scholarly journals "The City as Muse": A Context-Oriented Meta-Historical Reading of Toyin Falola's A Mouth Sweeter than Salt

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ibrahim A. Odugbemi
Keyword(s):  
Life Writing ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Self Image ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Prose Literature ◽  
The City

A number of scholarly and critical arguments have explored the poetics of nonfiction, otherwise called life writing, as a sub-genre of prose literature. Against the common expectation of a detailed concentration on facts about the subject (the self or the other) which has made nonfiction to be seen in some quarters as a concern of history, such critical arguments have shown that this genre has its peculiar, predominant pattern and structure, which make it arguably a concern of the literary enterprise. A part of such argu­ments theoretically postulates that nonfiction is a meta-history, based on its identification of some textual and contextual properties and patterns of narra­tion which transform the life account of the self or other into a meta-historical (and not historical) expression, and therefore makes such writing a concern of literature. In extension of this argument, this paper examines Toyin Falola's memoir, A Mouth Sweeter than Salt, as a genre of life writing and, especially, a form of autobiography, by showing how the setting, Ibadan, in its cultural and social formations, is depicted as having contributed to the self-awareness, self-image and identity of the subject, and how this reflection makes the nar­rative a meta-historical expression.

scholarly journals The Sea in the Poetry of Judita Vaičiūnaitė and Vizma Belševica

Lituanistica ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Inga Stepukonienė
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Urban Culture ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Complex World ◽  
The Past ◽  
Lyrical Poetry ◽  
The Subject

The lyrical poetry of Judita Vaičiūnaitė (Lithuania) and Vizma Belševica (Latvia), modern poetesses of the second half of the twentieth century, vividly reflects the realities of urban culture. However, the centre of their lyricism, the woman, is projected not only in the urban environment, but also in nature. The four mythological elements (water, air, earth, and fire) are given special powers and are highly important in both Belševica’s and Vaičiūnaitė’s work. Water in their lyrical poetry becomes an inexhaustible source of spiritual and stylistic variations. In the poetry of Vaičiūnaitė and Belševica, the sea is not a metaphor for harmony, but for anxiety, which contrasts with the representation of earth, sky, and clouds. These elements are often opposed to water paradigms like lakes, rivers, rain, snow or frost, which hide mysterious worlds. The representation of the sea is rather controversial: the overall image is shaped from a multitude of different impulses and impressions that arise from different situations of life. One of the most typical lyrical themes in Vaičiūnaitė’s and Belševica’s work is the past and remembrance of things, people, events, and phenomena. They reflect on the existence of prominent past personalities by representing their vivid images; the reader can feel the spiritual motion and projection of dynamic actions into the future. Meanwhile, memories related to the realm of water often project passiveness. The poetry of Vaičiūnaitė and Belševica reflects a strong symbolic link between the sea and the woman. The lyrical “I”, like the sea, is silent, deep, mysterious and, at the same time, turbulent. The sea also embodies the feeling of global insecurity. The seabed metaphorically represents the threshold between the safe and the dangerous states of a woman, separating the complex world of earth from the inscrutable water world, which may instantly transform the woman’s status. The sea also implies the seme of purity and purgation, the axis of morality and value as discussed by Bachelard. Purity is one of the main value-determining categories, inseparable from the self-awareness of the lyrical “I”, which stands in opposition to the other. In their experience of nature, they share the same motif of “motherly water”. It is not by chance that the poetry of Vaičiūnaitė and Belševica merges the elements of the sea world and reality – images of love appearing in the subconscious of the subject are directed to “the shelter creature, the nourishment creature symbolic of the mother”. This semantics of the sea brings together the poetry of the two Baltic poets.

