scholarly journals Monitoring the Unvisible: Seeing and Unseeing in China Mievelle's The City & The City

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 222-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Marks
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Potential Value ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
The City ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Invisible

Visibility is central to surveillance, but the term is both complex and ambiguous. This article seeks to  add to that complexity and prdocutively investigate the ambiguity by putting forward the concept of the 'unvisible' represented in China Mieviile's recent dystopian novel, The City & The City. Mieville's fiction depicts a world in which characters live in two cities that occupy the same space--are, in the novel's terms, 'topolgangers'. In order to maintain this curious situation, people from one city are required to unsee those from the other, to make them unvisible.  Failure to do so incures punishment from a surveillance force. These and other inventive notions challenge what constitutes visibility.  Briefly addressing ideas on visibility by surveillance theorists, the article argues that The City & The City usefully tests out those ideas. Gary T. Marx has written about the potential 'gradations' between the visible and the invisible. Through a detalied reading of the novel, the article argues for the potential value of the 'unvisible' in those gradations.

KONSEP DIRI “ I “ DAN “ME” TOKOH HIROKO DALAM NOVEL NAMAKU HIROKO KARYA NH.DINI

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Besin Gaspar
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Fictional Character ◽  
Social Customs ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Village ◽  
The City

This research deals with the development of  self concept of Hiroko as the main character in Namaku Hiroko by Nh. Dini and tries to identify how Hiroko is portrayed in the story, how she interacts with other characters and whether she is portrayed as a character dominated by ”I” element or  ”Me”  element seen  from sociological and cultural point of view. As a qualitative research in nature, the source of data in this research is the novel Namaku Hiroko (1967) and the data ara analyzed and presented deductively. The result of this analysis shows that in the novel, Hiroko as a fictional character is  portrayed as a girl whose personality  develops and changes drastically from ”Me”  to ”I”. When she was still in the village  l iving with her parents, she was portrayed as a obedient girl who was loyal to the parents, polite and acted in accordance with the social customs. In short, her personality was dominated by ”Me”  self concept. On the other hand, when she moved to the city (Kyoto), she was portrayed as a wild girl  no longer controlled by the social customs. She was  firm and determined totake decisions of  her won  for her future without considering what other people would say about her. She did not want to be treated as object. To put it in another way, her personality is more dominated by the ”I” self concept.

scholarly journals Breach of Contact: An Intercultural Reading of China Miéville's 'The City and The City'

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Elizabeth Hanna ◽  
Peter Cowley
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Models ◽  
The Other ◽  
Intercultural Training ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Intercultural Encounters ◽  
Training Courses ◽  
City States ◽  
City Relations ◽  
The City ◽  
Two Populations

China Miéville’s 2009 'Weird' detective novel The City and The City is a tale of two city states, culturally distinct, between which unpoliced contact is forbidden. While residents of each city can learn about the other’s history, geography, politics, see photographs and watch news footage of the other city, relations between the two are tightly monitored and any direct contact requires a series of protocols, some of which might seem reasonable, or at least familiar: entry permits, international mail, international dialing codes, intercultural training courses. What complicates these apparently banal measures is the relative positioning of the two cities, each one around, within, amongst the other. The two populations live side by side, under a regime which requires ostentatious and systematic disregard or 'unnoticing' of the other in any context but a tightly regulated set of encounters. For all that interculturality is endemic to everyday life in the 21st century, what is striking is that critical and popular uptake of this novel so frequently decries the undesirability, the immorality even, of the cultural separation between the two populations, framing it as an allegory of unjust division within a single culture, and thus by implication endorsing the erasure of intercultural difference. We propose an alternative reading which sees this novel as exploring the management of intercultural encounters, and staging the irreducibility of intercultural difference. We examine how the intercultural is established in the novel, and ask how it compares to its representations in prevalent theoretical models, specifically that of the Third Place.

scholarly journals Iraq Wars from the other Side: Transmodern Reconciliation in Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer

Societies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
José Yebra
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
The Other ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
The Novel ◽  
American Film ◽  
Iraq Wars ◽  
American Film Industry ◽  
Do So

