scholarly journals Vodun Continuum in Black America: Communication with the Dead and the Invisible World in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing Unburied Sing

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Senakpon Adelphe Fortune Azon
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Black People ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Search For Meaning ◽  
Black America ◽  
Cultural Trait ◽  
The World ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Invisible

The spread of Western rationalism through armed conquest, with the global dominance of Judeo-Christian and Islamic creeds, has almost obliterated the existence of the alternative ontological perceptions rooted in the dominated people’s cultures. This essay studies how Ward’s Sing Unburied Sing reaches back to African ancestral beliefs, vodun practices and rituals, and brings to life characters who strive to counteract exclusion with the conception of the world as a Whole, a continuum whose survival is premised on the respect of, and fusional union with, each element of that Whole. This conception partakes in the search for meaning to existence in a society that has erected individualism and the exclusion of black people into creed. The paper uses the theoretical approach of vodun ontology and, in an Afrocentric perspective, reads through Ward’s novel this cultural trait thriving centuries after the enslaved people’s departure from Africa. It purports to voice African traditional values and to celebrate cultural difference.

Everyday Catastrophes: Gender, Labour and Power in Beckett's Theatre

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-34
Author(s):  
Trish McTighe
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The World ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
Gender Boundaries ◽  
The Invisible ◽  
Making Art

In an era of public consciousness about gendered inequalities in the world of work, as well as recent revelations of sexual harassment and abuse in theatre and film production, Beckett's Catastrophe (1982) bears striking resonances. This article will suggest that, through the figure of its Assistant, the play stages the gendered nature of the labour of making art, and, in her actions, shows the kind of complicit disgust familiar to many who work in the entertainment industry, especially women. In unpacking this idea, I conceptualise the distinction between the everyday and ‘the event’, as in, between modes of quotidian labour and the attention-grabbing moment of art, between the invisible foundations of representation and the spectacle of that representation. It is my thesis that this play stages exactly this tension and that deploying a discourse of maintenance art allows the play to be read in the context of the labour of theatre-making. Highlighting the Assistant's labour becomes a way of making visible the structures of authority that are invested in maintaining gender boundaries and showing how art is too often complicit in the maintenance of social hierarchies.

Ghost, Broken Narratives and the Art of Dying

2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 15-22
Author(s):  
Lars Rømer
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
Art Of Dying ◽  
The Dead

This article investigates how experiences of ghosts can be seen as a series of broken narratives. By using cases from contemporary as well 19th century Denmark I will argue that ghosts enter the world of the living as sensations that question both common sense understanding and problematize the unfinished death. Although ghosts have been in opposition to both science and religion in Denmark at least since the reformation I will exemplify how people deal with the broken narrative of ghosts in ways that incorporate and mimic techniques of both the scientist and the priest. Ghosts, thus, initiate a dialogue between the dead and the living concerning the art of dying that will enable both to move on.

Beritakan Injil Kepada Segala Makhluk

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-69
Author(s):  
Ibelala Gea
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Great Commission ◽  
The World ◽  
The Dead

This article aims to describe the results of research on how to preach the gospel to all beings, based on Mark 16:15-16. Preaching the gospel is a great commission from the Lord Jesus to His followers after His resurrection from the dead. The world is the address of the gospel preaching, not only to man but to all beings.The Gospel writer of  Mark wants to explain that the world is synonymous with evil, therefore the gospel serves to salt the evil world, so when Iniil is preached to the wicked, it is expected to change the mindset and human behavior.Greedy and greedy human behavior that only views nature as a commodity. Human evil is seen when only the task of exploiting natural resources and forget the responsibility of caring for, nurturing nature and the environment. Gospel preaching aims to awaken peoples not only to view nature as power (dominio) but as a fellow of creatures, and friends (communio). Preach the gospel to all beings and receiving each other with referring to reduce, reuse, recycle and replace as a responsibility to God who has given the mandate for us. AbstrakArtikel ini bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan hasil penelitian tentang bagaimana memberitakan Injil kepada  seluruh makhluk, bertolak dari Markus 16:15-16. Memberitakan Injil adalah amanat agung dari Tuhan Yesus kepada para pengikut-Nya setelah kebangkitan-Nya dari antara orang mati.Dunia adalah sebagai alamat pemberitaan Injil, bukan hanya kepada manusia melainkan kepada segala makhluk. Penulis Injil Markus hendak menjelaskan bahwa dunia identik dengan kejahatan, sebab itu Injil berfungsi menggarami dunia yang penuh kejahatan itu, karena itu ketika Iniil diberitakan kepada orang-orang jahat, diharapkan akan mengubah mindset dan perilaku manusia. Perilaku manusia yang serakah dan tamak yang hanya memandang alam sebagai komoditi. Kejahatan manusia terlihat ketika hanya bertugas mengeksploitasi sumber-sumber daya alam dan lupa pada tanggung jawab merawat, memelihara alam dan lingkungan hidupnya.  Pemberitaan Injil menyadarkan manusia agar tidak hanya memandang alam sebagai kekuasaan (dominio) tetapi sebagai sesama ciptaan, sahabat yang bersifat communio. Memberitakan Injil kepada seluruh makhluk dan menghargai segala makhluk dengan saling memberi dan menerima dengan mengacu pada pola-pola reduce, reuse, recycle dan replace sebagai tanggung jawab kepada Tuhan yang telah memberi amanat.

