scholarly journals Considering All (Non) Living Things: A Biocentric Orientation in Blair Richmond’s The Lithia Trilogy

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 87
Author(s):  
Ida Farida ◽  
Yudi Permadi ◽  
Trisha Adelia ◽  
Nolly Liviani

This article elucidates the perspective of The Lithia Trilogy, written by Blair Richmond, towards environment. This research is executed based on ecocriticism, a literary approach which focuses on the exploration of environmental issues in literary works. The theory is taken from Laurence Buell on the meaning of ecocriticism. From the analysis of the structure of the novels, it is found that the trilogy presents the idea of biocentrism, an assumption that the earth and all of the living things on it have the right to fulfill their needs without any molestation from the other, especially from humans. Biocentrism is the opposing concept of Anthropocentrism, both of which are studied in environmental ethics. Two issues of conflicts are presented in this trilogy: herbivores versus omnivores and environ-mentalists versus capitalists. The result of the research reveals that the novels suggest not to eat animals to save fauna and socialize Gaia hypothesis to save all living and non-living things on the earth. As one work of young adult literature, this trilogy explicitly teaches those suggestions to young readers.

2018 ◽  
pp. 136-148
Author(s):  
T. Solovieva

The most thorough analysis in Russian to date, this article is devoted to the works of the contemporary French author M.- A. Murail, who specializes in young adult literature, and who is idolized by her audiences in France and holds numerous literary awards. In Russia, her books were ‘discovered’ by the Samokat publishing house. All brought out by Samokat, her four books translated into Russian each target a different reader group, from 6 to 18-year-olds. Murail’s appeal is in her ability to find the right themes, plots, and narration method for each readership, and that she never shies away from modernity’s most uncomfortable topics, but interprets those in an easily comprehensible manner and language. Murail’s work is examined through its main topics: family relationships, the conflict between traditional and new societies, and the problem of the other. Also analyzed are the stylistic features that define this kind of prose as dynamic, easy to understand and filled with irony.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-174
Author(s):  
Vandana Saxena

Young adult fiction has emerged as a crucial pedagogical tool for Holocaust education. According to scholars and writers, it promotes empathy and also encourages the readers to become a part of the process of remembering. However, this field of storytelling also grapples with the dilemma of traumatic subject matter and its suitability for young readers. The humanist conventions of young adult fiction are often in conflict with the bleak and horrifying core of Holocaust literature. Young adult novelists have tried to deal with these problematic aspects by using multiple narrative strategies to integrate the memories of genocide and human rights abuse with the project of growth and socialisation that lies at the heart of young adult literature. This paper examines the narrative strategies that make young adult fiction an apt bearer and preserver of the traumatic past. Specifically, these strategies involve fantastical modes of storytelling, liminality and witness testimonies told to the second- and third-generation listeners. These strategies modify the humanist resolution of young adult narratives by integrating growth with collective responsibility.


2005 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 22-23
Author(s):  
Michael Wheeler

As a first shot, one might say that environmental ethics is concerned distinctively with the moral relations that exist between, on the one hand, human beings and, on the other, the non-human natural environment. But this really is only a first shot. For example, one might be inclined to think that at least some components of the non-human natural environment (non-human animals, plants, species, forests, rivers, ecosystems, or whatever) have independent moral status, that is, are morally considerable in their own right, rather than being of moral interest only to the extent that they contribute to human well-being. If so, then one might be moved to claim that ethical matters involving the environment are best cashed out in terms of the dutes and responsibilities that human beings have to such components. If, however, one is inclined to deny independent moral status to the non-human natural environment or to any of its components, then one might be moved to claim that the ethical matters in question are exhaustively delineated by those moral relations existing between individual human beings, or between groups of human beings, in which the non-human natural environment figures. One key task for the environmental ethicist is to sort out which, if either, of these perspectives is the right one to adopt—as a general position or within particular contexts. I guess I don’t need to tell you that things get pretty complicated pretty quickly.


