scholarly journals Experience – Information – Image: A Historiography of Unfolding. Arab Cinema as Example

1970 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura U. Marks

Why do certain images of history reach us, while others remain seemingly forgotten, in the infinite breadth of the past? Why do only certain events seem to matter? I suggest those experiences are not forgotten but enfolded. The contemporary politics of historiography can be conceptualized according to the relationship between Experience, Information, and Image; a triadic relationship I have proposed to understand the nature of the image in the information age. While Experience is infinite, the vast majority of experience lies latent. Few Images ever arise from it. In our age, those that do tend to be selected, or unfolded, by political and economic interests that deem them to be useful as Information. Nevertheless, anyone can unfold any aspect of Experience to become a public image, and artists (and others) do so in order to allow other aspects of Experience to circulate, before they enfold, back into the matrix of history. I will show an animated diagram that illustrates this concept of history as a flow of unfolding and enfolding, influenced by concepts from Charles Sanders Peirce and Gilles Deleuze. Many artworks can be illuminated by this process. My examples will be drawn from contemporary Arab cinema. In the heavily politicized Arab milieu, the Image world is constructed as a selective unfolding of only those aspects of Experience that are deemed to be useful or profitable. Some Arab filmmakers, rather than deconstruct the resulting ideological images, prefer to carry out their own unfoldings:  explicating hitherto latent events, knowledges, and sensations. Thus what official history deems merely personal, absurd, micro-events, or no events at all, becomes the stuff of a rich alternative historiography. This process characterizes the work of, among others, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Nisrine Khodr, Mohammed Soueid, and Akram Zaatari (Lebanon), Azza El-Hassan, Elia Suleiman, and Sobhi Al-Zobaidi (Palestine), and Mohamad Khan (Egypt).

Author(s):  
Nicholas Owen

Other People’s Struggles is the first attempt in over forty years to explain the place of “conscience constituents” in social movements. Conscience constituents are people who participate in a movement but do not stand to benefit if it succeeds. Why do such people participate when they do not stand to benefit? Why are they sometimes present and sometimes absent in social movements? Why and when is their participation welcome to those who do stand to benefit, and why and when is it not? The work proposes an original theory to answer these questions, crossing discipline boundaries to draw on the findings of social psychology, philosophy, and normative political theory, in search of explanations of why people act altruistically and what it means to others when they do so. The theory is illustrated by examples from British history, including the antislavery movement, the women’s suffrage and liberation movements, labor and socialist movements, anticolonial movements, antipoverty movements, and movements for global justice. Other People’s Struggles also contributes to new debates concerning the rights and wrongs of “speaking for others.” Debates concerning the limits of solidarity—who can be an “ally” and on what terms—have become very topical in contemporary politics, especially in identity politics and in the new “populist” movements. The book provides a theoretical and empirical account of how these questions have been addressed in the past and how they might be framed today.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 205316801877993
Author(s):  
Dino Hadzic

Can reminders of violence committed in the past influence citizens’ policy preferences in the present? Prior work has found that under the threat of violence individuals prioritize safety and adopt policy views aimed at reducing the threat. Elites can then strategically employ concerns over personal safety and security to shape the public’s preferences. I contribute to this literature by conducting an exploratory study of whether invocations of violence committed in the past shape preferences in the long-term, years after the actual violence has ended. To do so, I fielded an experiment on a large ( N = 1125) and nationally representative sample of respondents in Bosnia, the site of a major ethnic civil war in 1992–1995. I did not find evidence that reminders of wartime violence in and of themselves affect policy preferences. Ultimately, this study represents a first cut at a neglected question in the literature and has implications that could motivate future research on the relationship between violent conflict and policy preferences.


1977 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 334-340
Author(s):  
Frank Ardolino

Source study has generally been discredited as a useful critical tool because of the past simplistic conception of the relationship between the source and its adapted context. Generally, source hunters emphasized parallel passages as the major proof of similarities between texts, merely listing the parallels without investigating more important critical implications. If we are to continue to consider source study a valuable scholarly tool—and there are good reasons to do so—we need to establish its interpretational relevance through a method which compares the conventional ideas and symbols of the source with the motifs and themes of the adapted context. Thus, the contextual method of ascription, as it shall be termed for purposes of discussion, will require an understanding of the interaction between the source's original context, including subsequent intellectual history, and the themes of the new context.


