scholarly journals “For know, alas, I’m dumb, alas I love": Rhetoric of disability, female agency and tragedy in ‘The Dumb Virgin’

Sederi ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 167-192
Author(s):  
Juan de Dios Torralbo Caballero
Keyword(s):  
Disability Studies ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Female Agency ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Normal Body ◽  
Personal Effort ◽  
The Social ◽  
Established Order

This essay will focus on the two sisters of “The Dumb Virgin; or, The Force of Imagination,” addressing the crossover between disability studies, feminism and aesthetic theory. It will examine how art has the capacity to manipulate nature and how nature may be improved by the intervention of human industry. With this aesthetic duality, it will suggest that the writer reframes the concept of the ‘normal’ body, establishing a rhetoric of deformity and disability through the characters of Belvideera and Maria, both of whom overcome their natural disabilities by means of personal effort. Lastly, it will investigate the ‘misfortunes’ of several characters, paying particular attention to the educated nature of the two protagonists and how this poses a threat to the established order of society. The conclusion to be drawn from this is that their challenge to the social construct is directly responsible for the tragic climax of the narrative.

The Alluring Nature of Children's Culture: Fairy Tales, the Carnival and the World Wide Web

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-184
Author(s):  
Željka Flegar
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Mikhail Bakhtin ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Time Out ◽  
The Social ◽  
Children's Culture ◽  
Language And Ideology

This article discusses the implied ‘vulgarity’ and playfulness of children's literature within the broader concept of the carnivalesque as defined by Mikhail Bakhtin in Rabelais and His World (1965) and further contextualised by John Stephens in Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction (1992). Carnivalesque adaptations of fairy tales are examined by situating them within Cristina Bacchilega's contemporary construct of the ‘fairy-tale web’, focusing on the arenas of parody and intertextuality for the purpose of detecting crucial changes in children's culture in relation to the social construct and ideology of adulthood from the Golden Age of children's literature onward. The analysis is primarily concerned with Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes (1982) and J. K. Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard (2007/2008) as representative examples of the historically conditioned empowerment of the child consumer. Marked by ambivalent laughter, mockery and the degradation of ‘high culture’, the interrogative, subversive and ‘time out’ nature of the carnivalesque adaptations of fairy tales reveals the striking allure of contemporary children's culture, which not only accommodates children's needs and preferences, but also is evidently desirable to everybody.

The identity policy and its effect in the stability of Middle East after 2010

2019 ◽  
pp. 434
Author(s):  
Ali Hussein Kadhim Alesammi
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Stability And Instability ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Stability ◽  
International Interactions ◽  
Regional Interests ◽  
Political Groups ◽  
Identity Policy

Since 2010 Middle East have many events or what they call "Arab spring events" which it result of overthrow governments and the rise of new political groups, all of this elements was resulting of many international and regional activities and making new regional and international axles, as well as the intersections of the different regional interests, therefore this research will try to study the stability and instability in the region as an independent variable not according to the neorealism or neoliberalism theories, but according to the constructivism theory which it base their assumptions on:  "In the international relations the non-physical structures of international interactions are determined by the identities of the players, which in turn determine the interests that determine the behavior of international players." So the research questions are: 1-What is the identity policy and haw affect in international relations? 2-How the social construct affect in international relations? 3-How the elite's identities for the main actors in the Middle East affect in the regional axles?  

Performing Masculinity and the Crisis of Transclass Man in August Wilson’s Drama

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Khatija Bibi Khan ◽  
Owen Seda
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Cultural Experience ◽  
Great Cost ◽  
Social Milieu ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
The Social ◽  
North End

Feminist critics have identified the social constructedness of masculinity and have explored how male characters often find themselves caught up in a ceaseless quest to propagate and live up to an acceptable image of manliness. These critics have also explored how the effort to live up to the dictates of this social construct has often come at great cost to male protagonists. In this paper, we argue that August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone present the reader with a coterie of male characters who face the dual crisis of living up to a performed masculinity and the pitfalls that come with it, and what Mazrui has referred to as the phenomenon of “transclass man.” Mazrui uses the term transclass man to refer to characters whose socio-economic and socio-cultural experience displays a fluid degree of transitionality. We argue that the phenomenon of transclass man works together with the challenges of performed masculinity to create characters who, in an effort to adjust to and fit in with a new and patriarchal urban social milieu in America’s newly industrialised north, end up destroying themselves or failing to realise other possibilities that may be available to them. Using these two plays as illustrative examples, we further argue that staged masculinity and the crisis of transclass man in August Wilson’s plays create male protagonists who break ranks with the social values of a collectively shared destiny to pursue an individualistic personal trajectory, which only exacerbates their loss of social identity and a true sense of who they are.

scholarly journals Social Representations of Physical Disability in a Professional Environment

2021 ◽  
pp. 193672442098296
Author(s):  
Bernardeau-Moreau Denis
Keyword(s):  
Physical Disability ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
The Social ◽  
Professional Environment

Our article addresses disability as a social construct. More precisely, our intention is to see to what degree practices and exchange and interaction situations operate on social representations of physical disability in professional environments. Our aim is to provide some elements for reflection with regard to the imagined issues of physical disability in the workplace by focusing, in particular, on the social representations that they trigger among employees and managers who work with disabled colleagues on a day-to-day basis.

