scholarly journals Earth, World, and the Human

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-221
Author(s):  
Marc Farrant
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Human Finitude

Abstract This essay reads the ungraspable relation to death in Beckett’s works as a means to think through our contemporary era of climate crisis. Beckett’s singular aesthetics of human finitude can be a powerful resource for thinking the unthinkable. By envisaging finitude in terms of the limits imposed on life by both space and time, this essay seeks to ground the existential framework of Beckett’s oeuvre in terms of an always embedded self. Looking at the short story “The End,” I show how such embeddedness may work to evade totalisation or abstraction in terms of a universal worldview, yet also how it poses problems for any privileging of materiality as such. Beckett’s writings are thereby seen to produce a dynamic ethics between world and earth, the global and the local, life and death.

scholarly journals Happy Christmases are All Alike; Each Unhappy Christmas is Unhappy in its Own Way

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-184
Author(s):  
Vivien Blanchet
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Postal Service ◽  
Eternal Return ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Liminal Spaces ◽  
The World ◽  
Academic Publications ◽  
Ritual Practices

The French postal service has been opening a bureau for Father Christmas every winter since 1962. Sixty employees are responsible for responding to letters to Father Christmas. In 2018, more than one million children corresponded with him. But what would happen if someone were to write to Father Christmas, developing a close epistolary relationship with him? This short story explores such a scenario. Pierre M. and Father Christmas have during many years maintained regular and personal correspondence. Yet Father Christmas’s attitude seems to have changed. Pierre M. reveals the evolution of their secret relationship to his mysterious friend. On substance, the short story offers an original perspective on modern marketplace mythologies. Previous studies depict myths as liminal spaces in which people negotiate contradictory meanings, practices and realities. The myth of Father Christmas thus involves compromises between ignorance and knowledge, life and death, the sacred and the profane. The short story tells how they evolve to define the identity of the protagonists and the world they live in. It highlights how they are embodied in hybrid artefacts like letters to Father Christmas and extraordinary servicescape. The short story also questions the performative force of the myth. It shows that it results from the interpretative work and ritual practices of the protagonists involved in an unstable actantial system structured around an enlightened person, an ignorant person and a mythical character. This is constantly negotiated throughout sociotechnical interactions, which, as in the case of witchcraft, may or may not realize the myth. On form, the short story adopts the principle of the eternal return inherent to the myth: it is plotted as a series of small variations on recurring themes and structural repetitions. Intertextual references to academic publications, literary tradition and popular culture enrich the narrative by extending it beyond its textual boundaries.

scholarly journals The root cap: a short story of life and death

2015 ◽  
Vol 66 (19) ◽  
pp. 5651-5662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert P. Kumpf ◽  
Moritz K. Nowack
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Root Cap ◽  
Life And Death

scholarly journals Inf(l)ection of the medium

2015 ◽  
pp. 38-57
Author(s):  
Mónika Dánél
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Skin Surface ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The West ◽  
Moving Image ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Face ◽  
Experimental Films

Slitfilm (Résfilm, 2005) and The Gravedigger (A sírásó, 2010) are two Hungarian experimental films made using a slit camera. The director/photographer Sándor Kardos’s adaptations of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s short story “The Handkerchief” and of Rainer Maria Rilke’s “The Gravedigger” expose a particular “physiognomy” of the filmic medium through the use of this technique. Likewise, the face as the privileged medial surface for emotion becomes an uncanny, stretched painting with grotesque associations, similar to Francis Bacon’s paintings. The sharp, clear narrator’s voice, layering the literary texts “onto” the moving image further emphasises the colour-stained plasticity of the visible. Both films attempt to articulate a liminal experience: the cultural differences between the East and the West that are inherent in expressing and concealing emotions (Slitfilm) or the questions relating to life and death, the speakable/conceivable and the unspeakable/inconceivable (The Gravedigger) that are embedded in the communicative modalities of social interaction. Through the elastic flow of images, the face and the hand become two uncovered, visible, corporeal surfaces engaged in a rhythmic, chromatic relationship (due to the similar skin tones of face and hand), and thus gradually uncover the medium of the film as a palpable skin surface or violated, wounded flesh. The article approaches the fluid, sensuous imagery that displaces the human towards the inhuman uncanny of the unrecognisable flesh through Deleuzian concepts of fold and inflection.

scholarly journals To die and let die: A just theology of ceding space

2020 ◽  
Vol Supp (29) ◽  
pp. 195-214
Author(s):  
T Van Wyk ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Framework ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Past ◽  
Authentic Existence ◽  
Civic Infrastructure ◽  
The World ◽  
Large Populations ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
The Trinity

Over the past few years, there has been a significant intel­lectual and artistic emphasis on the manner in which one considers or approaches the end of life. This is in con­junction with a renewed ethical discussion about choosing the manner and time of one’s death in light of a diminished quality of life. Large populations across the world are ageing, presenting unique challenges to healthcare and civic infrastructure. The planet is suffering because of a climate crisis, due to the overburdening of resources. In light of all this, it is argued in this contribution that a renewed theological consideration of death is necessary. In his theology about the Trinity, Jürgen Moltmann makes a remark about his understanding of the perichoretic unity of the persons of the Trinity, in which the persons of the Trinity “cede” space for one another. Ceding space creates space (room) for authentic existence. This con­­tribution considers and utilises Trinitarian “spatial” theology as foundation for rethinking the complexity and balance of life and death. It is ultimately argued that “creating space for death” could serve as a foundation for an ethical framework for decision-making, as well as foster a compassionate community that provides space for each other’s diversity – in life and in death.

