Closure in dystopia: Projecting memories of the end of crises in speculative fiction

2021 ◽  
pp. 175069802110543
Author(s):  
Jordi Serrano-Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
Speculative Fiction ◽  
First Century ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Dystopian Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
China Dream

In this piece, I approach the relationship between the paradigm of imbricated crises pertaining to the second decade of the twenty-first century and its contemporaneous dystopian literature. I focus particularly on how dystopian literature forges a sense of closure that attempts to give meaning through the construction of imaginary memories of how crises came and went, or came and stayed. Dystopian tales provide the troubled reader of its time with a sense of narrative continuation and a substitute for closure. For my analysis, I draw on a corpus of literary works from around the world, which includes The Queue, by Basma Abdel Aziz; Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel; The Emissary, by Tawada Yōko; Severance: A Novel, by Ling Ma; China Dream, by Ma Jian; Ansibles, Profilers and Other Machines of Wonder, by Andrea Chapela; and The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Messiah with the Microphone? Oral Historians, Technology, and Sound Archives

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert B. Perks
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Digital Audio ◽  
Digital Revolution ◽  
The World ◽  
Technological Skills ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Relationship

For decades, oral historians and their tape recorders have been inseparable, but it has also been an uneasy marriage of convenience. The recorder is both our “tool of trade” and also that part of the interview with which historians are least comfortable. Oral historians' relationship with archivists has been an uneasy one. From the very beginnings of the modern oral history movement in the 1940s, archivists have played an important role. The arrival of “artifact-free” digital audio recorders and mass access via the Internet has transformed the relationship between the historian and the source. Accomplished twenty-first-century oral history practitioners are now expected to acquire advanced technological skills to capture, preserve, analyze, edit, and present their data to ever larger audiences. The development of oral history in many parts of the world was influenced by the involvement of sound archivists and librarians. Digital revolution in the present century continues to influence oral history.

A Tale of Two Balloons: Intercultural Cinema and Transnational Nostalgia in Le voyage du ballon rouge

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Scott Diffrient ◽  
Carl R. Burgchardt
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Cultural Function ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Transnational Film ◽  
The Relationship

Millions of movie lovers around the world have experienced a range of emotions upon viewing Albert Lamorrise’s 1956 French classic Le Ballon Rouge (The Red Balloon). Many adulatory responses have been triggered but perhaps none other more clearly than Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge (Flight of the Red Balloon, France-Taiwan, 2007). Although lacking the fantastical interludes of the earlier film and filled with fewer flaneurial excursions through the alleyways of Paris, Hou’s feature-length work is no less compelling as a series of quotidian scenes concerning the interwoven themes of companionship, loneliness, memory, nostalgia, and the restorative power of art. Drawing upon phenomenological and memory-based studies of intercultural cinema, this chapter explores the relationship between recollections, references, and transnational film remakes, ultimately aiming to transnationalise (or “uproot”) nostalgia and show how twenty-first century cinephilia performs a similar cultural function to the remaking process.

scholarly journals Leading Beautifully: The Creative Economy and Beyond

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 11-39
Author(s):  
Nancy J. Adler
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Creative Economy ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Passionate Commitment ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Traditional Structures ◽  
First Time

<p align="right">Only by investing in the artistry of our humanity <br/>will we create a peaceful, prosperous planet</p> “These times are riven with anxiety and uncertainty” asserts John O’Donohue.<sup>1</sup> “In the hearts of people some natural ease has been broken. … Our trust in the future has lost its innocence. We know now that anything can happen. … The traditional structures of shelter are shaking, their foundations revealed to be no longer stone but sand. We are suddenly thrown back on ourselves. At first, it sounds completely naïve to suggest that now might be the time to invoke beauty. Yet this is exactly what … [we claim]. Why? Because there is nowhere else to turn and we are desperate; furthermore, it is because we have so disastrously neglected the Beautiful that we now find ourselves in such a terrible crisis.”<sup>2</sup> Twenty‑first century society yearns for a leadership of possibility, a leadership based more on hope, aspiration, innovation, and beauty than on the replication of historical patterns of constrained pragmatism. Luckily, such a leadership is possible today. For the first time in history, leaders can work backward from their aspirations and imagination rather than forward from the past.<sup>3</sup> “The gap between what people can imagine and what they can accomplish has never been smaller.”<sup>4</sup> Responding to the challenges and yearnings of the twenty‑first century demands anticipatory creativity. Designing options worthy of implementation calls for levels of inspiration, creativity, and a passionate commitment to beauty that, until recently, have been more the province of artists and artistic processes than the domain of most managers. The time is right for the artistic imagination of each of us to co‑create the leadership that the world most needs and deserves.

scholarly journals A modern rendering of Naboth’s vineyard

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-41
Author(s):  
Matthew Vandagriff
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Relationship

The story of Naboth’s vineyard is a simple story to conceptualize for most readers. A king sees something he desires, and he devises a way to take it. In the case of Naboth, the king had him murdered. In the twenty-first century, imagining a king or other leader who wields this type of authority and influence can be difficult. This article outlines a different understanding for the story (1 Kgs 21:1–16), in which economic forces, not a singular person, drive the procurement of land through the use of fair and legal means. After a brief contextualization of the passage, the article moves to outline the relationship between Kirkwood, MO and the area of Meacham Park. The purpose of this article is help readers understand how fair and legal means can wield the same power as a monarchy, and that Christians must see the world through a lens other than economic issues.

