Contemporary Buddhism and Death

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Rowe
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
International Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
Crucial Aspect ◽  
Funerary Practices ◽  
The West ◽  
Existential Crisis ◽  
Ongoing Care ◽  
Textual Material ◽  
Civil Codes

Funerary Buddhism emerges out of Buddhism’s encounter with modernization, both in Asia and the West from the nineteenth century. It refers to a broad spectrum of textual, material, ritual, sociocultural, and institutional forms connected to the immediate and ongoing care of the dead. It implicates everything from Buddhist institutions to local temples, local civil codes to international law, and sectarian intellectuals to popular culture. A crucial aspect of funerary Buddhism includes its use as a foil, particularly the ways in which Buddhist modernists have tried to explain away many aspects of Buddhist funerary practices as not real Buddhism. Forced to act as the “other” to various notions of true Buddhism, funerary Buddhism thus also represents, in countries such as Japan, a sort of existential crisis whereby local priests are told that their ongoing dependence on funerary ritual is at odds with the true teachings of their sects.

scholarly journals Dracula tourism as pilgrimage?

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 211-227
Author(s):  
Tuomas Hovi
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Eu

This article is about Dracula tourism in Romania and how it may be seen as pilgrimage. The author approaches this connection especially through the place myth of Transylvania and through the status Transylvania has in Western popular culture. The subject is approached purely from a ‘Western’ point of view, that is, in this article Romania, although a member of the EU and NATO, is treated not as part of the West but part of the East. This is due to the fact that in Western popular culture Romania and especially Transylvania have always been portrayed as the Other in relation to the West. Western popular culture plays a significant role in Dracula tourism.

scholarly journals The Nature and Structure of the Islamic World

1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-405
Author(s):  
Yousuf Dadoo
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Print Media ◽  
The Other ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
The West ◽  
Literal Interpretation ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Western Media

The author offers a concise critique of Wes tern perceptions of Islamand the Muslim world. He then proceeds to discuss the Muslim world andproposes a taxonomy for it on the basis of certain configurations in orderto prove that the Muslim world should not be treated as a monolith.Contemporary problems, which shall be elucidated during the course ofthis review, are highlighted.In "Prospectus," Braibanti introduces the perception dialectic that isnow prevalent in the West as regards Islam. First, there is the pejorative"green menace," according to which the united hordes of Islam threaten toannihilate the West. Second, there is a more sober ecclesiastical, political,and intellectual reappraisal of Islamic issues. The author offers a tentativeprediction: In a more confrontational environment, the former view willpredominate, and vice versa. He then discusses the first component of thedialectic in greater detail over the next three chapters.In "Circles of Antagonism: Popular Culture," Braibanti states that thenegative bias toward Islam and the fear of it are reflected daily in Americanmedia and in policy-shaping forums. He cites a few contemporary examplesfrom literature, movies, print media, and documentaries.He argues that two "subtle rhetorical aberrations" (p. 7) prejudice theperception of Islam. The first one is the tenn fundamentalist, which isequated with violence. In Christianity, where this term is defined clearly,it refers to a literal interpretation of the Bible by a minority of adherentswho believe in biblical infallibility. When this term is applied to Muslimson this basis, virtually all can be called fundamentalists. However, as violencecannot be linked to the quintessentials of Muslim belief, it is unfairto blame all Muslims for the crimes committed by a minority. The authorcould have elaborated on the nebulousness of this term for Muslims withdetails like the following: Whereas certain groups of Christians, like theAmish, emulate lifestyles of earlier times in minute details, no "traditional"Muslim spurns conclusively the benefits of technetronics. So one wouldnot find a Muslim preferring to travel by camel when motor transportwould be affordable and more convenient."Fundamentalism" gained currency among Western media with theIranian revolution of 1979. Some Muslims often ask: Was this binaryopposition, namely, fundamentalist/other, fabricated to sow confusionamong Muslims? Would the "other" only refer to a nominal, nonpracticingMuslim? ...

