Childhood is “not a story to pass on”: Trauma and Memory Paradox in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 399-410
Keyword(s):  
Black Community ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
The Other ◽  
African Culture ◽  
Authentic Self ◽  
The Past ◽  
Active Life ◽  
The Future ◽  
Mother Figure ◽  
The One

This paper examines how Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child is structured around the paradox of memory; that is, the need to remember and to disremember the past. On the one hand, Bride has to relive her memory in order to confess her lies and in order to find her authentic self. On the other hand, Booker has to forget the past in order to conduct an active life. Memory centralizes Booker as the African voice when he relates the story of his brother’s abuse, that is to say, the abuse of the African culture. But, at the same time, it decentralizes him from the future projects he desires to achieve since he spends most of his time lamenting the loss of his brother. Bride, at first, believes that memory is the worst thing about healing, but, then, she realizes the reverse. By remembering the past, Bride reaches recovery. She becomes the mother figure of her Black community who wears the earrings of wisdom, spirituality and culture. Keywords: Toni Morrison, God Help the Child, the paradox of memory, childhood and trauma

Memory of Futures

KronoScope ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Adam
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Modification ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
The Other ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Memory Aids ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One ◽  
Far Future

AbstractWe think of memories as being focused on the past. However, our ability to move freely in the temporal realm of past, present and future is far more complex and sophisticated than commonsense would suggest. In this paper I am concerned with our capacity to produce and extend ourselves into the far future, for example through nuclear power or the genetic modification of food, on the one hand, and our inability to know the potential, diverse and multiple outcomes of this technologically constituted futurity, on the other. I focus on this discrepancy in order to explore what conceptual tools are available to us to take account of long-term futures produced by the industrial way of life. And I identify some historical approaches to the future on the assumption that the past may well hold vital clues for today's dilemma, hence my proposal to engage in 'memory of futures'. I conclude by considering the potential of 'memory aids for the future' as a means to better encompass in contemporary concerns the long-term futures of our making.

The Role of the Learned Man in Government

1958 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul H. Nitze
Keyword(s):  
Western Culture ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One

In the context of government, what do we mean by the phrase “a learned man”?* I take it we can mean a variety of things. On the one hand, we can have in mind the specialist, the expert, the man with an intensive and specialized background in a particular field of knowledge. On the other hand, we can have in mind the man with general wisdom, with that feeling for the past and the future which enriches a sense for the present, and with that appreciation for wider loyalties which deepens patriotism to one's country and finds bonds between it and Western culture and links with the universal aspirations of mankind.

scholarly journals Temps et psychanalyse chez Ricoeur. Confrontation de deux perspectives sur le passé

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 148-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolf Boutet
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Philosophy Of Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One ◽  
A Charge

This paper confronts two conceptions of the past that one can find alternately in Ricœur’s thought. The first, encountered in Time and Narrative and elsewhere, apprehends the past as a soil of possibilities able to guide expectations directed towards the future; the second, taken back from Freud’s psychoanalysis, defines it as a charge that haunts the present as a compulsive repetition. There are two issues to this confrontation between a past that opens up a future and one that closes it. On the one hand, we want to show what effects Ricœur’s lectures of Freud have had on his own philosophy of time; on the other hand we want to reveal, in the light of the problem that rises from a haunting past, the practical scope of the idea of an indeterminate past

scholarly journals Globalization, deglobalization and the liberal international order

2021 ◽  
Vol 97 (5) ◽  
pp. 1305-1316
Author(s):  
Markus Kornprobst ◽  
T V Paul
Keyword(s):  
International Order ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Conceptual Frame ◽  
The Past ◽  
Epochal Change ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One

Abstract For decades, globalization and the liberal international order evolved side by side. Recently, however, deglobalizing forces have been on the rise and the liberal international order has come to be increasingly beleaguered. The special issue ‘Deglobalization? The future of the liberal international order’ examines the interconnectedness of globalization and deglobalization processes on the one hand and the trajectory of the liberal international order on the other. This introduction provides a conceptual frame for the articles to follow. It discusses globalization and deglobalization processes, compares how they have been intertwined with the liberal international order in the past and presently, and explores how these differences are likely to affect the future of world politics. The special issue makes three important contributions. First, we examine globalization and deglobalization processes systematically. Second, we break new ground in studying the future of international order. Third, we generate novel insights into epochal change.

The medium and the message of mental time travel

2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 334-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Endel Tulving ◽  
Alice Kim
Keyword(s):  
Time Travel ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mental Time Travel ◽  
Conscious Awareness ◽  
The Past ◽  
Future Success ◽  
Fundamental Distinction ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One

AbstractWe add one point to Suddendorf & Corballis's (S&C's) story of mental time travel: For the future success of this hot, new area of research, it is imperative to pay attention to the fundamental distinction between the general brain/mind capacity that makes possible conscious awareness of the past and the future (the “medium”), on the one hand, and specific expressions of this capacity in a large variety of future-related mental activities (the “message”), on the other.

