The Uncomfortable Ordinary

Author(s):  
Laura E. Tanner

Despite extensive dialogue among Robinson scholars about the role of the ordinary in her fiction, critical attention limits itself almost exclusively to the transformation of the everyday. This chapter focuses instead on the way that, for Robinson’s protagonists, loss settles uneasily into the everyday; the aesthetic defamiliarization of a taken-for-granted world often translates into the intimate experience of estrangement. The power of representation that critics associate with Robinson’s rendering of ordinary things emerges from an intensity of perception that marks her characters’ expulsion from the taken for granted. Scarred by grief, illness, aging, and trauma, Robinson’s characters inhabit a world of transcendent beauty suffused with the terrifying threat of loss. This chapter introduces the concept of the “uncomfortable ordinary” within the frameworks of everyday life theory, Robinson criticism, contemporary novel studies, and recent dialogues on the lyrical novel to argue for the complexity, relevance, and contemporaneity of Robinson’s fiction.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lucy Eleanor Alston

<p>It is a commonplace that ekphrasis – the description in literature of a visual work of art – brings to the fore questions of representation and reference. Such questions are particularly associated with the ‘postmodern’; ekphrasis is thus often subsumed under the category of metafiction. There has been little critical attention, however, to how the ekphrastic mode might be understood in aesthetic terms. This thesis considers the nature of ekphrasis’s referential capacity, but expands on this to suggest a number of ways in which the ekphrastic mode evinces the aesthetic and ontological assumptions upon which a text is predicated. Two case studies illustrate how the ekphrastic mode can be figured to different effect. In comparing these two novels, this thesis argues that the ekphrastic mode makes clear the particular subject-object relations expressed by each. If Lukács is correct in asserting that the novel mode expresses a discrepancy between ‘the conventionality of the objective world and the interiority of the subjective one’, ekphrasis provides a fruitful but under-explored avenue for critical inquiry because, as a mode, it is situated at the point at which subject and object must converge. The first chapter of this thesis is concerned with Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station (2011), a novel that includes both traditional ekphrastic descriptions and embedded photographs and references to critical theory that function ekphrastically. David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996) provides a contrast: the novel makes continued reference to film – a medium defined by its temporal qualities – but as used in the novel the ekphrastic mode implies a fixed, ahistorical schema. The implications that such differences have on the novel mode and critical discourse are explored in the final section of the thesis.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 79-89
Author(s):  
Blinov Alexey V. ◽  

Turning to the history of the everyday life of an individual or society allows us to preserve historical memory, to identify the mechanisms that ensure the historical continuity and integrity of society at the present stage. An important role in the organization of the management of the regional educational space belonged to civil servant (the trustee, district inspectors, administrative corps of educational institutions), allocated from among the employees of the Ministry of the National Education. Based on historiographical and historical sources, using the methodological provisions of the theory of everyday life, the principles of objectivity, historicism and consistency, the article shows the role of the profession in the structure of the daily life of civil servant of the West Siberian Educational District. It is established that the professional activity was influenced by the scope of official duties established by departmental regulatory documentation, spatial and territorial features of the entrusted management sector, the socio-political situation that corrects professional duties, the established way of life and provides the opportunity to choose within the entrusted professional space. The social status and income level of a civil servant depended on the scope of control and its significance for the activities of the entire system. It was a compensation for the time and effort spent. The proposed approach to the analysis of the role of the professional factor in the daily life of civil servant of the West Siberian Educational District can be applied to other socio-professional groups in different territorial and temporal spaces. Keywords: West Siberian Educational District, Ministry of the National education, educational institution, everyday life, civil servant, charter, professional activity


2021 ◽  
pp. 109-128
Author(s):  
Rajiv Prabhakar

This concluding chapter reflects on some of the things that critics of financial inclusion might learn from its supporters. As many critics of financial inclusion are already engaging with policy topics at some level, they might benefit from a deeper engagement with policy detail. This might pave the way for more detailed criticisms. The chapter then uses the example of the financial education of young people to highlight the varying nature of policy, which might also inform theoretical discussions of the everyday life of finance. Indeed, financial education is important in building financial capability. Finally, the chapter suggests some possible further areas of research that build upon some of the arguments contained in this book.