The National and the Universal

2020 ◽  
pp. 368-386
Author(s):  
Sarah Collins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Johann Gottfried Herder ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Respective Treatment ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines the continuities between the categories of the “national” and the “universal” in the nineteenth century. It construes these categories as interrelated efforts to create a “world” on various scales. The chapter explores the perceived role of music as a world-making medium within these discourses. It argues that the increased exposure to cultural difference and the interpretation of that cultural difference as distant in time and space shaped a conception of “humanity” in terms of a universal history of world cultures. The chapter reexamines those early nineteenth-century thinkers whose work became inextricably linked with the rise of exclusivist notions of nationalism in the late nineteenth century, such as Johann Gottfried Herder and John Stuart Mill. It draws from their respective treatment of music to recover their early commitment to universalizable principles and their view that the “world” is something that must be actively created rather than empirically observed.

scholarly journals “They Made us into a Race. We Made Ourselves into a People”: A Corpus Study of Contemporary Black American Group Identity in the Non-Fictional Writings of Ta-Nehisi Coates

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yulia Hathaway
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Black People ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Black American ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Black America ◽  
Shared Experiences ◽  
American Group ◽  
Identity Based

AbstractThis article examines representations of contemporary Black American identity in the non-fictional writings of Ta-Nehisi Coates. The dataset is a self-compiled specialized corpus of Coates’s non-fictional writings from 1996 until 2018 (350 texts; 468,899 words). The study utilizes an interdisciplinary approach combining corpus linguistics and corpus pragmatics. Frequencies of five identity-related terms in the corpus (African(–)Americans, blacks, black people, black America/Americans and black community/communities) are compared diachronically; then the pragmatic prosody of the terms is analyzed via the notion of control. The findings suggest that Coates’s representation of Black American group identity has shifted over time. Specifically, the terms African Americans and black America are replaced by the terms blacks and black people. The study’s empirical findings, considered through the theoretical framework on Black solidarity, suggest a shift in representation of group identity in Coates’s writings from an identity based on cultural and ethnic commonalities to an identity based on the shared experiences of anti-Black racism.

Kenotic hospitality and the Eucharist: an alternative economy

2021 ◽  
pp. 000332862110288
Author(s):  
Shauna Kubossek
Keyword(s):  
The World ◽  
The Invisible ◽  
Sallie Mcfague ◽  
Alternative Economy

This essay discusses the Eucharist as an enactment of kenotic hospitality and the alternative economy of God. It explores kenosis and hospitality as important practices for Christians, and reflects on how they are linked and embodied in the sensuous experience of the Eucharist. I explore kenotic acts of self-limitation as an antidote to consumption, drawing upon the work of Sallie McFague. Balanced with an embodied understanding of mutuality, enactments of kenosis proclaim the abundance of God. Using the work of Christine D. Pohl, I explore the practice of hospitality as a mandate for Christians. Hospitality makes the invisible visible, and creates opportunity for connection and mutuality. The Eucharist, a liturgical expression of kenotic hospitality, engages participants in deep forms of connection to creation, to God, and to one another. I argue that kenosis and hospitality, in the light of the Eucharist, are illustrative of God’s alternative economy. As we engage the practices of limitation and hospitality that the Eucharist embodies, we are transformed by the abundance of God, for the sake of the world.