2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Parkinson

The Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) provides that judges must not alter property rights on the breakdown of the relationship unless satisfied that it is just and equitable to do so. This is the principle of judicial restraint. In the past, and prior to the 2012 decision of the High Court in Stanford v Stanford, this principle was given almost no effect. The High Court sought to correct this approach, insisting that the family courts should not begin from an assumption that a couple’s property rights are or should be different from the state of the legal and equitable title. It also reaffirmed that there is no community of property in Australia. This article considers the significance of the principle of judicial restraint: first, in cases where the property is already jointly owned and, secondly, in cases where the couple have chosen to keep their finances separate.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Spagnolo ◽  
Brice Rea ◽  
Iestyn Barr

<p>The glacier equilibrium line altitude (ELA) represents the elevation on the glacier surface at which the amount of mass gained (via precipitation, avalanching and windblown snow, equals the amount of ice lost (via ablation and sublimation, over the mass balance year. The ELA can be measured on modern glaciers or calculated for reconstructed, former glaciers. Despite its simple definition, the ELA represents an incredibly powerful, quantitative expression of the relationship between glaciers and climate. As a glacier responds dynamically to climate, so does the ELA. Precipitation at the glacier ELA has been empirically linked to ablation season temperature. Thus, the reconstruction of former glacier geometries and their ELAs leads to the quantification of palaeoclimate.</p><p>In recent years, the concept of an “average Quaternary ELA” (or “mean Quaternary ELA”) has become popular because of the role it might play in relation to the glacial buzzsaw hypothesis, i.e. the idea that glacial erosion could offset mountain uplift and therefore control and limit the growth of mountains. Attempts to determine the average Quaternary ELA have been undertaken, leading to some interesting conclusions. For example, it has been argued that the floor altitudes of glacial cirques can be used as a measure of average Quaternary ELA, therefore implying that average Quaternary mountain glaciers expansion was confined to the topmost portion of alpine valleys.</p><p>Time has passed from these initial attempts to determine the average Quaternary ELA and more palaeoclimatic and palaeoglaciological data have become available, so it is appropriate to reconsider these calculations and perhaps question the validity of such a concept. To do so, we revisit how the idea of an average Quaternary ELA developed and what such a parameter would really mean. We do so in light of a new quantitative study on the average ELA relative to both a single glacial cycle and multiple glaciations experienced during the past   ̴2.6 million years, i.e. the Quaternary. Collectively, this new study presents a very different perspective than previously suggested.</p>


Animals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 483
Author(s):  
Courtney Bir ◽  
Mario Ortez ◽  
Nicole J. Olynk Widmar ◽  
Christopher A. Wolf ◽  
Charlotte Hansen ◽  
...  

Pet ownership, veterinary use, and beliefs regarding veterinary care were elicited through the use of a nationally representative survey of 997 U.S. residents. Fifty-one percent of respondents have or had a dog in the past five years and 37% have or had a cat in the past five years. Over ninety percent of cat and dog owners had visited a veterinarian at any time, but only about 40% visited a veterinarian annually. With the rise of options in veterinary medicine, including low-cost options for vaccines and spay/neuter, further study and analysis of pet-owners use of veterinary care is warranted. Fifty-four percent of dog owners and 40% of cat owners who went to a low-cost spay/neuter clinic also went to a veterinarian/clinic/practice. This finding suggests that pet-owners who use low-cost options do so in a manner that supplements rather than replaces traditional veterinary care. Logit models were employed to evaluate the relationship between dog and cat owner demographics and visiting a veterinarian. The probability of visiting a veterinarian increased with age and income for dog owners.


1975 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 113-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.B. Peires

Among the Xhosa the institution of the ‘Right-Hand House’ acts both as a political charter and as an historical explanation. As a political charter it defines the relationship between the Ngqika Paramount (the Right-Hand House) of the Ciskei ‘Bantu Homeland’ and the Gcaleka Paramount (the Great House) of the Transkei Homeland. As it presently stands, the essence of this relationship is that the Ngqika Paramount recognizes the Gcaleka Paramount as his superior in rank, but without accepting any implications of practical political subordination. This position was defined by J.H. Soga, the standard authority on Xhosa history and customs, and himself an umNgqika, as follows: By courtesy, matters affecting Xosa customs might occasionally be referred to a chief of the older [i.e., Gcaleka] branch especially when a precedent was involved, but this did not prevent the Right-Hand House from following its own line of conduct, irrespective of what that precedent might be, should it choose to do so. Laws promulgated by the court of the Gaikas [Ngqika] were not subject to interference by the Gcaleka chief.In terms of historical explanation, secondary authorities from 1846 to 1975 have singled out the privileged status of the Right-Hand House as the principal cause of Xhosa political fragmentation.Whereas historians of Africa normally agree that institutions and their myths of origin are, at least in part, susceptible to historical interpretation and reconstruction, they may justifiably be more doubtful of an historical approach which seeks to explain historical events by imputing to the past the continuous retrogressive operation of institutions which can be seen to be operating in certain ways in the present. In this regard the present exercise has two aims.


