Dying to Know: Identity and Self-Knowledge in Baldwin's Another Country

PMLA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 124 (3) ◽  
pp. 782-797 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernesto Javier Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ethical Imperative ◽  
Central Thesis ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Commit Suicide

This article examines the prevalence of confusion and incoherence in James Baldwin's 1962 novel Another Country, arguing that the novel should be read as an extended and theoretically rich meditation on the difficulty of gaining self-knowledge in oppressive social contexts. Its central thesis is that the novel is motivated less by the tragedy of Rufus Scott's suicide early in the novel than by the ethical imperative that compels all the characters to risk their sense of self (to figuratively commit suicide) in order to better understand the circumstances they face. Through this “suicidal” sensibility, Baldwin examines how self-knowledge in oppressive contexts frequently depends on people making extreme shifts in their conception of self—of who they are in relation to their society. These shifts are often dreaded and appear self-menacing, but Baldwin ultimately implies that they hold liberatory promise.

Exploring normative perceptions and misperceptions of private, environmentally impactful behaviours

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Gallagher ◽  
Bas Verplanken ◽  
Ian Walker
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Behaviour Change ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Normative Influence ◽  
Change Mechanism ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Classical Studies ◽  
Referent Group

Social norms have been shown to be an effective behaviour change mechanism across diverse behaviours, demonstrated from classical studies to more recent behaviour change research. Much of this research has focused on environmentally impactful actions. Social norms are typically utilised for behaviour change in social contexts, which facilitates the important element of the behaviour being visible to the referent group. This ensures that behaviours can be learned through observation and that deviations from the acceptable behaviour can be easily sanctioned or approved by the referent group. There has been little focus on how effective social norms are in private or non-social contexts, despite a multitude of environmentally impactful behaviours occurring in the home, for example. The current study took the novel approach to explore if private behaviours are important in the context of normative influence, and if the lack of a referent groups results in inaccurate normative perceptions and misguided behaviours. Findings demonstrated variance in normative perceptions of private behaviours, and that these misperceptions may influence behaviour. These behaviours are deemed to be more environmentally harmful, and respondents are less comfortable with these behaviours being visible to others, than non-private behaviours. The research reveals the importance of focusing on private behaviours, which have been largely overlooked in the normative influence literature.

Whose Idea of Tragedy? Mrs Dalloway and the Ancient Greek Tradition

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Gourd
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Classical Scholar ◽  
Narrative Tradition ◽  
Ancient Literature ◽  
Greek Tradition ◽  
Previous Scholarship ◽  
Commit Suicide

As Septimus Smith prepares to commit suicide by throwing himself out of the window and ‘vigorously, violently down onto Mrs Filmer’s area railings,’ he comments on the narrative tradition of his own tragic demise. ‘It was their idea of tragedy,’ he reflects with bitter irony – ‘Holmes and Bradshaw liked that sort of thing.’ This paper addresses the wider implications of this sentiment in Mrs Dalloway, by positioning Septimus’ death as the tragic climax and dramatic focus of the novel. Previous scholarship has failed to recognise the significance of this allusion to Greek tragedy, though Woolf was an accomplished classical scholar and a voracious reader of ancient literature. This detail would repay attention, as the author’s self-conscious engagement with the literary and intellectual tradition of tragedy, demonstrated through the narrative and suicide of Septimus Smith, impacts upon our understanding of the novel as a whole. It raises several important questions which this paper seeks to address: to what extent does Woolf intend for us to sympathise with Septimus as the tragic protagonist? How does Woolf’s appropriation and manipulation of the tragic genre reflect her views on war, mental illness, and her relationship with her doctors? And finally, what does it tell us about Woolf’s idea of tragedy, and what she considers to be tragic?

“The Continuity of Married Companionship”

2012 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 494-530
Author(s):  
Cara Weber
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Conception ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ethical Action ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
A Site ◽  
Focus Questions

Victorian writers often focus questions of ethics through scenes of sympathetic encounters that have been conceptualized, both by Victorian thinkers and by their recent critics, as a theater of identification in which an onlooking spectator identifies with a sufferer. George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871–72) critiques this paradigm, revealing its negation of otherness and its corresponding fixation of the self as an identity, and offers an alternative conception of relationship that foregrounds the presence and distinctness of the other and the open-endedness of relationship. The novel develops its critique through an analysis of women's experience of courtship and marriage, insisting upon the appropriateness ofmarriage as a site for the investigation of contemporary ethical questions. In her depiction of Rosamond, Eliot explores the identity-based paradigm of the spectacle of others, and shows how its conception of selfhood leaves the other isolated, precluding relationship. Rosamond's trajectory in the novel enacts the identity paradigm's relation to skeptical anxieties about self-knowledge and knowledge of others, and reveals such anxieties to occur with particular insistence around images of femininity. By contrast, Dorothea's development in ethical self-awareness presents an alternative to Rosamond's participation in the identity paradigm. In Dorothea's experience the self emerges as a process, an ongoing practice of expression. The focus on expression in the sympathetic or conflictual encounter, rather than on identity, enables the overcoming of the identity paradigm's denial of otherness, and grounds a productive sympathy capable of informing ethical action.

