scholarly journals Metaphor and Melancholy Consciousness: Enduring Efficacy and Universal Common in Obiora Udechukwu’s Eight Paintings

Author(s):  
Chukwuemeka Okpara ◽  
◽  
Emeka Aniago ◽  
Tochukwu Felicia Okpara ◽  

This paper analytically discusses the efficacy of Obiora Udechukwu’s eight paintings particularly their commonality in projecting humanity universal common, pervading melancholy consciousness, and their propensity to activate effectual catharsis. This paper also discusses how these eight paintings provide cognitive channels through which plausible interpretive attempt at psychoanalysis of Udechukwu in relation to the paintings can be attained. We are adopting interpretive approach in our attempt at coming up with plausible deductions and extrapolations of the embedded significations in the paintings. To deepen our purview on efficacy of these paintings as stimuli for emotion activation, we shall apply select theories explaining contexts of melancholy consciousness, effectual catharsis and cognitive channels of psychoanalysis in relation to paintings as texts. In the end, our interpretations indicate that Udechukwu’s techniques in these paintings create perpetual atmosphere subsuming consciousness of universally acknowledged debilitating agonies resulting from wars.

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-77
Author(s):  
Peter Mercer-Taylor

The notion that there might be autobiographical, or personally confessional, registers at work in Mendelssohn’s 1846 Elijah has long been established, with three interpretive approaches prevailing: the first, famously advanced by Prince Albert, compares Mendelssohn’s own artistic achievements with Elijah’s prophetic ones; the second, in Eric Werner’s dramatic formulation, discerns in the aria “It is enough” a confession of Mendelssohn’s own “weakening will to live”; the third portrays Elijah as a testimonial on Mendelssohn’s relationship to the Judaism of his birth and/or to the Christianity of his youth and adulthood. This article explores a fourth, essentially untested, interpretive approach: the possibility that Mendelssohn crafts from Elijah’s story a heartfelt affirmation of domesticity, an expression of his growing fascination with retiring to a quiet existence in the bosom of his family. The argument unfolds in three phases. In the first, the focus is on that climactic passage in Elijah’s Second Part in which God is revealed to the prophet in the “still small voice.” The turn from divine absence to divine presence is articulated through two clear and powerful recollections of music that Elijah had sung in the oratorio’s First Part, a move that has the potential to reconfigure our evaluation of his role in the public and private spheres in those earlier passages. The second phase turns to Elijah’s own brief sojourn into the domestic realm, the widow’s scene, paying particular attention to the motivations that may have underlain the substantial revisions to the scene that took place between the Birmingham premiere and the London premiere the following year. The final phase explores the possibility that the widow and her son, the “surrogate family” in the oratorio, do not disappear after the widow’s scene, but linger on as “para-characters” with crucial roles in the unfolding drama.


2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-123
Author(s):  
Michael A. Capps

Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial is an example of one memorial site that has successfully managed to retain relevance for nearly one hundred years by adapting to changes in scholarship and the expectations of its visitors. Initially created as a purely commemorative site, it has evolved into one where visitors can actively engage with the Lincoln story. By embracing an interpretive approach to managing the site, the National Park Service has been able to add an educational component to the experience of visiting the memorial that complements its commemorative nature.


Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 70
Author(s):  
Costas S. Constantinou ◽  
Andrew Timothy Ng ◽  
Chase Beverley Becker ◽  
Parmida Enayati Zadeh ◽  
Alexia Papageorgiou

This paper presents the results of a narrative literature review on the use of interpreters in medical education. A careful search strategy was based on keywords and inclusion and exclusion criteria, and used the databases PubMed, Medline Ovid, Google Scholar, Scopus, CINAHL, and EBSCO. The search strategy resulted in 20 articles, which reflected the research aim and were reviewed on the basis of an interpretive approach. They were then critically appraised in accordance with the “critical assessment skills programme” guidelines. Results showed that the use of interpreters in medical education as part of the curriculum is scarce, but students have been trained in how to work with interpreters when interviewing patients to fully develop their skills. The study highlights the importance of integrating the use of interpreters in medical curricula, proposes a framework for achieving this, and suggests pertinent research questions for enriching cultural competence.


Author(s):  
Kevork Oskanian

Abstract This article contributes a securitisation-based, interpretive approach to state weakness. The long-dominant positivist approaches to the phenomenon have been extensively criticised for a wide range of deficiencies. Responding to Lemay-Hébert's suggestion of a ‘Durkheimian’, ideational-interpretive approach as a possible alternative, I base my conceptualisation on Migdal's view of state weakness as emerging from a ‘state-in-society's’ contested ‘strategies of survival’. I argue that several recent developments in Securitisation Theory enable it to capture this contested ‘collective knowledge’ on the state: a move away from state-centrism, the development of a contextualised ‘sociological’ version, linkages made between securitisation and legitimacy, and the acknowledgment of ‘securitisations’ as a contested Bourdieusian field. I introduce the concept of ‘securitisation gaps’ – divergences in the security discourses and practices of state and society – as a concept aimed at capturing this contested role of the state, operationalised along two logics (reactive/substitutive) – depending on whether they emerge from securitisations of the state action or inaction – and three intensities (latent, manifest, and violent), depending on the extent to which they involve challenges to state authority. The approach is briefly illustrated through the changing securitisation gaps in the Republic of Lebanon during the 2019–20 ‘October Uprising’.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 101-117
Author(s):  
Luca Vanzago ◽  

The interpretive approach adopted in this paper is influenced by Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy and in particular by his understanding of Nature, which in turn takes into consideration Whitehead’s work. Whitehead’s philosophy of organism is seen by its author as the metaphysical generalization of problems found in his investigation of natural knowledge. Whitehead admits that a speculative approach is necessitated by the very questions arising from the mathematical concepts of the material world and the revolutions undergone in logic, mathematics and physics at the turn of the century.Whitehead’s understanding of nature is framed from the beginning in terms of a processual approach. However, this notion of process is not fully worked out in the epistemological works and requires a metaphysical deepening. This is due to the fact that the notion of duration adopted in the epistemological works is not sufficient to convey the notion of process. This lack of adequacy is coupled by Whitehead with the need to interpret process in terms of experience. In turn, this notion of experience is wider than the usual one, for it implies that there is experience from the lowest levels onwards. Matter itself experiences. Seen in this perspective, reality is thus conceived in terms of a whole in constant change, whose parts are in mutual connection. This conception derives from Whitehead’s criticism of Aristotle’s substantialism and from his preference for a relationist ontology. The outcome of this approach is a speculative conception of reality in terms of a twofold notion of process: concrescence and transition, which Whitehead sees as the two faces of the creative advance of nature. This dual notion of process is interpreted in this essay in a merleau-pontyan perspective.


2002 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Schembri ◽  
Jorgen Sandberg

Slavic Review ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 294-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark R. Beissinger

Empire has become a common analytical frame through which the Soviet state and its collapse are interpreted. Commenting on the other contributions to this forum, Mark R. Beissinger examines the limits and utility of this concept, arguing that empire needs to be understood, not as a clearly bounded transhistorical model, but as a Wittgensteinian “family resemblance” whose meaning and referents have altered significantly over time. The article then probes the ways the concept of empire has been redeployed in the Soviet context, addressing in particular the role of nationalism in the making of empire, the injustices associated with empire, and the contested boundary between the multinational empire and the multinational state. It concludes by arguing for a more interpretive approach to Soviet empire as a way of relating to authority rather than a common set of political practices.


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