The image of a modern shaman. A literary example of Ida Brzezińska

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-134
Author(s):  
Angelika Moskal
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
Evil Spirits ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Way

Abstract: The shaman figure is most often associated with primitive communities, inhabiting, among others Siberia. The shaman plays one of the most important roles in them - he is an intermediary between the world of people and the world of spirits. Responds to, among others for the safe passage of souls to the other side and protects her from evil spirits. However, is there room for representatives of this institution in contemporary Polish popular literature? How would they find themselves in the 21st century? The article aims to show the interpretation of the shaman on the example of Ida Brzezińska, the heroine of the books of Martyna Raduchowska. I intend to introduce the role and functions of the „shaman from the dead”, juxtaposing the way Ida works (including reading sleepy margins from a rather unusual dream catcher, carrying out souls and the consequences that await in the event of failure or making contact with the dead) with the methods described by scholars shamans. The purpose of the work is to show how much Raduchowska tried to adapt shamanism in her work by modernizing it, and how many elements she added from herself to make the story more attractive.

Self-descriptions of the World Society in non-western contexts and the implications for the general theoretical approach. An Analysis of the Edicts of Ancient India Emperor Ashoka

2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Iris Clemens
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
World Society ◽  
Niklas Luhmann ◽  
Ancient India ◽  
The World

ZusammenfassungWie Rudolf Stichweh im Anschluss an Niklas Luhmann ausgeführt hat, sind Selbstbeschreibungen ein basaler Bestandteil aller sozialen Systeme und insbesondere für die Analyse der emergierenden Weltgesellschaft grundlegend. Die Diskussion hat bislang jedoch zumeist nur westliche Quellen berücksichtigt. Ausgehend von den Säulenedikten des indischen Königs Ashoka wird der Frage nachgegangen, ob frühe Formen einer Selbstbeschreibung der Weltgesellschaft auch in nichteuropäischen Kontexten gefunden werden können. Mit der Analyse dieser 2200 Jahre alten Edikte kann die These gestützt werden, dass bestimmte Formen solcher Selbstbeschreibungen der Weltgesellschaft auch für den indischen Kontext nachgewiesen werden können. Der Blick kann so global geweitet werden, und es wird in Zweifel gezogen, dass es sich um rein europäische semantische Erfindungen handelt. Zudem kann durch die Einbeziehung anderer als menschlicher Adressaten in der vorgefundenen Semantik der Fokus von einer im Westen vorherrschenden anthropologischen auf eine ›biozentrische‹ Perspektive verschoben werden.

Death Shall have no Dominion: The Passing of the World of the Dead in America

1977 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles O. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Living World ◽  
The World ◽  
The Dead ◽  
American Society ◽  
Social Importance ◽  
The 19Th Century

The dead have largely lost their social importance, visibility, and impact in American society. This event is essentially a phenomenon of the present century. For three centuries prior, the dead world occupied a significant and readily recognizable place in the living world. Indeed, that place was growing rapidly through much of the 19th century. Causes of the reversal in relationship between the two worlds are examined and consequences of the present radical withdrawal from the dead are suggested.

The Boat of the Dead in the Bronze Age

Antiquity ◽  
1941 ◽  
Vol 15 (60) ◽  
pp. 360-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. V. Grinsell
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The World ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Bronze Age

In many parts of the world and at many periods the practice has prevailed of depositing boats, or models or other representations of them, with the dead, either as a means of facilitating his supposed voyage to another world, or as a symbol of his maritime activities during his lifetime.That the former is generally the correct explanation of the custom there can be no doubt. This is shown by the evidence of the belief in a voyage to a future world, and the customs to which it has given rise, among living primitive peoples in the Pacific Islands and elsewhere, so well collected and presented by the late Sir J. G. Frazer. It is shown also by traditions such as that of our own king Arthur's journey by barge to ‘the island valley of Avilion, where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow’ It is shown also by the ancient Greek and Roman custom of placing a coin in the mouth of the dead to pay Charon's fee for ferrying him across the Styx.

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