A new perspective on the Basque kopla zaharrak from the Moroccan ayyus

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-363
Author(s):  
Sarali Gintsburg

Abstract In this article I continue reading oral traditional poetry from a cognitive perspective. This time I use findings obtained empirically from my previous research on the living short improvisational poetic genre ayyu from Morocco (Gintsburg 2017, 2019a) and turn my attention to kopla zaharrak, another short oral improvisational poetic genre, which once existed in the Basque Country but is now extinct and almost forgotten. In order to better understand how this genre once functioned, I first apply to it the notions of frames, or topics or themes, and scripts, or possible scenarios manifested at least partly in form of formulaic language, which are triggered by them. The analysis reveals that on the cognitive level kopla zaharrak offer a structure similar to the ayyu, where the first two lines work as a frame and the last two lines as a script. In the second part of my research, I compare examples of kopla zaharrak and ayyus and conclude that, despite obvious cultural and linguistic differences, the way both traditions make use of images of the natural world and connect them to human situations has demonstrable similarities.

Author(s):  
Katherine Clarke
Keyword(s):  

This chapter recalls the way in which landscapes are constructed, both in literary terms and in physical terms by characters within Herodotus’ narrative. It explores some modern parallels, such as the Kerch bridge which will link Crimea to Russia, for the manipulation of landscape through monumental engineering works as a symbol of imperial ambitions. It suggests, therefore, that the narrative of Herodotus, with its subtle and differentiated presentation of man’s interaction with the natural world, especially in the context of imperial projects, and its underlying proposition that the map of empire is constantly evolving, remains of immediate relevance to the modern world.


2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan B. Van der Schyff

I demonstrate here how Aristotle's teleological conception of nature has been largely misunderstood in the scientific age and I consider what his view might offer us with regard to the environmental challenges we face in the 21st century. I suggest that in terms of coming to an ethical understanding of the creatures and things that constitute the ecosystem, Aristotle offers a welcome alternative to the rather instrumental conception of the natural world and low estimation of subjective experience our contemporary techno-scientific culture espouses. Among other things, I consider how his conception of orexis and eudaimonia (happiness or, as I prefer here, "the flourishing life") might be extended to include the eco-system itself, thus allowing us to better understand the moral meaning of nature. I conclude with a look at the way in which modern phenomenology re-addresses the fundamental Greek concern with ontology, meaning and human authenticity. I consider the ways in which phenomenology reasserts the value of direct human experience that was so important to Aristotle; and I consider how this view, and that of Deep ecology, may help us to experience nature - and all of Being for that matter - in a more authentic, meaningful and altogether ethical light.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Kelsey

Why is the human mind able to perceive and understand the truth about reality; that is, why does it seem to be the mind's specific function to know the world? Sean Kelsey argues that both the question itself and the way Aristotle answers it are key to understanding his work De Anima, a systematic philosophical account of the soul and its powers. In this original reading of a familiar but highly compressed text, Kelsey shows how this question underpins Aristotle's inquiry into the nature of soul, sensibility, and intelligence. He argues that, for Aristotle, the reason why it is in human nature to know beings is that 'the soul in a way is all beings'. This new perspective on the De Anima throws fresh and interesting light on familiar Aristotelian doctrines: for example, that sensibility is a kind of ratio (logos), or that the intellect is simple, separate, and unmixed.


Author(s):  
D. G. Hart

Benjamin Franklin grew up in a devout Protestant family with limited prospects for wealth and fame. By hard work, limitless curiosity, native intelligence, and luck (what he called “providence”), Franklin became one of Philadelphia’s most prominent leaders, a world-recognized scientist, and the United States’ leading diplomat during the War for Independence. Along the way, Franklin embodied the Protestant ethics and cultural habits he learned and observed as a youth in Puritan Boston. This book follows Franklin’s remarkable career through the lens of the trends and innovations that the Protestant Reformation started (both directly and indirectly) almost two centuries earlier. The Philadelphian’s work as a printer, civic reformer, institution builder, scientist, inventor, writer, self-help dispenser, politician, and statesman was deeply rooted in the culture and outlook that Protestantism nurtured. Through the alternatives to medieval church and society, Protestants built societies and instilled habits of character and mind that allowed figures such as Franklin to build the life that he did. Through it all, Franklin could not assent to all of Protestantism’s doctrines or observe its worship. But for most of his life, he acknowledged his debt to his creator, reveled in the natural world guided by providence, and conducted himself in a way (imperfectly) to merit divine approval. This biography recognizes Franklin as a cultural or non-observant Protestant, someone who thought of himself as a Presbyterian, ordered his life as other Protestants did, sometimes went to worship services, read his Bible, and prayed, but could not go all the way and join a church.


