The Face of the Contemporary: Lost World Fantasies of Finding Lot’s Wife

Sodomscapes ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lowell Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
Intercultural Contact ◽  
The Face ◽  
Incarnational Theology

Chapter six examines a relatively unknown Victorian lost-world romance fantasy, Alfred Clark’s The Finding of Lot’s Wife (1896). The novel converts the legend of Lot’s wife, traditionally a cautionary tale of moral turpitude, into a stark lesson on the perilous consequences of intercultural contact in the Orientalizing theatre of colonial Palestine. Clark’s central contribution to the Sodom archive, however, resides in the novel’s prescient staging of a world in which insights associated with Hans Blumenberg’s philosophical anthropology of myth converge with the theological residue in Levinas’s writings – notably, the self-emptying action of kenosis, which Levinas takes from Pauline incarnational theology. Clark is no theologian, but his interest in the ethical provocations of kenosis is as keen as Levinas’s—and perhaps more viscerally arresting because of its narrative immediacy. This feature powerfully contributes to the innovation The Finding of Lot’s Wife brings to the Sodom archive. Clark’s ingenious intertwining of Blumenbergian and Levinasian treatments of myth effectively imagines the urgent contemporariness of the legacy of Lot’s wife. Clark shows how the lethal and reparative dimensions of that legacy asymmetrically impinge on each other, producing an arresting narrative image of dread commingled with hope and urgent consequence.

Reconceiving the Divine in Eliette Abécassis’ La répudiée

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 376-393
Author(s):  
Raquelle K Bostow
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Spiritual Practice ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Intellectual Engagement ◽  
The Face ◽  
French Author

Abstract Eliette Abécassis’ La répudiée (2000) narrates a rare story of female mystical practice in the face of her impending repudiation from a Hasidic community, which excludes women from intellectual engagement with religious texts. Set in the fictionalised neighbourhood of Meah Shearim in Jerusalem, the novel’s main character, Rachel, faces a divorce under the law of halakhah when she fails to become pregnant after ten years of marriage. Yet, throughout the novel, Rachel asserts her own individualised spiritual practice by locating the ‘divine’ within the love that she shares with her partner, placing her on the path of mysticism. To articulate Rachel’s intuition of the divine within human relationships, I rely on French author Hélène Cixous’ secularised notion of the juifemme: a woman who rewrites sacred texts, conceives of a God detached from dogmatic religion, and locates the divine within the other and the self.

Faces of the Self

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-274
Author(s):  
Vanita Seth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Muslim Woman ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Face ◽  
The Face ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The Individual

AbstractThis paper traces the centrality of the human face in the construction of modern individuality. It argues that the face of individuality no less than that of typology, is mired in and born of historical and political conditions that are subsequently disavowed in order that the individual (and the face she bears) is rendered a product of nature, an instantiation of the universal. Attempting to denaturalize and defamiliarize the authority invested in the face, this paper maps out three interrelated arguments: that the human face is historically produced; that its history is closely tethered to the production of modern subjectivity, and that its status as a purveyor of meaning relies upon the reiteration of preexisting norms through which it can be “read.” And yet, while this paper turns to the nineteenth century to trace the novel privileging of the face as an extension of selfhood, interwoven through this history is the figure of the “effaced” Muslim woman and the Muslim terrorist type.

Persuasion: Fellow Creatures

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pam Morris
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
Narrative Perspective ◽  
Class Hierarchies ◽  
A Chain ◽  
Porous Boundaries

Persuasion overtly foregrounds the self as embodied: physical accidents and sickness are recurrent. Sir Walter Eliot’s belief in the time-defying bodily grace of nobility is subject to Austen’s harshest irony. The transition from vertically ordered place to horizontal space in Persuasion is more extreme than in any other of the completed novels. Anne Elliot’s movement from social exclusiveness to socially inclusive possibility allows Austen to challenge gender and class hierarchies traditionally held to be inborn. Her writerly experimentation expands the possibilities of narrative perspective to encompass the porous boundaries of the physical, the emotional and the rational that constitute any moment of consciousness. Her focalisation techniques in the text look directly towards Woolf’s stylist innovations. A chain of references to guns and shooting gathers into the novel contentious contemporary discursive networks on class relations, notions of masculinity and the nature of creaturely life.

