Purity and Danger in Fin-de-Siècle Culture: A Psycho-historical Interpretation of Wagner, Stoker and Zola

Tekstualia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (63) ◽  
pp. 7-22
Author(s):  
Arnold Labrie
Keyword(s):  
Political Change ◽  
Bram Stoker ◽  
Identity Crisis ◽  
Cultural Reform ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
Religious Meaning ◽  
Purity And Impurity ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Formal Distinction

According to the anthropologist Mary Douglas, the quest for purity is usually accompanied by fears of change, ambiguity and transgression. Translating Douglas’ insights into historical terms, one may assume that sensibilities about what is pure and what is impure grow stronger during times of intense social and political change, as exemplifi ed by the stormy decades around 1900. This period was characterized by a profound identity-crisis and at the same time was marked by a quest for purity. One may think of a deepened concern for hygiene, of the rise of racist movements, but also of an intense longing for cultural reform and regeneration. Notwithstanding their many differences, these phenomena are linked through their concern for the formal distinction between what is pure and what is impure. A study of the work of Wagner, Bram Stoker and Zola gives some insight into the language of purity, serves to show the religious meaning of formal categories of purity and impurity, and makes it clear that the quest for purity in one area is related to the quest for purity in another area.

The Global Nexus of Drug Cultivation

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph J. Hobbs
Keyword(s):  
Incomplete Information ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Human Dimensions ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The People ◽  
Conventional Drug ◽  
Physiological Impact ◽  
Peasant Farmers ◽  
Insight Into

It is a pleasure to write the closing chapter for this volume. My tasks are to present some common themes in these diverse studies, point out the unique features, and reflect on our roles as researchers of plant-based drugs and the people who produce, distribute, and use them. The research behind this volume is extraordinary. Doing fieldwork about drugs is risky. Almost every situation described here involves illicit activities. Growers, traffickers, and merchants of these substances have every reason to be suspicious about the researcher, and they have been both generous and trusting in revealing their worlds to us. In turn we hope that our interpretations will benefit these people, not by condoning what is illegal, but by offering enlightened counsel to decision makers who should act with the best information on the human dimensions and costs of their policies, thereby reducing some of the harm done by actions based on ignorance or incomplete information. Regardless of whether or not we approve of what they do, we must marvel at the extraordinary resourcefulness of these people, particularly the peasant farmers at the base of the drug enterprise. As Steinberg (chapter 6) notes, these seemingly conservative people are amazingly flexible and adaptable to the changing world around them. And one cannot help but admire the fortitude in their labors. Westermeyer (chapter 3) describes the work of Laotian opium harvesters as “pressured, repetitive, prolonged, and grueling. Thousands of bulbs rapidly incised and scraped, incised and scraped every day, day after day, from twilight to dusk—sometimes even at night by torch—for weeks.” Their efforts are typical. This is a volume about indigenous peoples and drugs, and it is much more. It offers insight into the drugs themselves, their production and marketing, their unique place in the process of globalization, the physiological impact of their use, their spiritual and perceptual dimensions, their impact on landscapes, and their role in social and political change, as well as the drug war and alternatives to conventional drug warfare. These studies represent work that, as Mathewson (chapter 1) has written, is “immense, compelling, and critically important.”

Vico, Giambattista (1668–1744)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leon Pompa
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
New Science ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Degree Of Certainty ◽  
Methodological Aspects ◽  
Insight Into

Vico lived in a period in which the successes of the natural sciences were frequently attributed to the Cartesian method of a priori demonstration. His own first interest, however, was in the cultivation of the humanist values of wisdom and prudence, to which this method was irrelevant. Initially, therefore, he sought a methodology for these values in the techniques of persuasion and argument used in political and legal oratory. But he soon came to believe that the Cartesian method was too limited to explain even the advances in the natural sciences and developed an alternative constructivist theory of knowledge by which to establish the degree of certainty of the different sciences. Wisdom and prudence, however, came low on this scale. Through certain historical studies in law, he became convinced that, although there were no eternal and universal standards underlying law at all times and places, the law appropriate to any specific historical age was dependent upon an underlying developmental pattern of social consciousness and institutions common to all nations except the Jews after the Fall. His New Science (1725, 1730 and 1744) was a highly original attempt to establish this pattern, originating in a primeval mythic consciousness and concluding in a fully rational, but ultimately corrupt, consciousness. He believed that knowledge of the pattern would enable us to interpret a wide range of historical evidence to provide continuous and coherent accounts of the histories of all actual gentile nations. The primacy of consciousness in the pattern led him to claim that there must be a necessary sequence of ideas upon which institutions rested, which would provide the key to the historical interpretation of meaning in all the different gentile languages. He supported this conception by extensive comparative anthropological, linguistic and historical enquiries, resulting most famously in his interpretation of the Homeric poems. He also advanced a more developed account of his earlier theory of knowledge, in which the work of philosopher and historian were mutually necessary, to show how this conception of ‘scientific history’ was to be achieved. Vico believed that the knowledge that wisdom and prudence vary in different historical ages in accordance with an underlying pattern could provide us with a higher insight into those of our own age and enable us to avoid a collapse into barbarism which, in an over rational age in which religious belief must decline, was more or less inevitable. Unfortunately, the metaphysical status of his pattern rendered this impossible. Much of his thought was expressed in a context of theological assumptions which conflict with important aspects of his work. This has given rise to continuous controversy over his personal and theoretical commitment to these assumptions. Despite this, however, his conceptions of the historical development of societies, of the relation between ideas and institutions, of social anthropology, comparative linguistics and of the philosophical and methodological aspects of historical enquiry in general, remain profoundly fruitful.