Conceptions And Interpretations of Human Rights in Europe and Asia: Normative Aspects

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-135
Author(s):  
Bożena Drzewicka
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
The West ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
The World ◽  
International Human

Conceptions And Interpretations of Human Rights in Europe and Asia: Normative AspectsThe issue of confronting values between civilizations has become very important. It influences not only the level of international politics but also the international normative activity. It is very interesting for the modern international law and its doctrine. The most important factor of causing huge changes in the system of international law is still the international human rights protection and the international humanitarian law which is related to it. It is very difficult to create one catalogue of executive instruments and procedures but it is possible to influence the attitude toward the basic paradigms. The frictions appear from time to time and move to other planes. The West and Asia are still antagonists in the dialogue on the future of the world. The article is a contribution to the intercivilizational dialogue.

Turkish policy towards Libya after the February 2011 revolution

2020 ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Rafea Shareef Dhanoon
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Military Cooperation ◽  
The West ◽  
Regional Parties ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Shed Light

The close relations between Turkey and Libya are still on the rise, and this was evident through Turkish support at all levels of the internationally recognized government of Al-Sarraj winner. The Memorandum of Understanding signed between Turkey and Libya on 27 / November 2019, in the areas of security and military cooperation and the determination of areas of influence revealed The navy, the extent of the historical close relationship between Ankara and Tripoli, just as the Turkish President Erdogan wanted to deliver a message to the West and other regional parties after the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding, that Turkey has a non-negotiable sovereign right to define the maritime spheres of influence and that this right stems from international law. In light of these tracks, we will shed light on the orientations of Turkish policy towards Libya after the February 2011 revolution, by defining the determinants of those trends and examining the most important obstacles in the march of Turkish policy towards Libya.

Comparative Analysis of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar’s Travels to European Countries

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Aysel KAMAL ◽  
Sinem ATIS
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Young Lady ◽  
The Other ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
The West ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Turkish Literature ◽  
Art And Architecture

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar (1901-1962) is one of the most controversial authors in the 20th century Turkish literature. Literature critics find it difficult to place him in a school of literature and thought. There are many reasons that they have caused Tanpinar to give the impression of ambiguity in his thoughts through his literary works. One of them is that he is always open to (even admires) the "other" thought to a certain age, and he considers synthesis thinking at later ages. Tanpinar states in the letter that he wrote to a young lady from Antalya that he composed the foundations of his first period aesthetics due to the contributions from western (French) writers. The influence of the western writers on him has also inspired his interest in the materialist culture of the West. In 1953 and 1959 he organized two tours to Europe in order to see places where Western thought and culture were produced. He shared his impressions that he gained in European countries in his literary works. In the literary works of Tanpinar, Europe comes out as an aesthetic object. The most dominant facts of this aesthetic are music, painting, etc. In this work, in the writings of Tanpinar about the countries that he travelled in Europe, some factors were detected like European culture, lifestyle, socio-cultural relations, art and architecture, political and social history and so on. And the effects of European countries were compared with Tanpinar’s thought and aesthetics. Keywords: Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, Europe, poetry, music, painting, culture, life

The Proximity of Other Skins

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celine Parreñas Shimizu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Korea ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Pain And Suffering ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
Existing Frames ◽  
The Voice

Transnational films representing intimacy and inequality disrupt and disgust Western spectators. When wounded bodies within poverty entangle with healthy wealthy bodies in sex, romance and care, fear and hatred combine with desire and fetishism. Works from the Philippines, South Korea, and independents from the United States and France may not be made for the West and may not make use of Hollywood traditions. Rather, they demand recognition for the knowledge they produce beyond our existing frames. They challenge us to go beyond passive consumption, or introspection of ourselves as spectators, for they represent new ways of world-making we cannot unsee, unhear, or unfeel. The spectator is redirected to go beyond the rapture of consuming the other to the rupture that arises from witnessing pain and suffering. Self-displacement is what proximity to intimate inequality in cinema ultimately compels and demands so as to establish an ethical way of relating to others. In undoing the spectator, the voice of the transnational filmmaker emerges. Not only do we need to listen to filmmakers from outside Hollywood who unflinchingly engage the inexpressibility of difference, we need to make room for critics and theorists who prioritize the subjectivities of others. When the demographics of filmmakers and film scholars are not as diverse as its spectators, films narrow our worldviews. To recognize our culpability in the denigration of others unleashes the power of cinema. The unbearability of stories we don’t want to watch and don’t want to feel must be borne.

