WattIs Not a Well-Wrought Pot

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Byron ◽  
Chris Ackerley
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
The Novel ◽  
White Whale ◽  
Scholarly Edition ◽  
Textual Material ◽  
Presence And Absence ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Composition History

Beckett's 1953 novel Watt is justifiably known as the ‘white whale’ of Beckett Studies. Its wartime composition history in conditions of compound displacement, from the first tentative notes in 1941 to the first attempts at publication in 1945, traces out a process of manuscript revision, recirculation, fragmentation and recombination: a process in which art and life echoed each other's estrangements. The complicated journey into print bore its own pitfalls, where textual error combined with evidence of partial narrative excisions, serial non sequiturs, and a post-narrative midden of fragments both insinuated within and separated from the story of Watt and his master. This essay engages in a close examination of a selected range of variant types between published editions and between published text and manuscript (and partial typescript). There is no golden key, but a pattern emerges whereby an ambivalent alternation between presence and absence of textual material indicates the novel and its documents to be a kind of work-genesis. Watt's perplexing struggle with knowing and being reflects and informs the state of the novel's constituent materials. His tussle with the faculties of perception, as well as the improbable utterance of his strange quest, enjoins the reader to rethink the narrative and textual categories upon which a hermeneutics might be assayed. The material conditions of the novel's composition, transmission and post-publication career are well known. But the signal correspondence between the text's material vicissitudes, its thematic burden, and its hermeneutic challenges are positively striking. They imply a textual assemblage demanding a most supple editorial technique: the presence and absence, the ones and zeros structuring the digital scholarly edition.

Untimely Development, Ugly History:A Drama in Muslinand the Rejection of National-Historical Time

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-183
Author(s):  
Mary L. Mullen
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Core

This article considers the politics and aesthetics of the colonial Bildungsroman by reading George Moore's often-overlooked novel A Drama in Muslin (1886). It argues that the colonial Bildungsroman does not simply register difference from the metropolitan novel of development or express tension between the core and periphery, as Jed Esty suggests, but rather can imagine a heterogeneous historical time that does not find its end in the nation-state. A Drama in Muslin combines naturalist and realist modes, and moves between Ireland and England to construct a form of untimely development that emphasises political processes (dissent, negotiation) rather than political forms (the state, the nation). Ultimately, the messy, discordant history represented in the novel shows the political potential of anachronism as it celebrates the untimeliness of everyday life.

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
Keyword(s):  
Gender Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Flood Zone ◽  
The Social ◽  
Russian North ◽  
And Gender

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.

The reality of translating literature from Hebrew to Arabic The novel as a model

2020 ◽  
pp. 149-164
Author(s):  
أميرة عبد الحفيظ عمارة
Keyword(s):  
Financial Support ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
The State ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Existential Anxiety ◽  
Publishing Houses ◽  
Arab Descent ◽  
State Of Israel

This research is interested in studying the reality of translation from Hebrew to Arabic, especially the translation of novels. The research relied on translated and published novels, from certain publishing houses, and it includes about 29 novels translated from Hebrew to Arabic. The first translation in this field was Ahavat Zion )loving Zion(, a novel by Abraham Mapu (1808-1867), translated by Salim Al-Dawoodi, and published by the Al-khidewiah Press in Cairo in 1899. Translations from Hebrew to, and vice versa, had Flourished after the establishment of the State of Israel, in particular after 1967 War, and resumed after the peace agreement with Israel. The largest wave of such translations was carried out in newspapers, magazines and academic research in part. The eighties and nineties of the last century were a period of translation activity in regard of partial translations in newspapers. The numbers of translations of full novels published so far have not exceeded thirty in most cases, and the number of translations published in Israel is approximate to the translations published in the Arab countries. The trends of novels that were translated inside Israel were of specific trends, and the translated works that were chosen were initiated, encouraged, and financed by organizations supported by the Israeli establishment. In addition, the translators also had a role in choosing the translated novels into Arabic to obtain financial support. As for the translated Hebrew works in the Arab countries, their focus was on the conditions and sufferings of the Israelis from Arab descent in Israel, and on the failure of Zionism and the issues of existential anxiety the Israelis are experiencing.

