“I do not want her, I am sure”

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 448-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Urakova

Alexandra Urakova,“‘I do not want her, I am sure’: Commodities, Gifts, and Poisonous Gifts in Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (pp. 448–472) This essay focuses on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) in discussing the interrelation of sentimentality, slavery, and race. It asks what happens when a slave himself or herself becomes a gift in the way that Mr. Shelby buys Eliza as a present for his wife, and St. Claire seems to bestow Uncle Tom upon Eva and ultimately gives Topsy to his cousin Ophelia. Although much has been said about “sentimental property” or “sympathetic ownership” in Stowe, the instances of exchanging slaves as gifts in the novel have been surprisingly overlooked. Touching upon one of the novel’s important and precarious themes—the distinction between people and things—the aforementioned episodes not only contribute to our understanding of the novel’s gift economy but also invite us to revise the complex attitude to racial otherness in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I claim that while pursuing a sentimental ideology of the gift that comes to support racialist implications of its abolitionist rhetoric, Stowe’s novel also contains a radical potential of its critique embodied in the image of the poisonous gift of a slave child, Topsy, who figures as an unwelcome, wasteful, and repellent present. Concurring with critical opinion that Stowe’s racism is in the sentiment, this essay suggests that the novel’s unsentimental, explicitly racist metaphors paradoxically inform one of Stowe’s strongest antislavery arguments.

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-104
Author(s):  
Nursyam Nursyam

Children are a gift from Allah SWT that is always expected by every family. However, not everyone (parents) can take good care of their children according to what is commanded by Allah through religious teachings. For various reasons and reasons, parents no longer pay attention to children's religious education. In the end, the negative impact will be felt by parents even more so for their own children. To be able to form a religious awareness of children, the mother as the first person known to the child, then the mother needs to provide an understanding of the religious dimension of children is important, the child is essentially a mandate from Allah SWT that must be grateful, and we as Muslims must carry out the mandate with good and right. The way to be grateful for the gift of God in the form of children is through caring for, caring for, and educating and coaching the characters properly and correctly, so that they will not become weak children, both physically and mentally, and weak in faith and weak in their worldly lives. The aim of education is to be a perfect Muslim, who has faith and fear Allah. Mother as a parent is the first primary educator for children, before the child knows the outside world, first the child knows the mother and after that his father is the closest person to the child. As for women's efforts in fostering religious awareness as follows: to destroy personality, to form good habits , forming civilizations in the Muslim world and helping to encourage them to encourage things that lead to obedience to God and educate them with different ways of worship. Like prayer, recitation, prayer at home and at school.


Author(s):  
Andy Amiruddin ◽  
Khairil Anwar ◽  
Ferdinal Ferdinal

This paper discusses the foods eaten by the slaves from Uncle Tom’s Cabin about the nature of slavery that happens in South America. There are two contrast setting of places in the novel—Kentucky and Louisiana—that each has different food presentations for the slaves, and each presentation can reveal the power relation between masters and slaves. In gastronomy, when food is done right in writing, certain scenes from fiction can get the readers to experience it with all their senses and strange cravings. The finding in this writing is that the slaves creatively change the scraps and leftovers into finely soul foods of in the first set of the place, Kentucky. The second setting is a place in Louisiana, the slaves cannot have the soul food because the lack of food itself has chained them forever in the slavery. Each of this food presentations has directly revealed the nature of power relation between masters and slaves.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-258

The essay investigates the phenomenon of laziness by first analyzing the opposition between laziness and the good. Both utility and the good make reference to labor. This opposition between labor and laziness is pivotal in Oblomov, Ivan Goncharov’s famous novel written in 1859. It marks a radical transition from a feudal paradigm to a capitalistic one. The two main characters in the novel are Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, a Russian, and Andrey Ivanovich Stolz, a German, who together seem to personify the contradiction between laziness and labor. But the purpose of the essay is to deconstruct that opposition. In this connection, one can cite Kazimir Malevich, who maintained that laziness is the Mother of Perfection and is always unconsciously inherent in the conscious intent to work. Analysis of the Latin concepts of otium and negotium indicates that the laziness/labor opposition may be deconstructed as a dialectic between labor and its opposite. In other words, laziness does not stand in contradiction to labor but is instead its inseparable dialectical other. In the last part of the essay, the article considers the thinking of Anatoly Peregud, a poet who spent almost all his life in a psychiatric hospital. According to Peregud, Lenin derived his pseudonym from the Russian linguistic root “len” (laziness) in order to make laziness central to communism. For his part, Lenin saw Oblomov as an emblem of the main obstacle standing in the way of communism.


