scholarly journals Tales of Possession: A Study of Possession in the Novels of A. S. Byatt and John Fowles

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Samantha Edwards

<p>This thesis focuses on four works: John Fowles’s The Collector and The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and A. S. Byatt’s The Game and Possession: A Romance. The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Possession have frequently been treated together in academic criticism as Possession was a deliberate response to the former. I have extended this pairing because these four works are built around the idea of ‘possession’. While most critical discussions consider the notion of ‘possession’ as one theme among many, this thesis proposes that ‘possession’ dominates the characterisations in these works.  The starting point for my argument is Jean Baudrillard’s theory of possession as outlined in his chapter “The System of Collecting”. Baudrillard proposes that “[p]ossession cannot apply to an implement” (7). To possess an object it must undergo an “abstractive operation” (7) until it is “divested of its function and made relative to a subject” (8). This thesis translates that subject-object relationship to characters, where one character is the possessor, another the possessed. While the possessive drive can take on multiple forms, in these works romantic, erotic, intellectual, and creative desires come to the fore. The Collector and The Game involve a one-on-one dynamic. The first is one man’s attempt to romantically possess his female obsession, the second is one woman’s attempt to creatively appropriate and possess her sister. Both novels are preludes to the more complex examinations of possessive intent in the novelists’ later work. In The French Lieutenant’s Woman Charles Smithson undertakes an erotic and romantic quest to possess Sarah Woodruff. Along with this is the socially possessed Ernestina Freeman. The contemporary scholars in Possession all compete to intellectually and creatively possess the Victorian poets Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. The possessive parties in these works attempt to stabilise their projections under the delusion of reciprocity. Only the title of Byatt’s novel hints literally at ‘possession’, but in all of these works ‘possession’ reveals the nature of relationships between human beings.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Samantha Edwards

<p>This thesis focuses on four works: John Fowles’s The Collector and The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and A. S. Byatt’s The Game and Possession: A Romance. The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Possession have frequently been treated together in academic criticism as Possession was a deliberate response to the former. I have extended this pairing because these four works are built around the idea of ‘possession’. While most critical discussions consider the notion of ‘possession’ as one theme among many, this thesis proposes that ‘possession’ dominates the characterisations in these works.  The starting point for my argument is Jean Baudrillard’s theory of possession as outlined in his chapter “The System of Collecting”. Baudrillard proposes that “[p]ossession cannot apply to an implement” (7). To possess an object it must undergo an “abstractive operation” (7) until it is “divested of its function and made relative to a subject” (8). This thesis translates that subject-object relationship to characters, where one character is the possessor, another the possessed. While the possessive drive can take on multiple forms, in these works romantic, erotic, intellectual, and creative desires come to the fore. The Collector and The Game involve a one-on-one dynamic. The first is one man’s attempt to romantically possess his female obsession, the second is one woman’s attempt to creatively appropriate and possess her sister. Both novels are preludes to the more complex examinations of possessive intent in the novelists’ later work. In The French Lieutenant’s Woman Charles Smithson undertakes an erotic and romantic quest to possess Sarah Woodruff. Along with this is the socially possessed Ernestina Freeman. The contemporary scholars in Possession all compete to intellectually and creatively possess the Victorian poets Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. The possessive parties in these works attempt to stabilise their projections under the delusion of reciprocity. Only the title of Byatt’s novel hints literally at ‘possession’, but in all of these works ‘possession’ reveals the nature of relationships between human beings.</p>


Author(s):  
Volker Scheid

This chapter explores the articulations that have emerged over the last half century between various types of holism, Chinese medicine and systems biology. Given the discipline’s historical attachments to a definition of ‘medicine’ that rather narrowly refers to biomedicine as developed in Europe and the US from the eighteenth century onwards, the medical humanities are not the most obvious starting point for such an inquiry. At the same time, they do offer one advantage over neighbouring disciplines like medical history, anthropology or science and technology studies for someone like myself, a clinician as well as a historian and anthropologist: their strong commitment to the objective of facilitating better medical practice. This promise furthermore links to the wider project of critique, which, in Max Horkheimer’s definition of the term, aims at change and emancipation in order ‘to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them’. If we take the critical medical humanities as explicitly affirming this shared objective and responsibility, extending the discipline’s traditional gaze is not a burden but becomes, in fact, an obligation.


