A Sense of (Be)longing in Shaun Tan's The Lost Thing

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Rudd
Keyword(s):  
Social Issues ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Zygmunt Bauman ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Feeling At Home

Almost all Shaun Tan's work explores notions of belonging, and related ideas about feeling at home (or not) in time and space. But these issues are most starkly explored in his first solo picture book, The Lost Thing (2000), where the narrator, Shaun, relates his discovery of a mysterious, large, red, hybrid being. This article undertakes a close reading of Tan's text, drawing on the work of theorists like Mary Douglas, Zygmunt Bauman, Giorgio Agamben and Judith Butler to show how societies, through their classificatory logic, manage to deal with any ‘matter out of place’. It also explores the particular poignancy of ‘misplaced’ things in the context of Australia, not only through the Howard Government's draconian treatment of refugees, but also in terms of the country's long-standing guilt about its treatment of the Aboriginal ‘stolen generation’, and of others, like the forcibly deported British children. In contrast to the more optimistic reading usually given to Tan's work, a darker, more menacing interpretation is suggested – though a note of hope is still detected in the narrator's need to record his story. In this way, The Lost Thing is not concerned solely with social issues, but engages with a more existential sense of longing that we can all experience.

Archaeology and the Letters of Paul

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Salah Nasrallah
Keyword(s):  
Judith Butler ◽  
First Century ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Apostle Paul ◽  
The Social ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Archaeological Materials ◽  
Feminist Historiography ◽  
The Many ◽  
Political Economic

Through case studies of archaeological materials from local contexts, Archaeology and the Letters of Paul illuminates the social, political, economic, and religious lives of those whom the apostle Paul addressed. Roman Ephesos, a likely setting for the household of Philemon, provides evidence of the slave trade. An inscription from Galatia seeks to restrain traveling Roman officials, illuminating how the travels of Paul, Cephas, and others may have disrupted communities. At Philippi, a donation list from a Silvanus cult provides evidence of abundant giving amid economic limitations, paralleling practices of local Christ followers. In Corinth, a landscape of grief includes monuments and bones, a context that illumines Corinthian practices of baptism on behalf of the dead and the provocative idea that one could live “as if not” mourning. Rome and the Letter to the Romans are the grounds to investigate ideas of time and race not only in the first century, when we find an Egyptian obelisk inserted as a timepiece into Augustus’s mausoleum complex, but also of Mussolini’s new Rome. Thessalonikē demonstrates how letters, legend, and cult are invented out of a love for Paul, after his death. The book articulates a method for bringing together biblical texts with archaeological remains in order to reconstruct the lives of the many adelphoi—brothers and sisters—whom Paul and his co-writers address. It is informed by feminist historiography and gains inspiration from thinkers like Claudia Rankine, Judith Butler, Giorgio Agamben, Wendy Brown, and Katie Lofton.

scholarly journals Demanda: Literatura e Filosofia, de Jean-Luc Nancy

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (20) ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Lock Farina
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Alain Badiou ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Jacques Rancière

Publicada originalmente na coleção “La philosophie en effet”, da prestigiada editora Galilée, na França em 2015, com o título Demande. Philosophie, littérature, a coletânea de textos de Jean-Luc Nancy, inédita enquanto tal e organizada por Ginette Michaud, professora da Universidade de Montreal, chega ao Brasil devido à iniciativa em parceria entre a editora da UFSC e a editora Argos, da Unochapecó. Nancy (1940-), professor emérito da Universidade de Estrasburgo, é certamente um dos filósofos mais conceituados no universo acadêmico atual, ao lado de Alain Badiou, Hélène Cixous, Judith Butler, Giorgio Agamben e Jacques Rancière. Seu destaque se dá sobretudo em função das contribuições acerca do político e da democracia, da obra em conjunto com Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, de seus escritos sobre Jacques Derrida e da preocupação constante em relacionar a arte de maneira geral com o pensamento filosófico. Sua produção, entretanto, é ainda pouquíssimo traduzida no Brasil. Na tarefa de suprir essa falta, Demanda: Literatura e Filosofia (365 p.) reúne textos de 1977 a 2015, disponíveis até então somente em periódicos ou resultantes de conferências e entrevistas, dando mostras da trajetória do autor no que concerne o debate entre o aproveitamento da literatura e do modo singular (a singularidade para Nancy é sempre uma singularidade plural) com que ela convoca a filosofia para um pensamento conjunto, crítico e afectante a respeito da vida, da atividade política e dos sentidos nas suas concepções mais amplas.