In the last years, more and more literary accounts of recent and current wars in the Middle East have been published. In most cases, they are authored from a Western viewpoint and provide a narrow account of the Muslim world. This article focuses on Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer because it opens the scope. That is, it constitutes an alternative to the imagery of the American film industry. Moreover, as Antoon is a Christian, his account of contemporary Iraq is particularly peripheral and hybrid. To analyse the novel, this article makes use of Transmodernity, a concept coined by Rosa María Rodríguez Magda in 1989. Yet, instead of Magda’s Transmodernity as a neatly Euro-centric phenomenon of worldwide connectivity, Ziauddin Sardar’s version of the concept is preferred. Sardar’s Transmodernity adds to connectivity a message of reconciliation between progress and tradition, particularly in the context of non-Western cultures. This paper defends that Antoon’s novel opens the debate on Islam to challenge the prejudiced Western discourses that have ‘legitimized’ war. To do so, Sardar’s ‘borders’ and Judith Butler’s grievability are particularly useful. In a Transmodern context, novels like Antoon’s show that humans should never be bare lives.

scholarly journals The Imagination of the Other in a (Post-)Sectarian Society: Asylum Seekers and Refugees in the Divided City of Belfast

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrike M. Vieten ◽  
Fiona Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The City ◽  
Asylum Seekers And Refugees ◽  
Do So

This article explores the ways a salient sectarian community division in Northern Ireland frames the imagination of newcomers and the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees. We examine the dominant ethno-national Christian communities and how their actions define the social-spatial landscape and challenges of manoeuvring everyday life in Northern Ireland as an ‘Other’. We argue all newcomers are impacted to some degree by sectarianism in Northern Ireland, adding a further complexified layer to the everyday and institutional racism so prevalent in different parts of the UK and elsewhere. First, we discuss the triangle of nation, gender and ethnicity in the context of Northern Ireland. We do so in order to problematise that in a society where two adversarial communities exist the ‘Other’ is positioned differently to other more cohesive national societies. This complication impacts how the Other is imagined as the persistence of binary communities shapes the way local civil society engages vulnerable newcomers, e.g. in the instance of our research, asylum seekers and refugees. This is followed by an examination of the situation of asylum seekers and refugees in Northern Ireland. We do so by contextualising the historical situation of newcomers and the socio-spatial landscape of the city of Belfast. In tandem with this, we discuss the role of NGO’s and civil support organisations in Belfast and contrast these views with the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees. This article is based on original empirical material from a study conducted in 2016 on the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees with living in Northern Ireland.

scholarly journals El enigma de lo insignificante. Subjetividad y ciudad en "Jakob von Gunten"

2016 ◽  
pp. 289
Author(s):  
Juan Evaristo Valls Boix
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Robert Walser ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

El propósito del presente estudio consiste en analizar las relaciones entre subjetividad y espacio urbano a través de la novela Jakob von Gunten de Robert Walser. La novela desarrolla una tensión entre, de un lado, un instituto de enseñanza y una forma de subjetividad entendida como interioridad privada y normativizada, y, de otro, la ciudad como espacio de lo múltiple y lo irrepresentable y una forma de subjetividad entendida como intimidad o secreto. La tensión entre ambas relaciones espacio-sujeto supone una versión peculiar de la dialéctica entre modernización y modernidad tal y como Benjamin o Kracauer la relatan, y permite pensar formas alternativas y superpuestas de concebir la subjetividad y el espacio a partir de distintas lecturas de un texto. The purpose of the present study is to analyze the relations between subjectivity and urban space through the novel Jakob von Gunten by Robert Walser. The novel develops a tension between, on the one hand, an institute of teaching and a form of subjectivity understood as private and normative interiority, and, on the other, the city as a space of the multiple and the unrepresentable and a form of subjectivity understood as intimacy The secret. The tension between both space-subject relations supposes a peculiar version of the dialectic between modernization and modernity as Benjamin or Kracauer relate it, and allows to think alternative and superposed forms of conceiving the subjectivity and the space from different readings of a text.

Se kép, se hang?

