scholarly journals Verhale oor die Anglo-Boereoorlog

Literator ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 85-98
Author(s):  
C. N. Van der Merwe
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
Boer War ◽  
The Past ◽  
War Experience ◽  
War Stories

Fiction on the Anglo-Boer War This article gives an overview of fictional prose about the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. In contrast to the desire of many people to “forgive and forget" this past war, some authors for example Gustav Preller and D.F. Malherbe, told stories to remind the reader of the suffering of the past. Stereotypical patterns in a number of conventional war stories are mentioned in the article, followed by a discussion of fictional texts deviating from these conventional patterns - inter alia, works by Johannes van Melle and J.R.L. van Bruggen. In conclusion, texts are analysed which use the war experience to illuminate the general human condition: works by Etienne Leroux, Elsa Joubert and others.

War Stories and Poems

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudyard Kipling
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Boer War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Stories ◽  
First World

A unique anthology of Kipling’s war stories and poems, from the frontier wars of empire to the Boer War and the First World War.

Touching the Past to Remember the Past

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-397
Author(s):  
Meghan J. Dudley ◽  
Jenna Domeischel
Keyword(s):  
Social Memory ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Public Archaeology ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Archaeological Theory ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Introductory Article

ABSTRACTAlthough we, as archaeologists, recognize the value in teaching nonprofessionals about our discipline and the knowledge it generates about the human condition, there are few of these specialists compared to the number of archaeologists practicing today. In this introductory article to the special section titled “Touching the Past to Learn the Past,” we suggest that, because of our unique training as anthropologists and archaeologists, each of us has the potential to contribute to public archaeology education. By remembering our archaeological theory, such as social memory, we can use the artifacts we engage with on a daily basis to bridge the disconnect between what the public hopes to gain from our interactions and what we want to teach them. In this article, we outline our perspective and present an overview of the other three articles in this section that apply this approach in their educational endeavors.

scholarly journals “Prefer not, eh?”: Re-Scribing the Lives of the Great War Poets in Contemporary British Historical Fiction

2018 ◽  
pp. 125
Author(s):  
María Cristina Pividori
Keyword(s):  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Great War ◽  
Historiographic Metafiction ◽  
Siegfried Sassoon ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
The Past ◽  
British Fiction ◽  
Post War ◽  
War Experience ◽  
The Great War

Although the First World War has become history by now, the memory of the war continues to be repeatedly fictionalised: retrospectively inspired narratives are often regarded as more genuine and far-reaching than historical or documentary accounts in their rendition of the past. Yet, memory is creatively selective, reflecting a highly-conflicted process of sifting and discerning what should be remembered, neglected or amplified from the stream of war experience. In his book about Pat Barker, Mark Rawlinson argues that “historical fiction has been transformed in the post-war period by the way writers have exploited the porous and unstable demarcation between fiction and no fiction, stories and history” (14). Jill Dawson’s The Great Lover (2009), Geoff Akers’s Beating for the Light: The Story of Isaac Rosenberg (2006) and Robert Edric’s In Zodiac Light (2008) have not become best sellers like Barker’s Regeneration trilogy; yet, they too represent the predominant commemorative drift in contemporary British fiction about the Great War. Without doubt, these three authors have followed in Barker’s steps in their purpose of holding a mirror to real people and real events in the past and of deciphering the deleted text of ‘the war to end all wars.’ However, while Barker chose to write about the often-anthologised Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Dawson, Akers and Edric base their narratives on the writings, and lives, of Rupert Brooke, Isaac Rosenberg and Ivor Gurney respectively. My discussion of these three novels will explore the various ways in which the past can be accessed and interpreted from the present and represented in fiction. The authors’ decisions as to what historical instances to unravel do not just reveal the relation that contemporary British fiction entertains with the Great War and with history, but also how the past erupts in the present to interrogate it. Taking three salient features of Hutcheon’s “historiographic metafiction” (1988)—intertextuality, parody and paratextuality—as my theoretical points of departure, I will explore the dominant frameworks and cultural conditions (that is the propagation of either patriotic or protest readings) within which the Great War has been narrated in the novels and the new approaches, opportunities and ethical implications of using historical and literary sources to re-scribe a previously non-existent version of the lives of the iconic Great War Poets.

