Moments of Being and the Everyday

Author(s):  
Emma Simone

This chapter examines the most convincing affinities in terms of Woolf and Heidegger’s understandings of Being-in-the-world. Drawing attention to Woolf and Heidegger’s respective notions of ‘moments of Being’ and ‘moments of vision’, the ways in which such moments are triggered by particular moods that are experienced by the individual are discussed. Disrupting the individual’s everyday inauthentic immersion in the preoccupations and prescriptions of the present, such moments provide the potential for the disclosure of the typically concealed extraordinary nature of the ordinary. This chapter begins with a discussion of the significance and history of the literary epiphany, and draws attention to the influence of precursors such as Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad and William Wordsworth upon Woolf’s writings. In the second section, attention is directed to a number of Heideggerian notions – including ‘anxiety’, ‘nothingness’, ‘boredom’, ‘wonder’ and the ‘numinous’ – in terms of their relations to the Woolfian ‘moment’.

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Liam Young

This essay examines the Vegetarian Advocate, a British monthly periodical that ran from 1848 to 1850, and it argues that the periodical’s serial form shaped its representation of vegetarianism. As the first official organ of the UK Vegetarian Society, the Vegetarian Advocate carried different messages to different audiences. For members of the Society, it circulated information on the organization’s publications, annual meetings, membership statistics, and finances, subjects that would be of interest only to insiders. For outsiders and the uninitiated, it published articles explaining vegetarian principles, using arguments drawn from physiology, chemistry, natural history, economics, and ethics to persuade curious readers to experiment with a vegetarian diet. However, drawing on press scholarship and Michel Foucault’s techniques of the self, this essay argues that the serial form of the periodical itself carried an important message on the vegetarians’ ‘serialization of life’, their belief that life be lived serially or, in other words, that forward progress and self-improvement come through repetition, attention to routine, and the everyday training of oneself. Specifically, this essay claims that the seriality of the Vegetarian Advocate allowed the Vegetarian Society to represent its dietary regimen as serial — that is, as a repetitive yet progressive, sequential system of self-transformation in which all forms of activity (from eating to exercising to socializing) accrued meaning sequentially, serially, and relationally, orientating vegetarianism and vegetarians towards a teleological objective, or what Foucault calls the ‘telos of the ethical subject’. Serialization, it claims, was integral to both the practice and concept of vegetarianism: vegetarian print materials were published serially while the practice itself was conceptualized as a progressive step in the development of the individual and the species.


Author(s):  
William H. Galperin

This study is about the emergence of the everyday as both a concept and a material event and about the practices of retrospection in which it came to awareness in the romantic period in “histories” of the missed, the unappreciated, the overlooked. Prior to this moment everyday life was both unchanging and paradoxically unpredictable. By the late eighteenth century, however, as life became more predictable and change on a technological and political scale more rapid, the present came into unprecedented focus, yielding a world answerable to neither precedent nor futurity. This alternative world soon appears in literature of the period: in the double takes by which the poet William Wordsworth disencumbers history of memory in demonstrating what subjective or “poetic” experience typically overlooks; in Jane Austen, whose practice of revision returns her to a milieu that time and progress have erased and that reemerges, by previous documentation, as something different. It is observable in Lord Byron, thanks to the “history” to which marriage and domesticity are consigned not only in the wake of his separation from Lady Byron but during their earlier epistolary courtship, where the conjugal present came to consciousness (and prestige) as foredoomed but an opportunity nonetheless. The everyday world that history focalizes in the romantic period and the conceptual void it exposes in so doing remains a recovery on multiple levels: the present is both “a retrospect of what might have been” (Austen) and a “sense,” as Wordsworth put it, “of something ever more about to be.”


Author(s):  
Susanna Braund ◽  
Zara Martirosova Torlone

The introduction describes the broad landscape of translation of Virgil from both the theoretical and the practical perspectives. It then explains the genesis of the volume and indicates how the individual chapters, each one of which is summarized, fit into the complex tapestry of Virgilian translation activity through the centuries and across the world. The volume editors indicate points of connection between the chapters in order to render the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Braund and Torlone emphasize that a project such as this could look like a (rather large) collection of case studies; they therefore consider it important to extrapolate larger phenomena from the specifics presented here


1988 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-38
Author(s):  
Moojan Momen

As the Bahá’í Faith emerges from obscurity, Bahá’í scholars will have an important role in three fields: the presentation of Bahá’í Faith to the world; the defense of the Bahá’í Faith from attacks; and the intellectual growth and development of the Bahá’í community. This paper discusses the question of the place of scholarship in the Bahá’í community. The value of Bahá’í studies to the Bahá’í community is analyzed. The problems that may arise for Bahá’í scholars in relation to their own spiritual life and also in relation to the Bahá’í community are discussed. Some suggestions are then made with regard to the question of what academic approaches are most likely to be fruitful in the study of the Bahá’í Faith. Finally, consideration is given to the mutual obligations of the Bahá’í scholar and the Bahá’í community (in particular, the Bahá’í administrative institutions). Every Bahá’í who surveys the vast range of doctrines and concepts enshrined in the holy writings of the Bahá’í Faith or whose imagination is captured by the intensity of its brief history must, to some extent, be inspired to make a more thorough study of some aspect that interests him or her. To some is given the good fortune to have both the opportunity and inclination to put this study on a more formal basis. Whether this be at an institute of learning or through private study and research, there are many areas of the teachings and history of the Bahá’í Faith that invite painstaking research and thoughtful analysis. Such study is of great benefit to the Bahá’í community as a whole, quite apart from the immense satisfaction that it can bring to the individual student. There are also dangers in such study, particularly for the individual concerned, and often the extent of this danger is not appreciated by someone just setting out on such a course of study.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 66-71
Author(s):  
Nikita Gupta