2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miklós Takács
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Trauma ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
German Sociologist ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Title Character ◽  
Do So

Sebald’s novel Austerlitz can be considered a „trauma novel” not only for a narratological reason (that is, because it reflects upon the non-representability of trauma on the level of words), but also because it reveals the impossibility of depicting a past memory with pictures – despite of the fact that both the narrator and the title character are feel impelled to do so. The attitude of the narrator illustrates a phenomenon that the German sociologist Bernhard Giesen describes as the perpetrator’s trauma. According to this theory the individual trauma becomes a collective one in case of the perpetrators. Austerlitz, on the other hand, turns into a medium of the victimes as well. Cultural trauma can also become a part of the personal identity due to certain individuals and media, such as the photography, which is of crucial importance for remembering in the novel. One can describe the sound and picture of the trauma with the term of catachresis. This figure involves the constraint of signifying the non-representability.

The Cities of Kerma and Pnubs-Dokki Gel

2021 ◽  
pp. 200-212
Author(s):  
Charles Bonnet
Keyword(s):  
External Input ◽  
The Other ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
The South ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Main Development ◽  
Development Phases ◽  
The City

The two cities of Kerma and Dokki Gel represent the center of an independent Nubian kingdom that stood up to Egyptian hegemony over a long period of time. Archaeological research carried out in Kerma has enabled us to trace the main development phases of the capital and to identify its main institutions, often influenced by Egypt. On the other hand, the city of Dokki Gel is different in nature, and its unusual architecture, displaying oval or circular monuments, leads us to consider an external input from neighboring countries, probably from the south, like Punt or ancient powers of Darfur. One can thus suggest that the armies of neighboring kingdoms took part in the defense of the territory in the form of coalitions mentioned in some sources contemporary with the conquest of Kerma by the pharaoh’s armies. The establishment of a menenu (fortress) by Thutmose I at Dokki Gel marks a breach that lasted three centuries, and the start of the Egyptianization of the city of Pnubs.

Collective Powers

2020 ◽  
pp. 101-138
Author(s):  
Alessio Fiore
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Degree Of Control ◽  
High Degree ◽  
The City ◽  
Do So

It focuses on the interventions of cities in the countryside in the decades either side of 1100 drawing examples primarily from Lombardy, Tuscany, and Lazio. The particular character of the area close to cities (5–10km) which urban authorities sought to control politically, economically and militarily is emphasized. Detailed examples of judicial and fiscal powers exercised by the communes over rural communities both near and far from the city follow. The author points out that although some of the stronger communes such as Milan and Genoa managed to achieve a high degree of control over their territories from the early 1100s, smaller and less powerful centres (for example, Alba and Imola) struggled to do so. Nevertheless, through local consensus, many cities achieved a hegemonic position over extensive tracts of the countryside at the expense of the dynastic families who had previously held sway there. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of the (far less numerous) autonomous rural communities such as Isola Comacina, Chiavenna, and Val di Scalve, proposing the novel idea of ‘collective lordships’, a point re-emphasized in the conclusion.

Siegecraft and spoliation,c.500 BC: a tale of two cities

2005 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 21-42
Author(s):  
G. R. H. Wright ◽  
D. White
Keyword(s):  
Chance Discovery ◽  
City Wall ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
The City ◽  
Do So

AbstractAt some date shortly after the Persian conquest of Egypt (525 BC) a Persian army dispatched by the satrap of Egypt, Aryandes, was encamped on the Lykaian Hill outside the city of Cyrene, threatening its capture. How far hostilities had advanced is not known, but very soon the army abandoned its position and marched off on the return way to Egypt (Herodotus IV, 16–67, 200–203). Herodotus' account is an involved story how the Persian force came to be in Cyrenaica, and it is not clear why it departed from Cyrene with little achieved there. The episode would be of limited substance except for the chance discovery of some antiquities in the region of the Persian camp. About 20 years later, in 498 BC, a Persian force was deployed in Cyprus to reduce the city of Paphos in the aftermath of the unsuccessful Cypriote uprising to support the Ionian revolt. A siege mound was raised against the city wall employing an unexpected variety of material. Latterly the mound has been excavated and afforded wide ranging information. Hitherto these archaeological facts have not been considered in conjunction, and an attempt to do so may be instructive.

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