Persona

2018 ◽  
pp. 109-132
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
New Left ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Political Subjectivity ◽  
Stand Up Comedy ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject

This chapter asks what room is there for stand-up comedy as social critique in a ‘post-abjection’ society. In a society where a New Left politics is normative, ‘common sense’, where does this leave radical critique for stand-up comedians? If New Left ideals are mainstream ‘political sense’, how do comedians face up to the obligations of New Left political subjectivity from the social identities their personas fix them as? The ethics of selfhood which New Left hegemony obliges is viewed through stand-up personas as offering philosophies of ‘the subject’ which foreground the moral ought of leftist politics and the structurally compromised position of their social identities.

scholarly journals Narrating self and topicality in AY and Elenu’s stand-up comedy

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Azeez Akinwumi Sesan
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Stand Up Comedy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Oral Stage ◽  
Political Realities ◽  
Media Data

The narrative pattern and discursive strategies of stand-up comedy in Nigeria reveal some tropes and motifs that are contemporary to the socio-political realities of the country. These narrative/discursive strategies demonstrate three discourse types: salutation/greeting discourse, reporting discourse and informing discourse. With these discourse types, stand-up comedians use themselves as the victims of the jokes in order to evoke laughter in the audience. The performances of stand-up comedy, however, have not been accorded due recognition of the functional arts that can be used to critique the failure of the ruling elite in the Nigerian State. This is because stand-up comedy is class-selective and occasion-driven. To evoke laughter in the audience and to comment on the reality of existence, stand-up comedians deploy language aesthetics, kinesics and atmosphere. The modal transition from pure oral stage to the technological phase of performance informs the conceptualisation of media mediated performance (MMP) through recorded VCDs/DVDs and the social media. Data on the stand-up comedy of AY and Elenu are collected through media mediated performances (MMP) on VCD. Data on the subject matter, topicality and discursive strategies of AY and Elenu’s (these are among ace stand-up comedians in Nigeria) jokes are analysed and discussed. With the subject matter and topicality of the jokes, this paper suggests that stand-up comedy performs the utilitarian functions of literary and performing arts. It entertains, moralises, satirises and educates members of heterogeneous audiences on some values and ethos of the contemporary Nigerian society.The narrative pattern and discursive strategies of stand-up comedy in Nigeria reveal some tropes and motifs that are contemporary to the socio-political realities of the country. These narrative/discursive strategies demonstrate three discourse types: salutation/greeting discourse, reporting discourse and informing discourse. With these discourse types, stand-up comedians use themselves as the victims of the jokes in order to evoke laughter in the audience. The performances of stand-up comedy, however, have not been accorded due recognition of the functional arts that can be used to critique the failure of the ruling elite in the Nigerian State. This is because stand-up comedy is class-selective and occasion-driven. To evoke laughter in the audience and to comment on the reality of existence, stand-up comedians deploy language aesthetics, kinesics and atmosphere. The modal transition from pure oral stage to the technological phase of performance informs the conceptualisation of media mediated performance (MMP) through recorded VCDs/DVDs and the social media. Data on the stand-up comedy of AY and Elenu are collected through media mediated performances (MMP) on VCD. Data on the subject matter, topicality and discursive strategies of AY and Elenu’s (these are among ace stand-up comedians in Nigeria) jokes are analysed and discussed. With the subject matter and topicality of the jokes, this paper suggests that stand-up comedy performs the utilitarian functions of literary and performing arts. It entertains, moralises, satirises and educates members of heterogeneous audiences on some values and ethos of the contemporary Nigerian society.

Paine’s Debt to Hume?

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 137-151
Author(s):  
Allan Potofsky
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Public Debt ◽  
Monetary Policies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
Self Mutilation ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Wealth Of Nations

It has been famously argued that Tom Paine was not much of an economic thinker. Indeed, in his published work, we see relatively scarce systematic commentary on the subject. But, as befitting his origins in a mercantile family, Paine as a young man had prepared for a career as an excise officer. He later fully participated in a broader Enlightenment conversation about the new world of credit, trade, commercial and monetary policies, among other fiscal issues of early globalization. In particular, Paine formulated a systematic critique of public debt as a compelling way to discuss political sovereignty, the social contract, and the true wealth of nations – among other issues. In 1796, in France, Paine published a critique of wartime funding of the British economy with the publication of The Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance inspired by the title of Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776). Paine’s denunciation of the economic self-mutilation caused by British wartime expansionism focused on a reform by the Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, who partially privatized the public debt of Britain. The British pound sterling was henceforth sustained by mysterious private loans whose very terms were obscured from public opinion. This article argues that the pamphlet had many parallels to David Hume’s 1752 essay Of Public Debt which Hume revised after the Seven Years War with a radical critique of public debt. The Humean origins of many of Paine’s arguments are manifest in the corrupting nature of public debt tied to military expenditure. To Hume and Paine, gimmicky forms of state borrowing in times of war lead to the bankruptcy of expansionist absolutism and to the eventual “decline and fall” of belligerent empires.