Call Your "Mutha"

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Caputi
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Mother Nature ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Mother Earth ◽  
Made In

The proposed new geological era, The Anthropocene (a.k.a. Age of Humans, Age of Man), marking human domination of the planet long called Mother Earth, is truly The Age of the Motherfucker. The ecocide of the Anthropocene is the responsibility of Man, the Western- and masculine-identified corporate, military, intellectual, and political class that masks itself as the exemplar of the civilized and the human. The word motherfucker was invented by the enslaved children of White slave masters to name their mothers’ rapist/owners. Man’s strategic motherfucking, from the personal to the planetary, is invasion, exploitation, spirit-breaking, extraction and toxic wasting of individuals, communities, and lands, for reasons of pleasure, plunder, and profit. Ecocide is attempted deicide of Mother Nature-Earth, reflecting Man’s goal to become the god he first made in his own image. The motivational word Motherfucker has a flip side, further revealing the Anthropocene as it signifies an outstanding, formidable, and inexorable force. Mother Nature-Earth is that “Mutha’ ”—one defying translation into heteropatriarchal classifications of gender, one capable of overwhelming Man, and not the other way around. Drawing upon Indigenous and African American scholarship; ecofeminism; ecowomanism; green activism; femme, queer, and gender non-binary philosophies; literature and arts; Afrofuturism; and popular culture, Call Your “Mutha’ ” contends that the Anthropocene is not evidence of Man’s supremacy over nature, but that Mother Nature-Earth, faced with disrespect, is going away. It is imperative now to call the “Mutha’ ” by decolonizing land, bodies, and minds, ending rapism, feeding the green, renewing sustaining patterns, and affirming devotion to Mother Nature-Earth.

‘There shall be no musical servitude’: Towards a Multitudinous Shostakovich in the West

2020 ◽  
Vol 145 (2) ◽  
pp. 495-505
Author(s):  
EIRINI DIAMANTOULI
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

Ideologically motivated attempts to elucidate Shostakovich’s political views and to determine whether and how they may be coded into his compositions have come to characterize the Western reception of the composer’s works since his death in 1975. Fuelled by the political oppositions of the cold war, Shostakovich’s posthumous reputation in the West has been largely shaped by two conflicting perspectives. These have positioned him on the one hand as a secret dissident, bent and broken under the unbearable strain of totalitarianism, made heroic through his veiled musical resistance to Communism; and on the other hand as a composer compromised by his capitulation to the regime – represented in an anachronistic musical style. Both perspectives surrender Shostakovich and his music to a crude oversimplification driven by vested political interests. Western listeners thus conditioned are primed to hear either the coded dissidence of a tragic victim of Communist brutality or the sinister submission of a ‘loyal son of the Communist Party’.1 For those prepared to accept Shostakovich as a ‘tragic victim’, the publication of his purported memoirs in 1979, ‘as related to and edited by’ the author Solomon Volkov, presents a tantalizing conclusion: bitterly yet discreetly scornful of the Stalinist regime, Shostakovich was indeed a secret dissident and this dissidence was made tangible in his music.

Informed Consent: Ezenwa–Ohaeto between Past and Future Uses of Pidgin

Matatu ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chantal Zabus
Keyword(s):  
Informed Consent ◽  
First Language ◽  
West African ◽  
The Other ◽  
Wole Soyinka ◽  
The West ◽  
West African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The One

The essay shows how Ezenwa–Ohaeto's poetry in pidgin, particularly in his collection (1988), emblematizes a linguistic interface between, on the one hand, the pseudo-pidgin of Onitsha Market pamphleteers of the 1950s and 1960s (including in its gendered guise as in Cyprian Ekwensi) and, on the other, its quasicreolized form in contemporary news and television and radio dramas as well as a potential first language. While locating Nigerian Pidgin or EnPi in the wider context of the emergence of pidgins on the West African Coast, the essay also draws on examples from Joyce Cary, Frank Aig–Imoukhuede, Ogali A. Ogali, Ola Rotimi, Wole Soyinka, and Tunde Fatunde among others. It is not by default but out of choice and with their 'informed consent' that EnPi writers such as Ezenwa–Ohaeto contributed to the unfinished plot of the pidgin–creole continuum.

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