scholarly journals Between freedom and self-subjection: the dilemma of writing in an African language

Literator ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Maake

This article is an analysis of the dilemmas that confront an author who chooses to write in an African language. (Language choice remains a particularly vexing issue in African literature.) On the one hand a language that he is a master of gives him the freedom to assert himself and oppose the imperial way of thinking, which is liberating. On the other hand choice of language confines his work to a specific audience and a particular set of literary canons. Sometimes certain influential gatekeepers overtly prescribe boundaries and limit the possibilities of transcending them. On the other hand, as a case study of Sesotho literature shows, the literature itself manifests generic and thematic propensities that limit the freedom of literary expression. From the subjective and privileged position of being a writer in Sesotho himself the author in the end makes a number of suggestions on how to overcome this stifling status quo.

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-194
Author(s):  
Shailendra Kumar Singh

The theme of nationalism in the works of Premchand, the pre-eminent Urdu–Hindi writer of the 1920s and 1930s, not only serves as an organising principle but also constitutes a protean and contentious field of study, which has resulted in conflicting interpretations. On the one hand, his nationalist narratives are categorically denounced for their apparent lack of radicalism, while on the other hand, they are unequivocally valorised for their so-called subversive content. Both these diametrically opposed schools of criticism, however, share a common lacuna, that is, both of them tend to conflate the writer’s nationalist narratives with his peasant discourse, thereby precluding the possibility of different themes yielding different interpretations. This article examines the theme of nationalism in Premchand’s works, in general, and the question of civil resistance in particular, in order to demonstrate how the writer’s politics of representation in his nationalist writings differs from the one that we find in his peasant narratives. It argues that as opposed to the authorial valorisation of the fictive peasant’s conformity to the exploitative status quo, civil resistance in Premchand’s nationalist narratives is not only necessary and desirable but also synonymous with dharma (moral duty) itself.


1990 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-153
Author(s):  
Brian Langille

It is not transparently obvious why legal theorists are increasingly attracted to the ideas and methods of Ludwig Wittgenstein. After all, Wittgenstein’s writings are notoriously difficult and he said almost nothing, and certainly nothing sustained, about law. And why would self-proclaimed legal theorists be attracted to someone who was quite explicitly hostile to “theory”, who viewed philosophy as a sort of therapy, and who said, famously, “philosophy leaves everything as it is”? But a still more interesting question is, why has Wittgenstein received such curious and conflicting treatment at the hands of the critical legal theorists? On the one hand critical legal theory celebrates Wittgenstein’s work as a key to the dismantling of traditional jurisprudence, but on the other hand critical scholars bemoan his alleged debilitating endorsement of the status quo. It is this last question upon which this essay is focussed.


Urban Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (10) ◽  
pp. 2031-2046
Author(s):  
Salla Jokela

There have been two types of scholarly discussion on city branding. On the one hand, city branding has been conceptualised as a differentiation strategy of entrepreneurial cities involved in interspatial competition. On the other hand, researchers have recently emphasised the need to pay attention to increasingly pervasive and transformative forms of city branding, including branding as an urban policy and a form of planning. Drawing on a case study carried out in Helsinki, Finland, this article connects these two approaches by analysing Helsinki’s recent city branding endeavour in the context of the qualitative transformation of the entrepreneurial city. The article shows how city branding highlights and constitutes the city as an entrepreneurial platform and enabler bound up by the extended entrepreneurialisation of society.


2020 ◽  
pp. 105268462097206
Author(s):  
Jeff Walls

Schools are expected to be sites of caring, but there is evidence that both students and adults often experience them as uncaring places. One reason is that a sustained and heavy policy emphasis on accountability and demonstrations of effectiveness has placed pressure on educators to perform in certain ways, and to care about things other than caring. This case study explores how leaders and teachers at two schools balance their efforts to care for students, on the one hand, with the performative pressures they feel, on the other hand. Teachers who were able to prioritize a balance of care used collaborative relationships with colleagues to manage the pressure they felt, and took a longer term, more emotionally attuned, and more inquiry-based approach to meeting student needs. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.


2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 212-219
Author(s):  
Alexandru Trifu

On the one hand, the impulse in the case of these interrelations and the proper functioning of any company producing/providing services is represented by the needs and motivation of the customers, these aspects leading to determining their behavior in the process of their acceptance / rejection of the products/services they are provided. On the other hand, the products or services should be tailored according to the requirements of the customers and consumers and they should consider the satisfaction of a set of desires and needs, including the ones expressed by the Maslow's Pyramid of Needs. In order to highlight these multidimensional double-way interrelations, one surely needs, at the same time, to use the marketing sub-function in a case study in symbiosis with the other functions, sub-functions and highlighting tools of the analyzed firm or company. Any purchasing act follows to simultaneous reach more goals, the consumer having to manage between positive motivations and the negative ones, the last category acting as a break. In the double-way interaction, the redirecting of the negative behaviors, along with the improving the supply characteristics are the appropriate ways of winning. A key role in this action is played by the customer loyalty programs which provide a strengthened interrelation and a win-win type beneficial strategy.