Can Memory Be Collective?

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Green
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
The Past ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

This article explains the collectivity of memory. Memory, in all its guises, has been at the heart of historical inquiry over the past three decades. Cultural and social historians, sociologists, social psychologists, and those working in cultural studies and literary criticism have generated a significant body of work exploring both individual autobiographical memory and collective, public memory. Interest in the subject of collective remembrance, initially focusing upon the social and cultural forms through which the violent and repressive history of the twentieth century were recalled and commemorated, has developed over time into a broader, interdisciplinary field focusing upon memory. The term “memory” has now expanded to encompass all these forms of historical consciousness, a development that has received a less-than-enthusiastic response from those historians who define conventional history by its goals of objectivity and truth, as opposed to the subjectivity and partiality of memory. Discussion on personal and collective memory and social identities conclude this article.

scholarly journals Skinder as gespreksgenre

Literator ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.S. Van der Merwe
Keyword(s):  
Social Identities ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Story Telling ◽  
Informal Conversation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Subject

Gossip as a discourse genre Gossip is one of the wide range of sub-categories of discourse genres in story-telling. It is one of the most common interactive forms of discourse in informal conversation, because it has its origin in the general inclination of man to show an intense interest in other people’s activities. Although the development of gossip differs with regard to the subject of discussion, the context and situation in which it is produced as well as the persons participating, it is possible to distinguish definite universal features of gossip. This article deals with the most prominent characteristics of gossip. The focus falls on the structure, the gossiping process, the content, the pejorative, evaluating nature of it and the social aspects involved in gossiping. Special attention is paid to non-verbal elements, which are frequently used when people gossip. In spite of the negative connotations gossip has, it is very important in the establishment of social identities and relations. It should therefore not be neglected in the study of language.

Entre parole et histoire

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 153-176
Author(s):  
Francesca Peruzzotti ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Social Bond ◽  
First Person ◽  
Ternary Relation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One

Witnessing is an increasingly important theme in the work of Jean-Luc Marion. According to Marion, the witness can be considered an appropriate figure to define the first person, the “I,” without reducing it to subjectivism and without envisaging the intersubjective tie as binary (dual or dialogic), inasmuch as the testimony refers instead to a ternary relation. The present analysis investigates the difference Marion identifies between the religious witness and what seems to be, according to common sense, the regular witness. While in the latter case, the subject is completely foreign to the event to which s/he testifies, in the case of the religious witness, the commitment is total. We will tackle this difference by showing that the fact of testifying always implies a connection with effectivity, which reveals itself through the profound commitment characterizing the witness’s life, up to the point of death. This becomes obvious when considering the role played by the witness’s confessing speech, which establishes an unsurpassable ternary relationship between the witness, the object of the testimony, and the one to whom it is addressed, by deploying an absolute form of the social bond.

Clothes and Identity: The Case of the Greeks in Ionia c. 400 BC

Antichthon ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 18-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Miller
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
The West ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Cultural Flexibility ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Communication Study

AbstractThe capacity of the individual to maintain several identities concurrently is well established, as is the ability of dress to reflect (passively) or to announce (actively) the social identities of its bearer. Within a multi-national structure such as the Achaemenid Persian Empire the semiosis of dress is especially complex. Since dress functions as a form of non-verbal communication, study of the language of dress of past cultures must appeal to the widest possible range of literary and visual sources.Analysis of the visual arts within the Persian sphere shows careful attention to vestimental definition of the Iranian ‘dominant ethno-class’ and its separation from the dress of the subject peoples in the western empire. Artistic and literary evidence for the Greek and West Anatolian experience of the Persian Empire testifies to the extent of the Persian presence in the west. It also shows the cultural flexibility of the local populations, who might occasionally emulate the Persian model by adopting Persian dress while retaining the traits of their traditional cultures.

Getting David Copperfield: Humor, Sensus Communis, and Moral Agreement

Good Form ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 78-123
Author(s):  
Jesse Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Shared Understanding ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
David Copperfield ◽  
Rational Knowledge ◽  
Sensus Communis ◽  
Intuitive Sense

This chapter looks at another narrative mechanism that an author could use to imply that there was a “law” governing the text: humor. This is not, as the chapter shows through a discussion of Romantic and Victorian writings on the subject, a humor that was defined by its ability to make a reader laugh. Rather, humor was a strategy used to produce, in the reader, the experience of unspoken agreement and shared community with others. Unlike Oliver Twist, David Copperfield does not rely on an inaccessible back-story. Instead, it relies on a shared understanding, but one so implicit that it seems to be more of an intuitive sense than any sort of rational knowledge. It relies, in other words, on the idea of sensus communis (common sense). The narrative of David's progression is always measured against this backdrop of an anonymously judging public of which he is part, and the novel's narrative method seeks to move him into agreement with that public. The novel thus uses humor to underscore the idea that one's individual intuitions are shared, though in ways that are difficult to conceptualize. Charles Dickens's narrative technique makes use of an externalization, into the social sphere, of a reader's individual feeling.