This paper deals with the concept of racism, which is considered as a dark topic in the history of the world .Throughout history, racist ideology widespread throughout the world especially between black people and white people. In addition, many European countries started to expand their empire and to get more territories in other countries. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness which is his experience in the Congo River during the 19th century dealt with the concept of racism, which was clear in this novel because of the conflicts that were between black and white people and it explained the real aims of colonialism in Africa, which were for wealth and power.


Perceptions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Effi Booth

This paper was presented in History 3697, fall semester, 2017, a mid-level required writing course designed to link the methods of oral history with the study of issues in the contemporary history of the non-western world. The issue for all of us in this course was social change in recent times. I chose to examine the degree of acceptance of gays in Jamaica, in an era of great change in sexual mores throughout the world. I read the literature; I interviewed Julian, a recent immigrant from Jamaica, and I drew conclusions based on integrating the scholarly material with the interview revelations. The findings were important both for understanding (the lack of) change in sexual attitudes in Jamaica, and the importance of analysis of the individual and the collective together, of the interview and the scholarly data examined together. The individual, at least my interviewee, and the society, are currently resistant to change. The main conclusion: changes in sexual mores in other areas of the world are taking place at rates very different from, and, specifically in Jamaica, at rates much slower than, those in the USA.


2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-219
Author(s):  
Jonghyun Kim

This article analyzes the formative power of the Korean dawn prayer service to better understand the public and private dimensions of Christian spirituality. It explores the origin of the dawn prayer in the history of Korean Protestantism, and examines an example from a particular church. On the basis of this exploration, it is argued that the dawn prayer service should not be understood as an instrument to strengthen individual spirituality, but rather as a place to participate in God’s redemptive work to and for the world. Both the individual and communal aspects of dawn prayer practice are important, but I will argue that current Korean practice leans too much toward the individual.


Author(s):  
Sára Czina ◽  

At the turn of the 20th century, Budapest was famous for its Coffeehouse Culture. One of the most popular Café was the New-York Coffeehouse; today, it is remembered for its literary life. After 20 years of operation, in 1913, new people bought the tenant’s rights and established the first Coffeehouse joint-stock company in Hungary, called New-York coffeehouse Company Limited. This paper aims to analyze the operation of the Company in relation to the stock transfers, analysis of its profitability, and the changes in the transformations in the shares. The main goal was to figure out how the profitability and the stock transfers were connected to the contemporary social and economic circumstances. The years of the World Wars, Revolutions, the Great Depression, and the cultural/social life of the twenties had their deep effects on the life of the Company. The changes were perceptible for the public, too. Many articles were published about the hardships of the Company and the changing atmosphere of the Coffeehouse. These were different; not all of them damaged the interest of the Company Limited equally. Still, the difficulties influenced the stock transfers, profitability, and the everyday life of the Managers and Shareholders. These circumstances are parallel to the changes of the Company.


Author(s):  
Stephen J. Davis

Monasticism is a social and religious phenomenon that originated in antiquity, which remains relevant in the 21st century. Monasticism: A Very Short Introduction discusses the history of monasticism from the earliest evidence for it, and the different types that have developed. It considers where monasteries are located around the world, and how their settings impact the everyday life and worldview of the monks and nuns who dwell in them. Exploring how monastic communities are organized, this VSI also looks at how all aspects of life are regimented. Finally, it discusses what the stories about saints communicate about monastic identity and ethics, and considers what place there is for monasticism in the modern world.


1961 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 560-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glenn Tinder

American students of society and politics for the most part view “historicism”—the ascription to history of an overall direction and goal—with attitudes ranging from skepticism to overt hostility. In the general view, no valid propositions can be framed concerning matters so shrouded in darkness as the course and the end of history. Indeed it may well be asked, when we use such terms, whether we are referring to realities or merely to inventions of the imagination. Historicist theories are also said to tend to undermine concern for the individual; the needs of the present, living person are likely to shrink into apparent insignificance before the imagined events of a future age. On the part of those who in recent years have seen the bloody trails left by pretended ministers of historical missions, such misgivings are understandable.Are social scientists and political thinkers at liberty, however, dogmatically to reject historicism? It is the purpose of this article to argue that they are not. For if history is without meaning, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that social and political affairs, which make up a large part of what we treat as history, are also without meaning. Why then should one study, or take part in, these affairs? What is at stake, in the last analysis, is our right—or duty—to regard the world we inhabit, not merely as alien material to be used or ignored as we please, but as a realm of being with which we are fundamentally united and in which, consequently, we are properly participants.


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