A Matter of Life and Death Women’s Narration of the Subject in the GDR’s Declining Years

2004 ◽  
pp. 108-138
Keyword(s):  
2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 248-257
Author(s):  
Natalia Valerievna Chikina

The paper analyzes the works of a well-known poet and rock musician S. Karhu, who writes in the Karelian language. The aim of the study is to highlight the author’s artistic system of images. The following tasks were set for the study: to formulate the poet’s original concept, to scrutinize and comment on the images in Karhu’s lyrics. The object is verses from the first and so far only volume. The subject of the study is the specific ethnic traits of Karhu’s poetry, as seen in the system of images. Literary-historical and comparative methods were used in the analysis. The scientific novelty is in the absence of similar studies on the poet’s works. Systemic analysis of the ethnic sources, the evolution and genre choices of the Karelian language literature associated with the changing artistic consciousness are coming to the foreground in this time of global change, when preserving the people’s cultural heritage is especially important. The poet’s personal background has brought him into the sphere of artistic creativity, enabled him to verbalize the world of ethnic life that had been opened up to him. The article points out some specific features of the world of images, language and culture of the Karelian people. Karelian literature shows a tendency to use folklore heritage. The transformation of folk poetic symbolic images is arguably the most characteristic trait of folklorism in contemporary Karelian-language poetry, where folk poetry symbols tend to be equaled with the image of the native land. Karhu’s philosophical verses increasingly pose and confidently resolve the questions of good and evil, happiness and pain, life and death. It is essential for him that the character retains the folklore origins, for he deems it to be the spiritual source of modernity.


Author(s):  
Józef Wróbel

This chapter discusses the theme of Jewish martyrdom in the works of Adolf Rudnicki. Without losing sight of the universal dimensions of the theme he was taking up, Rudnicki enriches the subject-matter with characteristics that are specifically Jewish. First, the situation of Jewish society during the occupation differed from that of other nations. Jews were pushed to the very bottom of the invader's hierarchy. Their life and death depended not only on Germans but also on the aid of Poles among whom they lived, which was not always forthcoming. A second specific feature is derived from Rudnicki's chosen artistic genre, which monumentalized the suffering of Jews by including them in the biblical circle and the almost 2,000-year history of the Diaspora, the wandering and persecution with which God tries his chosen people. This problem dominated the writing of Rudnicki for at least ten years. Undoubtedly, the literary situation in the first half of the 1950s was decisive in Rudnicki's abandonment of the theme, since the subject of the war was quickly recognized as outdated. The chapter then studies occupation literature.


Author(s):  
Miriam Leonard

In …Pleasure Principle, Freud juxtaposes his discussion of the life and death instincts in “elementary organisms” to the tragic drama he sees enacted in his grandson’s fort-da game. Freud’s insights into the death drive are given an added tragic dimension in Lacan’s reading of Oedipus at Colonus. Here Lacan establishes the anti- or even post-humanist credentials of tragedy by insisting that it is the death of the subject which is Sophocles’ ultimate preoccupation. By placing Greek tragedy’s confrontation with the death drive in dialogue with the instincts of the “germ-cell”, the chapter demonstrates how psychoanalysis offers a perfect model for understanding antiquity’s contribution to posthumanism.


2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 160-163
Author(s):  
Valdis O. Lumans

Reading Karel C. Berkhoff's Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule reaps reward but also some disappointment. For the general public unfamiliar with the historical issues and intricacies of the Nazi occupation of the Soviet Union, this book contains far more reward as a montage of vivid depictions of everyday life under German domination in the occupied East. But conversely, for those with a more advanced, research-level familiarity with the subject, the results are reversed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-98
Author(s):  
Anna Maria Manek

Experiences of a Developmental Crisis in the Course of Life in Twentieth-Century Writers. Sándor Márai and Maria Kuncewiczowa The subject of this study is the psychological analysis which uses a biographical method to analyze the last stages of a long life and the crisis “between life and death”of the two outstanding writers of the twentieth century: Maria Kuncewiczowa and Sándor Márai. The analyzed data giving insight into the life events and the personal experiences of the last few years of their lives was sourced from the last texts published by the writers. In the case of Maria Kuncewiczowa, these are: Notatki włoskie: Przezrocza (Italian Notes: Transparencies, 2010) and Listy do Jerzego (Letters to Jerzy, 1988). In the case of the Hungarian writer Sándor Márai, it will be the final part of the 5th Volume of the Diary 1977–1989, pp. 345–387 (Márai, 2020). The tasks and challenges at this stage of life, which is one immediately preceding the inevitable death, are as follows: functioning at the late old age in a changed life situation after the death of the spouse and the manner of responding to one’s own death. The analysis of experiences related to the life situation, mainly carried out with use of the conceptual apparatus of the psychology of the course of life (Bühler, 1999), allows us to observe the coherence of life events and subjective experiences in the examined period of life, which is an expression of the creative activity and the spirituality of these outstanding writers, as well as constitutes their life experience in preparation for the death.