Author(s):  
James Miller

Daoism proposes a radical reversal of the way that modern human beings think about the natural world. Rather than understanding human beings as “subject” who observe the “objective” world of nature, Daoism proposes that subjectivity is grounded in the Dao or Way, understood as the wellspring of cosmic creativity for a world of constant transformation. As a result the Daoist goal of “obtaining the Dao” offers insights into the ecological quest to transcend the modern, Cartesian bifurcation of subject and object, self and world. From this follows an ideal of human action not as the projection of agency onto an neutral, objective backdrop but as a transaction or mediation between self and world.


Author(s):  
Eitan P. Fishbane
Keyword(s):  

Studies the phenomenon of journey and encounter in zoharic narrative, with special attention to the poetics of anagnorisis — the drama of character unveiling in which superficial appearances are inverted, seeming fools revealed to be mystic sages. Also studies the ways in which encounters with the natural world (including trees, flowers, and stars) serve as stimuli for the discovery and exposition of mystical secrets.


Author(s):  
Amit Pinchevski

“Transmission” is a term used, curiously enough, in both technology and psychology. In the former, it denotes the transfer of messages from one point to another, a view that was principally theorized by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver. Technologically speaking, transmission names the conveyance of information from sender to receiver through a designated channel by means of symbols or signals. This technical formulation of transmission constitutes the operational basis of numerous media technologies. In psychology, transmission is often used to describe the way behavior and symptoms of traumatized parents are transferred to their children, causing transgenerational trauma. Such transmission can be direct or indirect, overt or covert; indeed, transmission of trauma might be the result of either over-disclosure of knowledge and facts, or of under- disclosure, even of persistent silence, which “can often communicate traumatic messages as powerfully as words.” In both technological and psychological uses, transmission denotes a unilateral handing over across space and/ or time. But clearly psychological transmission implies more than the mere delivery of messages: it involves a delivery that exceeds that of meaning or information proper, a transmission taking place as though beyond words, on the affective rather than on the cognitive level. This book has posited media as linking the two senses of transmission above by virtue of the technological capability of effecting impact in excess of message, and contact in excess of content. And nowhere are the stakes in linking technological and psychological transmissions higher than in the mediation of trauma. In this book I have advanced an argument about the deep association of media and trauma. The media discussed here—radio, videotape, television, digital, and virtual—comprise different instantiations of the mediation of trauma: the ways media technologies sustain and convey the experience of unsettling experience. Media reach to the Real, and in so doing make available a register whose registration is of corporeality itself. Bodies find expression through media in the Real, revealing materiality as a common substratum.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-214
Author(s):  
Kelhouvinuo Suokhrie

Abstract This is the first variationist study of clan intermarriage and intergenerational change in Nagaland (India). The study investigates clan as a sociolinguistic variable by drawing data from the Angami (belonging to the Kuki-Chin-Naga sub-group of Tibeto-Burman languages) community of Kohima village in Nagaland. The linguistic variables examined include two alveolar fricatives and three affricates showing variable palatalization. Like many other clan-based communities (cf. Stanford, 2007, 2008, 2009), Angamis practice exogamy. Women settle down in their husband’s clans in the same village after marriage, but continue to maintain their original clanlects despite being in contact with their husband’s clanlects for many years. Exogamy practices are however weakening in Kohima, resulting in intra-clan marriages. The study examines the linguistic implications of the inter-clan and intra-clan marriages, illustrating the patterns that young learners acquire under such circumstances and the way they respond to the new changes. Labov finds evidence for an “outward orientation of the language learning faculty” (2012, 2014). The Nagaland results build on this notion but provide a new perspective: In Nagaland, children’s language learning is inwardly oriented with respect to stable variation and outwardly oriented in the case of change in progress.


2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherry Ganon-Shilon ◽  
Schechter Chen

Educational reform implementation in today’s fast changing world requires a critical transition from individual to school sense-making processes. Managing expectations from above (e.g. external demands) and below (e.g. internal school goals) while performing within multiple overlapping contexts, principals seem pulled in many different directions simultaneously. This article proposes the concept of sense-making as a collaborative framework, explaining how principals make sense with their teachers through dialogue and negotiation to improve their schools as they constantly seek to understand the unique contexts in which they operate. This holistic approach invites a new perspective on how to develop models for reforming education systems while paving the way for a collaborative sense-making process within unique school contexts.


2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 345-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Lester

One of the primary goals of human spaceflight has been putting human cognition on other worlds. This is at the heart of the premise of what we call space exploration. But Earth-controlled telerobotic facilities can now bring human senses to other worlds and, in that respect, the historical premise of exploration, of boots on the ground, no longer clearly applies. We have ways of achieving remote presence that we never used to have. But the distances over which this must be achieved, by humans based on the Earth, is such that the speed of light seriously handicaps their awareness and cognition. The highest quality telepresence can be achieved not only by having people on site, but also by having people close, and it is that requirement that truly mandates human spaceflight. In terms of cost, safety, and survival, getting people close is easier than getting people all the way there. It is suggested here that to the extent that space exploration is best accomplished by achieving a sense of real human off-Earth presence, that presence can be best achieved by optimally combining human spaceflight to mitigate latency, with telerobotics, to keep those humans secure. This is culturally a new perspective on exploration.


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