Investing in Fictions: Faith, Abstraction and Materiality in Paul Murray’s The Mark and the Void

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-281
Author(s):  
Eoin Flannery
Keyword(s):  
Financial Burden ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Credit Crisis ◽  
Celtic Tiger ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Finance Capitalism ◽  
The Relationship

One of the central contentions of this essay is that Paul Murray's novel, The Mark and the Void, addresses questions of faith, fictionality, literary form and the relationship between abstract finance and material sociality. The novel engages with and exposes the arcane vernaculars of finance capitalism, while at the same time registering the inalienable materiality of their effects in terms of impoverishment, displacement and terminal indebtedness. As we shall detail, for Murray, the purpose of ‘finance fiction’ is neither to confirm nor further mythologize the transcendental fictionality of high finance. In crafting such a literary critique of Celtic Tiger Ireland, Murray invokes an increasingly common trope – the zombie. In doing so, The Mark and The Void partakes of a figuration that acknowledges ‘the deadliness of financialized debt and credit crisis’. In a sense, enlisting the metonymic figure of the zombie speaks to the undead nature of indebtedness, and it is an apt figuration of the past that continues to haunt in the present and into the future. As the narrative suggests, debt is the financial burden that refuses to die, and the literary zombie represents communities of Celtic Tiger debtors metonymically.

Oleanolic Acid Derived from Plants: Synthesis and Pharmacological Properties of A-ring Modified Derivatives

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (9) ◽  
pp. 1084-1101
Author(s):  
Tingjuan Wu ◽  
Xu Yao ◽  
Guan Wang ◽  
Xiaohe Liu ◽  
Hongfei Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Drug Design ◽  
Oleanolic Acid ◽  
Water Solubility ◽  
Future Application ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Pharmacological Effects ◽  
Framework Structure ◽  
Design And Synthesis ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Relationship

Background: Oleanolic Acid (OA) is a ubiquitous product of triterpenoid compounds. Due to its inexpensive availability, unique bioactivities, pharmacological effects and non-toxic properties, OA has attracted tremendous interest in the field of drug design and synthesis. Furthermore, many OA derivatives have been developed for ameliorating the poor water solubility and bioavailability. Objective: Over the past few decades, various modifications of the OA framework structure have led to the observation of enhancement in bioactivity. Herein, we focused on the synthesis and medicinal performance of OA derivatives modified on A-ring. Moreover, we clarified the relationship between structures and activities of OA derivatives with different functional groups in A-ring. The future application of OA in the field of drug design and development also was discussed and inferred. Conclusion: This review concluded the novel achievements that could add paramount information to the further study of OA-based drugs.

Wisdom and Wisdom Literature

2021 ◽  
pp. xxii-14
Author(s):  
Will Kynes
Keyword(s):  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter introduces the volume by arguing that the study of biblical wisdom is in the midst of a potential paradigm shift, as interpreters are beginning to reconsider the relationship between the concept of wisdom in the Bible and the category Wisdom Literature. This offers an opportunity to explore how the two have been related in the past, in the history of Jewish and Christian interpretation, how they are connected in the present, as three competing primary approaches to Wisdom study have developed, and how they could be treated in the future, as new possibilities for understanding wisdom with insight from before and beyond the development of the Wisdom Literature category are emerging.

scholarly journals V. Bryusov’s Letters to His Fiancée

Literary Fact ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 8-30
Author(s):  
Monika V. Orlova
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Full Text ◽  
Terminally Ill ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Relationship

