Mistaken Identities: First-Person Narration in Kazuo Ishiguro

1993 ◽  
Vol 3 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 139-154
Author(s):  
Margaret Scanlan

Abstract Contemporary theorists tend to agree on the death of the subject and therefore, it seems, on the death of the first-person realistic novel. Novels like David Copperfield and Jane Eyre seem like extended metaphors for humanism itself-the outmoded view that human beings are the center of their world, that they can know themselves, that their psychology and moral character develop con-sistently, and that they are largely responsible for the courses their lives take. In two recent first-person novels, An Artist of the Floating World (1986) and The Remains of the Day (1989), Kazuo Ishiguro explores such assumptions, providing us with narrators whose selves do seem to be socially constructed and consequently decentered and unstable. Although Ishiguro fully understands and displays the appeal of posthumanist models of the subject, he ends by suggesting that a self no longer author of itself is a self in search of authority. (Cultural criticism, literary criticism)

Author(s):  
Yao Chiachen ◽  
Ya-huei Wang

<p class="AbstractText">All human beings seek certain identities in order to understand their existence and position in society, the groups to which they belong, and the unique characteristics they have. This paper examines how, in <em>Jane Eyre</em>, Charlotte Bronte examines socially constructed institutionalism in Victorian England. This paper also explores how the protagonist, Jane Eyre, oppressed due to her social class and gender, struggles to live with equality, dignity, and freedom, and finally reaches independence and self-fulfillment. Jane successfully completes the stages of identity development, and, after acquiring a sense of competence, achieves happiness and intimacy in an equal partnership with her true love, Mr. Rochester.</p>


2020 ◽  
pp. 64-73
Author(s):  
Shivam Grover ◽  
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Kshitij Sidana ◽  
...  

Performance capture of human beings have been used to animate 3D characters for movies and games for several decades now. Traditional performance capture methods require a dedicated costly setup which usually consists of more than one sensor placed at a distance from the subject, hence requiring a large amount of budget and space to accomodate. This lowers its feasibility and portability by a huge amount. Egocentric (first-person/wearable) cameras, however, are attached to the body and hence are mobile. With a rise of acceptance of wearable technology by the general public, wearable cameras have gotten cheaper too. We can make use of their excessive portability in the performance capture domain. However working with egocentric images is a mammoth task as the views are severely distorted due to the first-person perspective and the body parts farther from the camera are highly prone to being occluded. In this paper, we review the existing state-of-the-art methods about performance capture using egocentric based views.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sreeja Gangadharan P ◽  
S P K Jena

Mind is a subject widely studied under various discipline, yet, failed to come up with a definition which we could comprehend. These studies had unravelled a number of questions regarding the nature of the mind and leads to serious debates on its composition, i.e., whether it consists only of higher intellectual functions such as memory and reasoning, its activities i.e.; what is the relationship of mind and body, is dualism or monism?, is it accessible to study or only an endeavour of first person and finally, who possess a mind?; do all beings have a mind or only human beings could possess it?, and so on. With two simple models, ‘the Epistemological dualism’ and the model of ‘Mind-Spirit; dichotomy Vs coexistence’ based on the concepts in Indian Psychology, the paper throws more light in to the subject mind and its faculty.


2013 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-187
Author(s):  
E. S. Burt

Why does writing of the death penalty demand the first-person treatment that it also excludes? The article investigates the role played by the autobiographical subject in Derrida's The Death Penalty, Volume I, where the confessing ‘I’ doubly supplements the philosophical investigation into what Derrida sees as a trend toward the worldwide abolition of the death penalty: first, to bring out the harmonies or discrepancies between the individual subject's beliefs, anxieties, desires and interests with respect to the death penalty and the state's exercise of its sovereignty in applying it; and second, to provide a new definition of the subject as haunted, as one that has been, but is no longer, subject to the death penalty, in the light of the worldwide abolition currently underway.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-37
Author(s):  
Syarifudin Syarifudin