Author(s):  
Horace Walpole

‘Look, my lord! See heaven itself declares against your impious intentions’ The Castle of Otranto (1764) is the first supernatural English novel and one of the most influential works of Gothic fiction. It inaugurated a literary genre that will be forever associated with the effects that Walpole pioneered. Professing to be a translation of a mysterious Italian tale from the darkest Middle Ages, the novel tells of Manfred, prince of Otranto, whose fear of an ancient prophecy sets him on a course of destruction. After the grotesque death of his only son, Conrad, on his wedding day, Manfred determines to marry the bride–to–be. The virgin Isabella flees through a castle riddled with secret passages. Chilling coincidences, ghostly visitations, arcane revelations, and violent combat combine in a heady mix that terrified the novel's first readers. In this new edition Nick Groom examines the reasons for its extraordinary impact and the Gothic culture from which it sprang. The Castle of Otranto was a game-changer, and Walpole the writer who paved the way for modern horror exponents.


Author(s):  
Stuart Bell

Abstract “Lambeth Palace is my Washpot. Over Fulham have I cast my breeches.” So declared the novelist and secularist H. G. Wells in a letter to his mistress, Rebecca West, in May 1917. His claim was that, because of him, Britain was “full of theological discussion” and theological books were “selling like hot cakes”. He was lunching with liberal churchmen and dining with bishops. Certainly, the first of the books published during Wells’s short “religious period”, the novel Mr. Britling Sees It Through, had sold very well on both sides of the Atlantic and made Wells financially secure. Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy (“Woodbine Willie”) wrote that, “Everyone ought to read Mr. H. G. Wells’s great novel, Mr. Britling Sees It Through. It is a gallant and illuminating attempt to state the question, and to answer it. His thought has brought him to a very real and living faith in God revealed in Jesus Christ, and has also brought relief to many troubled minds among the officers of the British Army.” Yet, Wells’s God was explicitly a finite God, and his theology was far from orthodox. How can we account for his boast and for the clerical affirmation which he certainly did receive? This article examines and re-evaluates previous accounts of the responses of clergy to Wells’s writing, correcting some narratives. It discusses the way in which many clergy used Mr. Britling as a means by which to engage in a populist way with the question of theodicy, and examines the letters which Wells received from several prominent clerics, locating their responses in the context of their own theological writings. This is shown to be key to understanding the reaction of writers such as Studdert Kennedy to Mr. Britling Sees It Through. Finally, an assessment is made of the veracity of Wells’s boasting to his mistress, concluding that his claims were somewhat exaggerated. “Lambeth Palace is my Washpot, Over Fulham have I cast my breeches.” Mit diesen Worten erklärte der literarisch außergewöhnlich erfolgreiche und entschieden säkular denkende, kirchenkritische Schriftsteller und Science-Fiction-Pionier Herbert George Wells seiner Geliebten, dass seinetwegen Großbritannien “full of theological discussion” sei. Nicht ohne Eitelkeit schrieb er es seinem im September 1916 mit Blick auf den Krieg geschriebenen und stark autobiographisch gefärbten Roman Mr. Britling Sees it Through von knapp 450 Seiten zu, dass theologische Bücher reißenden Absatz fänden. Auch war er stolz darauf, liberale Kleriker zum Lunch zu treffen und von Bischöfen zum abendlichen Dinner eingeladen zu werden. In einer kurzen Phase seines Lebens war – oder inszenierte sich – Wells als ein frommer, gläubiger Mensch. Sein damals veröffentlichter Roman Mr. Britling Sees It Through verkaufte sich sowohl in Nordamerika als auch im Heimatland so gut, dass der Autor nun definitiv finanziell gesichert war. Der anglikanische Priester und Dichter Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, der im Ersten Weltkrieg Woodbine Willie genannt wurde, weil er verletzten und sterbenden Soldaten in den Phasen der Vorbereitung auf den Tod Woodbine-Zigaretten anbot, empfahl die Lektüre von Wells’ “great novel” Mr. Britling mit den Worten: “It is a gallant and illuminating attempt to state the question, and to answer it. His thought has brought him to a very real and living faith in God revealed in Jesus Christ, and has also brought relief to many troubled minds among the officers of the British Army.” Allerdings war H. G. Wells’ Gott ein durchaus endlicher Gott, und seine Theologie war alles andere als orthodox. Wie lassen sich dennoch seine evidente Prahlerei und die emphatische Zustimmung zu seinem Roman in den britischen Klerikereliten erklären? Im Aufsatz werden zunächst einige ältere Deutungen der Zustimmung führender Kleriker zu Wells’ Roman untersucht und einige der dabei leitenden Deutungsmuster kritisch infrage gestellt. Deutlich wird, dass nicht wenige anglikanische Geistliche Mr. Britling dazu nutzten, um höchst populistisch das umstrittene Theodizeeproblem anzusprechen. Auch werden die Briefe prominenter Geistlicher an Wells analysiert, mit Blick auf ihre eigenen Publikationen. Diese Reaktionen haben stark Studdert Kennedys Haltung zu Mr. Britling Sees It Through beeinflusst. Besonders aufrichtig war Wells mit Blick auf sich selbst allerdings nicht. Die Selbstinszenierung gegenüber seiner Geliebten war einfach nur peinliche Übertreibung.


