scholarly journals Killer Stories: 'Globalizing' the Grotesque in Alain Mabanckou's African Psycho and Leïla Slimani's Chanson douce

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-172
Author(s):  
Sarah Arens
Keyword(s):  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Central Element ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Serial Killer ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
The World ◽  
The City ◽  
The Grotesque

Focusing on Leïla Slimani's Chanson douce (2016) and Alain Mabanckou's African Psycho (2003), this article traces a grotesque aesthetics that draws on other globally circulated texts, such as North American crime fiction, the literary trope of the serial killer and the 'evil mother', as well as on the recognition value of the city of Paris to appeal to a global, and in particular Western readership. While this new aesthetics is clearly informed by previous generations of African literature, such as the texts that have served to illustrate Achille Mbembe's articulation of the grotesque, the 'commandement' in Slimani and Mabanckou's novels is exercised by less tangible dynamics of transnational capitalism, class differentiation, gender stereotypes, and social marginalisation. The article considers the ways in which both Slimani and Mabanckou's narratives place a new importance on, and instrumentalize the role of the audience — as readership — by making them a central element of their representation of the grotesque. The writers' public performance of their identities as celebrity literary authors then serves to better understand how their re-configuration of the grotesque as a 'globalized' aesthetic extends to a re-thinking of what African literature in French and its authors are today on the world literary market.

Comedy and the Athenian Ideal

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Konstan
Keyword(s):  
American Democracy ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
The World ◽  
Hollywood Movies ◽  
Hellenistic World ◽  
City State ◽  
The City ◽  
New Comedy ◽  
A Performance

New Comedy was a Panhellenic phenomenon. It may be that a performance in Athens was still the acme of a comic playwright’s career, but Athens was no longer the exclusive venue of the genre. Yet Athens, or an idealized version of Athens, remained the setting or backdrop for New Comedy, whatever its provenance or intended audience. New Comedy was thus an important vehicle for the dissemination of the Athenian polis model throughout the Hellenistic world, and it was a factor in what has been termed ‘the great convergence’. The role of New Comedy in projecting an idealized image of the city-state may be compared to that of Hollywood movies in conveying a similarly romanticized, but not altogether false, conception of American democracy to populations around the world.

scholarly journals Performing in Crisis Mode: the Munich National Theater, the Great Exhibition and the Cholera Epidemic in 1854

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 39-61
Author(s):  
Meike Wagner
Keyword(s):  
German Industry ◽  
Cholera Epidemic ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
National Theater ◽  
The World ◽  
Final Count ◽  
Risk Zones ◽  
The City ◽  
Great Exhibition

In 1854, the city of Munich had arranged for the “First General German Industrial Exhibition” to promote German industry to the world and invited a global audience to the event. At the same time, Franz Dingelstedt, director of the National Theater, organized a festival displaying the finest actors from Germany. Right after the opening of the festival, cholera started raging in the city and leaving 3,000 deaths in the final count. The author sketches out the role of the theatre in this crisis, when Dingelstedt was ordered by the king to keep the theatre open at any cost. This appears awkward, in regard to the current global pandemic crisis where theaters have been identified as risk zones for infection and consequently closed down. Why was the theatre at the time considered a safe and appropriate place even helping to counter the disease?

The local and global in North African popular music

Popular Music ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Langlois
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Political Party ◽  
North African ◽  
Islamic Movement ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
The World ◽  
East And West ◽  
Victims Of Violence ◽  
The City

On 29 September 1994, Cheb Hasni, the most renowned Rai singer living in Algeria, was gunned down outside his family's house in Gambetta, a quarter of the city of Waharan (Oran). He was one of many public figures (and some 50,000 others) who have been killed since the main opposition political party, the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) was prevented from assuming power by the annulment of elections that they would have won in 1991. Like the most notable of Algeria's victims of violence, which include journalists, lawyers, doctors, television presenters and top policemen, Hasni represented a version of Algerian identity that some people clearly could not tolerate. Responsibility for his assassination has not been claimed, but the manner of his death was identical to others carried out by the armed faction of the fundamentalist Islamic movement, the GIA (Armed Islamic Group). His death has possibly marked the demise of a genre of North African popular music known as Rai as it was produced in Algeria. Rai has been a particularly problematic idiom for Islamists and secularists alike. Both groups nurture distinct views of the place of Algeria, and Algerians in the world, and the role of Islam and liberal secularism in Algeria. Rai music constructs its own distinct trajectories linking local and global, ‘East’ and ‘West’, and, in this way, constitutes a distinct problem for Algerians, and indeed other North Africans today.

