Who’s holding up the sky? On Rymba, a novel by A. Bushkovsky

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-158
Author(s):  
A. V. Zhuchkova

The article deals with A. Bushkovsky’s novel Rymba that goes beyond the topics typical of Russian North prose. Rather than limiting himself to admiring nature and Russian character, the author portrays the northern Russian village of Rymba in the larger context of the country’s mentality, history, mythology, and gender politics. In the novel, myth clashes with reality, history with the present day, and an individual with the state. The critic draws a comparison between the novel and the traditions of village prose and Russian North prose. In particular, Bushkovsky’s Rymba is discussed alongside V. Rasputin’s Farewell to Matyora [ Proshchanie s Matyoroy ] and R. Senchin’s The Flood Zone [ Zona zatopleniya ]. The novel’s central question is: what keeps the Russian world afloat? Depicting the Christian faith as such a bulwark, Bushkovsky links atheism with the social and spiritual roles played by contemporary men and women. The critic argues, however, that the reliance on Christianity in the novel verges on an affectation. The book’s main symbol is a drowning hawk: it perishes despite people’s efforts to save it.

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 147
Author(s):  
Misbah Zulfa Elizabeth

<p>Visual expression is something un-denayable in social life because the viasuality is the expression of the social life. This article has the purpose to explore how visual expression of women resistance toward gender inequality. Applying qualitative research with the method of documentation study this article in detail analyses the interpretation of religious text as the source of inequality and gender reality in social context. It is revealed that visual expression of the poster suggesting to treat men and women respectfully is the resistance toward religious text interpretation which is inequally treat men and women.</p>


Author(s):  
Joanne Boucher

Abstract This article examines the role of women in Hobbes's economic thought. First, I frame Hobbes's economic thought in relation to his philosophical materialism so as to underscore the extent to which Hobbes's materialism entails the insight that human beings are, by definition, productive, economic creatures. I argue that his description of the economy, even without explicit acknowledgment, necessarily positions women as crucial economic actors. I then consider the implications of this in relation to the feminist possibilities of Hobbes's gender politics. I conclude that when deliberating on this question, we face the same conundrum that is evident in all literature considering Hobbes and gender. His radical comments about women in the state of nature are undermined by his seeming indifference to the state of women in commonwealths once they are founded.


2020 ◽  
pp. 114-150
Author(s):  
Mona Sue Weissmark

This chapter outlines key issues in scientific literature concerning how evolutionary processes have shaped the human mind. To that end, psychologists have drawn on Charles Darwin’s sexual selection hypothesis, or how males compete for reproduction and the role of female choice in the process. Darwin argued that evolution hinged on the diversity resulting from sexual reproduction. Evolutionary psychologists posit that heterosexual men and women evolved powerful, highly patterned, and universal desires for particular characteristics in a mate. Critics, however, contend that Darwin’s theory of sexual selection was erroneous, in part because his ideas about sexual identity and gender were influenced by the social mores of his elite Victorian upper class. Despite this critique, some researchers argue similarly to Darwin that love is part of human biological makeup. According to their hypotheses, cooperation is the centerpiece of human daily life and social relations. This makes the emotion of love, both romantic and maternal love, a requirement not just for cooperation, but also for the preservation and perpetuation of the species. That said, researchers speculate that encounters with unfamiliar people, coincident with activated neural mechanisms associated with negative judgments, likely inspire avoidance behavior and contribute to emotional barriers. This suggests the need to further study the social, psychological, and clinical consequences of the link between positive and negative emotions.


Author(s):  
Chris Gilleard ◽  
Paul Higgs

This chapter begins by considering the distinction between sex and gender. The latter constitutes the source of the social division between men and women considered as social beings. It serves as both a reflection of division and inequality and a source of difference and identity. The chapter then explores the framing of this division in terms of patriarchy and the inequalities that are organised by and structured within the relations of work and of social reproduction. It focuses next upon the consequences of such a division, first in terms of both financial assets and resources and then in terms of social relational capital, drawing upon Putnam’s distinction between bridging and bonding capital. It then considers other sources of difference that become more salient in later life, in terms of health illness and longevity. The chapter ends with the role of gender in representing later life, and the role of later life in representing gender. It concludes by distinguishing between gender as a structure shaping third age culture, and gender as a constituent in the social imaginary of the fourth age.


Author(s):  
Agnieszka Legutko

Celia Dropkin, one of the greatest yet lesser-known Yiddish poets, revolutionized modern Yiddish poetry with her pioneering exploration of gender dynamics. Bold erotic motifs in Dropkin’s poetry shocked her contemporaries, while her poems, written mostly in the 1920s and 1930s, sound au courant in the twenty-first century. In her poetry, Dropkin addressed themes such as sexuality, love, artistic creativity, motherhood, and nature — as well as domination and sexual politics in man-woman relationships. Born in Bobruisk, Belarus as Tsilye Levin, she wrote her first poems in Russian at the age of 10. After her immigration to the USA in 1912, she began writing in Yiddish, making her literary debut in 1918. She was affiliated with modernist groups formed by Yiddish poets in America, such as Di Inzikhistin [Introspectivists] and Di Yunge [The Young]. During her lifetime, she published only one volume of poetry, In heysn vint. Her children reissued the volume after her death, updating it to include her short stories and reproductions of paintings that she created later in life. Dropkin’s modernist poetry shattered cultural stereotypes about the social and gender roles imposed on men and women, making her a path-breaking poet who ‘filled the stillness of Yiddish poetry with a passionate breath’ (Yakov Glatshtayn).