Purity, power and cruelty

2011 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 312-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robbie Duschinsky
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Cultural Economy ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
Purity And Impurity ◽  
Theoretical Paradigms ◽  
Shed Light

One of the most significant theoretical paradigms for understanding themes of purity and impurity available to researchers is that of Mary Douglas. However her account is problematic: it neglects the analysis of power-relations and subjectivity due to its universalizing, structural-functionalist scope. By contrast Primo Levi’s writings offer an example of a particular cultural economy of purity, and shed light on how a contingent form of purity judgement in Fascist ideology refracted into multiple lived discourses. Levi traces changes in purity narratives across different institutional and social contexts, even within the psyche of a single perpetrator or victim. His writings show the pressing need for a new theory of purity and impurity, and offers fundamental insights towards such an account.

scholarly journals A tale of two Dickenses: Or, learning as fact, fiction and play

2021 ◽  
pp. 147821032110409
Author(s):  
David Rudrum
Keyword(s):  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Mikhail Bakhtin ◽  
Educational Experience ◽  
Free Play ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
Literary Education ◽  
Literary Heritage ◽  
Small Industry ◽  
Insight Into

Over the years, a small industry has sprung up dedicated to preserving writers’ homes and birthplaces, offering the chance to see first-hand the circumstances under which their key texts were written. Experiencing an insight into, say, Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage, or Hardy’s Wessex cottage, or the Bronte parsonage in Haworth, is widely held to be an educational experience, enhancing our appreciation of the link between the life and work of the author in question. Axiomatically – and simplistically – literary heritage sites like these might seem to offer the “truth” behind the “fiction”, by showing the visitor the “real” world behind the “imaginative” writing. Thus, the educational experience they offer is often said to consist in providing an insight into context (historical/biographical, landscape and setting, etc.). This study sets out to challenge this assumption. As case studies, it will discuss two very (very!) different literary heritage sites: the Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum in Portsmouth and the now-defunct literary theme park Dickens World, which finally closed its doors in 2016. The former offers a biographical and historical interpretation of Dickens, ostensibly grounded in reality and truth – although the truth claims made for the museum are shown to be somewhat contestable. The latter appealed far more to the imagination, and to ‘free play’ with the text, than it did to truth. Obviously, these sites involve two completely different conceptions of what it is to provide an experience of literary education. The two are compared and contrasted, with passing reference to thinkers such as Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Kendall Walton and Mikhail Bakhtin, with a view to challenging and dismantling the commonsensical view that the educational value of literary heritage sites consists in revealing the truth behind the fiction.

Cultural Contributions to Explaining Institutional Form, Political Change, and Rational Decisions

1999 ◽  
Vol 32 (7) ◽  
pp. 862-893 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHARLES LOCKHART
Keyword(s):  
Group Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Explanatory Variable ◽  
Institutional Form ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
The Social

Relying on culture as an important explanatory variable is regarded with skepticism by many contemporary political scientists. Yet, doubts about culture's usefulness rest in large part on false perceptions of various sorts. These misunderstandings relegate an important explanatory variable to the social science scrap heap. Accordingly, the author engages in three tasks. First, selected prominent arguments for culture's lack of explanatory usefulness are discussed. Second, it is demonstrated how at least one conceptualization of culture, Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky's grid-group theory, overcomes aspects of these difficulties and contributes to explaining institutional form and political change. Third, it is argued that grid-group theory contributes significantly to both institutional analysis and rational choice theory. Grid-group theory augments each of these latter two approaches and, more important, reveals complementary aspects, linking these modes of analysis together as mutually supportive elements of a more inclusive explanatory scheme.

scholarly journals Zjawisko korupcji w kontekście zmian ustrojowych w Polsce po 1989 roku

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 89-102
Author(s):  
Mateusz Menzel
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
Problem Area ◽  
Market System ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Insight Into

