scholarly journals Un-thinking the West: The spirit of doing Black Theology of Liberation in decolonial times

2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vuyani S. Vellem
Keyword(s):  
Black Theology ◽  
Knowledge Systems ◽  
The Self ◽  
Gender Violence ◽  
The West ◽  
Black African ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Theoretical Foundations ◽  
Theology Of Liberation

It is indisputable that Black Theology of Liberation (BTL) intentionally un-thinks the West. BTL has its own independent conceptual and theoretical foundations and can hold without the West if it rejects the architecture of Western knowledge as a final norm for life. This, however, is a spiritual matter which the article argues. The historical arrest of the progression of liberative logic and its promises might be self-inflicted by rearticulating and reinterpreting liberation strong thought. At a time when neofascism, which is virtually an open display of psychological and ideological confusion, racism, classism, sensibilities of integralism and gender violence, having become rife, liberal democracy is arguably in crisis today. BTL has to move beyond rethinking and repeating its tried and tested ways of response to black pain caused by racism and colonialism. Un-thinking the West is not only cognitive but also spiritual. Umoya, the spirit of life, the article argues, to un-think the West, constitutes inter alia, the rejection of Hellenocentric concepts as a starting point of knowledge. Umoya should reject the self-serving periodisation of history centred on Europe, dualistic obfuscating secularism and willingness by black to occlude their knowledge systems. Without this, the article argues, the lethargic sleep, the mocking laughter of the West at the self-wounding black African remains a syndrome that arrests the translation of liberation knowledge from history.

scholarly journals “I Am Not Good at Any of This.” Playing with Homoeroticism in The Arabian Nights

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 480
Author(s):  
Frank G. Bosman
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Self ◽  
French Translation ◽  
The West ◽  
Arabian Nights ◽  
Safe Environment ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Cross Dressing ◽  
And Gender

The story collection known in the West as The Arabian Nights or One Thousand and One Nights, is famous, among other things, for its erotic playfulness. This eroticism was (and is) one of the key reasons for its continuous popularity after Antoine Galland’s French translation in 1704. The Arabian Nights includes, besides traditional, heterosexual acts, play, and desires, examples of homoerotic playfulness—even though we must tread lightly when using such Western concepts with an oriental text body such as this one. The homoerotic playfulness of The Arabian Nights is the subject of this article. By making use of a text-immanent analysis of two of the Nights’ stories—of Qamar and Budûr and of Alî Shâr and Zumurrud—the author of this article focuses on the reversal of common gender roles, acts of cross-dressing, and, of course, homoerotic play. He will argue that these stories provide a narrative safe environment in which the reader is encouraged to “experiment” with non-normative sexual and gender orientations, leaving the dominant status quo effectively and ultimately unchallenged, thus preventing the (self-proclaimed) defenders of that status quo from feeling threatened enough to actively counter-act the experiment.

scholarly journals Ebuhlanti Amandla ngawethu: Womanism and black theology of liberation, in memory of Vuyani Shadrack Vellem

2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fundiswa A. Kobo
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
Black Consciousness ◽  
The West ◽  
Women’S Experiences ◽  
Women's Experiences ◽  
Heuristic Device ◽  
A Site ◽  
Theology Of Liberation

The liberation of black humanity has been an area of scholarly reflection by black theologians and the black consciousness communities. The constructs of oppression such as race, class and sexism amongst others have been critiqued in the quest for liberation of a fragmented black humanity. In this article, this quest for liberation happens within ubuhlanti [kraal], a site for which Vuyani Vellem is ‘like a hermeneutical circle, where the mediations of the bonds of spheres and the instantiation of their life take place’. By looking at a fragmented black humanity and black women’s experiences, we posit that no western framework could ever be representative of those bodies, ubuhlanti becomes our solution as a heuristic device and symbol of a communication of the efficacy of integrated life. From a womanist perspective, ubuhlanti decentres the West. Ebuhlanti Amandla ngawethu [power belongs to us], as black women and men dialogue issues that affect black humanity. The whole proposition of this dialogue ebuhlanti is animated by our lived experiences, which already offer alternatives for us to decentre.Contribution: Premised by the lived experiences of black humanity in their quest for liberation, this paper contributes in the dewesternising discourse by presenting alternative epistemologies and spiritualities. A womanist dialogue with black theology of liberation ebuhlanti, a decolonising and decentring praxis for the liberation of black humanity is our solution as blacks.

Nature, Self, and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy, and the Critique of Rationalism

Hypatia ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Val Plumwood
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Deep Ecology ◽  
Environmental Philosophy ◽  
The Self ◽  
The West ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Instrumental View

Rationalism is the key to the connected oppressions of women and nature in the West. Deep ecology has failed to provide an adequate historical perspective or an adequate challenge to human/nature dualism. A relational account of self enables us to reject an instrumental view of nature and develop an alternative based on respect without denying that nature is distinct from the self. This shift of focus links feminist, environmentalist, and certain forms of socialist critiques. The critique of anthropocentrism is not sacrificed, as deep ecologists argue, but enriched.