An Answer to a Question that Cannot Be Answered: A Pragmatist Approach to Viktor Frankl’s and Primo Levi’s Theoretical Perspectives on Humor

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Jarno Hietalahti
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
The Past ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
The Future ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
Pragmatist Philosophy ◽  
The Human Condition

Abstract This article offers a pragmatist approach to concentration camp humor, in particular, to Viktor Frankl’s and Primo Levi’s conceptualizations of humor. They both show how humor does not vanish even in the worst imaginable circumstances. Despite this similarity, it will be argued that their intellectual positions on humor differ significantly. The main difference between the two authors is that according to Frankl, humor is elevating in the middle of suffering, and according to Levi, humor expresses the absurdity of the idea of concentration camps, but this is not necessarily a noble reaction. Through a critical synthesis based on pragmatist philosophy, it will be claimed that humor in concentration camps expresses the human condition in the entirely twisted situation. This phenomenon cannot be understood without considering forms of life, how drastic the changes from the past were, and what people expected from the future, if anything.

I. Plutarch's Life

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Past ◽  
Greek History

The fifth and fourth century bc were truly the pinnacle of Greek history and culture. In those golden days, one could deliberate on political matters with Themistocles and Pericles; discuss our human condition with Socrates and Plato and the past with Herodotus and Thucydides; watch the superb plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; visit the brand-new Acropolis at Athens or consult Apollo at Delphi; drop in at Polyclitus’ workshop or marvel at a skilfully decorated black-figure Panathenaic amphora. It was, however, also a period in which Greeks were still Greeks, whereas the rest were conveniently despised as barbarians. Greeks confidently bashed barbarian brains in (at Marathon, for instance, or Plataea) and were even proud of it. After all, they did it in a culturally justified way. With fellow Greeks, matters were somewhat different. Their brains were likewise crushed, to be sure, and even in such cases, the slaughter was usually not devoid of a certain feeling of ideological superiority, yet to refined Greek ears, the cracking of Greek skulls must have sounded differently from the smashing of the skull of an ordinary effeminate barbarian. Athenians, Spartans, and Thebans could often drink each other's blood (in a skilfully decorated cup), no doubt, but in the end, they all remained fellow Greeks.

Technic Self-Determination

2014 ◽  
pp. 203-224
Author(s):  
Franco Cortese
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Will ◽  
Human Capacity ◽  
Enhancement Technologies ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter addresses concerns that the development and proliferation of Human Enhancement Technologies (HET) will be (a) dehumanizing and a threat to human dignity and (b) a threat to our autonomy and sovereignty as individuals. Contrarily, HET can be shown to constitute the most effective foreseeable means of increasing the autonomy and sovereignty of individual members of society. Furthermore, this chapter elaborates the position that the use of HET exemplifies—and indeed even intensifies—our most human capacity and faculty, namely the desire for increased self-determination (i.e., control over the determining circumstances and conditions of our own selves and lives), which is referred to as the will toward self-determination. Based upon this position, arguably, the use of HET bears fundamental ontological continuity with the human condition in general and with the historically ubiquitous will toward self-determination in particular as it is today and has been in the past. HET will not be a dehumanizing force, but will rather serve to increase the very capacity and characteristic that characterizes us as human more accurately than anything else.

scholarly journals Thematic Preoccupation of Nigerian Literature: A Critical Approach

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Adetuyi, Chris Ajibade
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
The Past ◽  
Public Property ◽  
Economic Exploitation ◽  
Nigerian Literature

Nigerian literature takes "matter" from the realities of Nigerian living conditions and value systems in the past and present. In the Nigerian society the writer, be it a novelist, dramatist or poet is a sensitive "questioner" and reformer; as all literature in a way is criticism of the human condition obtainable in the society it mirrors. The writer often cannot help exposing the bad and the ugly in man and society. Thus much of Nigerian literature is a deploration of the harsh and inhuman condition in which the majority of Nigerians live in i.e. poverty, misery, political oppression, economic exploitation, excesses of the affluent, liquidation of humane Nigerian traditional values, and all forms of injustices which seem to be the lot of a large majority in most Nigerian societies.In drama, novel, poetry or short - story, the writer's dialogue with his physical and human environment comes out as a mirror in which his people and society can see what they look like. Every image painted by a skillful artist is expressed or put into writing / print, becomes public property and leaves itself open for evaluation by those who read and understand the language and expression. There is therefore a need to identify the thematic preoccupation of Nigeria literature which is the focus of this paper with a view to identifying their peculiarities with textual references.