Power of Darkness: Narrative and Biographical Reflexivity in A Series of Unfortunate Events

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-212
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH BULLEN
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Project Risk ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
High Earning ◽  
Textual Culture ◽  
Children’S Exposure ◽  
Central Claim

This paper investigates the high-earning children's series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, in relation to the skills young people require to survive and thrive in what Ulrich Beck calls risk society. Children's textual culture has been traditionally informed by assumptions about childhood happiness and the need to reassure young readers that the world is safe. The genre is consequently vexed by adult anxiety about children's exposure to certain kinds of knowledge. This paper discusses the implications of the representation of adversity in the Lemony Snicket series via its subversions of the conventions of children's fiction and metafictional strategies. Its central claim is that the self-consciousness or self-reflexivity of A Series of Unfortunate Events} models one of the forms of reflexivity children need to be resilient in the face of adversity and to empower them to undertake the biographical project risk society requires of them.

Beckett's Watt and Monastic Tradition

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-109
Author(s):  
Kristen Marangoni
Keyword(s):  
Boarding School ◽  
Illuminated Manuscripts ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Geometric Shapes ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Book Of Kells ◽  
The Face ◽  
Choral Arrangements ◽  
Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts

The enigmatic setting of Beckett's novel Watt has been compared to places as diverse as an insane asylum, a boarding school, a womb, and a concentration camp. Watt's experience at Knott's house does seem suggestive of all of these, and yet it may more readily conform to the setting of a monastery. The novel is filled with chants, meditations, choral arrangements, hierarchical classifications, and even silence, all highly evocative of a monastic lifestyle. Some of Watt's dialogue (such as his requests for forgiveness or reflections on the nature of mankind) further echoes various Catholic liturgies. Watt finds little solace in these activities, however. He feels that they are largely rote and purposeless as they are focused on Knott, a figure who in many ways defies linguistic description and physical know-ability. Watt's meditations and rituals become, then, empty catechisms without answers, something that is reflected in the extreme difficulty that Watt has communicating. In the face of linguistic and liturgical instability, the Watt notebooks present a counter reading that can be found in the thousand plus doodles that line its pages. The drawings reinforce as well as subvert their textual counterpart, and they function in many ways as the images in medieval illuminated manuscripts. The doodles in Watt often take the form of decorative letters, elaborate marginal drawings, and depictions of a variety of people and animals, and many of its doodles offer uncanny resemblances in form or theme to those in illuminated manuscripts like The Book of Kells. Doodles of saints, monks, crosses, and scribes even give an occasional pictorial nod to the monastic setting in which illuminated manuscripts were usually produced (and remind us of the monastic conditions in which Beckett found himself writing much of Watt). Beckett's doodles not only channel this medium of illuminated manuscripts, they also modernize its application. Instead of neat geometric shapes extending down the page, his geometric doodle sequences are often abstracted, fragmented, and nonlinear. Beckett also occasionally modernized the content of illuminated manuscripts: instead of the traditional sacramental communion table filled with candles, bread and wine, Beckett doodles a science lab table where Bunsen burners replaces candles and wine glasses function as beakers. It is through these modernized images that Watt attempts to draw contemporary relevance from a classic art form and to restore (at least partial) meaning to rote traditions.

The Relationship between Seeker and Spiritual Guide as portrayed in contemporary Western Sufi Autobiographies

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-332
Author(s):  
Kate Zebiri
Keyword(s):  
Life Writing ◽  
New Age ◽  
The Self ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Continuity And Discontinuity

This article aims to explore the Shaykh-mur?d (disciple) or teacher-pupil relationship as portrayed in Western Sufi life writing in recent decades, observing elements of continuity and discontinuity with classical Sufism. Additionally, it traces the influence on the texts of certain developments in religiosity in contemporary Western societies, especially New Age understandings of religious authority. Studying these works will provide an insight into the diversity of expressions of contemporary Sufism, while shedding light on a phenomenon which seems to fly in the face of contemporary social and religious trends which deemphasize external authority and promote the authority of the self or individual autonomy.