Governing urban diversity through myths of national sameness – a comparative analysis of Denmark and Sweden

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Gudrun Jensen ◽  
Rebecka Söderberg
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Integration Policies ◽  
Cultural Texts ◽  
The City ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Urban Diversity

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore problematisations of urban diversity in urban and integration policies in Denmark and Sweden; the paper aims to show how such policies express social imaginaries about the self and the other underlying assumptions of sameness that legitimise diverging ways of managing urban diversity and (re)organising the city.Design/methodology/approachInspired by anthropology of policy and post-structural approaches to policy analysis, the authors approach urban and integration policies as cultural texts that are central to the organisation of cities and societies. With a comparative approach, the authors explore how visions of diversity take shape and develop over time in Swedish and Danish policies on urban development and integration.FindingsSwedish policy constructs productiveness as crucial to the imagined national sameness, whereas Danish policy constructs cultural sameness as fundamental to the national self-image. By constructing the figure of “the unproductive”/“the non-Western” as the other, diverging from an imagined sameness, policies for organising the city through removing and “improving” urban diverse others are legitimised.Originality/valueThe authors add to previous research by focussing on the construction of the self as crucial in processes of othering and by highlighting how both nationalistic and colour-blind policy discourses construct myths of national sameness, which legitimise the governing of urban diversity. The authors highlight and de-naturalise assumptions and categorisations by showing how problem representations differ over time and between two neighbouring countries.

Self-Portrait

2017 ◽  
pp. 105-124
Author(s):  
Gian Maria Annovi
Keyword(s):  
Modern Art ◽  
The Self ◽  
Abstract Art ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Common Notion ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common

Pasolini’s less well-studied paintings and drawings, particularly his self-portraits, are the subject of chapter Four. I provide new critical and theoretical perspectives on his visual work and follow its development in parallel with Pasolini’s other creative endeavors, interpreting them as one way of delineating an public authorial performance. I analyze Pasolini’s drawing as wounded self-portrait, that is the graphic manifestation of a torn self-image, produced by the violent clash with society. In Chapter Four, I also look at Pasolini’s relationship to abstract art, focusing on the parallels between his cinema and his experimentation with materials and forms in painting. Challenging the common notion of Pasolini’s hatred for modern art, I argue that in his portraits and self-portraits, he actually used abstraction to deform or disfigure the self, as a result of the pressure of history and society. Finally, in this chapter I consider some of Pasolini’s photographic portraits as a part of his authorial self-fashioning, and as a necessary component of his multimedia practice and his authorial performance during the last phase of his career.

XXIII. On the water-barometer erected in the hall of the Royal Society

1832 ◽  
Vol 122 ◽  
pp. 539-574 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Physical Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
Metallic Tube ◽  
French Academy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Made In

I have for some time entertained an opinion, in common with some others who have turned their attention tot he subject, that a good series of observations with a Water-Barometer, accurately constructed, might throw some light upon several important points of physical science: amongst others, upon the tides of the atmosphere; the horary oscillations of the counterpoising column; the ascending and descending rate of its greater oscillations; and the tension of vapour at different atmospheric temperatures. I have sought in vain in various scientific works, and in the Transactions of Philosophical Societies, for the record of any such observations, or for a description of an instrument calculated to afford the required information with anything approaching to precision. In the first volume of the History of the French Academy of Sciences, a cursory reference is made, in the following words, to some experiments of M. Mariotte upon the subject, of which no particulars appear to have been preserved. “Le même M. Mariotte fit aussi à l’observatoire des experiences sur le baromètre ordinaire à mercure comparé au baromètre à eau. Dans l’un le mercure s’eléva à 28 polices, et dans Fautre l’eau fut a 31 pieds Cequi donne le rapport du mercure à l’eau de 13½ à 1.” Histoire de I'Acadérmie, tom. i. p. 234. It also appears that Otto Guricke constructed a philosophical toy for the amusement of himself and friends, upon the principle of the water-barometer; but the column of water probably in this, as in all the other instances which I have met with, was raised by the imperfect rarefaction of the air in the tube above it, or by filling with water a metallic tube, of sufficient length, cemented to a glass one at its upper extremity, and fitted with a stop-cock at each end; so that when full the upper one might be closed and the lower opened, when the water would fall till it afforded an equipoise to the pressure of the atmo­sphere. The imperfections of such an instrument, it is quite clear, would render it totally unfit for the delicate investigations required in the present state of science; as, to render the observations of any value, it is absolutely necessary that the water should be thoroughly purged of air, by boiling, and its insinuation or reabsorption effectually guarded against. I was convinced that the only chance of securing these two necessary ends, was to form the whole length of tube of one piece of glass, and to boil the water in it, as is done with mercury in the common barometer. The practical difficulties which opposed themselves to such a construction long appeared to me insurmount­able; but I at length contrived a plan for the purpose, which, having been honoured with the approval of the late Meteorological Committee of this Society, was ordered to be carried into execution by the President and Council.