The article aims to provide an insight into the issue of corruption in Poland at the turn of the 1980s and the 1990s. An important aspect which has influenced the understanding the corruption and its scale was a political change – the transition from communism to a democratic state based on the rule of law. Additionally, an equally important factor which was the simultaneous economic change of the state from a centrally planned system to a free market system was pointed out. The article does not exhaust the topic in question to a greater extent, limiting itself only to offering conclusions based on the collected and presented materials. However, it may serve as the starting point for a detailed study of the problem area.

scholarly journals Applying Topic Modelling to Party Discourse: An Exploration of the Italian Case in 2013–2019

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-150
Author(s):  
Andre Pareschi
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Political Change ◽  
The Political ◽  
Topic Modelling ◽  
Electoral Volatility ◽  
Italian Case ◽  
Facebook Pages ◽  
Insight Into

During the last few years, external crises and endogenous weaknesses have combined to plunge the Italian political system into generalised instability. In particular, the major political parties have experienced rapidly turning tides in a context of intensified electoral volatility. This explorative article sets out to get an insight into the discursive struggles that have pitted these parties one against another, undergirding the ebb and flow in their respective mass support and revolving around the ways of communicating political change. To that end, I collect data from the official Facebook pages of the four main Italian parties, downloading posts they published in the period 2013–2019 via the Netvizz application, and I analyse the four corresponding textual corpora through the technique of Topic Modelling. On such bases, the article finds the overall configuration of the political discourse of Italian parties to be aptly described by a model comprising 16 topics, equally divided into ‘partisan’ and ‘cross-cutting’ ones, with the former having a slight edge in terms of diffusion. The four parties differ among themselves by the topics they focus on and by the quantity of topics they choose to include sizably in their streams of communication.

Dialogue and Community: The Ethical Claim of Tradition

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 380-406
Author(s):  
Hans-Herbert Kögler
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Dimension ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Central Thesis ◽  
Ethical Approach ◽  
Validity Claims ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Life Projects

The essay reconstructs an ethical approach towards history. The hermeneutic insight into the requirement for a dialogical access to the meaning of history is shown to entail an ethical dimension. The central thesis is that tradition raises an existential claim towards the interpreter that requires a dialogical recognition of the other’s expressed perspectives. The essay develops this thesis via a concept of tradition as an intersubjective community based on dialogue, which is inspired by Hans-Georg Gadamer’s reflections on the intertwinement of dialogical interpretation, tradition, and the ethical recognition of the other. The Gadamerian concept of tradition will nevertheless be radically revised so as to be suitable for historical interpretation. Dialogical recognition will now reach beyond the textual claims of linguistically raised validity claims to include an existential openness towards the other’s fully situated life-projects and narratives. The argument culminates in the introduction of an existential claim that history entails, and from there establishes a thorough rejection and critique of interpretive objectivism as well as of interpretive presentism.

scholarly journals ENGAGING WITH MAL(E)FUNCTIONS: GENDER AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS IN DAPHNE MARLATT’S ANA HISTORIC

eTopia ◽  
2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Krahn
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Identity Crisis ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
North Americans ◽  
Modes Of Representation ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Insight Into

Daphne Marlatt's novel Ana Historic presents a female-oriented version of historical events not based on male-centered modes of representation. Marlatt fictionalizes aspects of historical and literary documents to carve out a space for an imagined female history that counters masculine production- based narratives previouslywritten about the logging camps of British Columbia. Ana Historic provides a concise look at previous representations of resources and women, which offers insight into how these issues inform a contemporary viewpoint regarding natural resources. Moreover, if the environmental crisis we are experiencing globally is a result of industrialization, have women been manufactured in a similar fashion? And if so, how can North Americans attempt to counter environmental crisis from a societal perspective that is heavily implicated in upholding patriarchal structures? The answer extends beyond mere syllogism, and into the complicated realm of capital: both monetary and social. Revisiting Ana Historic  in our current moment of environmental uncertainty reflects the interconnected relationship between so-called natural spaces and engendered representation. This causes an identity crisis for landscapes and gender, leading to the manipulation of these spaces by established patriarchal institutions and industrializing structures. This represents an extension beyond the consideration of women as "Mother Nature" and relates specifically to their manipulation by men into resources that furthermale capital. Marlatt's transformation of the forest into a manufactured product mimics her transformation of the female protagonists into appropriately functioning wives and mothers. Marlatt's main protagonists Ana, Ina, Annie resist manufacture and become the monsters of male-functions. The transformation of landscapes and women involves looking at the forest as represented in the natural environment, the sawmill, and the finished product. The malfunction of the proper male functioning in the novel is what I come to label as mal(e)functions. The term mal(e)functions, while embodying the simultaneity of two words also represents the non male-oriented spaces in the novel; that of the forest and the female protagonists. The split in the term also represents the fissures of male centered narratives where women and environmental consciousness can exist.

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