scholarly journals The Ethics of Care in the No Fire Zone: Anuk Arudpragasam’s The Story of a Brief Marriage

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-88
Author(s):  
Isabel Alonso-Breto ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Central Element ◽  
Ethics Of Care ◽  
International Community ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fire Zone ◽  
People’S Attitudes ◽  
Desperate Attempt

The ethics of care is a central element in the novel The Story of a Brief Marriage (2016), written by Anuk Arudpragasam in response to the slaughter which the Tamil community suffered in the final months of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009. This article discusses the novel from this theoretical perspective, positing that care is played out as a strategy to enhance the jeopardised human condition of those involved. The narrative bears witness to the intense suffering of this community at a time when the situation was deadly for civilians, who were confined in the so-called “No Fire Zone.” Paradoxically, this area was systematically shelled, its conditions responding to what Achille Mbembe has described as necropolitics. In the midst of this horror, however, Arudpragasam’s novel finds a deeply moving ethics of care in people’s attitudes to one another, which signals a desperate attempt to keep the bereaved community together or at least maintain an essential sense of humanness. Care is also identified as intentio autoris since the novel becomes a powerful reminder of the huge toll of human lives and the immense pain that occurred in this dark episode, as well as the failure—or lack of interest—of the international community to intervene in order to save thousands of innocent lives.

scholarly journals Organizational Communication and Conflict Management Systems

2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pekka Aula ◽  
Kalle Siira
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Management ◽  
Organizational Communication ◽  
Social Complexity ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Management Systems ◽  
Dual Function ◽  
Organizational Conflict ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Management Perspective ◽  
Mechanistic View

Abstract The purpose of the present article is to examine the prevailing model of systematic organizational conflict management from an organizational communicative perspective and to suggest directions for improvement. Particularly the model of conflict management system (CMS) is examined at the macro-level from the novel theoretical perspective of social complexity augmented with an interpretive view of organizational communication. Specifically two models – the dual function of communication and the arena model – are utilized to illustrate weaknesses and points of development in traditional CMS thinking. CMS was found to represent a rather limited vision of contemporary conflict management. It is rooted in a mechanistic view of organizational communication, which, we assert, is problematic from the organizational conflict management perspective, both theoretically and practically. The differences between CMS and social complexity approaches are identified, and a fresh framework for strategic conflict management is introduced.

scholarly journals Pollution as a Paradigm: Property, Dignity, and Absorption in Poth and Tezuka

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-132
Author(s):  
Sonja Schillings
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Central Element ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Visual Elements ◽  
Human Ability ◽  
The Law ◽  
Human And Nature ◽  
Airborne Viruses

Pollution, this article suggests, challenges the fundamental structural premises of contemporary state institutions such as the law. These institutions are based on the premise of human exceptionalism via the construction of a human-nature divide. This divide only allows one point of connection between human and nature: the human ability to absorb nature as property. Such metaphorical understandings of absorption become a problem as soon as the physical human body is faced with a situation in which we constantly absorb pollution (e.g. nitrogen oxides, microplastic, ionizing radiation, but also other life forms such as airborne viruses). As a result, contemporary institutions are ill-equipped to deal with pollution as a central element of the contemporary human condition. This article suggests that comics are a model for rethinking these categorical issues productively and sustainably. By using visual elements, comics have already been able to reframe and recontextualize categorical premises such as the human-nature divide that otherwise tend to be reproduced in critical theory and the law. To make this point for the potential of a new categorical language that centrally draws on visual elements in text, the article uses two central examples from Japan and Germany: Osamu Tezuka's story "Space Snow Leopard" from the Astro Boy series, and Chlodwig Poth's short comic "Jörg the Limelight Hog."

scholarly journals Vuoret ja kaupunki vastakohtaisina tiloina Alisa Ganijevan teoksissa

2016 ◽  
pp. 7-22
Author(s):  
Anni Lappela
Keyword(s):  
Central Element ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The Real ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
The City ◽  
Geographical Space