scholarly journals Socio-literary Study of Robert Browning and Darwesh Durrani’s Dramatic Monologues: A Comparative Literary Approach

sjesr ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-143
Author(s):  
Raham Dil Khan ◽  
Dr. Khan Sardaraz
Keyword(s):  
Social Issues ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Gender Violence ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
The Past ◽  
Literary Theories ◽  
Reading Technique ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Dramatic Monologues

Previous literature is laden with research on Browning’s dramatic monologues from various perspectives. This paper will compare Browning’s dramatic monologues with Derwesh Durrani’s poetry from socio-literary perspective. Literary theories of analogy and variation will be used to find out similarities and differences in their poetry. Two poems from each poet have been selected for analysis through close reading technique on the model of theories of variation and analogy. Stratified sampling technique was used for taking the representative sample from the data. The findings reveals that Darwesh’s poetry exhibits most of the dramatic features of Browning’s dramatic monologues, but his poetry is more poetic, while Browning’s poetry is more dramatic; Browning invigorates the past, Darwesh recreates the present. In addition, Browning’s poems deals with domestic issues like gender violence, love and marriage, Darwesh’s poetry deals with social issues and patriotism, and contrary to Browning, he stands for women’s rights and sensibilities. This paper suggests further studies purely from socio-cultural perspective of Darwesh’s dramatic monologues, which will contribute to the existing literature on dramatic monologues.

scholarly journals “A picture book” and its educational potential

2020 ◽  
pp. 96-107
Author(s):  
E.S. Romanicheva
Keyword(s):  
Learning Process ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Teaching Literature ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Professional Discourse ◽  
Educational Potential ◽  
Creative Tasks

The author has aimed at unleashing the educational potential of contemporary children’s and adolescent books and the possibilities of working with them in the class setting. The books (the ones mentioned in the research body are included in the first part of the bibliography) are inherently texts of a new nature, they suggest markedly different practices of working with them which allow to synthesize their verbal and visual components while reading them. For this very reason work with them should be included in the educational process – because while working like that a student will master close reading techniques, ways of checking one’s own understanding and will also fulfill creative tasks. Describing and analyzing the selected books, the author demonstrates which reading practices (reading with pauses, synthesizing a continuous and discontinuous text while reading, creative tasks based on the texts and others) are offered by the designer on the pages of the books and claims that mastering publishers’ strategies, if it becomes a professional goal, will considerably enlarge teachers’ methodological instrumentarium, will allow teachers to master new techniques of working with a multicode text and to include the former into the learning process. In the course of the research the author introduces and explains concepts that are new for the national methodology of teaching literature: text of a new nature, architecture of a book – and justifies the need for using them in the professional discourse. Generally, the article demonstrates the need for engaging ‘picture books’ at the lessons of literature as long as dealing with them will broaden the reading circle of a contemporary student and will prepare them for further independent reading of various texts and books.

scholarly journals “Merde Alors!”

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 358-383
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Bernini
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Umberto Eco ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Deputy Prime Minister

AbstractIn recent history, Italy has repeatedly emerged as a successful laboratory for political experiments. After WWI, Fascism was invented there by Mussolini, and it quickly spread across Europe. In the 1990s, Berlusconi anticipated Trump's entrepreneurial populism. Today, there is a risk that Italy will once again perform the role of a political avant-garde: that it will export to Europe a sovereign populism of a new kind that is nonetheless in continuity with disquieting features of the worst past. The essay performs a close reading of the programmatic speech that Minister of Home Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister of Italy Matteo Salvini delivered in July 2018 at the thirty-second annual gathering of the Lega party. Its aim is to detect the presence in it of the politics of abjection (Judith Butler), a “Fascist archetype” (Umberto Eco) that affects both racialized and non-heterosexual people.

