scholarly journals Tell me Still, Angola the False Thing that is Dystopia

Gragoatá ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (55) ◽  
pp. 689-717
Author(s):  
Solange Luis
Keyword(s):  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
The Past ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Historical Objects ◽  
Liberation Struggle ◽  
New Nation ◽  
To Come

José Luis Mendonça’s book Angola, me diz ainda brings together poems from the 1980s to 2016, unveiling a constellation of images that express the unfulfilled utopian Angolan dream. Although his poems gravitate around his personal experiences, they reflect a collective past. They can be understood as what Walter Benjamin referred to as monads, as historical objects (c.f. Benjamin) based on the poet’s own experiences, full of meaning, emotions, feelings, and dreams. Through these monadic poems, his poetry establishes a dialogue with the past.  The poet´s dystopic present is that of an Angola distanced from the dream manifested in the insubmissive poetry of Agostinho Neto and of the Message Generation, which incited decolonization through a liberation struggle and projected a utopian new nation. Mendonça revisits Neto’s Message Generation and its appeal to discover Angola: unveiling a nation with a broken dream and a dystopic present, denouncing a future that is still to come. The poet’s monads do not dwell on dystopia but wrestle conformism, fanning the spark of hope (c.f.  Benjamin). They expose the false thing (c.f. Adorno), inciting the longing for something true: reminding the reader that transformation is inevitable.

Sixty Years Later

2012 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Hocoy
Keyword(s):  
Necessary Conditions ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
60Th Anniversary ◽  
Multiple Factors ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Age Movement ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Academic Publications ◽  
To Come

This year marks the 60th anniversary of Jung’s (1952) concept of synchronicity; a survey of popular books and academic publications indicates that the idea has never been more popular. The unique longevity and cultural impact of synchronicity, compared with other notions of its era, is worthy of discussion. This article explores the multiple factors that seem to have synergistically converged to maintain its relevance. Human existential needs for meaning, connection, and agency appear to make up the “fertile ground,” while personal experiences of meaningful coincidences, especially profound and numinous ones, seem to constitute the “seed” of belief in synchronicity. The New Age Movement may provide the favorable environmental conditions for the idea to flourish, and the association with physics and explicit support by celebrated scientists serve to enhance its credibility and ensure its survival. If the past is any indication of the future, a coincidence of the necessary conditions will persist synchronistically, and the meme will continue to thrive for some time to come.

Suicidal Behavior in Black South Africans

Crisis ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lourens Schlebusch ◽  
Naseema B.M. Vawda ◽  
Brenda A. Bosch
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Suicidal Behavior ◽  
Health Care Facilities ◽  
South African Society ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
Care Facilities ◽  
Black South Africans ◽  
To Come

Summary: In the past suicidal behavior among Black South Africans has been largely underresearched. Earlier studies among the other main ethnic groups in the country showed suicidal behavior in those groups to be a serious problem. This article briefly reviews some of the more recent research on suicidal behavior in Black South Africans. The results indicate an apparent increase in suicidal behavior in this group. Several explanations are offered for the change in suicidal behavior in the reported clinical populations. This includes past difficulties for all South Africans to access health care facilities in the Apartheid (legal racial separation) era, and present difficulties of post-Apartheid transformation the South African society is undergoing, as the people struggle to come to terms with the deleterious effects of the former South African racial policies, related socio-cultural, socio-economic, and other pressures.

Screen Wonders of the Past: And to Come?

1957 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-393
Author(s):  
Kenneth MacGowan
Keyword(s):  
The Past ◽  
To Come

Music and Memory: The Tlatelolco Refrain

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Josh Kun
Keyword(s):  
State Violence ◽  
First Century ◽  
Student Movements ◽  
Octavio Paz ◽  
Mexican History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rock Bands ◽  
To Come ◽  
Musical Memory ◽  
A Current