Recht als Gegenstand rhetorischer Grundlagenforschung

Rhetorik ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Jens Fischer
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Legal Rhetoric ◽  
Logical Status ◽  
Realistic Picture ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Rhetorical Practice ◽  
Rhetorical Figure ◽  
Judicial Procedure

Abstract According to the self-image of lawyers, jurisprudence is a science: the premises in legal conclusions are truth-apt, as are the conclusions or judgements that follow from them, the cognition of true law is consequently regarded as their task. Against this background, a program that understands and analyzes law as the product of a rhetorical practice is confronted with fierce resistance. According to the research of analytical legal rhetoric, on the other hand, the evidence for a rhetorical imprint on law is overwhelming: starting with the logical status of legal inferences, to the peculiarities of judicial procedure, to the motivational situation of those involved in it, everywhere it becomes apparent that the image of strict truth-orientation inadequately describes the genesis of law. Following Aristotle, who assigned law to the field of phrónēsis and not to epistēmē, contemporary legal rhetoric research aims to draw a realistic picture of the genesis of law. Subdivided into the triad of logos, ethos, and pathos, it attempts to fully grasp the interrelationships involved. It becomes apparent that the rational or argumentative dimension is far from dominating in legal justifications. It is precisely at the neuralgic point, i.e., where arguments are opposed to each other, that the rhetor typically uses a rhetorical figure that links all levels of the triad: the restrictio.

scholarly journals Personal factors that influence the development of resilience in children aged between 7 and 12 years to develop in extreme poverty

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-107
Author(s):  
Hernán Yair Rodríguez Betancourt ◽  
Laura Guzmán Verbel ◽  
Nataly Del Pilar Yela Solano
Keyword(s):  
Training Program ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Personal Factors ◽  
Extreme Poverty ◽  
Resiliency Factors ◽  
Positive Representations ◽  
The City

The following investigation was realized with the objective to characterize the personal factors that influence in the development of resilience in 200 children aged between 7 and 12 years in families linked to the program Red UNIDOS in the city of Ibague, for this was applied the inventory of resiliency factors proposed by Salgado (2005), which evaluate the level of self-esteem, empathy, autonomy, humor and creativity. The results show that the sample is in the middle of the factors evaluated (61%) and that 69% did not face adequately the adversity. We conclude that adult significant training children require psycho-afective formation to enable them to generate environments based on the self awareness of their children. Is proposed to design a training program for parents to incorporate into their speeches and actions positive representations on their children, so that achieving self-assertive and enable them to develop the ability to overcome adversity.

scholarly journals Housing and living conditions of working youth in the plants of Buryat-Mongolian ASSR during the Great Patriotic War

2020 ◽  
pp. 86-93
Author(s):  
Anastasiya Nikolaevna Soboleva
Keyword(s):  
Living Conditions ◽  
Industrial Plant ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Problems ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Poor Nutrition ◽  
The City

The object of this research is the youth of Buryat-Mongolian ASSR as most active social group within the social structure of 1941 – 1945, which was the major source for replenishment of labor reserves. The subject of this research is the examination of core financial and social problems faced by the youth working at the defense industry plants of the republic. Special attention is given to analysis of the impact of wartime struggles and hardships upon household and food procurement. It is noted that shortage of housing, low salaries, insecure life, poor nutrition, deficit of clothing and footwear often led breach of employee discipline. The article explores the important vectors in the activity of Komsomol with regards to housing and living conditions, as well as various forms of financial and psychological incentives that promote adaptation of youth to working at the industrial plant. The scientific novelty consists in introduction into the scientific discourse of a number of previously unpublished source that were collected specifically for this research. As a result of the conducted research, it was established that working youth, who for the most part came from rural localities to the city, were put in quite difficult social and living conditions, experiencing critical problems in the process of adaptation; however, they accomplished significant labor achievements and made their contribution to the common Victory.