Women, Writing and the Iraqi Ba'thist State

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hawraa Al-Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
The State ◽  
Woman Question ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Resistance ◽  
Cultural Revival ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
Material Form

The book examines the trajectory of the state sponsored novel in Iraq and considers the ways in which explicitly political and/or ideological texts functioned as resistive counter narratives. It argues that both the novel and ‘progressive’ discourses on women were used as markers of Iraq’s cultural revival under the Ba‘th and were a key element in the state’s propaganda campaign within Iraq and abroad. In an effort to expand its readership and increase support for its pan-Arab project, the Iraqi Ba‘th almost completely eradicated illiteracy among women. As Iraq was metaphorically transformed into a ‘female’, through its nationalist trope, women writers simultaneously found opportunities and faced obstacles from the state, as the ‘Woman Question’ became a site of contention between those who would advocate the progressiveness of the Ba‘th and those who would stress its repressiveness and immorality. By exploring discourses on gender in both propaganda and high art fictional writings by Iraqis, this book offers an alternative narrative of the literary and cultural history of Iraq. It ultimately expands the idea of cultural resistance beyond the modern/traditional, progressive/backward paradigms that characterise discourses on Arab women and the state, and argues that resistance is embedded in the material form of texts as much as their content or ideological message.

Constitutional Rights and Social Welfare: Exploring Claims-Making Practices in Post-Apartheid South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-48
Author(s):  
Whitney K. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Neighborhood Context ◽  
The State ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
The Law ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

When do individuals choose to advance legal claims to social welfare goods? To explore this question, I turn to the case of South Africa, where, despite the adoption of a "transformative" constitution in 1996, access to social welfare goods remains sorely lacking. Drawing on an original 551-person survey, I examine patterns of legal claims-making, focusing on beliefs individuals hold about the law, rights, and the state, and how those beliefs relate to decisions about whether and how to make claims. I find striking differences between the factors that influence when people say they should file a legal claim and when they actually do so. The way that individuals interpret their own material conditions and neighborhood context are important, yet under-acknowledged, factors for explaining claims-making.

scholarly journals Anticipating Jean-Jacques Rousseau: the state of nature in the novel ‟Letters from a Peruvian Woman” by Madame de Graffigny (1747)

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 155-160
Author(s):  
Artem D. Morozov
Keyword(s):  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
The State ◽  
General Interest ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Inca Empire ◽  
Noble Savage ◽  
Moral Qualities ◽  
Intellectual Influence

The article deals with the novel ‟Letters from a Peruvian Woman” (Lettres d'une Péruvienne, 1747) by Madame de Graffigny, which anticipates many ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, including the notion of state of nature. The main character, a young Peruvian woman, who was taken away to France, embodies the concept of the ‟noble savage”. Unlike civilised Europeans she has high moral qualities, critically evaluates the institutions and customs of her time, and she aspires to the state of nature, though knowledge about this world did not make her happy. Madame de Graffigny uses the Peruvian theme according to the general interest in the age of Enlightenment in the Inca Empire, which was considered as idyllic society, organised under the laws of nature. She tries, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to display merits of savages and demerits of civilised Europeans. The intellectual influence of Madame de Graffigny and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on each other is confirmed by their personal contacts. As a result, we claim that the novel ‟Letters from a Peruvian Woman” was influenced by advanced philosophical ideas of the mid-18thcentury – this text stands at the origins of the concept of the ‟state of nature”, which eventually became one of the main terms of Rousseauism.