The publication includes V.Ya. Bryusov’s letters to his fiancée I.M. Runt (1876 –1965) from June 9 to September 9, 1897. 11 correspondences, including the final telegram sent from Kursk, were written and sent from Aachen (Germany), Moscow and several Ukrainian localities. The letter 10 is accompanied by the full text of I.M. Runt’s only surviving letter to Bryusov, sent from Moscow to the village of Bolshye Sorochintsy and received by the poet a few months later at home. The relationship between the young people before the wedding were complicated. While the poet was preparing for the wedding in Moscow, he summed up the past contacts with “mes amantes”, and his state of mind was painful. Shortly before meeting his future wife, Bryusov broke up with the former governess of his family E.I. Pavlovskaya, who was terminally ill. A few days before the wedding he decided to go to say goodbye to Pavlovskaya to her homeland, Ukraine. In his letters to the future wife the poet tried to smooth out the tension of the situation, perhaps anticipating that he would be bounded with I.M. Runt 30 Литературный факт. 2021. № 2 (20) by a long-term relationship, where life and literature are closely interconnected. The letters are published for the first time.

scholarly journals Archiving Metaxourgio

2021 ◽  
pp. 167-184
Author(s):  
Thomais Kordonouri
Keyword(s):  
Urban Area ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Ground Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
The Way

‘Archive’ is a totality of records, layers and memories that are collected. A city is the archive that consists of the conscious selection of these layers and traces of the past and the present, looking towards the future. Metaxourgio is an area in the wider historic urban area of Keramikos in Athens that includes traces of various eras, beginning in the Antiquity and continuing all the way into the 21st century. Its archaeological space ‘Demosion Sema’ is mostly concealed under the ground level, waiting to be revealed. In this proposal, Metaxourgio is redesigned in light of archiving. Significant traces of the Antiquity, other ruins and buildings are studied, selected and incorporated in the new interventions. The area becomes the ‘open archive’ that leads towards its lost identity. The proposal aims not only to intensify the relationship of architecture with archaeology, but also to imbue the area’s identity with meanings that refer to the past, present and future.

I. The Augustan Historian

1974 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 5-7
Keyword(s):  
Nazi Germany ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Order ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ab Urbe Condita ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship

During the past forty years the dominant preoccupation of scholars writing on Livy has been the relationship between the historian and the emperor Augustus, and its effects on the Ab Urbe Condita. Tacitus’ testimony that the two were on friendly terms, and Suetonius’ revelation that Livy found time to encourage the historical studies of the future emperor Claudius, appeared to have ominous overtones to scholars writing against the political backcloth of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Though the subject had not been wholly ignored previously, the success of the German cultural propaganda-machine stimulated a spate of approving or critical treatments. While some were hailing Livy as the historian whose work signalled and glorified the new order, others following a similar interpretation were markedly scathing.

Virtual Reality from the Standpoint of Complexity Science

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 244-260
Author(s):  
Helena Knyazeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
The Past ◽  
Extended Approach ◽  
Human Creativity ◽  
The Future ◽  
Latent Potential ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

An extended approach to the comprehension of virtual reality is developed in the article. Virtual reality is understood not only as a logically possible or cybernetically constructed reality but also as continuous turbulence of potencies of the complex natural and social world we live in, the wandering of complex systems and organizations over a field of possibilities, such a realization of forms and structures in which many formations remain in latent, potential forms, and are in the permanent process of making and multiplying a spectrum of possibilities, lead to the growth of the evolutionary tree of paths of development. It is shown that such an understanding of virtual reality corresponds to concepts and notions developed in the modern science of complexity. The most significant concepts are considered, such as the nonlinearity of time, the relationship of space and time, the uncertainty of the past and the openness of the future, the choice and construction of the future at the moments of passing the bifurcation points. Some cultural and historical prototypes of these modern ideas of virtual reality are given. It is substantiated that the vision of virtual reality being developed today can play the role of a heuristic tool for understanding the functioning and stimulation of human creativity.

