and made a splash when she was able to publish again in the early 1920s. After emigrating in 1922 she wrote and published a great deal of poetry, but later she switched largely to prose, at least in part because it was easier to publish. Her culminating book of poetry is After Russia (Paris, 1928). Tsvetaeva returned to the USSR for family reasons in June of 1939. There she worked as a translator; she committed suicide in August 1941. Since her work began appearing more widely in the 1960s, Tsvetaeva has been recognized as a ground-breaking poet, impacting writers and poets all over the world, and she is of particular interest to feminist critics and scholars.


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