scholarly journals Studying development in the 21st Century

2008 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-356
Author(s):  
Michael S. C. Thomas ◽  
Gert Westermann ◽  
Denis Mareschal ◽  
Mark H. Johnson ◽  
Sylvain Sirois ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Development ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Future Study ◽  
First Century ◽  
Target Article ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn this response, we consider four main issues arising from the commentaries to the target article. These include further details of the theory of interactive specialization, the relationship between neuroconstructivism and selectionism, the implications of neuroconstructivism for the notion of representation, and the role of genetics in theories of development. We conclude by stressing the importance of multidisciplinary approaches in the future study of cognitive development and by identifying the directions in which neuroconstructivism can expand in the Twenty-first Century.

scholarly journals Messianic ideas in monotheistic religions

2001 ◽  
pp. 20-29
Author(s):  
O. Sheludchenko
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Communities ◽  
Mass Consciousness ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
New Vision ◽  
The Universe

The beginning of the twenty-first century was marked by a series of crisis phenomena in the field of social life, humanity and nature. These crises, quite naturally, require a worldview of their development and the development of prerequisites for overcoming. The mass consciousness remains the ideological and ideological stereotypes that were characteristic of the century that passed before our eyes. Along with this, the development of a new vision of the present and the future - the process is very complicated and painful. Losing the usual stereotypes, people sometimes come to the thought that with them the world perishes, the collapse of social communities may seem apocalypse of the universe in general.

Three Hundred Years after Hooke and Van Leeuwenhoek: Optical Microscopy in the Twenty-First Century

1994 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 4-5
Author(s):  
M. Isaacson
Keyword(s):  
Optical Microscopy ◽  
First Century ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
New View

We are always trying to extend our vision through the four senses of sight, sound, touch and smell. The microscopy devised by Hooke and Van Leeuwenhoek more than three centuries ago are examples of methods used to extend our visible vision. In fact, instrument designers since then have constructed microscopes using each one of our senses to give us peeks into the microworld. When Robert Hooke took some scrapings from his teeth and viewed the bacteria in these scrapings in his primitive microscope, a whole new view of the world ensued. It would, however, have been difficult to predict how microscopy would evolve in the following centuries.I am asked now to make similar predictions. Where will optical microscopy be in a decade? In order to even attempt to answer this question with some sense of validity we must look at the prehistory and hope it allows us to extend into the future.

The Future of the Novel

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Boxall ◽  
Bryan Cheyette
Keyword(s):  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Push And Pull ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter addresses the future of the novel. It also reflects on the possibility and nature of historical change. The push and pull between the novel as an expressive symptom of an ailing culture, and the novel as the engine for the production of new cultural possibilities, runs through the long history of novelists’ reflections on the future of the novel. From our perspective in the early decades of the twenty-first century, the perception of a watershed triggered by 1973, and a new understanding of the relationship between style, fiction, and knowledge, seems remarkably prescient. Moreover, the new generation of novelists that have emerged since the turn of the century have collectively registered the re-emergence of a kind of historical vitality in the culture.

Malaysia: Strategy for the Twenty–first Century

1999 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 51-59
Author(s):  
Sushil Vachani
Keyword(s):  
Developing Country ◽  
First Century ◽  
Developed Country ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century

Malaysia dramatically transformed itself from a developing country into a newly industrializing country, and one of the ten most competitive nations of the world, in just two decades. The case describes the important challenges that Malaysia's ambitious leader, Dr Mahathir, faced in 1997 as he looks to the future with the objective of making Malaysia a developed country by the year 2020. Readers are invited to send their responses on the case to Vikalpa Office.

scholarly journals Education and National Identity

2003 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 332-341
Author(s):  
Lee Byung-Jin
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
First Century ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Right ◽  
Future Of Education ◽  
Constant Improvement

Mankind experienced a tremendous vortex of changes during the last century, and the world changed toward a knowledge-based society. It is also true that the eagerness for constant improvement and growth has deprived us of time to reflect and to judge whether we are moving in the right direction. There are many educational problems in Asia, and considerable parts of the problems are also common in many countries of the world. What should be taken into account here regarding education is that it was established on a strong foundation, and that it should be considered more carefully. The additional points required are a new establishment of the right direction and the provision of a vision about national identity so that the educational boom can make a great contribution toward the mutual prosperity of mankind. In this respect, ‘mutual prosperous globalization’ is the password to the future of education in the twenty-first century. Mutual prosperous globalization is a possibility, where everyone cooperates and prospers mutually to live with equal rights and privileges. The author calls this ‘Symbiotic Globalization’ for the twenty-first century. The future is not something that is taken for granted, but is something that we create. If we really have hopes and desires for an ideal future, we are obliged to make every effort and take every pain to accomplish it. Therefore, it is very important to reexamine education and national identity and to make every effort in the search for a desirable education for the twenty-first century.

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