Creative Confinement and Narratives of Violence: Charles Baudelaire, Shumona Sinha and Assommons les pauvres!

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-75
Author(s):  
SONYA STEPHENS

This article examines the relationship between Baudelaire’s prose poem, “Assommons les pauvres!” (Le Spleen de Paris, 1869) and Shumona Sinha’s 2011 novel of the same title. Focusing on questions of reading and intertextuality, from Baudelaire’s reference to Proudhon to Sinha’s engagement with the prose poem and Le Spleen de Paris more broadly, it explores forms of confinement and creativity, the connections between narrative and freedom and the ways in which lyrical subjectivity and literary form reflect the social challenges of each period. In expressing socio-cultural and linguistic alienation, these texts centre the textual in an exploration of the marginal, thereby demonstrating that the connection between them goes beyond a critical act of violence and the presumed equality or dignity it confers, to represent a shared interrogation of universalism, multiculturalism, and authorial and political power.

2020 ◽  
pp. 003329412095724
Author(s):  
Abby Howes ◽  
Gareth Richards ◽  
John Galvin

Self-compassion refers to the extension of kindness to oneself when faced with feelings of inadequacies, shortcomings or failures. It is possible that individuals high in autistic traits may encounter difficulties with self-compassion, and this could be particularly pronounced due to the social challenges they might face. To explore this potential relationship, we recruited university students and members of the general population to an online survey (n = 176). Participants completed measures on demographics, autistic traits, and self-compassion. We found that autistic traits were indeed negatively correlated with self-compassion in both males and females. Interestingly, a comparison of the slopes showed significantly stronger relationships in males compared to females for the negative (but not the positive) subscales of the self-compassion scale. Although speculative at this point, it is possible that self-compassion acts as a mediator between autistic traits and psychopathology. With this in mind, further work is warranted to determine whether self-compassion could be a target for therapeutic intervention.


2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-212
Author(s):  
Larry R. Hearld ◽  
Jeffrey A. Alexander ◽  
Laura J. Wolf ◽  
Yunfeng Shi

Cross-sector collaborative organizations are increasingly viewed as an effective means of addressing multifaceted health and social challenges. Given their dependence on volunteers to develop and implement strategy, members’ perceptions of future strategic priorities is a critical concern for leaders and sponsors of these organizations. Research set in more hierarchical, single-sector organizations acknowledges the important relationship between structure and strategy; however, relatively little research has explored these relationships in the context of collaborative organizations. We examined these relationships using multiple rounds of an Internet survey. All three dimensions of social structure (locus of decision making, formalization, and integration) had independent associations with participant’ perceptions of different strategic priorities, suggesting there is more than one approach to influencing the perceived priorities of the alliance. However, some dimensions of the social structure changed more than other dimensions over time, highlighting differential opportunities for influencing strategic priorities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (Special Issue Nr. 1) ◽  
pp. 41-48
Author(s):  
Zoltán Nagy ◽  
Géza Tóth ◽  
Krisztina Varga

Technological and economic innovations cannot respond to all social challenges. Natural and material resources are becoming ever scarcer, so it is necessary to use investment assets, maximizing social and economic efficiency. It is a major task to address the backwardness originating from regional disparities and to create opportunities for catching up in peripheral regions. The study, based on the process-oriented model defined in our previous studies and the determination of the social innovation potential, tries to determine the relationship between social innovation potential, the spatial position of developmental image, and regional differences and population change in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County.


Author(s):  
Emile De Rosnay

Charles Baudelaire is a pivotal figure of modernist aesthetics. His contributions to poetry, the prose poem and criticism, as well as his focus on urban modernity and the psychological consequences of industrialization, have had an undeniable impact on modernism. He is amongst the first to have connected historical modernity to aesthetic modernity, in works such as Les Fleurs du mal, Spleen de Paris (Petits poèmes en prose), and Le Peintre de la vie moderne.


Author(s):  
Ruha Benjamin

In this response to Terence Keel and John Hartigan’s debate over the social construction of race, I aim to push the discussion beyond the terrain of epistemology and ideology to examine the contested value of racial science in a broader political economy. I build upon Keel’s concern that even science motivated by progressive aims may reproduce racist thinking and Hartigan’s proposition that a critique of racial science cannot rest on the beliefs and intentions of scientists. In examining the value of racial-ethnic classifications in pharmacogenomics and precision medicine, I propose that analysts should attend to the relationship between prophets of racial science (those who produce forecasts about inherent group differences) and profits of racial science (the material-semiotic benefits of such forecasts). Throughout, I draw upon the idiom of speculation—as a narrative, predictive, and financial practice—to explain how the fiction of race is made factual, again and again. 


Author(s):  
Solomon A. Keelson ◽  
Thomas Cudjoe ◽  
Manteaw Joy Tenkoran

The present study investigates diffusion and adoption of corruption and factors that influence the rate of adoption of corruption in Ghana. In the current study, the diffusion and adoption of corruption and the factors that influence the speed with which corruption spreads in society is examined within Ghana as a developing economy. Data from public sector workers in Ghana are used to conduct the study. Our findings based on the results from One Sample T-Test suggest that corruption is perceived to be high in Ghana and diffusion and adoption of corruption has witnessed appreciative increases. Social and institutional factors seem to have a larger influence on the rate of corruption adoption than other factors. These findings indicate the need for theoretical underpinning in policy formulation to face corruption by incorporating the relationship between the social values and institutional failure, as represented by the rate of corruption adoption in developing economies.


Author(s):  
Oleksii Chepov ◽  

The qualitative and clear definition of the legal regime of the capital of Ukraine, the hero city of Kyiv, is influenced by its legislative enshrinement, however, it should be noted that discussions are ongoing and one of the reasons for the unclear legal status of the capital is the ambiguity of current legislation in this area. Separation of the functions of the city of Kyiv, which are carried out to ensure the rights of citizens of Ukraine and the functions that guarantee the rights of the territorial community of the city of Kyiv. In the modern world, in legal doctrine and practice, the capital is understood as the capital of the country, which at the legislative level received this status and, accordingly, is the administrative and political center of the state, which houses the main state bodies and diplomatic missions of other states. It is the identification of the boundaries of the relationship between the competencies of state administrations and local self-government, in practice, often raises questions about their delimitation and ways of regulatory solution. Peculiarities of local self-government in Kyiv city districts are defined in the provisions of the Law on the Capital, which reveal the norms of the Constitution in these legal relations, according to which the issue of organizing district management in cities belongs to city councils. Likewise, it is unregulated by law to lose the particularity of the legal status of the territory of the city. It should be emphasized that the subject of administrative-legal relations is not a certain administrative-territorial entity, but the social group is designated - the territorial community of the city of Kiev, kiyani. Thus, the provisions on the city of Kyiv partially ignore the potential of the territorial community.


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