Mountains and City as Contrary Spaces in the Prose of Alisa Ganieva I analyze Alisa Ganieva’s novel Prazdnichnaia gora (2012) and her novella Salam tebe, Dalgat! (2010) from a geocritical (Westphal, Tally) point of view. Ganieva was born in 1985 in Moscow, but she grew up in Dagestan, in North Caucasia. Since 2002, she has lived in Moscow. All Ganieva’s novels are set in present-day Dagestan, not only in the capital Makhachkala but also in the countryside.  I study the ways the two main spaces and main milieus, the mountains and the city, oppose each other in Prazdnichnaia gora. I also analyze how this opposition constructs the utopian and dystopian discourses of the novel. In this high/low opposition, the mountains appear as the utopian place of a better future, and the city in the lowlands is depicted as a dystopian place of the present-day life. The texts’ multilayered time is also part of my analysis, which follows Westphal’s idea of the stratigraphy of time. Furthermore, the mountains are associated with the traditional way of life and the Soviet past. In this way, the mountains have two kinds of roles in the texts. Nevertheless, the city is a central element of the postcolonial dystopian discourse of Prazdnichnaia gora. In my opinion, Ganieva’s texts problematize referentiality, one of the key concepts of geocriticism. Whilst the city tends to be very referential, the mountains escape the referential relationship to the “real” geographical space.

scholarly journals Quando o silêncio narra o que aconteceu: a morte em "To the Lighthouse"

Scriptorium ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 33180
Author(s):  
Adriana Madeira Coutinho
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Traumatic Event ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Novel ◽  
To The Lighthouse ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Empirical Perspective ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Concrete Reality

Este artigo reflete sobre a condição humana e seu fim último, a morte, através do romance “To the Lighthouse”, de Virginia Woolf, em que a narrativa se desenvolve na relação entre a vida e a morte. Nas três partes do romance os acontecimentos giram em torno da morte, não só da morte física mas também de uma morte simbólica. Para tanto são apontadas algumas observações sobre subjetivismo e realidade objetiva, sobre temporalidade e sobre a própria prosa moderna nas formulações de Erich Auerbach. Em uma perspectiva empírica a autora aproxima o romance de sua realidade concreta, desnuda a dificuldade da escrita após um evento traumático além de apresentar aos leitores a fragilidade humana diante do inesperado. O presente trabalho foi realizado com apoio da Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) - Código de Financiamento 001.  *** When silence tells what happened: death in "To the Lighthouse" ***This article reflects on the human condition and its ultimate end, death, through Virginia Woolf's novel "To the Lighthouse," where the narrative unfolds in the relationship between life and death. In the three parts of the novel, events revolve around death, not only physical death but also a symbolic death. To this end, some observations on subjectivism and objective reality, on temporality, and on modern prose itself in the formulations of Erich Auerbach are pointed out. In an empirical perspective, the author brings the novel closer to its concrete reality, exposes the difficulty of writing after a traumatic event, as well as presenting the human frailty before the unexpected. This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001.Keywords: Virginia Woolf; Death; Human condition; Literary criticism.

Camus and Tragedy in Education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Gibbons
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Albert Camus ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Educational Systems ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Apparent Absence ◽  
The World ◽  
Educational Imagination ◽  
The Human Condition

Tragedy is a central theme in the work of Albert Camus that speaks to his 46 years of life in “interesting times.” He develops a case for the tragic arts across a series of letters, articles, lectures, short stories, and novels. In arguing for the tragic arts, he reveals an epic understanding of the tensions between individual and world manifest in the momentum of liberalism, humanism, and modernism. The educational qualities of the tragic arts are most explicitly explored in his novel The Plague, in which the proposition that the plague is a teacher engages Camus in an exploration of the grand narratives of progress and freedom, and the intimate depths of ignorance and heroism. In the novel The Outsider Camus explores the tragedy of difference in a society obsessed with the production of a normal citizen. The tragedy manifests the absurdity of the world in which a stranger in this world is compelled to support the system that rejects their subjectivity. In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus produces an essay on absurdity and suicide that toys with the illusion of Progress and the grounds for a well-lived life. Across these texts, and through his collection of letters, articles, and notes, Camus invites an educational imagination. His approach to study of the human condition in and through tragedy offers a narrative to challenge the apparent absence of imagination in educational systems and agendas. Following Camus, the tragic arts offer alternative narratives during the interesting times of viral and environment tragedy.