M n gement ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Anthony Hussenot

This article examines the emergence of organizational dynamics in the context of fluid organizational phenomena. To do so, three organizational dynamics are studied: (1) identity, (2) actorhood, and (3) interconnected instances of decision-making. To study how these three organizational dynamics take shape in the context of fluid organizational phenomena, I rely on the events-based approach and a case study of makers operating in a makerspace in the Paris region. The results show, on the one hand, that the collective of makers enacts a structure of past, present, and future events that participates in the definition of a common frame of reference and, on the other hand, that this common frame of reference plays a role in the emergence of organizational dynamics. On the basis of this result, my main contribution is to show the role of the eventalization – that is, the definition, configuration and narration by the actors of past, present, and future events – in the definition of organizational dynamics in fluid organizational phenomena. This article contributes on the one hand to the literature on fluid organizational phenomena, and on the other hand to the literature on makers working in makerspaces.


2019 ◽  
pp. 38-58
Author(s):  
Frederic Wehrey ◽  
Anouar Boukhars

This chapter takes Morocco as a case study to investigate the bifurcating paths that the most dominant strands of Salafism have taken in the kingdom. Special attention is paid to how the Arab uprisings of 2011 expedited the mutations, paradoxes, and adaptations of quietist Salafism. On the one hand, Morocco’s “Arab” Spring nudged Salafis toward political engagement as a means to protect their interests. On the other hand, the subsequent derailment of the Arab uprisings exposed major fault lines within the Salafi community. The chapter illustrates this great rift by tracing the course taken by two of the most prominent figures of this current and the critical stages that have influenced their ideological postures, relations with the ruling regime, and adaptability to local and regional changes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-294
Author(s):  
Andreea Badea

A Good Shepherd and Bureaucrat or: What Makes a Good Bishop? Elite Recruitment as the Purpose of Roman Administrative Reform in the Late 17th Century Religious reforms characterized the Italian episcopacy during the 18th century. This article aims to show that these reforms were not so much driven by ideational issues but were the result of a lasting administrative reform. In 1676, Innocent XI had started a comprehensive process of bureaucratisation in the Roman Curia with the help of his auditor Giovanni Battista de Luca. Within this larger process, the pope appointed de Luca secretary of a new congregation that was supposed to select the most suitable candidates for Italian episcopal sees. Although this congregation was entitled to make decisions only in a few minor cases (since, in most Italian territories, the pope did not choose the new bishops) and although it worked only for about four years, it achieved long-term success. On the one hand, de Luca developed procedures that provided a permanent boost to the bureaucratisation process; on the other hand, he presented this new policy to a broad readership through his books. However, he did not describe his reforms as innovations but as a reconfiguration of the bureaucratic status quo in the Curia.


1971 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Chen ◽  
Hsin-I Hsieh

One of the perennial problems in diachronic linguistics is how to reconcile, on the one hand, the Neogrammarian postulate of sound laws operating without exception, and, on the other hand, the embarrassingly numerous irregularities we observe in many languages. On most occasions linguists have attempted to solve the problem by positing interdialectal borrowing or analogical levelling and have largely overlooked the possibility of the gradual diffusion of phonological changes across the lexicon. As a result of the lexical gradualness of sound changes, exceptions may be created either through the incompletion of a sound change, or owing to the conflict of two sound changes overlapping along the time dimension. It is the latter concept that we will attempt to elaborate and illustrate with two sets of data, both from Peking dialect. We have chosen Chinese as a case study for an obvious reason: it is possible in the case of Chinese, like few other cases, to follow sound changes step by step through the phonological dictionaries, rhyme charts and other records compiled at various stages of history. The columns on Tables 1 and 2 contain information taken from the various datable phonological dictionaries.


2021 ◽  
pp. 163-188
Author(s):  
Paola Guglielmotti

The essay addresses the problem of the relationship between large aristocratic families and “noble parishes” in Genoa, by considering the case of the Doria and the church of San Matteo, founded in 1125 and whose reconstruction was planned in 1278. On the one hand, three qualifying aspects of the Doria kinship are examined in order to understand the role of the small church in enhancing the coordination of the group: i.e., positions of leadership and command in the maritime city and in its government; dispersion and presence outside Genoa; numerical strength, residence and leadership. On the other hand, the article considers the insertion of San Matteo in the monastic network (not only in Liguria) headed by the abbey of San Fruttuoso, and how its reconstruction allowed for the diversification of the large family internal and external relevance. The conclusion, thanks to the comparison with the experiences of other important urban families, shows the uniqueness of this case study and how broader and more systematic comparisons should be made, even outside the Genoese context.


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