The Past, Present, and Future of the Canon of Ancient Anatolian Art

2020 ◽  
pp. 90-110
Author(s):  
Susan Helft
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

Scholarship on the ancient Near East has not yet considered how the formation of a discrete set of objects and monuments has shaped our understanding of Anatolian civilizations. This chapter explores this issue by “testing” the canon of ancient Anatolian art and archaeology, with a focus on art. What is the canon, how was it formed, and does it meet the needs of today’s art historians and archaeologists? This exercise makes clear that the lists of Anatolian objects and sites chosen for modern consumption are the result of Mesopocentric viewpoints on the one hand, and of Turkish nationalist agendas on the other. For the canon of ancient Anatolia to more accurately represent the diversity of Anatolian cultures, the current canon needs to shed its Mesopotamian baggage and be more geographically and typologically inclusive. This chapter also advocates for a move away from comparisons between canons (which have contributed to a derivative view of ancient Anatolian art) and toward a thematic view. A case study on the topos of the hunt is meant to reset the relationship between the Anatolian and Mesopotamian canons and demonstrate the potential for more conceptual approaches to reinvigorate the canon for the future.

Moderns of the Past, Moderns of the Future

2020 ◽  
pp. 161-178
Author(s):  
Arabella Currie
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Latin Poetry ◽  
The Past ◽  
Translation Strategy ◽  
The Future ◽  
Latin Verse ◽  
The One

This chapter complements the volume’s focus on Celtic–Classical interactions within the notion of Britishness by examining the role of such a dialogue in Ireland’s attempts to extricate itself from the British Empire, and by emphasizing the part that Irish scholars and poets have played in shaping Celtic, Roman, and British identities. It focuses on the Revivalist translator and neurologist, George Sigerson (1836–1925), whose comparative reading of ‘Celtic’ and Latin poetry set out to prove an Irish influence on Latin verse, on the one hand by arguing that Cicero was directly influenced in his poetry by a Celtic druid, and on the other by proving that the author of the first Latin biblical epic of Late Antiquity was Irish. The chapter examines these arguments for the forgotten Celticization of Rome in the light of colonial mimicry, before asking how Sigerson put his theories of the postcolonial power of cross-linguistic influence into practice in his own translation strategy. It concludes by highlighting the lasting implications of Sigerson’s call for a new way of reading texts across languages, attuned to verbal and stylistic echoes and so able to dismantle any strict divide between the Celtic and the Classical.

Past and Future With some Thoughts on Heredity

1901 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 292-313
Author(s):  
Spencer C. Thomson
Keyword(s):  
Forward Direction ◽  
The Other ◽  
Daily Routine ◽  
Actuarial Science ◽  
Professional Career ◽  
The Past ◽  
Look Back ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One

Exactly twenty years have elapsed since I first had the honour of addressing the members of the Actuarial Society as their Honorary President, being then but on the threshold of my official life.Again ten years later I once more occupied this chair.And now after the lapse of another ten years, as my professional career draws somewhat near its close, and you have again kindly asked me to become your President, there comes on me in meeting you at the beginning of your session for the purpose of offering to you a few words of welcome, a desire, on the one hand, to look back over the past—to get out of the trees, as it were, and see the forest,—and on the other, already throwing loose the trammels of daily routine, to turn in the forward direction with an endeavour to peer some way into the future and see what is in store for us there.I will accordingly endeavour to ascertain in what way our science and the great practical businesses built upon it—and to promote which actuarial science mainly exists—have been tending during these more recent years, and, by carrying on the lines in the same direction, to make some forecast of the conditions that will prevail when you, who are entering on the actuarial profession, in your turn take the helm of management.

The promise of the unforgiven

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Keller Hirsch
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One

Hannah Arendt’s work on violence is bedeviled by a series of paradoxes. On the one hand, Arendt is clear in arguing that violence is utterly powerless and yet, on the other hand, she is equally clear in her portrayal of beginnings as necessarily violent. These two positions conflict insofar as Arendt holds beginnings to be the source of all power. Thus power and violence are at once opposed and yet alloyed. This tension is deepened by yet another. For Arendt, action, of which power is composed, would not be possible without the twofold human faculties of promising and forgiveness. Promising undoes the hold of the future on the present by pacifying its unpredictability, while forgiveness loosens the grip of the past by alleviating its irreversibility. The trouble, however, is that Arendt argues that the power of forgiveness stems from its unpredictability, and unpredictability is precisely that which promising is meant to thwart. Taking these two paradoxes together one might say that Arendt, however unwittingly, leaves us promising never to forgive. This article works to flesh these paradoxes out. It also contextualizes Arendt’s paradoxes in terms of the literature that claims democratic political life is beset by tragedy. In the end, I argue that, following Arendt, democracy is ultimately about learning to live with the vivid disquiet of the miracle of paradox.

Philosophical Progress

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Stoljar
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Opposite View ◽  
The One ◽  
Philosophical Progress ◽  
Philosophical Questions ◽  
Do So

Can there be progress in philosophy? On the one hand, it is often thought that problems in philosophy, in contrast to those in science, are perennials for which it is pointless to expect a solution. On the other hand, professional philosophy seems to have organized itself, perhaps unconsciously, around the opposite view: how else to explain the panoply of books, papers, journals, conferences, graduate programmes, websites, etc.? Who is right? And what turns on who is right? This book defends a reasonable optimism about philosophical progress. Optimistic, because the author argues that, contrary to a widespread attitude of pessimism common even among professional philosophers, we have correctly answered philosophical questions in the past and therefore should expect to do so in the future; The work discusses several examples from philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and epistemology. Reasonable, because the optimism the author has in mind does not extend to every instance of the sort of problem called ‘philosophical’ or even to every subkind of that sort of problem.

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