Profile kompetencji społecznych studentów przygotowujących się do sprawowania opieki nad osobami starszymi – badania polsko-niemieckie

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (4 (254) ◽  
pp. 237-254
Author(s):  
Anna Kanios ◽  
Anna Bocheńska-Brandt
Keyword(s):  
Elderly People ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Social Competencies ◽  
Comparative Group ◽  
Questionnaire Research ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The University

The ageing of people is one of the most important social issues of the modern world. This is a global phenomenon, concerning all regions and almost all countries. This problem pertains also to Poland and Germany. The following article is based on empirical studies whose subject were the social competencies profiles of Polish and German students preparing for caregiving of the elderly people. The method of the study was a diagnostic survey, whereas the research instruments used in the study were PROKOS. Social Competencies Profile by A. Matczak and K. Martowska and The questionnaire for the analysis of motivation to work with elderly people for students of social wellbeing majors (self-constructed questionnaire). Research studies were carried out between October and December 2018. In Poland, they involved students from Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin and the University of Rzeszów, while in Germany, students from universities of Münster, Osnabrück, Bielefeld and Wolfsburg. German students (200 people) constituted the main group, whereas the comparative group consisted of 167 Polish students. The results of the research demonstrated significant statistic differences in the range of all distinguished types of social competencies between the examined Polish and German groups of students (p < 0,001).

Carl Schmitt and Modernity

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friedrich Balke
Keyword(s):  
Judith Butler ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Specific Diagnosis ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Constitutional State ◽  
The Government ◽  
And Function

Carl Schmitt’s political and juridical thought is anchored in a specific diagnosis of modernity. He develops the concept of the political because of how the location and address of the political become fundamentally questionable under modern conditions. Romanticism disempowers the state, the government, indeed all political-public structures and processes, turning them into mere “scenery” or simulacrums that hide an actual or substantial reality. This chapter traces the continued effects of Schmitt’s thought on various diagnoses of a political dialectic of modernity. Each has the changing form and function of sovereign power at its center. The work of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, and Zygmunt Bauman shows that Schmitt’s thought is applicable to the paradox by which sovereign power of decision continues to have a latent effect under the conditions of a constitutional state.

scholarly journals Introduction: Towards an Ethics of Gesture

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Ruprecht
Keyword(s):  
Special Section ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Philosophical Reflection ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Forward Looking

The introduction to this special section of Performance Philosophy takes Giorgio Agamben�s remarks about the mediality and potentiality of gesture as a starting point to rethink gesture�s nexus with ethics. Shifting the emphasis from philosophical reflection to corporeal practice, it defines gestural ethics as an acting-otherwise which comes into being in the particularities of singular gestural practice, its forms, kinetic qualities, temporal displacements and calls for response. Gestural acting-otherwise is illustrated in a number of ways: We might talk of a gestural ethics when gesturality becomes an object for dedicated analytical exploration and reflection on sites where it is not taken for granted, but exhibited, on stage or on screen, in its mediality, in the ways it quotes, signifies and departs from signification, but also in the ways in which it follows a forward-looking agenda driven by adaptability and inventiveness. It interrupts or modifies operative continua that might be geared towards violence; it appears in situations that are suspended between the possibility of malfunction and the potential of room for play; and it emerges in the ways in which gestures act on their own implication in the signifying structures of gender, sexuality, race, and class, on how these structures play out relationally across time and space, and between historically and locally situated human beings.

scholarly journals The Portrayal of Jews in Seventeenthand Eighteenth-Century Monastery Chronicles from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on the Basis of Selected Examples

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (special) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Stefan Gąsiorowski
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Valuable Insight ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
History Of ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Secular Institutions

Monastery chronicles from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth provide valuable insight not only into the history of individual orders and the Polish clergy in general, but also into the history of mentality, daily life and religious and ethnic minorities. Although references to Jews are rather sporadic in such chronicles, they are nevertheless quite diverse and concern almost all aspects of Jewish activity in Poland and abroad. Therefore, they can serve as an excellent complement to other sources in the field, including Jewish ones, and those of various secular institutions and offices. It should be noted, however, that the credibility of the information contained in monastery chronicles is always dependent on the distance in time and space between the chronicler and the described events and should—if possible—be verified against other documentary sources from the same period.

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