scholarly journals Waiting for Godot and the Zoo Story: A Critical Perspective towards Postmodern Civilization

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 55-58
Author(s):  
Srinewas Prasad Yadav

This paper is an attempt out of my living mode of experience in the contemporary society, academic learning, and my teachers’ contribution in imparting epistemological meaning of life and the world to me, to explore the implication of globalization and its different layers of deformities accelerating absurdities, challenging ethical values encompassed with existentialism, nihilism and Charles Darwin’s phrase ‘struggle for existence’, and how the plays-Waiting for Godot and The Zoo story are applicable in the postmodern society-decentring its rationality, faith, love, mutual-understanding and seeking metaphysical protection: giving birth to skepticism everywhere, to show how the contemporary civilization is on the track of Estragon and Vladimir, Pozzo and Lucky, Jerry and Peter respectively and, why the colonized Man opt best for ‘suicide’.

Author(s):  
Valentyna Bohatyrets

The paper provides the framework for embracing multiculturalism as a source of national identity, a political ‘profession de foi’, and an engine for a government to gain positive outcomes, leading to better immigrant integration and economic advantages for any country in the world. Noteworthy, Canadian federal policy of multiculturalism, since its official adoption in 1971, is witnessed to work stunningly and in contrast to developments elsewhere – in Canada, public support for multiculturalism is seeing unprecedented growth. Currently, the diversity of the Canadian populace is increasing faster than at any time in its history; Canada’s ethnic makeup has notably altered over the time due to changing immigration patterns. According to the latest poll findings, 84% of Canadians agree with the statement that ‘Canada’s multicultural makeup is one of the best things about this country’; 61% of Canadians believe multiculturalism ‘strengthens national identity’. Moreover, released data from Environics reveals that 27% of Canadians believe ‘multiculturalism is the one characteristic about Canada that most deserves to be celebrated on its upcoming 150thanniversary. Undeniably, people around the world tend to view Canada as “good”. Importantly, the election of Justin Trudeau is viewed as an excellent opportunity to invigorate brand Canada. Noteworthy, brand Justin Trudeau is currently composed of his belief in and promotion of the values of tolerance, equality and diversity. While recognizing the value for society of the human dignity inherent in each individual, Trudeau’s government aims to push beyond mere tolerance to mutual understanding and respect. Keywords: Multiculturalism of Canada, immigration, digital diplomacy, brand, national identity, poll, ethnic groups


2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-310
Author(s):  
Sabine Wilke

Every late spring since 1951, the Wiener Festwochen bring performers from around the world to Vienna for an opportunity to share recent developments in performance styles and present them to a Viennese public that seems to be increasingly open to experimentation. These festival weeks solidify a specific form of Viennese self-understanding and self-representation as a culture that is rooted in performance. This essay seeks to link two recent Austrian performances—one of them was part of the Wiener Festwochen in 2016, the other was staged in downtown Linz during the past few years—to this Austrian and specifically Viennese culture of performance by reading them as contemporary articulations of a tradition of radical performance art that can be traced back to the Viennese Actionism of the sixties and later feminist articulations in the seventies and eighties. They play on the dramatic effect of these actions, specifically their joy in cruelty, chaos, and orgiastic intoxication, by staging regressions and thus making visible what has been dammed up and repressed in contemporary society.1 Just as their historical models, these two performances merge the performing and the fine arts and they highlight provocative, controversial, and, at times, violent content. But they do it in an interspecies context that adds an entire layer of complexity to the project of societal and cultural critique.


2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-240
Author(s):  
Nita Mathur

The plethora of M. N. Srinivas’s articles and books covering a wide range of subjects from village studies to nation building, from dominant caste in Rampura village to nature and character of caste in independent India, and from prospects of sociological research in Gujarat to practicing social anthropology in India have largely influenced the understanding of society and culture for well over five decades. Additionally, he meticulously wrote itineraries, memoirs and personal notes that provide a glimpse of his inner being, influences, ideologies, thought all of which have inspired a large number of and social anthropologists and sociologists across the world. It is then only befitting to explore the major concerns in the life and intellectual thought of one whose pioneering contributions have been the milestones in the fields of social anthropology and sociology in a specific sense and of social sciences in India in a general sense. This article centres around/brings to light the academic concerns that Srinivas grappled with the new avenues of thought and insights that developed consequently, and the extent of his rendition their relevance in framing/understanding contemporary society and culture in India.