scholarly journals Wearable robotic exoskeletons: A socio-philosophical perspective on Duchenne muscular dystrophy research

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 404-413
Author(s):  
Alexandra Kapeller ◽  
Michael H. Nagenborg ◽  
Kostas Nizamis
Keyword(s):  
Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy ◽  
Muscular Dystrophy ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Individual Model ◽  
Engineering Sciences ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual

AbstractRecently, several research projects in the Netherlands have focused on the development of wearable robotic exoskeletons (WREs) for individuals with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Such research on WREs is often treated solely within the disciplines of biomedical and mechanical engineering, overlooking insights from disability studies and philosophy of technology. We argue that mainly two such insights should receive attention: the problematization of the ableism connected to the individual model of disability and the stigmatization by assistive technology. While disability studies have largely rejected the individual model of disability, the engineering sciences seem to still locate disability in an individual’s body, not questioning their own problematization of disability. Additionally, philosophy of technology has argued that technologies are not neutral instruments but shape users’ actions and perceptions. The design of WREs may convey a message about the understanding of disability, which can be comprehended as a challenge and an opportunity: stigmatization needs to be avoided and positive views on disability can be evoked. This article aims to highlight the benefits of considering these socio-philosophical perspectives by examining the case of WREs for people with DMD and proposing design principles for WREs. These principles may enhance acceptability of WREs, not only by individuals with DMD but also by other users, and help engineers to better place their work in the social context.

scholarly journals Twenty years of unnecessary forward slashes: towards a post-ontological critique of Tim Berners-Lee's evolving aspirations for the Web and the World Wide Web Consortium from the cultural studies perspective

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Dick
Keyword(s):  
World Wide Web ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Technological Determinism ◽  
Uniform Resource Identifier ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Alternative Means ◽  
The Web

Since it was first formally proposed in 1990 (and since the first website was launched in 1991), the World Wide Web has evolved from a collection of linked hypertext documents residing on the Internet, to a "meta-medium" featuring platforms that older media have leveraged to reach their publics through alternative means. However, this pathway towards the modernization of the Web has not been entirely linear, nor will it proceed as such. Accordingly, this paper problematizes the notion of "progress" as it relates to the online realm by illuminating two distinct perspectives on the realized and proposed evolution of the Web, both of which can be grounded in the broader debate concerning technological determinism versus the social construction of technology: on the one hand, the centralized and ontology-driven shift from a human-centred "Web of Documents" to a machine-understandable "Web of Data" or "Semantic Web", which is supported by the Web's inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, and the organization he heads, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C); on the other, the decentralized and folksonomy-driven mechanisms through which individuals and collectives exert control over the online environment (e.g. through the social networking applications that have come to characterize the contemporary period of "Web 2.0"). Methodologically, the above is accomplished through a sustained exploration of theory derived from communication and cultural studies, which discursively weaves these two viewpoints together with a technical history of recent W3C projects. As a case study, it is asserted that the forward slashes contained in a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) were a social construct that was eventually rendered extraneous by the end-user community. By focusing On the context of the technology itself, it is anticipated that this paper will contribute to the broader debate concerning the future of the Web and its need to move beyond a determinant "modernization paradigm" or over-arching ontology, as well as advance the potential connections that can be cultivated with cognate disciplines.

scholarly journals Historical Epistemology as Disability Studies Methodology: From the Models Framework to Foucault’s Archaeology of Cure

2015 ◽  
pp. 108-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aimi Hamraie
Keyword(s):  
Disability Studies ◽  
Biomedical Knowledge ◽  
Historical Epistemology ◽  
Critical Disability Studies ◽  
Medical Authority ◽  
Disability History ◽  
Models Of Disability ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Construction Of Disability

In this article, I argue for historical epistemology as a methodology for critical disability studies (DS) by examining Foucault’s archaeology of cure in History of Madness. Although the moral, medical, and social models of disability frame disability history as an advancement upon moral and medical authority and a replacement of it by sociopolitical knowledge, I argue that the more comprehensive frame in which these models circulate—the “models framework”—requires the more nuanced approach that historical epistemology offers. In particular, the models framework requires greater use of epistemology as an analytical tool for understanding the historical construction of disability. Thus, I turn to Foucault’s History of Madness in order to both excavate one particular archaeological strand in the text—the archaeology of cure—and to demonstrate how this narrative disrupts some of the key assumptions of the models framework, challenging DS to consider the epistemological force of non-medical fields of knowledge for framing disability and procedures for its cure and elimination. I conclude by arguing that DS must develop historical epistemological methodologies that are sensitive to the complex overlays of moral, medical, and social knowledge, as well as attend to the social construction of scientific and biomedical knowledge itself.

scholarly journals RELIGION AND RELATIONS BETWEEN GENDERS

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-158
Author(s):  
Miroljub Jevtić
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Legal Structure ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
Positive Rights ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Familial Relations

Contemporary world rests on an idea of an inalienable equality regardless of one’s faith, ethnicity or race. An important factor that impacts such inalienable equality is religion. Religions have a well developed view of the world and society that includes detailed arrangements between genders. In some religions, the legal social construct is very much related to the theology. These religions demand that the rules of familial relations acquire the power of positive rights. It is through these channels that religious tradition and practice become part of a legal structure in some parts of the world. The consequences are felt on the social and political relations between genders as well as on relations between religions in those societies.

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