Each religious sect has its own characteristics, whether fundamental, radical, or religious. One of them is Insan Al-Kamil Congregation, which is in Cijati, South Cikareo Village, Wado District, Sumedang Regency. This congregation is Sufism with the concept of self-purification as the subject of its teachings. So, the purpose of this study is to reveal how the origin of Insan Al-Kamil Congregation, the concept of its purification, and the procedures of achieving its purification. This research uses a descriptive qualitative method with a normative theological approach as the blade of analysis. In addition, the data generated is the result of observation, interviews, and document studies. From the collected data, Jamaah Insan Al-Kamil adheres to the core teachings of Islam and is the tenth regeneration of Islam Teachings, which refers to the Prophet Muhammad SAW. According to this congregation, self-perfection becomes an obligation that must be achieved by human beings in order to remember Allah when life is done. The process of self-purification is done when human beings still live in the world by knowing His God. Therefore, the peak of self-purification is called Insan Kamil. 


AKADEMIKA ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-221
Author(s):  
Minahul Mubin

A novel titled BumiCinta written by Habiburrahman El-Shirazy takes place in the Russian setting, in which Russia is a country that adopts freedom. Russia with various religions embraced by its people has called for the importance of human freedom. Free sex in Russia is commonplace among its young people. Russia is a country that is free with no rules, no wonder if there have been many not embracing certain religion. In fact, according to data Russia is a country accessing the largest porn sites in the world. Habiburrahman in his Bumi Cinta reveals some religious aspects. He incorporates the concept of religion with social conflicts in Russia. Therefore, the writer reveals two fundamental issues, namely: 1. What is the characters' religiosity in the Habiburrahman El-Shirazy'sBumiCinta? 2. What is the characters' religiosity in the BumiCinta in their relationship with God, fellow human beings, and nature ?. To achieve the objectives, the writer uses the religious literary criticism based on the Qur'an and Hadith. It emphasizes religious values in literature. The writer also uses the arguments of scholars and schools of thought to strengthen this paper. This theory is then used to seek the elements of religiousity in the Habiburrahman El-Shirazy'sBumiCinta. In this novel, the writer explains there are strong religious elements and religious effects of its characters, especially the belief in God, faith and piety


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Putu Sabda Jayendra

The use of the bija in worship is commonplace in the Hindu religion, especially in Bali. But actually means philosophical a very deep, because it not only as a guidance for mankind in creating prosperity based on the sacredness through harmonious relationships beetwen humans and God/Ida Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa, humans with their fellow human beings and human beings with their natural environment. But the most important is education in shaping the character of good moral character, thus forming each employee to become a real human being. Keywords: bija, harmonization, chastity, character.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
João Carlos Brum Torres