Identifying Ethics: Dysfunction as Representation of Societal Relationship in Ian McEwans’s Sweet Tooth

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
A. Yacob ◽  
S. Veeramani
Keyword(s):  
Code Of Conduct ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Code ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Research Article ◽  
Ian Mcewan

In the novel, Sweet Tooth, McEwan has employed an ethical code of conduct called, Dysfunction of Relationship. The analysis shows that he tries to convey something extraordinary to the readers. If it is not even the reader to understand such a typical thing, He himself represents a new ethical code of conduct. The character of the novel, Serena is almost a person who is tuned to such a distinct one. It is clear that the character of this type is purely representational. Understanding reality based on situation and ethics has been a new field of study in terms of Post- Theory. Intervening to such aspect of Interpretation, this research article establishes a new study in the writings of Ian McEwan. In the novel, Dysfunction is not on the ‘Self’ but it is on the ‘Other’. The author tries to integrate the function of the Character Serena, instead of fragmenting the self. Hence, Fragmentation makes sense only in the dysfunction of relationship.

Le premier moment de l’art dans À la recherche du temps perdu de Marcel Proust – une « leçon d’idéalisme » ?

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-40
Author(s):  
Larisa Botnari
Keyword(s):  
Essential Role ◽  
Marcel Proust ◽  
The Self ◽  
Philosophy Of Art ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Philosophical Interpretation ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
Lost Time ◽  
Aesthetic Thinking

Although very famous, some key moments of the novel In Search of Lost Time, such as those of the madeleine or the uneven pavement, often remain enigmatic for the reader. Our article attempts to formulate a possible philosophical interpretation of the narrator's experiences during these scenes, through a confrontation of the Proustian text with the ideas found in the System of Transcendental Idealism (1800) of the German philosopher F. W. J. Schelling. We thus try to highlight the essential role of the self in Marcel Proust's aesthetic thinking, by showing that the mysterious happiness felt by the narrator, and from which the project of creating a work of art is ultimately born, is similar to the experiences of pure self-consciousness evoked and analyzed by Schellingian philosophy of art.

Mansfield Park

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Austen ◽  
Jane Stabler
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Mansfield Park ◽  
Sexual Jealousy ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face

‘Me!’ cried Fanny … ‘Indeed you must excuse me. I could not act any thing if you were to give me the world. No, indeed, I cannot act.’ At the age of ten, Fanny Price leaves the poverty of her Portsmouth home to be brought up among the family of her wealthy uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, in the chilly grandeur of Mansfield Park. There she accepts her lowly status, and gradually falls in love with her cousin Edmund. When the dazzling and sophisticated Henry and Mary Crawford arrive, Fanny watches as her cousins become embroiled in rivalry and sexual jealousy. As the company starts to rehearse a play by way of entertainment, Fanny struggles to retain her independence in the face of the Crawfords’ dangerous attractions; and when Henry turns his attentions to her, the drama really begins… This new edition does full justice to Austen’s complex and subtle story, placing it in its Regency context and elucidating the theatrical background that pervades the novel.

scholarly journals The construction of leadership practice: Making sense of leader competencies

Leadership ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 174271502199649
Author(s):  
Dag Jansson ◽  
Erik Døving ◽  
Beate Elstad
Keyword(s):  
Professional Practice ◽  
Leadership Competencies ◽  
The Self ◽  
Leadership Practice ◽  
Choral Conductors ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Sensemaking Process ◽  
The Face ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Selection Of

The notion of leadership competencies is a much-debated issue. In this article, we propose that how the leader makes sense of his or her competencies is key to leadership practice. Specifically, we look at how leaders reconcile discrepancies between the self-perceived proficiency of various competencies and their corresponding importance. Empirically, we study leaders within the music domain – how choral conductors make sense of their competencies in the shaping of their professional practice. We investigated how choral leaders in Scandinavia ( N = 638) made sense of their competencies in the face of demands in their working situations. A mixed methodology was used, comprising a quantitative survey with qualitative comments and in-depth interviews with a selection of the respondents. The results show that when choral leaders shape their practice, they frequently face competency gaps that compel them to act or adjust their identity. The key to this sensemaking process is how they move competency elements they master to the foreground and wanting elements to the background. The concept of ‘sensemaking affordance’ is introduced to account for how various leader competency categories are negotiated to safeguard overall efficacy.

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