2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 497-520
Author(s):  
Nicola Pozza

AbstractNumerous studies have dealt with the process of globalization and its various cultural products. Three such cultural products illustrate this process: Vikas Swarup’s novel Q and A (2005), the TV quiz show Kaun banega crorepati? (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?), and Danny Boyle’s film Slumdog Millionaire (2008). The novel, the TV show and the film have so far been studied separately. Juxtaposing and comparing Q and A, Kaun banega crorepati, and Slumdog Millionaire provides an effective means to shed light on the dialogic and interactive nature of the process of globalization. It is argued through this case study that an analysis of their place of production, language and content, helps clarify the derivative concepts of “glocalization” and “grobalization” with regard to the way(s) contemporary cultural products respond to globalization.


2020 ◽  
pp. 074391562098384
Author(s):  
Norah Campbell ◽  
Sarah Browne ◽  
Marius Claudy ◽  
Melissa Mialon ◽  
Hercberg Serge ◽  
...  

Ultra-processed food manufacturers have proposed that product reformulation should be a key strategy to tackle obesity. In determining the impact of reformulation on population dietary behaviours, policy makers are often dependant on data provided by these manufacturers. Where such data are “gifted” to regulators there may be an implicit expectation of reciprocity that adversely influences nutrition policies. We sought to assess Europe’s industry-led reformulation strategy in five countries deploying critical policy studies as an approach. We found that interim results on industry-led food reformulation did not meet their targets. Information asymmetries exist between food industry and policy makers: the latter are not privy to marketing intelligence and must instead rely on data that are voluntarily donated by food industry actors. These data represent a distorted snippet of the marketing intelligence system from whence they came. Because these data indeed bear all the hallmarks of a gift, regulatory and public health authorities operate within a gift economy. The implications of this “data gift economy” are strategic delay and goal-setting when the field is not visible. Ultimately, this could diminish the implementation of public health nutrition policies that are contrary to the commercial interests of ultra-processed food producers.


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Auni Aslah Mat Daud

A Galton board is an instrument invented in 1873 by Francis Galton (1822–1911). It is a box with a glass front and many horizontal nails or pins embedded in the back and a funnel. Galton and many modern statisticians claimed that a lead ball descending to the bottom of the Galton board would display random walk. In this study, a new mathematical model of Galton board is developed, to further improve three very recently proposed models. The novel contribution of this paper is the introduction of the velocity-dependent coefficient of restitution. The developed model is then analyzed using symbolic dynamics. The results of the symbolic dynamics analysis prove that the developed Galton board model does not behave the way Galton envisaged.


2014 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-207
Author(s):  
Kristen A. Pond

Kristen A. Pond, “Harriet Martineau’s Epistemology of Gossip” (pp. 175–207) This essay is a fresh examination of Harriet Martineau’s only domestic novel, Deerbrook (1838). Though the novel seems like an interruption to those writings considered more typical of the author, and more successful, this essay traces the way in which Deerbrook’s preoccupation with epistemology connects it in important ways to the rest of Martineau’s oeuvre. While in most of her writing Martineau gives preference to what the Victorians considered to be empirical and rational ways of knowing, in Deerbrook she focuses on more typically feminized knowledge forms that rely on speculation and intuition, in particular the discourse of gossip. This essay argues that gossip’s main function in Deerbrook is not as plot device or didactic warning; rather, it functions as an epistemological category that challenges Enlightenment presumptions to certain knowledge. Read as a source of knowledge rather than a female vice, gossip becomes the tool through which Martineau raises the possibility of alternative forms of knowledge that might counter, or at least complicate, assumptions about what constitutes certain truth and right knowledge.


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