Pissing On the Past: The Highland Clearances, Effigial Resistance and the Everyday Politics of the Urinal

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 444-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Saunders ◽  
Rhys Crilley
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Political Intervention ◽  
Highland Clearances ◽  
Hautes Terres ◽  
Public Toilets

When and where one can urinate is increasingly politicised around the globe. As an example of bio-political power, the provision, regulation and access to public toilets reflects larger structures in any given society. However, there is another side to micturition, that is the use of urine as a manifestation of bodily power over another/others. This article analyses the politics of the urinal through a close reading of the men’s toilet in The Lismore pub in Partick, Scotland, thus bringing together these two threads via the concept of everyday effigial resistance. In our interrogation of a politicised urinal that asks users to ‘piss’ on historical figures associated with the Highland Clearances, we aim to push International Relations to follow Enloe’s call for the study of ‘mundane practices… and the most intimate spaces’ by considering the most banal aspects of the human condition as part of its remit. Our case study serves as an explicit political intervention, one which through its geographic and geopolitical scales makes an argument for engaging with the mundane, vernacular and vulgar in everyday IR. Pisser sur le passé : les dédouanements des hautes terres, la résistance à l’effigie et la politique quotidienne de l’urinoir

Presenting the Past: The Genre of Commentary in Theoretical Perspective

2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Theoretical Discussion ◽  
Traditional Concept ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis article provides a theoretical discussion of the genre of commentary writing. Rather than examining the role of commentary in a specific religion, it attempts to articulate a set of useful questions to begin the process of rethinking what this genre is and, in the process, help create a theoretical vocabulary and conceptual framework for an analysis of commentary from the history of religions. The article is divided into three parts. The first broadens the traditional concept of a "canon", ostensibly the raw data upon which the commentary imposes a taxonomy. The second argues that the human condition, what Heidegger calls the way in which we are thrown into the world, demands that we interpret it. Finally, it is suggested that commentary is fundamentally about location or space, thereby providing the classificatory schema that is necessary for contextualizing both past and present. The main goal of this article is to problematize the current discussion of commentary in a theoretical way.

The Return of Adam: Freud's Myth of the Fall

1993 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-296
Author(s):  
David Humbert
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Oedipus Complex ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Death Instinct ◽  
Psychological Constructs ◽  
The Past ◽  
Psychological Theories

Despite its loss of intellectual respectability in the nineteenth century, the myth of the fall still haunts modern religion and thought like an unquiet ghost. Discredited in its role as an historical account of human origins, it has retained its vitality as a ‘psychological’ myth, an inexhaustible metaphor for the brokeness and fragmentation of the human spirit. The myth of the fall surfaces in the twentieth century in the form of the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud, who would not normally spring to mind as someone sympathetic to the myth. Freud is perhaps the most famous ‘demythologizer’ of religion. He traced all religion and myth, including the myth of original sin, back to non-spiritual psychological processes. But although he clearly wished to deconstruct all traditional myth, myth plays an indisputable role in his own psychological theories. Some of his psychological constructs, such as the ‘Oedipus complex’ and the concept of ‘narcissism’, are inspired by Greek myths. Others, like the theory of the death instinct, are founded on scientific speculations which clearly resemble myths. The myth of the primal horde in particular draws its rhetorical power from its similarity to the Biblical account of the fall. Both the Biblical account of the fall and the psychohistorical ‘myth’ of the primal horde attribute the conflicts and imperfections of the human condition in part to an inherited guilt, an inherited guilt which stems from a decisive and fateful historical event in the past.

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