1970 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muskinul Fuad

The education system in Indonesia emphasize on academic intelligence, whichincludes only two or three aspects, more than on the other aspects of intelligence. For thatreason, many children who are not good at academic intelligence, but have good potentials inother aspects of intelligence, do not develop optimally. They are often considered and labeledas "stupid children" by the existing system. This phenomenon is on the contrary to the theoryof multiple intelligences proposed by Howard Gardner, who argues that intelligence is theability to solve various problems in life and produce products or services that are useful invarious aspects of life.Human intelligence is a combination of various general and specific abilities. Thistheory is different from the concept of IQ (intelligence quotient) that involves only languageskills, mathematical, and spatial logics. According to Gardner, there are nine aspects ofintelligence and its potential indicators to be developed by each child born without a braindefect. What Gardner suggested can be considered as a starting point to a perspective thatevery child has a unique individual intelligence. Parents have to treat and educate theirchildren proportionally and equitably. This treatment will lead to a pattern of education that isfriendly to the brain and to the plurality of children’s potential.More than the above points, the notion that multiple intelligences do not just comefrom the brain needs to be followed. Humans actually have different immaterial (spiritual)aspects that do not refer to brain functions. The belief in spiritual aspects and its potentialsmeans that human beings have various capacities and they differ from physical capacities.This is what needs to be addressed from the perspective of education today. The philosophyand perspective on education of the educators, education stakeholders, and especially parents,are the first major issue to be addressed. With this step, every educational activity andcommunication within the family is expected to develop every aspect of children'sintelligence, especially the spiritual intelligence.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 216495612097363
Author(s):  
Ricardo R Bartelme

Introduction Anthroposophic medicine is a form of integrative medicine that originated in Europe but is not well known in the US. It is comprehensive and heterogenous in scope and remains provocative and controversial in many academic circles. Assessment of the nature and potential contribution of anthroposophic medicine to whole person care and global health seems appropriate. Methods Because of the heterogenous and multifaceted character of anthroposophic medicine, a narrative review format was chosen. A Health Technology Assessment of anthroposophic medicine in 2006 was reviewed and used as a starting point. A Medline search from 2006 to July 2020 was performed using various search terms and restricted to English. Books, articles, reviews and websites were assessed for clinical relevance and interest to the general reader. Abstracts of German language articles were reviewed when available. Reference lists of articles and the author’s personal references were also consulted. Results The literature on anthroposophic medicine is vast, providing new ways of thinking, a holistic view of the world, and many integrating concepts useful in medicine. In the last ∼20 years there has been a growing research base and implementation of many anthroposophical concepts in the integrated care of patients. Books and articles relevant to describing the foundations, scientific status, safety, effectiveness and criticisms of anthroposophic medicine are discussed. Discussion An objective and comprehensive analysis of anthroposophic medicine finds it provocative, stimulating and potentially fruitful as an integrative system for whole person care, including under-recognized life processes and psychospiritual aspects of human beings. It has a legitimate, new type of scientific status as well as documented safety and effectiveness in some areas of its multimodal approach. Criticisms and controversies of anthroposophic medicine are often a result of lack of familiarity with its methods and approach and/or come from historically fixed ideas of what constitutes legitimate science.


2021 ◽  
pp. 194277862110000
Author(s):  
Sheila Margaret McGregor

This article looks at Engels’s writings to show that his ideas about the role of labour in the evolution of human beings in a dialectical relationship between human beings and nature is a crucial starting point for understanding human society and is correct in its essentials. It is important for understanding that we developed as a species on the basis of social cooperation. The way human beings produce and reproduce themselves, the method of historical materialism, provides the basis for understanding how class and women’s oppression arose and how that can explain LGBTQ oppression. Although Engels’s analysis was once widely accepted by the socialist movement, it has mainly been ignored or opposed by academic researchers and others, including geographers, and more recently by Marxist feminists. However, anthropological research from the 1960s and 1970s as well as more recent anthropological and archaeological research provide overwhelming evidence for the validity of Engels’s argument that there were egalitarian, pre-class societies without women’s oppression. However, much remains to be explained about the transition to class societies. Engels’s analysis of the impact of industrial capitalism on gender roles shows how society shapes our behaviour. Engels’s method needs to be constantly reasserted against those who would argue that we are a competitive, aggressive species who require rules to suppress our true nature, and that social development is driven by ideas, not by changes in the way we produce and reproduce ourselves.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (5) ◽  
pp. 505-514
Author(s):  
Walter A. Lorenz ◽  
Silvia Fargion ◽  
Urban Nothdurfter ◽  
Andrea Nagy ◽  
Elisabeth Berger ◽  
...  

Purpose: The measurement of quality in social work practice has become an area of growing interest and relevance in the social services field. Our starting point is that quality in interventions with human beings has to be defined in ways that incorporate the multiple perspectives of all the subjects involved. Methods: The study, adopting qualitative and quantitative methods, explored issues of quality in social services provision in South Tyrol in Italy from the point of view of the main stakeholders. Results: It was possible to identify four dimensions of quality that stakeholders considered important: the political role of practitioners, the ability to take an active role in the organization, the capacity to connect with other professionals, and the quality of direct relationships with users. Conclusions: Results provide an understanding of the common and differing expectations evident in stakeholders’ perspectives and ideas for better quality systems


Author(s):  
Jung Mo Sung

From the perspective of liberation theology, God does not reveal himself so that the human being may know something, but rather so that the human being may be more humane. Revelation is an act of liberation, which delivers the truth that is a prisoner of injustice and sin. In this sense, revelation is not a set of right doctrines (a subject-object relationship), but is a pedagogical process in which human beings, in their relationship to other people (a subject–subject relationship), discover that God does not discriminate among people, that in God all persons are equal in their fundamental dignity. This revelation of God in human history begins with the outcry of the poor and the victims of oppressive relationships and goes on in the discernment between God, who hears the outcry of the victims and calls them to liberation, and the idols and idolaters who do not listen to them and do not recognize their humanity.