Author(s):  
Hongwen LI

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.莊子的生命自由觀是一種用自由來定義生命的哲學觀念,其核心內容是追求無待的絕對自由觀,以“吾喪我”來消解人的主體意識、“齊萬物”的平等精神,以及同生死的觀念。無待的自由是指一種絕對的、不依賴於外在條件的自由,它體現為無己、無功和無名。“無待”的主旨就是超越主觀和客觀的對立,超越有限的自我,達到無限而自由的自我。“喪我”便是摒棄偏執的我、固執的我。這個偏執的“我”是封閉的我,是假我;喪失了“我”的“吾”才是開放的我,才是拋棄了偏執的本真之我。莊子的“吾喪我”乃是一種消解主體意識的方式,超越了西方主體哲學的主觀和客觀的二元對立模式。“齊物論”闡發的是平等思想,它包括三個方面:即物物平等、人人平等、人與萬物平等。莊子認為人的生死是自然世界中的一個普通事件,人的身體乃是由外在物質世界元素(氣)假借而成,只是暫時的湊集,終究是要滅亡的。這些哲學觀念對中國生命倫理學的建構具有重要的意義,主要表現在:消解人的主體性和自主性,以區別於西方生命倫理學尊重自主性原則;物物平等、人人平等以及人與萬物平等的思想對生命倫理學提出了更高的要求;以貴生、養生的方法來善待生命,反對對生命的強干涉主義。Freedom is a key concept in the philosophy of Zhuangzi. This kind of freedom requires a deconstruction of the “subject…predicate” logic and an attitude that views all things equally. The ethical views of Zhuangzi focus on the notion of “losing oneself” or “forgetting oneself”, the purpose of which is to subvert the position between subject and object and to see things as they are. Unlike the Western idea of individual autonomy, Zhuangzi’s concept of freedom is based on the interconnectedness between individuals. This essay contends that the Daoist position on the meaning of human life and freedom can serve as a source of inspiration when we consider the many bioethical issues we face today—including the issue of life and death—and how to interpret those issues within the Chinese context.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 4268 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 685
Author(s):  
Susanne Valerie Granzer

When acting, the actor/actress experiences a complex regime of signs in his/her body, mind, mood and gender. These signs are both disturbing and promising. On the one hand, the act of creativity makes a wound obvious which has been incarnated within man. It tells him/her that he/she is not the sole actor of his/her actions. On the other hand, precisely this way acting on stage becomes an event. The act of this event reveals a way of be-coming in which one acts while at the same time being passive, in which the actor/actress is both agent and patient of his/her own performance. This complex artistic experience catapults actors/actresses into an open passage, into an in-between where they are liberated from the illusion of being the sole actors of their performances. One might even say that by this turn an actor/actress experiences a change, an “anthropological mutation” (Agamben). Or, to have it differently: the artist suffers a kind of “death of the subject”.It is remarkable that this loss of the predominance of subjectivity is a crucial aspect of acting which may affect the audience in a particularly intensive way. Why? Perhaps because it updates an extremely intimate connection between audience and actors/actresses which vicariously reflects the in-between of life and death. A passage by which life presents itself as itself? Life – by its plane of immanence?


Author(s):  
M.A. Dudareva ◽  
◽  
S.M. Morozova ◽  

The object of the article is the wood-spirit code in the Russian verbal culture. The subject is the symbolic meaning of a sallow, willow in the Russian folklore and literature. The material for the article is the poetic heritage of A.M. Zhemchuzhnikov whose 200th jubilee we celebrate this year. The ethos of life and death in the poet’s lyrics yields to hermeneutic reconstruction. Special attention is paid to the poetic cycle “Rural impressions and sketches” with its images of a sallow or a sallow alley – the dendronyms analysed closely as a system. The methodology of the research centres on holistic ontohermeneutical analysis aimed at highlighting the apophatic paradigm of the given literary material. Parallels with the Russian folklore, lullabies and children’s games are drawn. The results lie in identification of the cultural potential of dendronyms, in particular the sallow, willow, osier, that have a different-worldly semantics and act as a means of conveying initiatory transmissions in the verbal culture. The work results can also be used in teaching courses on the Russian culture, 19th-century poetry and philosophy.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lucinda April Campbell

<p>In bio-ethics, the potential practical and ethical implications of radical life extension are being seriously debated. However, the role of motivation in relation to dramatically increasing the human life span has been largely overlooked. I propose that motivation is a crucial aspect to consider within the radical life extension discourse by conjecturing about why it might appeal and the possible ways it could impact outcomes where it is successfully developed and implemented. I do not thereby present an argument that supports or opposes radical life extension technology. This is ultimately a speculative piece. In exploring the relationship between motivation and radical life extension, I present a conceptual framework called the Thanatophobic and Romantic Motivational Spectrum (TRM Spectrum) designed to assist deeper examination on the subject. It captures what I suggest are two key motivators related to life and death, that is, the fear of death (Thanatophobia) and the “love” of life (Romanticism). The motivational spectrum is then applied to the death penalty versus life imprisonment, and euthanasia and suicide debates to demonstrate how it can be used for analysis of ethical issues in relation to the potential introduction of radical life extension technology.</p>


Author(s):  
Felicity Meakins

Mixed languages are a rare category of contact language which has gone from being an oddity of contact linguistics to the subject of media excitement, at least for one mixed language—Light Warlpiri. They show considerable diversity in structure, social function, and historical origins; nonetheless, they all emerged in situations of bilingualism where a common language is already present. In this respect, they do not serve a communicative function, but rather are markers of an in-group identity. Mixed languages provide a unique opportunity to study the often observable birth, life, and death of languages both in terms of the sociohistorical context of language genesis and the structural evolution of language.


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