Simple Hardworking Christian Folks, or the Self-Image of Contemporary Belarusian Kolkhozniks

2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-279
Author(s):  
Anna Engelking
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Field Research ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Building Process ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Christian Nation ◽  
Source Materials ◽  
Insight Into

This article concerns the anthropological inquiry about collective identity of contemporary Belarusian kolkhozniks. The author had conducted her field research (1993-2011) in both west and east Belarus. Source materials consist of about seven hundred conversations with individuals overwhelmingly more than sixty years of age. By analyzing and interpreting their narrative, the author traced the implicit values, norms, rules, basic semiotic dichotomies, and distinctive attributes in search of an unbiased insight into the content, structure, and building process of collective identity of the subjects under study. She concludes that the dichotomies, constitutive for collective identity of kolkhozniks—“peasant” versus “lord,” “peasant” versus “Jew,” and “Christian” versus “Jew”—result in the self-definition of muzhik-kolkhoznik as a simple, hard-working man “from here” belonging to a “Christian nation.” Neither the nation nor motherland, state nor language, belongs to the principal values of this group, which are “working the land” and “faith in God.” As a result of the petrifaction of the old model of the serfdom manor by the Soviet kolkhoz system, in a Belarusian village we presently encounter one of the last European residuals of premodern mentality and social identity. The image of Belarusian kolkhozniks’ collective identity has little to do with the popular category of Homo sovieticus and with the common stereotype of the kolkhoz. The human subject of the author’s anthropological reflection shows up as a person dealing amazingly well with extremely difficult living conditions and the modern, vivid personification of the archaic Homo religiosus.

Who Got There First

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Lienhard
Keyword(s):  
Acid Solution ◽  
Electrical Current ◽  
Smithsonian Institution ◽  
Liquid Pool ◽  
The Other ◽  
Electric Contact ◽  
Variable Resistance ◽  
Scientists And Engineers ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common

Years ago, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution said to me, “Scientists and engineers are nutty on the subject of priority.” That was before I realized just how far-reaching that nuttiness was or how misguided the very concept of priority is. As an example, try searching out the inventor of the telephone. Instead of Alexander Graham Bell, you may get the name of a German, Johann Philipp Reis. The common wisdom is that Reis invented a primitive telephone that was only marginally functional, while Bell’s phone really worked. Reis was a twenty-six-year-old science teacher when he began work on the telephone in 1860. His essential idea came from a paper by a French investigator named Bourseul. In 1854 Bourseul had explained how to transmit speech electrically. He wrote: . . . Speak against one diaphragm and let each vibration “make or break” the electric contact. The electric pulsations thereby produced will set the other diaphragm working, and [it then reproduces] the transmitted sound. . . . Only one part of Bourseul’s idea was shaky. To send sound, the first diaphragm should not make and break contact; instead it should vary the flow of electricity to the second diaphragm continuously. While Reis had used Bourseul’s term “make or break,” his diaphragm actually drove a thin rod to varying depth in an electric coil. Instead of making and breaking the current, he really did vary it continuously. Bell faced the same problem when he began work on his telephone a decade later. First, he used a diaphragm-driven needle that entered a water-acid solution to create a continuously variable resistance and a smoothly varying electrical current. Bell got the idea from another American, inventor Elisha Gray. Of course, a liquid pool comes with two problems. One is evaporation; the other is immobility. Bell soon gave it up in favor of a system closer to Reis’ electromagnet. Still, it is clear that Gray’s variable-resistance pool had pointed the way for Bell. Next we must ask whether Bell was influenced by Reis’ invention. Reis died two years before Bell received his patent. (He was only forty, and he never got around to seeking a patent of his own.)

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