Thesis Eleven ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 072551362199470
Author(s):  
Dirk Wiemann ◽  
Shaswati Mazumdar ◽  
Ira Raja

Postcolonial criticism has repeatedly debunked the ostensible neutrality of the ‘world’ of world literature by pointing out that and how the contemporary world – whether conceived in terms of cosmopolitan conviviality or neoliberal globalization – cannot be understood without recourse to the worldly event of Europe’s colonial expansion. While we deem this critical perspective indispensable, we simultaneously maintain that to reduce ‘the world’ to the world-making impact of capital, colonialism, and patriarchy paints an overly deterministic picture that runs the risk of unwittingly reproducing precisely that dominant ‘oneworldness’ that it aims to critique. Moreover, the mere potentiality of alternative modes of world-making tends to disappear in such a perspective so that the only remaining option to think beyond oneworldness resides in the singularity claim. This insistence on singularity, however, leaves the relatedness of the single units massively underdetermined or denies it altogether. By contrast, we locate world literature in the conflicted space between the imperial imposition of a hierarchically stratified world (to which, as hegemonic forces tell us, ‘there is no alternative’) and the unrealized ‘undivided world’ that multiple minor cosmopolitan projects yet have to win. It is precisely the tension between these ‘two worlds’ that brings into view the crucial centrality not of the nodes in their alleged singularity but their specific relatedness to each other, that both impedes and energizes world literature today and renders it ineluctably postcolonial.


2021 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 408-417
Author(s):  
Nicu Dumitraşcu

In this article I briefly examine chapter 6 of the document For the Life of the World issued by the Ecumenical Patriarchate concerning “ecumenical relations and relations with the other faiths.” In the first part, I discuss the relationship between the Orthodox Church and other Christian denominations, and in the second, the dialogue with Judaism and Islam. The document has an optimistic, inspiring, and hopeful tone, but it will simply remain an idealistic statement without a major echo inside of the Christian world and contemporary society.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 323-334
Author(s):  
Inga V. Zheltikova

The concept of O. Spengler suggests that the history of any culture goes through certain stages of development, the last of which is civilization. During this period creative activity in culture is replaced by mechanical imitation and lost connection with the culture formed by the «pra-phenomenon». The author correlates Spengler’s postulates with the processes of actual social reality and comes to the conclusion that contemporary Russia is going through the stage of civilization. The article raises the question of how the future is seen in this situation. The author uses the term “image of the future”, introduced by F. Polak to understand the disinterest of modern post-war Europe in its future. Thus, the lack of interest in the future can be recognized as another characteristic of the state of civilization. The existence in contemporary Russia of distinct images of the future is an open question. Using the methods of content analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that in Russian contemporary society there exists a retrospective image of the future, focused on conservative values, hierarchy of society and its closed nature to the world. Thus, it is concluded that it is wrong to talk about complete absence of images of the future in contemporary Russia. But the nature and content of these images demonstrate the low level of interest in the future, which also indicates the transition of Russian culture to civilization.


Utilitas ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thaddeus Metz

This article addresses the utilitarian theory of life's meaning according to which a person's existence is significant just in so far as she makes those in the world better off. One aim is to explore the extent to which the utilitarian theory has counter-intuitive implications about which lives count as meaningful. A second aim is to develop a new, broadly Kantian theory of what makes a life meaningful, a theory that retains much of what makes the utilitarian view attractive, while avoiding the most important objections facing it and providing a principled explanation of their force.I have been very much puzzled as to the meaning of the question ‘What is the meaning or purpose of life?’ … But at last it occurred to me that perhaps the vague words of this question are often used to mean no more than ‘What is the use of a man's life?’ … A man's life is of some use, if and only if the intrinsic value of the Universe as a whole (including past, present, and future) is greater, owing to the existence of his actions and experiences, than it would have been if, other things being equal, those actions and experiences had never existed.G. E. Moore


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-51
Author(s):  
Cuong Phu Nguyen

It is obvious that English has become a popular language in many countries in the world. As a means of communication, English guarantees better mutual understanding and has become indispensable for most of people around the world. Thus, it is necessary to find out an appropriate and effective methods of giving feedback to help university students improve their English writing skills. The result of this study indicates that using indirect coded feedback in error correction help students make noticeable progress. The students’ positive attitude towards teacher’s feedback (indirect coded feedback) means that they enjoyed using error codes to find and correct their errors. Moreover, their confidence was boosted because error codes motivated them.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document