Toward the Study of the Psychodynamics of Mothering and Gender in Egyptian Families

1987 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mervat Hatem
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Critical Importance ◽  
The West ◽  
Specific Nature ◽  
Emotional Processes ◽  
Theoretical Synthesis ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
Gendered Roles ◽  
And Gender

Feminist interest in the social origins and the emotional/psychological development of gender roles has led to a new theoretical debate on the critical importance of mothering. The feminist contribution in this area lies in the formulation of a successful theoretical synthesis of Marxist and psychoanalytic insights to explain the development of gendered roles and personalities in contemporary capitalist society. In contrast to conventional Freudian approaches, which posit the universality of the psychological/emotional processes by which the self is developed, the feminist critics emphasize the historically (and socially) specific nature of the family, mothering patterns, and the way such patterns influence the development of gendered personalities in the West.

scholarly journals Tumelo le Moruo

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vuyani S. Vellem
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
The West ◽  
Black Africans ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Theology Of Liberation

Paleng ya rona batho ba batsho, tumelo ya boKreste e fihlile lefatsheng la rona la Afrika Borwa mmoho le dikgoka tsa ditjhaba tsa boPhirima. BoKreste bo fihlile ka nako ya dintwa tseo mohopolo wa tsona e neng e le ho hapa lefatshe la, batho ba batsho. Ka mantswe amang, rona batho ba batsho, re ile ra qetella re le setjhaba se ileng sa hlolwa, mme lefatshe la rona la nkuwa ka dikgoka. Ka hare ho dikgoka tsena, ho ne ho dutse tumelo ya boKreste. Makgowa a ile are: �A re kwaleng mahlo re rapeleng, rona ra kwala mahlo, mme ha re qeta hore Amen, re bula mahlo, ra fumana lefatshe le nkuwe matsohong a rona ho setse Bibele.� Re ile ra sala le Bibele eo ka yona re lekileng dilemong tse fitileng ho lwana ntwa ya topollo, kapa tokoloho hofihlela selemong sa 1994. Le ha re ile ra fumana tokoloho ka selemo seo, hare so ka re lokoloha ho tsa moruo. E kaba sena se bolela eng mabapi le tumelo ya rona ya boKreste? Segolweng sena re leka ho araba potso ena. Tumelo ke eng ho batho ba sa lokolohang moruong wa naha ya bona? Re lekola pale ya boKreste, tumelo ya batho le maemo a kereke ntlheng ya ho tadimana le tokoloho ka tumelo.Faith and economics. In our history from a black perspective, Christianity arrived through violent conquest from the west. Evidentially, this faith coincided with wars of dispossession and the ultimate defeat of black Africans. It is difficult to separate the violent defeat of black Africans from the arrival of Christian faith. This well-known statement within the circles of black Theology of liberation: When the white man arrived in our land he said, �let us pray and after prayer, when we opened our eyes, our land was taken and only the Bible was left in our hands,� captures the black sentiment of this history. Ironically, it was this Bible that black Africans used to wage their struggle for liberation up to the demise of apartheid in 1994.Nonetheless, political liberation is not enough as the struggle for economic liberation continue in South Africa post 1994. In the light of this history, what then is the role of faith for a people politically liberated without economic liberation? This article examines this history from the perspective of black faith and its role for liberation.

scholarly journals Production of the Self during the Age of Confessionalism

1996 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Warren Sabean
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Multiple Selves ◽  
The West ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
History Of ◽  
Identity Privacy ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Individual

During the last several decades, the history of the self, its nature, essential shifts, and trajectory have undergone considerable re-examination. The Western Civilization textbook premise that the history of the West and the rise of individualism correlate closely with each other is being critically examined. There are a number of different historical, anthropological, literary, and sociological discourses about bodies, memory, conscience, subjectivity, identity, privacy, sexuality, and gender, which have developed separate narratives about the self, frequently (mostly) in isolation from one another. Some recent feminist theory finds the thesis of individualism irrelevant for women and suggests that the self as a continuing story (autobiography) is gendered. Some theorists counter the creative possibilities of forgetting to a self constructed around a memory core. Multiple selves, schizoid selves, and decentered selves challenge older ideas of identity. The dialectic between public and private produces new problems about who “owns” the self, its image, and its location. Bodies, sexualities, and desire turn out to be shaped and disciplined within hidden forms of power. Old ideas about the rise of the individual and new ones about the pathologies of the self make the self and its history a central issue for contemporary debate.

scholarly journals The Two Cultures Revisited. Stanisław Lem’s His Master’s Voice

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 463-478
Author(s):  
Dominika Oramus
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
The West ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Stanislaw Lem ◽  
The 1960S