Author(s):  
Priyanuj Choudhury

Fear is one of the foremost debilitating factors that hinder an individual’s growth, and one of the cornerstones of mainstream competitive schooling in India. The presence of fear in the process of schooling has great significance in the way it shapes an individual and affects learning. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the ways in which education can be imparted without the operation of fear, by looking at the everyday practices, rituals and built form of a KFI school in Bengaluru. Through an ethnographic exploration, the author attempts to interpret the micro processes of everyday life in the school and pedagogic practices employed across junior, middle and senior school classrooms that work in collusion to create an environment free of fear. Through a case study of contradictions, the author also looks at the possible factors that may work against the creation of such a space.


Author(s):  
Andrew Wenn

This chapter discusses the nature of information, the way it appears in everyday life. However, the way information is presented and discussed in this chapter is also a little unconventional in that it uses rather a large amount of interview and other document transcripts (in Times italic font). The interview texts are largely unedited because I want to retain some of the flavour of the conversations that took place. Moreover, the limits of a conventional conference chapter are pushed even further because the text is also littered with comments from several other voices (represented in a sans serif font). Doing so allows a degree of reflexivity, albeit in the limited format of a conference paper, where we can explore things contained within the text that directly relate to the topic (Woolgar & Ashmore, 1991).


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 646-660 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Michael
Keyword(s):  

This article considers the sociological role of activities that seem to make no sense: what can be learnt from episodes ‘unhinged’ from the routines of everyday life? In particular, stressing a processual framework for the study of everyday life, these unhinged episodes are regarded as useful for accessing its virtuality. The paper draws on literatures on everyday life, the object and the event in order, firstly to contrast critique to speculation, and secondly to sketch out what a speculative method for the study of everyday life might look like. Along the way, a number of concepts are developed: including affordance (the combination of plan, body and object); idiocy (a positive responsiveness to that which makes no sense); and affect (an ‘exquisite sensitivity to the world’). This perspective is illustrated through a discussion of how everyday practical issues raised by the use of rolling or wheeled luggage might evoke new forms of sociality – a ‘technosociality’.


1992 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Davidson

AbstractSchizophrenia has historically been considered a severe psychiatric disorder with a chronic and progressive course; an assumption that has shaped both clinical research and public policy. Recent studies have suggested, however, that many people recover from this disorder to varying degrees, prompting new research approaches that focus on factors influencing improvement as well as pathology. An empirical-phenomenological approach appears especially promising as an avenue to investigating the active role the person may play in improvement. The dimensions of everyday life that are discussed as providing a conceptual framework for investigations of the active role of the person are intentionality, temporality, and meaning. Within this framework a four-step process of recovering and reconstructing the self in schizophrenia is then delineated, with concrete illustrations of each step drawn from interviews with one young woman with schizophrenia. The findings are taken to represent the kinds of valuable insights that may be garnered from an empirical-phenomenological approach to research built upon a recognition of the importance of the dimensions of intentionality, temporality, and meaning in the everyday life of those afflicied with severe mental illness. There is only the fight to recover what has been lost And found and lost again and again. T. S. Eliot


Bibliosphere ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 27-35
Author(s):  
N. N. Misyurov

The functional role of books (scientific, artistic, philosophical, religious and moralistic) in the public prac­tice of the German Enlightenment is comparable to the significance of such major national concepts as the Lutheran faith and a special German character. The idea of aesthetic education in contemporary historical circumstances and socio-political circumstances actually became the ideology of national self-determina­tion. The book, its semantic «images» as literary reading images enshrined in famous works of German clas­sics, helps better revealing the spiritual content of the era and the human inner world (in typical «hero of time»). Educational book (serious and entertaining) defines the vector of social development in Germany.  German book in its «materiality» belongs to the everyday life culture, reflects the level of development of the book business in Germany and the specificity of the «culture of consumption». Everyday life culture is a holistic «life world» shared «values» and «meanings» perceived as a world attitudes and behavioral habits and regarded as a natural space of human activity. Such an approach makes it possible to study the typical, recurring forms of «cultural practices», before remaining on the periphery of classical humanities. «Reading» could be attributed to this range of socio-cultural practices. Philosophical basis of the study is the following: everything that a thing opens our perception is simply «a scheme of sensation» changing in accordance with «angles», in which we perceive them; what the thing is in its materiality can be revealed only through our final experiences. A material thing and its «causality» base in sensory perception of a subject. This series of «material things» should include «the book in general» and specifically German book as an attribute of everyday life culture of the Enlightenment. The author investigates representations of meanings of «books» (ash an abstracted subject of study) realized in the «chronotope» of a literary work. The structure of «reading image» and «book image» identified during the texts analysis of famous masterpieces of German classics have a moral connotation.  