O artigo tem por objeto o exame de três registros de gritantes e distintos paradoxos na Doutrina do Direito de Kant. Registros feitos em tempos e contextos históricos diferentes por Friedrich Bouterwek, Marcus Willaschek e Balthazar Barbosa Filho. Bouterwek atribuiu a Kant a mais paradoxal das proposições jamais enunciadas por qualquer autor, a de que a mera ideia de soberania deve obrigar-nos a obedecer como a nosso inquestionável senhor a quem quer que se haja estabelecido como tal, sem que caiba indagar quem lhe deu o direito de comandar-nos. Willaschek aponta a incompatibilidade de duas teses centrais da doutrina kantiana: a do caráter externo dos vínculos jurídicos e a da incondicionalidade obrigacional do direito positivo, pois não é possível entender como é possível termo-nos como obrigados por imperativos jurídicos e, ao mesmo, vermo-nos internamente isentados do dever de obedecê-los. O ponto crítico de Balthazar é alegar que não pode haver na filosofia kantiana uma crítica da razão político e jurídica, simplesmente porque o conceito de imputação, base da normatividade própria dessas esferas, pressupõe uma pluralidade de agentes livres que, justamente, só pode ser uma pressuposição, pois nosso acesso à normatividade prática só pode ter lugar em primeira pessoa. No exame a que o artigo submete essas alegações, o artigo argumenta, em objeção à tese de Balthazar, que o caráter universal e categórico da força que vincula o sujeito quando confrontado com a lei moral em primeira pessoa necessariamente se desvaneceria se, ao mesmo tempo, ele não fosse tomado pela evidência de que a realidade objetiva dos princípios morais é não só instanciável, mas assegurada pela múltipla instanciação. Com relação às dificuldades levantadas por Willaschek e Bouterwek, o artigo argumenta que o princípio exeundum e statu naturali, enquanto norma metapositiva, anterior à divisão do domínio prático entre doutrina do direito e doutrina da virtude, permite ao mesmo tempo compreender a exigência de obediência ao poder constituído e a restrição das obrigações jurídico-políticas exclusivamente ao foro externo.AbstractThe object of the article is to examine three claims about three distinct and allegedly blatant paradoxes in Kant's Doctrine of Right. These three critical points had been made in distinct times and contexts by Friedrich Bouterwek, Marcus Willaschek e Balthazar Barbosa Filho. Bouterwek attributed to Kant the most paradoxical of all paradoxical propositions, the statement that by the mere idea of sovereignty we are obliged to obey as our lord who has imposed himself upon us, without questioning from where he got such right. Willaschek points out the incompatibility of two main theses of Kantian doctrine of right: the claims that the legal bounds are of external character and that they are the source of unconditional obligations, since it seems impossible to understand how it would be possible to be obliged by juridical norms and decisions and at the same time to be exempted of the internal duty of compliance. The radical objection of Professor Balthazar is the claim that in the context of Kantian Philosophy it is impossible to admit a critique of the juridical and political reason because the concept of imputation, ground of the normativity in these domains, requires not only the presupposition of free agents, but a true and secure epistemic access to them, which is, according to him, impossible considering that the moral law and the other practical principles are accessible for us only in the first person. In the course of the appraisal of such claims, the article contest that objection arguing that the universal and categorical force of the normative bound experienced by the subject when confronted with the moral law in the first person would ineluctably vanish if, at the same time, he had not been taken by the evidence that the objective reality of the moral principles is secured by multiple instancing. Regarding the difficulties raised by Willaschek and Bouterwek, the article argues that the principle exeundum e statu naturali, as a norm of meta-positive character, prior to the division of practical domains between the doctrine of right and the doctrine of virtue, is the cue both to the understanding of the requirement of unquestioning obedience to the constituted power and to the restriction of the validity of this requirement only in foro externo.


Author(s):  
Philip Goff

This is the first of two chapters discussing the most notorious problem facing Russellian monism: the combination problem. This is actually a family of difficulties, each reflecting the challenge of how to make sense of everyday human and animal experience intelligibly arising from more fundamental conscious or protoconscious features of reality. Key challenges facing panpsychist and panpsychist forms of Russellian monism are considered. With respect to panprotopsychism, there is the worry that it collapses into noumenalism: the view that human beings, by their very nature, are unable to understand the concrete, categorical nature of matter. With respect to panpsychism, there is the subject-summing problem: the difficulty making sense of how micro-level conscious subjects combine to produce macro-level conscious subjects. A solution to the subject-summing problem is proposed, and it is ultimately argued that panpsychist forms of the Russellian monism are to be preferred on grounds of simplicity and elegance.


Author(s):  
Christine M. Korsgaard

According to the marginal cases argument, there is no property that might justify making a moral difference between human beings and the other animals that is both uniquely and universally human. It is therefore “speciesist” to treat human beings differently just because we are human beings. While not challenging the conclusion, this chapter argues that the marginal cases argument is metaphysically misguided. It ignores the differences between a life stage and a kind, and between lacking a property and having it in a defective form. The chapter then argues for a view of moral standing that attributes it to the subject of a life conceived as an atemporal being, and shows how this view can resolve some familiar puzzles such as how death can be a loss to the person who has died, how we can wrong the dead, the “procreation asymmetry,” and the “non-identity problem.”


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