scholarly journals ASIAN ENGLISH LITERATURE'S MIDTERM EXAMINATION MATERNAL INSTINCT DEPICTED IN VERENATAY'S BROKEN

Lire Journal ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-13
Author(s):  
Ruly Indra Darmawan
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Newborn Baby ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Feminist Study ◽  
Maternal Instinct

In this essay, I want to analyze how maternal instinct is depicted in one short story which has South East Asia as a setting of place because this maternal instinct has became one of the most debatable issues in feminist study until nowadays. The main data is a short story entitled Broken. This short story was included in anthology of Asian short stories entitled A Rainbow Feast. One thing which becomes uniqueness in Broken that picks my interest is how this novel exploits woman acts and habits in different way than any other novel. VerenaTay through this novel tells a story about one particular woman and how she treats her newborn baby. Different with other novel, Broken pictures the woman who lives in different world than us, a human. It is interesting to see how VrenaTay pictures that woman acts and somehow lives after she was dead, how a woman escapes from subversive condition and move toward dominant one by leap through the limit of life and death.

scholarly journals Personality Psychology in Margaret Atwood’s Short Story Under Glass

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Dr. Y. Vidya
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Personality Psychology ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Alive Today ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation

Margaret Atwood is one of the most important and influential writers alive today. Margaret Atwood’s literature, both in the form of poetry and prose, is significant to an understanding of ‘female experiences’ more broadly speaking, though, Atwood attempts to explore questions of identity. She thus attempts to achieve the creation of a space and time in which readers can think critically about the world and their place in it. This self-reflexive form of analysis is significant in a modern and post-colonial world in which issues of gender have become increasingly critical, as it allows readers both a way of imagining and a way of criticizing ourselves and our own culture and that of others we perceive around us. Her stories are acute depictions of men and women, and are therefore interested in human curiosity but also in control and power.  Atwood focus lies also in the effects and dynamics of unequal power relations.  

Kantor, V. (2019). Demythologisation of Russian culture. Moscow, St. Petersburg: Tsentr gumanitarnykh initsiativ. (In Russ.)

2021 ◽  
pp. 290-295
Author(s):  
A. D. Magly
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
World War I ◽  
Short Story ◽  
World History ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
World War ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Mob Mentality

Vladimir Kantor’s new book Demythologisation of Russian culture is concerned with interaction of world cultures and the turning points in the world history — the fall of the Roman Empire, World War I, Russian Revolution of 1917, etc. What drives the masses in times of war and revolutions; how mob mentality takes over society, and how the truth known to an individual defies widespread delusion; what is the nature of the myth and of the two principal events of world history — ‘the life and death of a living being’ — each of these questions receives an answer in seventeen essays on key figures of Russian culture: Peter I, A. Pushkin, I. Turgenev, F. Dostoevsky, A. Chernyshevsky, M. Katkov, A. Kerensky, M. Gorky et al. Published as an addendum to the book is Kantor’s short story ‘The death of a retiree’ [‘Smert pensionera’], supplied with a dedicated article ‘On the event of death’ by K. Barsht.

Imaginary Dialogue with John Deely

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-227
Author(s):  
Farouk Y. Seif ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Being ◽  
Personal Traits ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Imaginary Dialogue

We live in a world of fact and a world of fancy, in the Peircean sense, telling real and imagined stories. In this Imaginary Dialogue with John Deely I compose narratives that integrate actual quotations from his seminal work and imaginative interpretation of our numerous conversations that took place over the years. Visiting John in May 2016 at the Latrobe Hospital and grieving his passing on January 7, 2017 were two cathartic and emancipating experiences that developed into this dialogical narrative as a commemorative manifestation of the exceptional life and the remarkable oeuvre of John Deely. It is inconceivable to separate Deely’s personal traits from his scholarly contributions as a great philosopher, semiotician, and a compassionate human being who not only graciously persevered through the semiotic paradox of life and death, but also gregariously played with many boundaries across space and time.

The Theatrical Life and Death of Wych Street

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Emeljanow
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Eastern Periphery ◽  
Drury Lane

In London’s Lost Theatres of the Nineteenth Century (1925), Errol Sherson describes Wych Street, located on the eastern periphery of the West End and within 200 metres of Drury Lane Theatre, as ‘one of the narrowest, dingiest and most disreputable thoroughfares the West End has ever known.’ By this time Wych Street had long disappeared, although its memory lingered. In a short story entitled ‘Where was Wych Street’ ( Strand Magazine, 1921), Stacy Aumonier attempted to recall the street’s existence and its significance. In the course of the story the street is identified in relation to two theatres – the Gaiety and the Globe – only the latter of which was connected to the street. Surprisingly, no reference is made to the Olympic Theatre with which Wych Street had been identified since the early nineteenth century or to the Opera Comique immediately adjacent to the Globe, highlighting the problematic role of memory in mapping historical space. This article examines the historical, theatrical and geographical mapping of Wych Street, bringing out contrasts, contradictions and paradoxes, and considering its role as part of the theatrical and extra-theatrical milieu of London.

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