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 415-432
Author(s):  
Aboubakar Gounougo

El ritmo, en el centro del texto, es una cuestión que rara vez se aborda por su cuenta. Sin embargo, aunque carece de sentido, el papel del ritmo en la construcción del sentido en el texto es sumamente esencial. Así pues, el ritmo, aunque no tenga sentido, tiene sentido por la forma en que interviene en la secuencia de texto. A este respecto, se resuelven muchas cuestiones dentro del texto, en particular las relativas a la fijación del sentido, así como las vinculadas a la expresión de la obsesión y de la emoción. Todas estas son cuestiones que preocupan nuestra reflexión actual, a través de dos puntos esenciales a este respecto y que nos llevan, en primer lugar, a interrogarnos sobre la problemática de la construcción del equilibrio entre el contenido y la forma en las secuencias de texto; en segundo lugar, el proceso al término del cual nace la categoría emocional, condición del placer estético del texto. Rhythm, at the heart of the text, is an issue that is rarely addressed for its own sake. Yet, although it has no meaning, the role of rhythm in the construction of meaning in the text is most essential. It is thus that the rhythm, in the absence of meaning, makes sense, however, by the way it intervenes in the sequence of text. It is in this respect that a number of questions are resolved within the text, particularly those relating to the fixing of meaning, as well as those relating to the expression of obsession and emotion. These are all questions which concern our present reflection, through two essential points on this subject and which lead us, in the first place, to question the problem of the construction of the balance between the content and the form in the textual sequences; second, the process at the end of which the emotional category takes birth, condition of the aesthetic pleasure of the text. Le rythme, au cœur du texte, est un problème rarement abordé pour lui-même. Pourtant, bien qu'il n'ait aucun sens, le rôle du rythme dans la construction du sens dans le texte est le plus essentiel. C'est ainsi que le rythme, en l'absence de sens, prend tout son sens, par sa façon d'intervenir dans la séquence du texte. C'est à cet égard qu'un certain nombre de questions sont résolues dans le texte, notamment celles relatives à la fixation du sens, ainsi que celles relatives à l'expression de l'obsession et de l'émotion. Autant de questions qui concernent notre réflexion actuelle, à travers deux points essentiels sur ce sujet et qui nous conduisent, en premier lieu, à questionner le problème de la construction de l'équilibre entre le contenu et la forme dans les séquences textuelles; deuxièmement, le processus au terme duquel prend naissance la catégorie émotionnelle, condition du plaisir esthétique du texte.


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-102
Author(s):  
Endre Sík

Path dependency is created and maintained by three intertwined influences of network capital, i.e. the inertia of the networks, the culture defining the proper use of network capital, and the way such a network capital fits into the local and global institutional setting. Following a brief introduction of the terms network capital and path dependency, I develop an extremely simplifying dual typology, to differentiate between network-sensitive and network-insensitive societies. These two extremes of a continuum characterize societies in which either the everyday life is under the total domination of network capital or where networks are auxiliary resources to be used in rare and special situations. I will show how both communism and post-communism have been a fertile institutional setting for the emergence of network-sensitivity and how does network capital under such conditions become so powerful that it shapes other institutions to its needs. In the last section I shall argue that the mechanisms I described in a network-sensitive institutional setting are present in a network-insensitive one as well and that there are signs that globalization increases the level of network-sensitivity all over the world.


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