2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 332-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Landy

AbstractThe article is a close reading of Isa. 40:1-11, which focuses on its function as a prologue to Deutero-Isaiah, and hence distinguished by its promise of a new beginning, and on its dependence on, and reversal of, the past, the spectral voices it seeks to repatriate. It is concerned with the secondariness of Deutero-Isaiah, and the consequent ambiguity of its messages. The voice of the poet/prophet is refracted through disembodied voices, which themselves cite other voices, before finally adopting that of the female herald, through whom the advent of God becomes manifest, only to be indefinitely deferred through metaphor and simile. In the background there is the frequently asserted relationship with Isaiah 6 as a metapoetic key to the book. Does its purview extend to Isaiah 40, and is the message of comfort conveyed by Deutero-Isaiah subverted by the incomprehensibility mandated by it? The complexities of the passage, and hence of the book as a whole, require attention to the detail of each its parts, but also to its fragmentariness, as it seeks to reconstruct a fractured reality. This is achieved in part through the emphasis on the materiality of the voice, as flesh (basar) and sonority, and as the matrix (mebasseret) of the future. The analysis proceeds from the voice of maternal comfort in vv. 1-2, to the announcement of the way and the universal theophany in vv. 3-5, to the pathos of transience in vv. 6-8, and finally to the deferred resolution in vv. 9-11. In the conclusion I discuss the relation of the text to the Freudian uncanny, the correspondence and non-correspondence with chapter 6, and the question of the relationship between historical and literary approaches.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Md. Shafiqul Islam

This paper attempts a cybercritical reading of William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer (1984) to explore the genesis of cyborgs in the novel, address issues pertaining to cyberpunks and scrutinize the portrayal of a cyberculture set in the futuristic dystopian city of Chiba. The relationship between humans and machines has gone through multiple phases of changes in the recent past. That is why instead of satirizing machinized-humans, science fiction writers have embraced different dimensions of man-machine relationships during the past few decades. ‘Cyborg’ is no longer represented as the ‘mutation of human capabilities’, but as ‘machines with Artificial Intelligence’. Gibson’s Neuromancer, a landmark piece of literary work in the sphere of Sci-Fi literature, specifically predicts a new height of man-machine relationship by employing both human and cyborg characters at the center of his story line. This paper shows how Gibson accurately prophesizes the matrix of machine-human relationship in his novel. It also explores Gibson’s depiction of female characters through the lens of cyberfeminist theories. In view of that, this paper uses contemporary critical and cultural theories including Donna Haraway’s idea of cyberfeminism, Baudrillard’s simulation and simulacra, Foucauldian discourse analysis, Jeremy Bentham’s concept of tabula rasa and other relevant theoretical ideas to examine and evaluate the transformative changes.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 25-35
Author(s):  
Leonid Rybakovskiy ◽  
Nataliya Kozhevnikova ◽  
Vladimir Savinkov

The Object of the Study. Migration processes in Rossiya.The Subject of the Study. Interdistrict migration links. The Purpose of the Study. Identifying the features of interdistrict migration exchange and justifying adequate indicators for its measurement.The Main Provisions of the Article. The article reveals how and when scientific ideas about the spatial patterns of migration processes that took place in the past and at present appeared, and about the subsequent interpretation of this knowledge and the creation of adequate indicators for their measurement have arisen. The paper shows the importance in the total migration turnover of internal migrations, interregional movements, in particular. Interregional migrations include population movements between administrative and territorial entities. In Rossiya, regions with independent status were adopted as such “migration” entities, i.e. which are subjects of the Russiyskaya Federatsiya. In its turn, migration flows between them break up into smaller interregional flows. All of them, like the general migration flows, differ in their scale, structure, directions and results. The article discusses existing approaches to studying the nature of migration flows, determining their directions and values, it is stressed that as early as at the end of the nineteenth century the idea was expressed about a relationship between population size, distance, as well as the forces of attraction and repulsion. It is noted that in the domestic literature, the clarification of the relationship between migration processes and the factors determining their scope and direction has begun since the 60s of the last century. At the same time, a special indicator has been created to level the influence of different population numbers in different regions on the assessment of the significance of interregional migration flows. The possibilities of using this gauge for present day interregional migrations are shown on the example of two regions of Rossiya with the publication of the matrix of coefficients of interdistrict migration links for 1966-1969 allowing to compare them with the data for 2015-2017 and accordingly confirm the stability of these relationships.


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