Assaulting Sophia, Protecting Sophia: the Female Body as a Symbolic Artifact in Gnostic Mythology

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-171
Author(s):  
Cindy Dawson

Abstract This article explores the construction and function of the female body in four Gnostic texts: Pistis Sophia, On the Origin of the World, Hypostasis of the Archons, and Apocryphon of John. In these texts’ accounts of the mythological origin of the cosmos, the exposed bodies of Sophia and her daughters are consistently depicted as objects of excessive, often gratuitous sexual violence. Yet in the midst of this violence appears another, equally consistent motif: the Gnostic writers protected their female characters through a variety of narratival techniques, such as transforming the female body into a tree or a strenuous insistence on the violence’s ultimate failure. This article accounts for this curious pairing of violence and protection by evaluating the female body as a symbolic artifact embedded with the values of the patriarchal culture which constructed it, a culture which valued the female body as a reliable, untainted conduit of progeny.

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-35
Author(s):  
E. N. Kuzmina ◽  
◽  
L. N. Arbachakova ◽  
N. V. Shulbaeva ◽  
◽  
...  

In the heroic legends of the peoples of Siberia, a special role is played by typical descriptions (stereotypes) that carry plot-forming and compositional functions. They reflect the syncretism of aesthetic and moral popular views in their content and the semantic guidelines that epic heroes are endowed with. As ethno-poetic constants, these stereotypes embodied the people’s value attitude to the world around them and, being transmitted for a long time, became ethnically differentiated cultural universals acquiring a normative status over time. In this study, an axiological approach has been applied to consider traditional portrait descriptions of warlike heroes and virgins, based on the comparative material from the epic of Buryats, Khakasses, and Shors. This approach allowed us to conclude that the similarity in imaging the characters of these peoples’ epic has a natural and genetic origin and that the descriptions show the syncretism of aesthetic and moral assessments. The descriptions used in the depiction of female characters are intertextual stereotypes taken from the general epic fund. The structure of these stereotypes comprises supporting phrases that tend to become epic formulas and function independently in the epic. Of the poetic and visual means, stereotypes steadily involve the comparisons and epithets easily correlated with the phenomena and objects of Nature and Space. The generally accepted statement that hyperbole is the main imaging device in the heroic epos is also confirmed in the female character description stereotypes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Dian Febriyanti ◽  
Pratiwi Retnaningdyah

The aim of this article is to analyze the types of violence against women depicted in Eka Kurniawan’s Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash also to reveal the process of several female characters from being disempowered (after received violence by men) to empowering themselves. Those are global and common issues that society would face every day. This study uses thematic analysis on the basis of Gender-based Violence (GBV) to categorize the type of violence based on a theory of feminist by Beauvoir and also using Naila Kabeer’s perspective to reveal that violence affect women in empower and disempower ways. The female characters that receive violence are Scarlet Blush, Iteung, Young Widow, and Jelita. The types of violence that occurred are sexual violence, physical violence, verbal violence, and psychological violence. However, the result of women’s empowerment only causes Iteung itself, she is the only one who can survive and be empowered after fighting against patriarchal culture, while Scarlet Blush is the opposite.


Film Studies ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-57
Author(s):  
Ora Gelley

Although Europa 51 (1952) was the most commercially successful of the films Roberto Rossellini made with the Hollywood star, Ingrid Bergman, the reception by the Italian press was largely negative. Many critics focussed on what they saw to be the ‘unreal’ or abstract quality of the films portrayal of the postwar urban milieu and on the Bergman character‘s isolation from the social world. This article looks at how certain structures of seeing that are associated in the classical style with the woman as star or spectacle - e.g., the repetitious return to her fixed image, the resistance to pulling back from the figure of the woman in order to situate her within a determinate location and set of relationships between characters and objects - are no longer restricted to her image but in fact bleed into or “contaminate” the depiction of the world she inhabits. In other words, whereas the compulsive return to the fixed image of the woman tends to be contained or neutralised by the narrative economy and editing patterns (ordered by sexual difference) of the classical style, in Rossellini‘s work this ‘insistent’ even aberrant framing in relation to the woman becomes a part of the (female) characters and the cameras vision of the ‘pathology’ of the urban landscape in the aftermath of the war.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-53
Author(s):  
V. N. Oslopov ◽  
◽  
Yu. V. Oslopova ◽  
E. V. Khazova ◽  
E. R. Girfanutdinova ◽  
...  