scholarly journals The Return of the Sacral King

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 51-65
Author(s):  
Paul R. DeHart ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
The World ◽  
Ancient Christianity ◽  
The City

In Pagans & Christians in the City, Steven D. Smith argues that in contrast to ancient Rome, ancient Christianity, following Judaism, located the sacred outside the world, desacralizing the cosmos and everything in it—including the political order. It thereby introduced a political dualism and potentially contending allegiances. Although Smith’s argument is right so far as it goes, it underplays the role of Christianity’s immanent dimension in subverting the Roman empire and the sacral pattern of antiquity. This division of authority not only undermined the Roman empire and antique sacral political order more generally—it also subverts the modern state, which, in the work of Hobbes and Rousseau, sought to remarry what Western Christianity divorced.

Introduction: Revisiting the Grotesque in Francophone African Literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Sarah Arens ◽  
Joseph Ford
Keyword(s):  
African Literature ◽  
Thematic Issue ◽  
Political Imagination ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
The West ◽  
New Era ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
The Grotesque

The introduction provides an overview of the intellectual context for the thematic issue and outlines the complexities around the genesis of Achille Mbembe's 'Provisional Notes on the Postcolony' (1992). It examines how Mbembe's work ushered in a new era of discursive practices that sought to understand the role of the imagination in the operation of power in contemporary Africa and sketches how the articles of the thematic issue engage with the aesthetics of the grotesque that is a key element in the African political imagination. As a new group of populist leaders in the West exhibit traits that are reminiscent of Mbembe's articulation of the grotesque, the editors emphasise the need for an expanded vision of the grotesque as it circulates between Africa and the West as part of a far broader and deeply entrenched colonial matrix of power.

scholarly journals Role of Taizé Music in Catholic Adoration and Protestant Ecumenical Community in Yogyakarta

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-35
Author(s):  
Hari Martopo
Keyword(s):  
Essential Role ◽  
Peace And Justice ◽  
The World ◽  
Working Together ◽  
The City

Taizé’s music comes from an ecumenical monastic order with an intense devotion to peace and justice through prayer and meditation. It was founded by Brother Roger Louis Schütz-Marsauche in 1940 in the French village of Taizé and later spread throughout the world. Now the Taizé community is also growing in Indonesia, especially in the city of Yogyakarta. The Taizé community introduced its model of worship consisting of prayer, music, and meditation. The Taizé community entered Indonesia through Ursuline nuns’ work, and some of them later chose Taizé music as their worship accompaniment. In Yogyakarta, Taizé music is being used formally in adoration worship, namely The Holy Hour Worship by the Congregational Scholastic Congregation of SCJ Yogyakarta. Simultaneously, an ecumenical community called DNTZ Yogyakarta sings Taizé music in ecumenical fellowship activities. These are voluntary activities which are performed at different places and open for public. These two models of Taizé music in Catholics and Protestants communities have become a unique phenomenon as both communities play an essential role in its development by helping each other and working together in harmony.

scholarly journals Geography and covid-19: reflections from the evolution of the pandemic in Uberlândia, Brazil

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Josimar dos Reis de Souza ◽  
Tatiana Silva Souza ◽  
Beatriz Ribeiro Soares
Keyword(s):  
First Year ◽  
Theoretical Discussion ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Virus Identification ◽  
Rapid Spread ◽  
The World ◽  
Current Scenario ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The City