Presenting the Past: The Genre of Commentary in Theoretical Perspective

2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Theoretical Discussion ◽  
Traditional Concept ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis article provides a theoretical discussion of the genre of commentary writing. Rather than examining the role of commentary in a specific religion, it attempts to articulate a set of useful questions to begin the process of rethinking what this genre is and, in the process, help create a theoretical vocabulary and conceptual framework for an analysis of commentary from the history of religions. The article is divided into three parts. The first broadens the traditional concept of a "canon", ostensibly the raw data upon which the commentary imposes a taxonomy. The second argues that the human condition, what Heidegger calls the way in which we are thrown into the world, demands that we interpret it. Finally, it is suggested that commentary is fundamentally about location or space, thereby providing the classificatory schema that is necessary for contextualizing both past and present. The main goal of this article is to problematize the current discussion of commentary in a theoretical way.

Framing the Responsibility to Protect

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly Nackers
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
International Community ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
World Summit ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
The Government ◽  
Outcome Document

The Responsibility to Protect (r2p), as enshrined in the 2005 World Summit Outcome document, aims to protect populations from the commission of mass atrocities. Yet both Sri Lankan government and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (ltte) forces killed thousands of civilians during the conclusion of Eelam War Four in Sri Lanka, in spite of the adoption of r2p by the Sri Lankan government. In this article, I argue that these atrocities occurred with little involvement on the part of the international community to stop them, in large part due to existing international political dynamics, which the framing efforts of the Sri Lankan government played upon. The government was able to determine the dominant discourse on the conflict and portrayed it as part of the War on Terror. This facilitated states in supporting the government in the conflict, while diminishing criticism from actors that may otherwise have been more supportive of the invocation of r2p.

scholarly journals Who speaks up for Inés Fonseca? Representing violence against vulnerable subjects and the ethics of care in fictional narrative about Alzheimer's disease:Ahora tocad música de baile(2004) by Andrés Barba

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (7) ◽  
pp. 1394-1415 ◽  
Author(s):  
RAQUEL MEDINA
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Ethics Of Care ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fictional Narrative ◽  
Social Discourses ◽  
Cultural Texts ◽  
Vulnerable Subjects ◽  
The One

ABSTRACTThis paper studies the 2004 Spanish fictional novel by Andrés Barba,Ahora tocad música de baile, one of the first cultural texts dealing entirely with Alzheimer's disease to appear in Spain. It argues that the significance of Barba's fictional novel rests on two important issues: the ethics of representation of violence against vulnerable subjects and the ethics of care. The paper analyses how these two issues allow Barba to create a story in which the verbal and physical abuse to which the person living with Alzheimer's disease is subjected places the reader, on the one hand, as voyeur/witness of the abuse; and, on the other, as interpreter, and ultimately judge, of the fine line that separates euthanasia, assisted suicide and murder. The open ending of the novel defers all ethical and moral judgement to the reader. It examines how the novel offers a monolithic perspective about Alzheimer's disease, in which care is presented as a burden. In fact, this study shows that the novel's multi-layered structure and polyphonic nature places the emphasis on stigmas, stereotypes and negative metaphors around Alzheimer's disease, as found in contemporary social discourses.

John Barth's Chimera and the Strictures of Reality

1976 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-101
Author(s):  
Ursula Mackenzie
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Pynchon ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
The Novel ◽  
True Purpose ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Collective Creation ◽  
John Hawkes ◽  
Second World

Although many contemporary American novelists have rejected the straightforward representation of social reality in fiction, this rejection may occur for a number of reasons. In Thomas Pynchon and William Burroughs it stems from a fear that the inanimate world is somehow superseding the animate, the sovereignty of the individual is being threatened. John Hawkes refers to the novelists ‘ who hope for more in the novel than trying to build brick walls of brick ’, and suggests that ‘ the true purpose of the novel is to assume a significant shape and to objectify the terrifying similarity between the unconscious desires of the solitary man and the disruptive needs of the visible world ’. Norman Mailer also remarks on this relationship in his essay ‘ The White Negro ’:The second world war presented a mirror to the human condition which blinded anyone who looked into it. For if tens of millions were killed in concentration camps out of the inexorable agonies and contractions of superstates founded upon the always insoluble contradictions of injustice, one was then obliged also to see that no matter how crippled and perverted an image of man was the society he had created, it was nonetheless his creation, his collective creation (at least his collective creation from the past) and if society was so murderous, then who could ignore the most hideous of questions about his own nature?

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