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630511986180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula Lutzky ◽  
Robert Lawson

This article presents the findings of a corpus linguistic analysis of the hashtags #mansplaining, #manspreading, and #manterruption, three lexical blends which have recently found widespread use across a variety of online media platforms. Focusing on the social media and microblogging site Twitter, we analyze a corpus of over 20,000 tweets containing these hashtags to examine how discourses of gender politics and gender relations are represented on the site. More specifically, our analysis suggests that users include these hashtags in tweets to index their individual evaluations of, and assumptions about, “proper” gendered behavior. Consequently, their metadiscursive references to the respective phenomena reflect their beliefs of what constitutes appropriate (verbal) behavior and the extent to which gender is appropriated as a variable dictating this behavior. As such, this article adds to our knowledge of the ways in which gendered social practices become sites of contestation and how contemporary gender politics play out in social media sites.


PMLA ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 88 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Dorsinville

Jack of Newbury's surface realism in characters, setting, and speech has led to an underestimation of its historical and literary value. A close reading reveals the consistent use of the Greco-Roman ethical-political conception of the state, epitomized in the figure of the ruler. Deloney shows his familiarity with this tradition, probably known to him through Erasmus and Sidney, in the three controlling motifs of his novel. First, the middle class of weavers, represented in Jack's household and dramatized in allegories and symbols, is portrayed as a self-sufficient state where peace and harmony reign. Second, this state is shown to be such because of the nature of its ruler, Jack, a benevolent, generous, wise man. Third, the middle-class way of life—hard work, thriftiness, material gains—serves as princely education; accordingly, Jack, from a menial position, goes on to become ruler of the state. Jack of Newbury, as a systematical reordering of an aristocratic tradition, represents the world view of the emergent middle class; and as such, a momentous shift in the social temper of the Renaissance and an important step in the evolution of the novel.


2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Sara Z. Burke

Abstract By examining forms of social thought articulated by members of the University of Toronto between 1888 and 1910, this paper argues that the University's first response to urban poverty was shaped by a combination of assumptions derived from British idealism and empiricism. Although many women at Toronto were pursuing a new interest in professional social work, the University's dominant assumptions conveyed the view that social service was the particular responsibility of educated young men, who were believed to be uniquely suited by their gender and class to address the problems of the city. This study maintains that during this period the construction of gender roles in social service segregated the reform activities of men and women on campus, and, by 1910, had the effect of excluding female undergraduates from participating in the creation of University Settlement, the social agency officially sanctioned by their University.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 199
Author(s):  
Ricardo Pedrosa Alves

Resumo: O artigo analisa de modo comparativo o romance Vidas secas, de Graciliano Ramos, e o ensaio de interpretação social Os sertões, de Euclides da Cunha. Através da comparação das estratégias compositivas e narrativas presentes nos dois livros, como o “narrador sincero” de Os sertões e o uso do indireto livre em Vidas secas, o artigo mostra aproximações e diferenças entre os dois clássicos brasileiros. Também são comparadas as perspectivas intelectuais que orientam o romance e o ensaio, no cientificismo de Euclides da Cunha e na perspectiva sociologicamente crítica adotada por Graciliano Ramos. O artigo ressalta as diferenças também na perspectiva social dos autores, através da análise da representação da violência institucional do Estado nas duas obras. As análises foram realizadas com o apoio de discussões presentes em Willi Bolle, Luís Bueno, Antonio Candido, Miriam Gárate e Luiz Costa Lima, entre outros.Palavras-chave: Vidas secas; Os sertões; ensaio de interpretação social; narrador sincero; indireto livre.Abstract: The article compares Graciliano Ramos’ novel Vidas secas and Euclides da Cunha’s essay on social interpretation Os sertões. By comparing the compositional strategies and the narratives present in both books, such as “the sincere narrator” in Os sertões and the use of free indirect speech in Vidas secas, the article shows approximations and differences between the two Brazilian classic works. The intellectual perspectives that guide the novel and the essay are also compared, analysing Euclides da Cunha’s scientificism and in the sociologically critical perspective adopted by Graciliano Ramos. The article also highlights the differences in the social perspective of the authors, analysing the representation of the institutional violence performed by the State in both works. The present analysis took as theoretical background the works by Willi Bolle, Luis Bueno, Antonio Candido, Miriam Gárate and Luiz Costa Lima.Keywords: Vidas secas; Os sertões; social interpretation essay; sincere narrator; free indirect speech.


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