scholarly journals CITRA EKSOTIK DALAM NOVEL RONGGENG DUKUH PARUK

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Abu Bakar Ramadhan Muhamad
Keyword(s):  
Power Relationship ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
Aesthetic Object ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
World Region ◽  
East Region ◽  
Rearrangement Process ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
Material Conditions

Imaging of a discourse in the paradigm of postcolonialism is closely related to the issue of domination and subordination in terms of reference to imperialism or capitalization. The imagery is a project that develops special perceptions about "foreign" (East) regions. This project presupposes that the "foreign" (East) region is exotic "uncivilized" regions, standardized in a special "understanding", whose main purpose is to separate or dissolve it ("tame" the "foreign" region), so that different from or being "civilized". One area that is strongly embedded in this project is literature, with the novel as an aesthetic object. In connection with this issue, this article reveals how the East is presented in its exotic image, so how the image represents an ambivalent relationship between the East (colonized) and the West (invaders), especially in the Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk (RDP) novel by Ahamad Tohari.The results of the study show that the RDP novel is an urgent medium related to the conditions of postcoloniality. The postcoloniality is meant not only that the narrative that is displayed is the essence of what is obtained from the author about the exotic world region (the nature of Paruk dukuh) with all the signs attached to it, narration is also used as an affirmation of identity and historical existence, in the context of civilized culture. The culture in question is the source of identity that is championed as a filter and lifter, for the community that has been known and thought about, as an invitation for emancipation. Power and ability to tell stories, in this case, are used as weapons of the author in hopes of inspiring readers. The expected result is the hegemonic reader of the discourse displayed in the work of the author.In the post-colonial context, this method is inseparable from a combination where political and ideological power is interrelated, where the image represented is always still signifying the "emancipation" power relationship between the West and the East. However, like ideology, imaging must be realized other than as originating from and relating to material conditions and material effects, it is also a misrepresentation of reality and in its rearrangement process. Therefore, the potential, possibilities, and certain visions that follow, are full of content, values, or strategies for "mastering" (power). Especially in the Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk novel by Ahamad Tohari, exotic images give rise to ambivalent meanings for emancipation efforts (West to East).

Presence and absence of προαίρεσις in Christ and saints according to Maximus the Confessor and parallels in Neoplatonism

2018 ◽  
Vol 111 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-54
Author(s):  
Grigory Benevich
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Gregory Of Nyssa ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Presence And Absence ◽  
Natural Will ◽  
Maximus The Confessor

Abstract The article shows that prior to the debate with the Monothelites, Maximus the Confessor followed the Christian tradition going back to Gregory of Nyssa in recognizing the presence of προαίρεσις in Christ and the saints. Later during the debate, Maximus declined to apply προαίρεσις to Christ and started to speak about the deactivation of προαίρεσις in the saints in the state of deification. Maximus was the first Orthodox author who distinguished deliberate choice (προαίρεσις) and natural will (θέλημα), and defended the presence of natural will in Christ according to His humanity. At the same time, the opposition of desire (βούλησις) and deliberate choice (προαίρεσις) can be found in some Neoplatonists, such as Iamblichus, Proclus, and Philoponus. Iamblichus and Proclus rejected the presence of προαίρεσις in the gods and god-like humans, admitting only the presence of βούλησις - the desire for the Good. Thus, the evolution of the doctrine of Maximus the Confessor, regarding the application of προαίρε- σις to Christ and the saints, finds a parallel doctrine (and even possibly a source) in Neoplatonism.

On cultural studies, again

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-291
Author(s):  
Ien Ang
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
The State ◽  
Technological Transformation ◽  
Global Challenges ◽  
Rise Of China ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Rise Of China

This article reflects on the state of cultural studies today. It asks to what extent cultural studies can move with the times, now that we live in a radically altered world dominated by global challenges such as climate change, the rise of China, and technological transformation. It points to the importance of focusing on cultural studies’ institutional and material conditions of possibility if it is to continue to exist as a distinct intellectual field.

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