Identification with School and Head Trauma: Parental Perceptions on Student’s Experiences

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 112
Author(s):  
BreAnna Jones ◽  
Lindsay Robinson ◽  
Karen H Larwin
Keyword(s):  
Head Injury ◽  
Brain Injuries ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
The United States ◽  
Psychosocial Effects ◽  
Psychosocial Experiences ◽  
Loss Of Self ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Identification With School ◽  
Shed Light

In the United States 40% of all traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are in children under the age 14 (Broque  et. al 2012). This means a portion of the school age population is exposed to head injury every year. The effect this injury and experience can have on a child varies, but it is important for educators, counselors, and family to understand the psychosocial experiences that follow after TBI. Research has shown that head injury in childhood can have severe psychosocial effects if the injury is not treated, recognized, and planned for (Broque et. al 2012).This research is intended to shed light on what educators, counselors, and families can do to help children who have experienced a TBI. Previous research shows that a loss of sense of self after TBI in three categories; loss of self-knowledge, loss of self by comparison, and loss of self in the eyes of others (Nochi, 1998). This investigation suggests that identification as “disabled” can impact how students identify with their school.

scholarly journals THE METHODOLOGY OF ANALYSIS OF J. JOYCE'S NOVEL "ULISSES" (EMPHASES OF DARIA VIKONSKA)

2021 ◽  
pp. 67-75
Author(s):  
M. Moklytsia
Keyword(s):  
Research Work ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Literary Process ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Ethical Norms ◽  
Almost All ◽  
First Time ◽  
School Curricula

The relevance of the study is due to the need to include the novel "Ulysses" by J. Joyce in university and, if possible, school curricula in foreign literature, as well as the need for its interpretation, despite the excessive complexity of the text and difficulty of perception. It is also important to return the legacy of D. Vikonska, a writer, critic, art critic and literary critic, to modern Ukrainian culture. Research methodology: a model of analysis of the modernist novel "Ulysses", created on the basis of the research work of D. Vikonska “James Joyce. The secret of his artistic face” (1934). Scientific novelty: for the first time the analysis of the novel "Ulysses" is carried out with the broad involvement of the half-forgotten studio of D. Vikonska, which has not lost its relevance, clearly articulates the modernist nature of the work, including surreal style. The purpose of the study: to draw attention to the outstanding figure of D. Vikonska as the founder of Ukrainian Joyce studies, to include her in the modern literary process, to show with her help the significant role of Joyce's novel "Ulysses". Conclusions. The answer to the question why Joyce's novel Ulysses is considered a landmark work of modernism should be concise but convincing, based on macro- and microanalysis of the text. First of all, it is a unique example of the author's self-expression, extreme subjectivism (the whimsy of Joyce's nature), transformed into universalism. No one is as subjective as Joyce is, no one is as universal as he is. Such can only be a conscious modernist who has passed the difficult path of search outside, in the world of culture, and inside, looking into the irrational depths of his own psyche. This is the most rational, intellectual and at the same time irrational, or visionary, according to K.G. Jung, type of creativity. Second: this is the boldest (revolutionary, in the words of Vikonska) challenge to tradition (or Cultural Canon, according to K.G. Jung), which manifested itself in the ironic parody of almost all known literary forms and narrative means, many moral and ethical norms. Third: it is a brilliant example of the author's style, a variant of surrealism, which grows out of naturalism and turns into neomythologism. Joyce's style is characterized by the following features: associative metaphorical writing, author's dictionary, which includes numerous innovations, narrative reception of the flow of consciousness; use of dreams, delusions, other boundary conditions; a bizarre intertwining of past and present, when dead and living characters are equal in meaning; consistent reflection of the external in the internal and vice versa; a labyrinth of human wanderings in search of pleasures, meaning, cognition and self-knowledge. Joyce modeled the next stage in the development of culture – the transition from modernism to postmodernism, from an ironic re-reading of tradition to playing with it.

scholarly journals Search of an ideal language in Friedrich Schlegel’s novel “Lucinde”

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 100-111
Author(s):  
Ekaterina A. Shikhanova ◽  
Alexander V. Belobratov
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ideal Language ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Theory Creation