The leading death cause in the world is diseases of the cardiovascular system, with CHD as the leader in the structure of cardiovascular diseases. The cause of this disease is atherosclerosis. One of the possible causes of atherosclerosis is an increase in LDL-C and a decrease in HDL-C in the blood. Many epidemiological studies have reliably shown that HDL cholesterol reduces the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases. Data from recent studies cast doubt on this data. The review briefly describes the current understanding of the effect of HDL-C high levels on morbidity and mortality, lists the new approaches to assessing the role and function of these particles, presents the results of clinical studies of drugs that affect their concentration in blood plasma and the probable causes leading to an increase of the HDL-Cin content in the blood.


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Atnike Nova Sigiro

<p>This article was formulated based on interviews with 5 (five) trade union confederations from a number of confederations in Indonesia, namely: Konfederasi Serikat Pekerja Nasional (KSPN), Konfederasi Sarikat Buruh Muslimin Indonesia (KSarbumusi), Konfederasi Serikat Buruh Seluruh Indonesia (KSBSI), Konfederasi Serikat Pekerja Indonesia (KSPI), and Konfederasi Kongres Aliansi Serikat Buruh Indonesia (KKASBI). This article seeks to explore the efforts made by the trade union confederation in promoting gender equality - specifically in advancing the agenda for the prevention and elimination of sexual violence in the world of work. This article was compiled based on research with a qualitative approach, with data collection methods through interviews and literature studies. The results of this study found that the confederations interviewed had already set up internal structures that have specific functions on issues related to gender equality, gender-based violence, and women’s empowerment; although still limited and on ad-hoc basis. This research also finds that the role of the trade union confederation is particularly prominent in advocating policies related to sexual violence and gender-based violence in the world of work, such as advocating the Bill on the Elimination of Sexual Violence, and the ratification of the ILO Convention No. 190 on Violence and Harassment.</p>


Author(s):  
Marion Wells

This essay explores the significance of the mutual imbrication of ekphrasis and sexual violence in Shakespeare’s poetry. Beginning with a discussion of Philomela’s substitution of a woven picture (the teasingly opaque ‘purpureas notas’) for an oral account of violence in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, I analyse Shakespeare’s revision of this foundational story in Titus Andronicus. Arguing that in Shakespeare’s work ekphrasis functions as a gendered site of contestation between image and word in which the feminine image is organized and contained by the masculine ‘noting’ of an artist figure, I consider how Shakespeare’s other extensive use of the Philomela story in Cymbeline clarifies this pattern. My final texts, The Rape of Lucrece and The Winter’s Tale, allow me to unpack more fully the function of ekphasis in drawing attention to the predication of poetic representation on the abjection of the female body.


2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 266-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig A. Warlick ◽  
Paul B. Ingram ◽  
Karen D. Multon ◽  
M. Alexandra Vuyk

Religion is a shaping force in the world today, increasingly expressed and integral to the flow and function of the workplace. The relationship between religious identity and work function is clearly present. However, no lines of research have explored how religion explains the variations in vocational interest, despite speculation that it does so. Fundamentalist beliefs provide an opportunity to examine how career interests are related to personal values. This study examined the relationship between fundamentalism and the Artistic and Investigative Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional types, types speculated to be most dissimilar to fundamentalism, by testing the incremental importance of religious fundamentalism beyond personality traits in the shaping of vocational interests. Results suggest that, even after controlling for variation attributed to personality, religious fundamentalism is negatively related to Artistic interests yet has no relationship to Investigative interests. Issues of diversity and implications for career counselors are discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
Miriam Yvonn Márquez Barragán

Resumen: El baile a lo largo del tiempo ha sido visto como una actividad peligrosa para los valores morales y religiosos. El cuerpo de la mujer ha sido visto como un medio para excitar el pecado. La obra dramática de Federico García Lorca logra capturar el conflicto moral y las implicaciones sexuales del baile con personajes femeninos que luchan entre el deseo y sus  instintos. En el presente trabajo, analizo algunos de los valores sociales y morales del baile en el teatro de Lorca. Palabras clave: Federico García Lorca, Danza, trangresión, cuerpo, estigma social. Abstract: Dance over time has been perceived as an activity threatening certain moral and religious values. The female body is the expressive instrument in dancing, as a mean to incite sinful behavior. The dramatic work of Federico García Lorca capture the moral conflict and the sexual implications of the dance with female characters who struggle between desire and their instincts. In the present article, I review some of the negative social and moral values present in dancing, in Lorca’s view.Key words: Federico Garcia-Lorca, dance, transgression, body, social stigma.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document