From the complex sanitary moment faced by Brazil, related to COVID-19, in particular due to the collapse of the health system that has occurred in medium-sized cities, this article aimed to analyze the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic in Uberlândia, according to reflections from geographic science, in order to help to understand the facts that led to the current scenario of the disease in the city. To achieve the objective, we carried out a theoretical discussion about how Geography faces recent events, especially in relation to the role of the Globalization process, both in the dissemination of information about the emergence of COVID-19 and other events, as well as in the rapid spread of the virus around the world. Based on these reflections, we analyzed the evolution of the pandemic, using data provided by the Municipality of Uberlândia and the Ministry of Health, with a cut-off date of March 18, 2021, in order to understand the chronological path of the facts. The choice for this cut-off date for data clipping is justified by our intention to analyze the first year of virus identification in the municipality. The results showed the negative evolution of the pandemic in the city, mainly over the months of February and March 2021, with 100% of the ICU beds occupied, which demonstrates the complexity and the long way to go to overcome this health crisis.

scholarly journals The Role of Astronomy and Feng Shui in the Planning of Ming Beijing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norma Camilla Baratta ◽  
Giulio Magli
Keyword(s):  
Satellite Imagery ◽  
Yuan Dynasty ◽  
Feng Shui ◽  
Palaeomagnetic Data ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Message ◽  
Mandate Of Heaven ◽  
The Yuan Dynasty ◽  
The City

AbstractPresent day Beijing developed on the urban layout of the Ming capital, founded in 1420 over the former city of Dadu, the Yuan dynasty capital. The planning of Ming Beijing aimed at conveying a key political message, namely that the ruling dynasty was in charge of the Mandate of Heaven, so that Beijing was the true cosmic centre of the world. We explore here, using satellite imagery and palaeomagnetic data analysys, symbolic aspects of the planning of the city related to astronomical alignments and to the feng shui doctrine, both in its “form” and “compass” schools. In particular, we show that orientations of the axes of the “cosmic” temples and of the Forbidden City were most likely magnetic, while astronomy was used in topographical connections between the temples and in the plan of the Forbidden City in itself.

“A Few More or Less Make No Difference”

2018 ◽  
pp. 193-241
Author(s):  
Molly A. Warsh
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Scottish Highlands ◽  
Pliny The Elder ◽  
Private Correspondence ◽  
The World ◽  
Pearl Fishing ◽  
Heuristic Device ◽  
The City

This chapter considers how pearls’ subjective beauty, their complex and mysterious origins, and their powerful association with mastery of the seas allowed them to remain a powerful heuristic device for the expression of ideas about mutability, worth, and the nature of different places and peoples around the world. As empires moved to objectify profit and regulate the role of subjects in new ways, pearls continued to serve as a useful index (elenco in Spanish, a word Pliny the Elder employed to denote an elongated pearl but that, by the early seventeenth century, had come to stand for the very impulse to order and compartmentalize that the jewel provoked) of peoples’ highly independent and contingent calculations of worth. Through a consideration of crown-sponsored pearl-fishing interventions in the Scottish Highlands and along Swedish rivers close to the city of Gothenburg, this chapter traces how pearls continued to facilitate the expression of distinct approaches to resource husbandry at scales personal and imperial. The chapter further explores the late-seventeenth-century market for pearls in London and the jewel’s unstable political and economic value as expressed in private correspondence as well as in portraits of women and enslaved bodies whose value was considered impermanent and for purchase..

Saving the Subway

Last Subway ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 96-123
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Plotch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
York City ◽  
Operating Costs ◽  
Budget Cuts ◽  
The World ◽  
Downward Spiral ◽  
Subway System ◽  
The City

This chapter describes how, in the 1970s, the New York City subway system continued the downward spiral of fewer riders, budget cuts, and reduced service, which led to a loss of more riders, further budget cuts, and even worse service. Despite carrying fewer passengers, the transit system's operating costs kept increasing. David Yunich's successor at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), Harold Fisher, failed to address the MTA's slide, although he claimed that his programs were making public transportation travel more efficient, comfortable, and safe. By 1980, New York City's subway riders had more to complain about than ever before. New York City's subway system was not just unreliable, crowded, and filthy; it was also the most dangerous in the world. Moreover, the ongoing deterioration of the subways was threatening the city's economy. The chapter then focuses on the role of house developer Richard Ravitch as MTA chair. Ravitch had no interest in restarting the Second Avenue subway, and the project was a low priority for many of the communities it would serve. Instead, under Ravitch's leadership, the MTA took care of the abandoned tunnels below Second Avenue. More importantly for the future of the neighborhoods that the Second Avenue subway had been designed to serve, Ravitch rescued the existing subway system and the city along with it.

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