A Judaism of Ethics in a Post-Holocaust World: The Interplay of Literature and Theology in Cynthia Ozick's Messiah of Stockholm

AJS Review ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Claire E. Sufrin
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Harold Bloom ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Literary Theories ◽  
Literature And Theology ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Bruno Schulz ◽  
The Relationship

This article suggests that bringing Jewish literature and Jewish thought into conversation can deepen our understanding of each. As an illustration of this interdisciplinary methodology, I offer a reading of Cynthia Ozick's 1987 Messiah of Stockholm. I claim that Ozick has embedded an argument about the relationship of post-Holocaust Jewry to the past into the literary features of her novel. Her argument draws in particular upon Leo Baeck's account of Judaism as focused on the present and future in contrast to the worshipful approach to the past characteristic of other religions. At the same time, I offer a more nuanced take on the fear of idolatry so often noted in analyses of Ozick's work and situate that fear in relationship to the literary theories of her predecessor Bruno Schulz, who plays a key role in the novel, and her contemporary Harold Bloom.

David Mitchell’s Inefficiency

2021 ◽  
pp. 149-183
Author(s):  
Thom Dancer
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Literary Realism ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
Global Problems ◽  
The Future ◽  
Massive Scale ◽  
And Function ◽  
Prior State ◽  
Cultural Force

David Mitchell’s fiction provides an opportunity to reconsider the claims of modesty in the context of globalization. This chapter draws upon the arguments of the previous ones to put critical modesty to its most difficult test. Are minor achievements enough given the massive scale of planetary life and of urgent global problems facing humanity, not the least of which is environmental ruin? I argue that Mitchell’s novels directly face the problems of scaling that cast into doubt the place and function of the novel as a relevant cultural force in the twenty-first century and beyond. Mitchell’s work helps us to reconcile realism as a kind of modest speculation. Where the novel has long been understood as a form that easily scales from the local to the global, Mitchell emphasizes the discontinuity afforded by novelistic thinking. The efficient causality that has subtended literary realism aims to retroactively recreate the events that lead inevitably from the past to the future. Mitchell’s formal investment in discontinuity resists the tyranny of the inevitable by narrating moments of bifurcation in which a new possibility for action suddenly and unexpectedly emerges. Thus, his novels adopt an inefficient causality that give expression to the feeling that things might be different than they are, that inevitability (optimistic or pessimistic) is a dangerous trap. The challenge that Mitchell poses for himself and other novelists is to imagine a disposition modest enough to nurture and shepherd into being these moments of bifurcation when, by definition, there is nothing in the prior state that predicts them.

The Self-Erasing Word

Poetics Today ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-139
Author(s):  
Michael LeMahieu
Keyword(s):  
Literary Form ◽  
Formal Logic ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Relationship

Don DeLillo’s early novels explore the relationship between formal logic and literary form. In End Zone, DeLillo uses tautology as a linguistic tactic of diminishment to advance a larger aesthetic strategy of repleteness. The novel says less to show more. As a result, End Zone, like many of DeLillo’s other early novels, frequently represents states of silence and unspeakability. DeLillo’s early fiction shares these concerns with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s early philosophy, particularly the remarks on tautology, silence, and the limits of language in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. In their conclusions, End Zone and the Tractatus analogously seek to undo themselves to overcome the inherent limitations of logic and language.

Address by the President of the Faculty of Actuaries. Respecting the Past, Creating the Future

2007 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-40
Author(s):  
John Stewart Russell Ritchie
Keyword(s):  
Life Expectancy ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Faculty Members ◽  
Healthy Life Expectancy ◽  
Healthy Life ◽  
150Th Anniversary ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTThis Presidential Address is delivered towards the end of the 150th anniversary year of the Faculty of Actuaries, and is timed to coincide with the International Actuarial Association and Groupe Consultatif holding meetings in Edinburgh. It deals with the growing globalisation of the Profession, reviews the key developments arising out of the Morris Review and the implications of current changes. It then moves on to examine communication and the role the Profession can play with the media. A comparison between actuarial practice in life and pensions follows, with suggestions for a closer alignment between pension expectation and pension reality. Comment is made about the prospects for healthy life expectancy. Finally, the relationship between the Faculty and the Institute of Actuaries is debated, and a consultation with Faculty members is launched.

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