I would like to take, as my starting point, the famous 1959 lecture of C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures, where science fiction is by and large ignored, and see how the consecutive points Snow is making are also discussed in the following decades of the 20th century by other philosophers of science, among them Stanisław Lem, Steven Weinberg, and Jonathan Gottschall. In 1959 Snow postulated re-uniting the two cultures through the reform of education. In the 1960s and 1970s Lem did not believe in any reform, but prophesied that science left alone would procure the final war and, probably, the self-inflicted technological death of the West. I am then going to juxtapose Snow’s argument with a science fiction novel concerned with the same civilizational crisis: Stanis law Lem’s His Master’s Voice.

scholarly journals ¿Por qué aún la violencia de género? Una respuesta conceptual a la persecución contra quienes no caben en las categorías “hombre” o “mujer”

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Saray Guevara Osorio
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Conceptual Structure ◽  
Gender Violence ◽  
Symbolic Order ◽  
The West ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
Human Difference ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Many

Resumen: En el presente artículo indago sobre el fenó- meno de la violencia y lo analizo en su estructura fun- cional y conceptual con el propósito de continuar la deconstrucción que hacen el feminismo y la teoría de género, entendiendo por género la amplitud de la dife- rencia sexual, es decir,  las múltiples formas der darse  el ser sexual. Evidencio dicho fenómeno de la violencia como causa a la vez que efecto del orden simbólico, so- cial, económico, político y cultural de Occidente. Es así como expongo la violencia como resultado de la funda- mentación conceptual de la categorización del mundo sexual, producto a su vez de la bipolaridad extrema de la categoría de lo humano; visibilizando así, una repro- ducción esquemática que legitima el ejercicio pleno de la violencia en su amplitud conceptual, pero que designa como blancos, a cuerpos precisos.Palabras  claves:  violencia,  diferencia  humana,  sexo, género, deconstrucción.Why Still Gender Violence? A Conceptual Answer to Persecution against Those Who Do Not Fit into the Categories of Man or Woman Abstract: In the present article I analyze the phenomenon of violence, its functional and conceptual structure, in order to further the deconstruction operated by feminism and gender theory, understanding gender as the full gamut of sexual difference, i.e. the many forms taken by sexual being. The phenomenon of violence is evidenced as both cause and effect of the symbolic order in the West, in its social, economic, political and cultural aspects. Thus I present violence as a result of the conceptual basis for the categorization of the sexual world, due in turn   to the extreme bipolarity of the category of the human, thereby making visible a schematic reproduction that fully legitimates violence in its conceptual scope, but which designates specific bodies as its targets.Keywords:   violence,   human   difference,   sex, gender, deconstruction.

Self-Compassion and Quality of Life in Adults Who Stutter

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 2097-2108
Author(s):  
Robyn L. Croft ◽  
Courtney T. Byrd
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Social Connectedness ◽  
The Self ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Self Compassion ◽  
Adults Who Stutter ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Impact

Purpose The purpose of this study was to identify levels of self-compassion in adults who do and do not stutter and to determine whether self-compassion predicts the impact of stuttering on quality of life in adults who stutter. Method Participants included 140 adults who do and do not stutter matched for age and gender. All participants completed the Self-Compassion Scale. Adults who stutter also completed the Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering. Data were analyzed for self-compassion differences between and within adults who do and do not stutter and to predict self-compassion on quality of life in adults who stutter. Results Adults who do and do not stutter exhibited no significant differences in total self-compassion, regardless of participant gender. A simple linear regression of the total self-compassion score and total Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering score showed a significant, negative linear relationship of self-compassion predicting the impact of stuttering on quality of life. Conclusions Data suggest that higher levels of self-kindness, mindfulness, and social connectedness (i.e., self-compassion) are related to reduced negative reactions to stuttering, an increased participation in daily communication situations, and an improved overall quality of life. Future research should replicate current findings and identify moderators of the self-compassion–quality of life relationship.

The Self-Description Questionnaire-1: A Lithuanian Application

1995 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Watkins ◽  
Anne McCreary Juhasz ◽  
Aldona Walker ◽  
Nijole Janvlaitiene
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Factor Structure ◽  
Response Bias ◽  
Internal Consistency ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
The Self ◽  
Nigerian Children ◽  
Gender Biases ◽  
And Gender

Analysis of the responses of 139 male and 83 female Lithuanian 12-14 year-olds to a translation of the Self-Description Questionnaire-1 (SDQ-1; Marsh, 1988 ) supported the internal consistency and factor structure of this instrument. Some evidence of a “positivity” response bias was found, however. Comparison of the Lithuanian responses to those of like-aged Australian, Chinese, Filipino, Nepalese, and Nigerian children indicated the Lithuanians tended to report rather lower self-esteem. The Lithuanian males also tended to report lower self-esteem than their female peers. Interpretation of the results are considered in terms of reactions to the recent upheavals in Eastern Europe, stable cultural dimensions, and possible cultural and gender biases in the items of the SDQ-1.

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