The study investigates the speech organization of Carl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel’s novel “Lucinde” (1799), which was written at the time of “universal poetry” theory creation and became its true embodiment. One of the key problems of the text is thinking and self-knowledge of the speaking subject. It is also connected with the role of language and dialogic speech in these processes. In this respect the important things are interaction of the speaker with “nameless”, definition and denomination of phenomena (all of them are necessary stages of knowledge), narrative itself, and plot deploying the speech canvas. In the course of these processes the expressive and cognitive abilities of the language are “tested”, its imperfections are revealed, and attempts are made to overcome them. Thus, “Lucinde” appears as a work typical for Early Romanticism with its search for a genuine language, pronounced self-reflexivity and the “socratic” dialogism of the novel form.

scholarly journals THE DEVELOPMENT OF LIFE-LONG LEARNING COMPETENCIES: POSITIONING STUDENTS FOR SELF-REGULATION

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Aleong ◽  
David S. Strong
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Reflective Process ◽  
Life Long Learning ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Learning Competencies ◽  
Insight Into

Within the engineering attribute of life-long learning is the ability for self-regulation, described as the process in which students plan, monitor, control, and adjust their behaviour to meet specific goals. To be self-regulating requires a degree of self-awareness and self-reflection to build knowledge about the self. This self-knowledge contributes to one’s values, personal identity, and motivational beliefs that may direct academic behaviour. In this paper, we present insight into the implementation of a workshop program designed to engage undergraduate engineering students in a facilitated self-reflective process. The workshop program challenged participants to think about how they see themselves in their engineering education and how they envision the person they wish to become in their future career. The research aims to offer educators with pedagogical insight into students’ sense of self, self-regulating processes, and new ways to promote the skills of life-long learning.

scholarly journals The Resistance of Memory in Stavrogin’s ‘Confession’

2021 ◽  
pp. 82-105
Author(s):  
Viktor M. Dimitriev
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Self Knowledge

The article investigates the resistance of memory as a typical narration technique in Dostoevsky’s works, especially in confessional texts. The attention is focused on a fragment of the unpublished chapter “At Tikhon’s” from an unrealized version of the novel The Possessed: Stavrogin bought a photograph of “one girl”, which he perceives as a photograph of Matryosha herself. The article attempts to explain how Stavrogin organizes memories in his “confession” and why the cases of memory aberrations become both the constructive elements of the genre of literary confession and an original “tool” for the protagonist’s self-knowledge. The illustrative memory aberration is considered here in connection with the problems of narration, the psychology of the protagonist, and the visual forms of representation.

scholarly journals Educación: Orientación Vocacional y Profesional, garantía de derechos y construcción de proyectos de vida.//Education: Vocational and Professional Guidance, guarantee of rights and construction of life projects.

Ciencia Unemi ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (30) ◽  
pp. 87-102
Author(s):  
Pablo Ormaza-Mejía
Keyword(s):  
Information Society ◽  
Meaning In Life ◽  
Qualitative Change ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Search For Meaning ◽  
Collective Rights ◽  
Descriptive Research ◽  
Sociedad Del Conocimiento ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Professional Guidance

La búsqueda del sentido a la vida ha sido una constante en todas las esferas de desarrollo humano. La práctica orientadora —trasformada en disciplina orientativa— ha estimulado la capacidad de decisión de las personas mediante procesos de autoconocimiento, información y toma de decisión. Desde los enfoques funcionalista, evolucionista, factorialista, humanista e histórico-cultural, hasta los nuevos postulados de la post-modernidad, la orientación se ha constituido en un mecanismo utilizado en diferentes contextos sociales para reproducir modos de producción o para reivindicar derechos individuales y colectivos. Muestra de ello es el desarrollo de dicha disciplina en el contexto ecuatoriano, donde la evidencia cronológica muestra el cambio cualitativo de enfoque: desde lo vocacional y profesional a un abordaje centrado en derechos. El presente ejercicio de investigación descriptiva esboza el desarrollo del concepto de la orientación en cada uno de sus estadios históricos en el Ecuador, su implicación en la normativa nacional e internacional a más de establecer un punto de conexión con el goce mismo de los derechos y libertades individuales y colectivas. Finalmente, se deja abierto un escenario de inquietudes con respecto a la práctica orientadora en la nueva sociedad del conocimiento e información. AbstractThe search for meaning in life has been a constant in all spheres of human development. The orienting practice -transformed into orienting discipline- has stimulated the decision capacity of people through processes of self-knowledge, information and decision making. From the functionalist, evolutionist, factorialistic, humanist and historical-cultural approaches to the new postulates of post-modernity, orientation has become a mechanism used in different social contexts to reproduce modes of production or to claim individual and collective rights. An example of this is the development of this discipline in the Ecuadorian context, where chronological evidence shows the qualitative change of approach: from the vocational and professional to a rights-centred approach. This descriptive research exercise outlines the development of the concept of orientation in each of its historical stages in Ecuador, its implication in national and international norms, and more than establishing a point of connection with the very enjoyment of individual and collective rights and freedoms. Finally, it leaves open a scenario of concerns regarding the guiding practice in the new knowledge and information society.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document