2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Drucilla Cornell ◽  
Karin Van Marle

The starting-point for the article is to provide a brief background on the Ubuntu Project that Prof. Drucilla Cornell convened in 2003; most notably the interviews conducted in Khayamandi, the support of a sewing collective, and the continued search to launch an Ubuntu Women�s Centre. The article will reflect on some of the philosophical underpinnings of ubuntu, whereafter debates in Western feminism will be revisited. Ubuntu feminism is suggested as a possible response to these types of feminisms. The authors support an understanding of ubuntu as critique and ubuntu feminism accordingly as a critical intervention that recalls a politics of refusal. The article ends by raising the importance of thinking about spatiality through ubuntu, and vice versa. It may seem strange to title an article Ubuntu feminism when feminism itself has often been identified as a European or Western idea. But, this article will argue that ubuntu offers conceptions of transindividuality and ways of social belonging that could respond in a meaningful way to some of European feminism�s own dilemmas and contradictions. Famously, one of the most intense debates in feminism was between those who defended an ethic of care in a relational view of the self, on one side, and those feminists who held on to more traditional conceptions of justice, placing an emphasis on individuality and autonomy, on the other side. The authors will suggest that ubuntu could address this tension in feminism. Thus, in this article the focus will not simply be on ubuntu, in order to recognise that there are other intellectual heritages worthy of consideration, other than those in Europe and the United States. It will also take a next step in arguing that ubuntu may be a better standpoint entirely from which to continue thinking about what it means to be a human being, as well as how to conceive of the integral interconnection human beings all have with one another. This connection through ubuntu is always sought ethically, and for the authors it underscores what we have both endorsed as ethical feminism. In this essay it is considered how ubuntu feminism could refuse the demands of patriarchy, as well as the confines of liberal feminism. The authors are interested in thinking about ubuntu in general as critique, as a critical response to the pervasiveness of a liberal legal order. Their aim is also to explore tentatively ubuntu and spatiality � how could one understand ubuntu in spatial terms, and more pertinently, how could ubuntu and ubuntu feminism relate to spatial justice? Before turning to the theoretical discussion, some of the on-the-ground history of the Ubuntu Project will be reviewed, including the Project�s attempt to build an Ubuntu Women�s Centre in Khayamandi in the Western Cape, South Africa.


Author(s):  
Alexey Sitnikov

The article deals with the social phenomenology of Alfred Schütz. Proceeding from the concept of multiple realities, the author describes religious reality, analyses its relationship with everyday, theoretical, and mythological realities, and identifies the areas where they overlap and their specifics. According to Schütz’s concept, reality is understood as something that has a meaning for a human being, and is also consistent and certain for those who are ‘inside’ of it. Realities are structurally similar to one another as they are similar to the reality that is most obvious for all human beings, i.e., the world of everyday life. Religious reality has one of the main signs of genuine reality, that of internal consistency. Religious reality has its own epoché (special ascetic practices) which has similarities with the epoché of the theoretical sphere since neither serve practical objectives, and imply freedom from the transitory issues of everyday life. Just as the theoretical sphere exists independently of the life of a scientist in the physical world and is needed to transfer results to other people, so the religious reality depends on ritual actions and material objects in its striving for the transcendent. Individual, and especially collective, religious practices are performed physically and are inextricably linked with the bodily ritual. The article notes that although Schütz’s phenomenological concept of multiple realities has repeatedly served as a starting point for the development of various social theories, its heuristic potential has not been exhausted. This allows for the further analyzing and development of topical issues such as national identity and its ties with religious tradition in the modern era, when religious reality loses credibility and has many competitors, one of which is the modern myth of the nation. Intersubjective ideas of the nation that are socially confirmed as the self-evident reality of everyday life cause complex emotions and fill human lives, thus displacing religious reality or forcing the latter to come into complex interactions with the national narrative.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Christopher W. Gowans

The chapter defines the concept of a self-cultivation philosophy. This proposes that human beings can and should move from a troubled state of existence to some ideal state of being via spiritual exercises guided by some philosophical analysis. Philosophy is defined as a reflective practice that seeks understanding of fundamental assumptions in our life. Philosophy may be a practical discipline or a theoretical one, and it may be based on whatever cognitive capacities human beings possess, including reason and awareness. This claim is defended by reference to virtue epistemology. Self-cultivation philosophy has a four-part structure: an account of human nature, an existential starting point, an ideal state of being, and a transformation program. The transformation program consists of exercises which have four functions: Cognition, Purification, Doctrine, and Habituation. Self-cultivation philosophies are often expressed in transformational texts intended to guide people in how to live their lives according to the philosophy


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