Ever since the 1968 student movements and the events surrounding the Tlatelolco massacre, Mexico City rock bands have openly engaged with the intersection of music and memory. Their songs offer audiences a medium through which to come to terms with the events of the past as a means of praising a broken world, to borrow the poet Adam Zagajewski’s phrase. Contemporary songs such as Saúl Hernández’s “Fuerte” are a twenty-first-century voicing of the ceaseless revolutionary spirit that John Gibler has called “Mexico unconquered,” a current of rebellion and social hunger for justice that runs in the veins of Mexican history. They are the latest additions to what we might think about as “the Mexico unconquered songbook”: musical critiques of impunity and state violence that are rooted in the weaponry of memory, refusing to focus solely on the present and instead making connections with the political past. What Octavio Paz described as a “swash of blood” that swept across “the international subculture of the young” during the events in Tlatelolco Plaza on October 2, 1968, now becomes a refrain of musical memory and political consciousness that extends across eras and generations. That famous phrase of Paz’s is a reminder that these most recent Mexican musical interventions, these most recent formations of a Mexican subculture of the young, maintain a historically tested relationship to blood, death, loss, and violence.

The Taste to Come

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 238-262
Author(s):  
Virgil W. Brower
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The Body ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Specific Kind ◽  
To Come

This article exploits a core defect in the phenomenology of sensation and self. Although phenomenology has made great strides in redeeming the body from cognitive solipsisms that often follow short-sighted readings of Descartes and Kant, it has not grappled with the specific kind of corporeal self-reflexivity that emerges in the oral sense of taste with the thoroughness it deserves. This path is illuminated by the works of Martin Luther, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Derrida as they attempt to think through the specific phenomena accessible through the lips, tongue, and mouth. Their attempts are, in turn, supplemented with detours through Walter Benjamin, Hélène Cixous, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The paper draws attention to the German distinction between Geschmack and Kosten as well as the role taste may play in relation to faith, the call to love, justice, and messianism. The messiah of love and justice will have been that one who proclaims: taste the flesh.

Conservation and Preservation of Nature Reserves, Monuments andSpecial Architectural or Historic Interest in Nigeria: Towards Promotion of Sustainable Cultural Tourism

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-218
Author(s):  
Francis Chuma Osefoh
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Tourism ◽  
Nature Reserves ◽  
Communication Link ◽  
Built Environments ◽  
Tourist Attraction ◽  
The Past ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Historical Heritage ◽  
Developed Nations

Some of the renowned world tourism countries have special peculiarities in character in terms of their nature reserves and built environments; that made them stand out for their attractions and visits. These qualities range from conservation and preservation of nature reserves, built environments- epoch architectural supports over the years; historical heritage; political; religious; socio-economic; cultural; and  high technology that enhance culture. The virtues of multi- ethnic groups and multi- cultural nature gave Nigeria a rich cultural heritage, and she is blessed with natural wonders, unique wildlife, and a very favorable climate. More often than not less attention and importance are placed over the nature reserves and built environments to the detriment of tourism in lieu of other sectors. Summarily the country lacks the culture of conservation and preservation of her abundant resources to promote cultural tourism. Case study strategy was applied in the research tours with reports of personal experiences, documentaries and analyses of sites visited in Europe and Nigeria were highlighted with references to their attributes in terms of structures and features that made up the sites as relate to culture and attraction.The task in keeping rural, city landscapes and nature reserves alive stands out as the secret of communication link from the past to present and the future; which tourism developed nations reap as benefits for tourist attraction.

Acta Fluens – Generatives Handeln und Improvisation im Jazz

2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-60
Author(s):  
Davide Sparti
Keyword(s):  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of