2005 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl Golser

Storicamente si può affermare che la Santa Sede è stata all’avanguardia nell’attenzione posta ai problemi ecologici, perché le sue prime prese di posizione risalgono all’inizio degli anni ‘70. Un’etica teologica cattolica si è sviluppata dalla metà degli anni ’80, dopo che le scienze bibliche hanno dovuto confutare l’accusa che l’antropocentrismo della Bibbia sia stata una delle cause dello sfruttamento della terra. Le ragioni storiche di un atteggiamento sbagliato verso la natura sono da vedere piuttosto nel pensiero filosofico moderno che si è sviluppato spesso in contrapposizione al cristianesimo, mentre la Bibbia e la teologia hanno in verità una visione teocentrica della creazione. I tentativi filosofici, che al posto dell’uomo vogliono mettere al centro della riflessione etica la natura stessa o la vita o anche la possibilità di soffrire, non hanno consistenza perché soltanto la persona umana come essere consapevole e libero può assumersi una responsabilità etica. Bisogna però tener conto di tutte le altre creature che in quanto create hanno una loro dignità propria. Essere creati significa essere relazionati a Dio; la fede in Dio Creatore comporta così un l’antropocentrismo relazionale. Da questi presupposti può essere sviluppata un’etica ecologica teologica che ha due percorsi, uno che insiste sul cambiamento necessario degli atteggiamenti di fondo verso la natura (le virtù ecologiche), ed uno che da determinati principi e da esperienze consolidate formula delle norme concrete per l’agire ecologico responsabile. ---------- Historically, one can say that the Holy See has been a pioneer for the attention paid to ecological issues, as it started taking a stance on the topic already in the early ‘70s of XX century. A catholic theological ethics was developed in the mid-‘80s, after the biblical sciences had to refuse the accusation that made biblical anthropocentrism one of the main causes of the exploitation of the earth. The historical reasons for a wrong attitude toward nature are to be found instead in the contemporary philosophical thinking that often developed against Christianity, while theology and the Bible promote a theocentric vision of creation. The philosophical attempts that place nature or life, or even the chance to suffer in lieu of man at the center of the ethical way of thinking, have no grounds because only human beings, self-aware and free, can take ethical responsibility. One needs to consider all creatures that, being created, have a dignity of their own. Being created means having a relation with God. Hence, the faith in the Creator involves a relational anthropocentrism. Departing from such assumptions, a theological environmental ethics can be developed along two paths, one insisting on the necessary change of the basic stance toward nature (i.e. ecological virtues), the other starting from recognized principles and experiences and postulating actual rules for responsible ecological behavior.


Author(s):  
S. Latimer ◽  
W.L. Steffens ◽  
Mark Goodwin

In mammals, morphologic changes in peripheral blood neutrophils are often reflections of bacterial infection and severe inflammation. These light microscopic changes as evidenced by Romanowsky staining may include appearance of Döhle bodies, toxic granules, vacuolation, and cytoplasmic basophilia. Cells exhibiting such changes are referred to as “toxic” neutrophils. Studies of ultrastructural alterations in toxic neutrophils are reported and well-documented in humans (1) and dogs (2). Detailed controlled investigations of leukocyte changes in response to inflammation in birds are lacking. It was the purpose of this study to document toxic changes induced by intramuscular turpentine injection in the equivalent avian cell, the heterophil.Young adult female White Leghorn chickens were obtained and divided into 2 groups, one receiving injection with 1 ml of filter-sterilized commercial grade turpentine in the right breast muscle, and the other (controls) receiving a similar volume of sterile saline.


Author(s):  
Derritt Mason

This book considers the recent surge in queer young adult literature publishing and argues that this explosion of queer representation has prompted new forms of longstanding cultural anxieties about adolescent sexuality. In particular, critics of queer texts for young people seem concerned with the following questions: what makes for a good “coming out” story? Will increased queer representation in popular culture teach adolescents the right lessons, and help queer youth live better, happier lives? What if these stories harm young people instead of helping them? Although these concerns spring from a particular contemporary moment, Mason illustrates how the history of adolescence is itself a history of anxiety, and how young adult literature emerged, in part, as a way of managing various cultural and social anxieties. Mason suggests that “queer YA” is usefully understood as a body of trans-media texts with blurry boundaries, one that coheres around affect—specifically, anxiety—instead of content. To clarify this point, Mason draws on criticism about a range of texts for and about queer adolescents, including an assortment of young adult books; Caper in the Castro, the first-ever queer video game; online fan communities; and popular television series Glee and Big Mouth. Themes that generate the most anxiety about adolescent culture, Mason argues—queer visibility, risk-taking, HIV/AIDS, dystopia and horror, the promise that “It Gets Better” and the threat that it might not—challenge us to rethink how we read and engage with young people’s media.


Some experiments are here described, the tendency of which is to prove, what the author had advanced as a conjecture in a former communication, that the vessels of the bark which pass from the leaves to the roots, are in their organization better calculated to carry the fluids they contain towards the roots than in the opposite direction. In the first of these experiments several strong horizontal shoots of vines were depressed about their middle; and at that part, buried in the mould, contained in pots about ten inches in diameter: after some months of vegetation, when the shoots had nearly filled the pots with roots, they were separated from the parent stock, having at each side above the earth a certain length of the layer, with at least one bud upon each. The end towards the stock was called the inverted, and the other the proper end of the layer. If the author’s above-mentioned conjecture of the retrograde motion of the sap be founded, it would follow that in the subsequent vegetation the inverted would display a more vigorous growth than the proper end; and this accordingly was soon found to be the case, with this additional circumstance, that the parts beyond the buds on the inverted ends were observed to increase considerably, while the same parts on the proper ends not only withered, but even gradually died away.


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