scholarly journals Finance Capitalism, Landnahme and Discriminating Precariousness – Relevance for a New Social Critique

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Dörre
Keyword(s):  
Specific Form ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Welfare Capitalism ◽  
Social Question ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Form ◽  
Market Driven ◽  
Finance Capitalism

Abstract This contribution discusses the return of the ‘social question’ to the basically still wealthy and secure societies of the Global North. Referring to the case of German welfare capitalism, a historically new form of discriminating precariousness is being identified. This type of precariousness results from processes of a market driven, capitalist Landnahme. The paper argues that this specific form of precariousness should be the subject matter of a renewed, scientific social critique.

Fakir Baykurt’un Almanya öykülerinde Türk göçmen çocukları

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Efnan Dervişoğlu
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Home Life ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Life Education

Almanya’ya işçi göçü, neden ve sonuçları, sosyal boyutlarıyla ele alınmış; göç ve devamındaki süreçte yaşanan sorunlar, konunun uzmanlarınca dile getirilmiştir. Fakir Baykurt’un Almanya öyküleri, sunduğu gerçekler açısından, sosyal bilimlerin ortaya koyduğu verilerle bağdaşan edebiyat ürünleri arasındadır. Yirmi yılını geçirdiği Almanya’da, göçmen işçilerle ve aileleriyle birlikte olup işçi çocuklarının eğitimine yönelik çalışmalarda bulunan yazarın gözlem ve deneyimlerinin ürünü olan bu öyküler, kaynağını yaşanmışlıktan alır; çalışmanın ilk kısmında, Fakir Baykurt’un yaşamına ve Almanya yıllarına dair bilgi verilmesi, bununla ilişkilidir. Öykülere yansıyan çocuk yaşamı ise çalışmanın asıl konusunu oluşturmaktadır. “Ev ve aile yaşamı”, “Eğitim yaşamı ve sorunları”, “Sosyal çevre, arkadaşlık ilişkileri ve Türk-Alman ayrılığı” ile “İki kültür arasında” alt başlıklarında, Türkiye’den göç eden işçi ailelerinde yetişen çocukların Almanya’daki yaşamları, karşılaştıkları sorunlar, öykülerin sunduğu veriler ışığında değerlendirilmiş; örneklemeye gidilmiştir. Bu öyküler, edebiyatın toplumsal gerçekleri en iyi yansıtan sanat olduğu görüşünü doğrular niteliktedir ve sosyolojik değerlendirmelere açıktır. ENGLISH ABSTRACTMigration and Children in Fakir Baykurt’s stories from GermanyThe migration of workers to Germany has been taken up with its causes, consequences and social dimensions; the migration and the problems encountered in subsequent phases have been stated by experts in the subject. Fakir Baykurt’s stories from Germany, regarding the reality they represent, are among the literary forms that coincide with the facts supplied by social sciences. These stories take their sources from true life experiences as the products of observations and experiences with migrant workers and their families in Germany where the writer has passed twenty years of his life and worked for the education of the worker’s children; therefore information related to Fakir Baykurt’s life and his years in Germany are provided in the first part of the study.  The life of children reflected in the stories constitutes the main theme of the study.  Under  the subtitles of “Family and Home Life”, “Education Life and related issues”, “Social environment, friendships and Turkish-German disparity” and “Amidst two cultures”, the lives in Germany of children who have been  raised in working class  families and  who have immigrated from Turkey are  evaluated under the light of facts provided by the stories and examples are given. These stories appear to confirm that literature is an art that reflects the social reality and is open to sociological assessments.KEYWORDS: Fakir Baykurt; Germany; labor migration; child; story

Negotiating Boundaries Between Gender and Social Identities in the Principality of Samos: The Case of Divorces (1902–1911)

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 90
Author(s):  
Vasilios Gialamas ◽  
Sofia Iliadou Tachou ◽  
Alexia Orfanou
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Cultural Construction ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Gender Ratio ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Government ◽  
Qualitative Characteristics

This study focuses on divorces in the Principality of Samos, which existed from 1834 to 1912. The process of divorce is described according to the laws of the rincipality, and divorces are examined among those published in the Newspaper of the Government of the Principality of Samos from the last decade of the Principality from 1902 to 1911. Issues linked to divorce are investigated, like the differences between husbands and wives regarding the initiation and reasons for requesting a divorce. These differences are integrated in the specific social context of the Principality, and the qualitative characteristics are determined in regard to the gender ratio of women and men that is articulated by the invocation of divorce. The aim is to determine the boundaries of social identities of gender with focus on the prevailing perceptions of the social roles of men and women. Gender is used as a social and cultural construction. It is argued that the social gender identity is formed through a process of “performativity”, that is, through adaptation to the dominant social ideals.

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