Obwohl jede menschliche Handlung mit einem gewissen Grad an Improvisation erfolgt, gibt es kulturelle Praktiken, bei denen Improvisation eine überwiegende Rolle spielt. Um das Risiko zu vermeiden, einen zu breiten Begriff von Improvisation zu übernehmen, konzentriere ich mich im vorliegenden Beitrag auf den Jazz. Meine zentrale Frage lautet, wie Improvisation verstanden werden muss. Mein Vorgehen ist folgendes: Ich beginne mit einem Vergleich von Improvisation und Komposition, damit die Spezifizität der Improvisation erklärt werden kann. Danach wende ich mich dem Thema der Originalität als Merkmal der Improvisation zu. Zum Schluss führe ich den Begriff affordance ein, um die kollektive und zirkuläre Logik eines Solos zu analysieren. Paradigmatisch wird der Jazzmusiker mit dem Engel der Geschichte verglichen, der nur auf das Vergangene blickt, während er der Zukunft den Rücken zugekehrt hat, und lediglich ihr zugetrieben wird. Weder kann der Improvisierende das Material der Vergangenheit vernachlässigen noch seine genuine Tätigkeit, das Improvisieren in der Gegenwart und für die Zukunft, aufgeben: Er visiert die Zukunft trotz ihrer Unvorhersehbarkeit über die Vermittlung der Vergangenheit an.<br><br>While improvised behavior is so much a part of human existence as to be one of its fundamental realities, in order to avoid the risk of defining the act of improvising too broadly, my focus here will be upon one of the activities most explicitly centered around improvisation – that is, upon jazz. My contribution, as Wittgenstein would say, has a »grammatical« design to it: it proposes to clarify the significance of the term »improvisation.« The task of clarifying the cases in which one may legitimately speak of improvisation consists first of all in reflecting upon the conditions that make the practice possible. This does not consist of calling forth mysterious, esoteric processes that take place in the unconscious, or in the minds of musicians, but rather in paying attention to the criteria that are satisfied when one ascribes to an act the concept of improvisation. In the second part of my contribution, I reflect upon the logic that governs the construction of an improvised performance. As I argue, in playing upon that which has already emerged in the music, in discovering the future as they go on (as a consequence of what they do), jazz players call to mind the angel in the famous painting by Klee that Walter Benjamin analyzed in his Theses on the History of Philosophy: while pulled towards the future, its eyes are turned back towards the past.

The Impact of War on Population Health

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Turkan Ahmet
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Status ◽  
Health Care Services ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
The Past ◽  
Care Services ◽  
Physical Environments ◽  
The Social ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
The Impact

The past few decades of ongoing war in Iraq has had a dramatic impact on the health of Iraq’s population. Wars are known to have negative effects on the social and physical environments of individuals, as well as limit their access to the available health care services. This paper explores the personal experiences of my family members, who were exposed to war, as well as includes information that has been reviewed form many academic sources. The data aided in providing recommendations and developing strategies, on both local and international levels, to improve the health status of the populations exposed to war.

Corporate Reorganization Law and Forces of Change

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Paterson
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Conceptual Frameworks ◽  
Corporate Reorganization ◽  
Process Of Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Way

This book is concerned with the way in which forces of change, from the fields of finance and non-financial corporates, cause participants in the corporate reorganization process to adapt the ways in which they mobilize corporate reorganization law. It argues that scholars, practitioners, judges, and the legislature must all take care to connect their conceptual frameworks to the specific adaptations which emerge from this process of change. It further argues that this need to connect theoretical and policy concepts with practical adaptations has posed particular challenges when US corporate reorganization law has been under examination in the decade since the financial crisis. At the same time, the book suggests that English scholars, practitioners, judges, and the legislature have been more successful, over the course of the past ten years, in choosing concepts to frame their analysis which are sensitive to the ways in which corporate reorganization law is currently used. Nonetheless, it suggests that new problems may be on the horizon for English corporate reorganization lawyers in adapting their conceptual framework in the decades to come.

scholarly journals A Sense of Presence: Mediating an American Apocalypse

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
Rachel Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sense Of Presence ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come

Here I build upon Robert Orsi’s work by arguing that we can see presence—and the longing for it—at work beyond the obvious spaces of religious practice. Presence, I propose, is alive and well in mediated apocalypticism, in the intense imagination of the future that preoccupies those who consume its narratives in film, games, and role plays. Presence is a way of bringing worlds beyond into tangible form, of touching them and letting them touch you. It is, in this sense, that Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward observe the “re-emergence” of religion with a “new visibility” that is much more than “simple re-emergence of something that has been in decline in the past but is now manifesting itself once more.” I propose that the “new awareness of religion” they posit includes the mediated worlds that enchant and empower us via deeply immersive fandoms. Whereas religious institutions today may be suspicious of presence, it lives on in the thick of media fandoms and their material manifestations, especially those forms that make ultimate promises about the world to come.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document