Death cults in Gothic ‘Lost World’ fiction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Cameron Hartley
Keyword(s):  
New Woman ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Fear Of Death ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Capitalist Economy ◽  
Copper Cylinder ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines the ‘Lost World’ genre, a staple of late-Victorian popular fiction, exemplified by H. Rider Haggard’s stories featuring Allan Quatermain, and Ayesha, known as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. These fin-de-siècle tales, while ostensibly celebrating British Imperialism and the continuation of colonial power, reveal layers of anxiety concerning degeneration, the collapse of civilisation, the rise of the Victorian ‘new woman’, and perhaps most potently the fear of death. Canadian writer James De Mille, in his book A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, inverted Victorian values to satirise the capitalist economy, and the glorification of war, by creating the Lost World of the Kosekin where wealth is a burden and death worshipped. The presentation of the Lost World as a Gothic Space allows for a critical examination of the way that Victorian cultural certainties were challenged, by divergent belief systems, and the mystery and terror of death.

scholarly journals Same but Different: Chaos and TV Drama Narratives

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Alison McLachlan
Keyword(s):  
Building Blocks ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Fundamental Level ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Basic Level ◽  
Mathematics And Science ◽  
The Way

<p>Complexity is a term that is now commonly used when discussing TV serial dramas and the way that, in recent years, creators and producers of this narrative form have embraced innovative and challenging strategies to tell their stories. As a result, it is also often argued that all TV serial dramas are strikingly different from one another; one of the few things that contemporary TV serial dramas have in common is their employment of complex narrative strategies. However, in this thesis, I argue that—while serial dramas are different from one another in many ways—they are also all the same at a fundamental level.  In order to examine the fundamental narrative components that all serial dramas employ, I use chaos as a framework. Chaos is a branch of mathematics and science which examines systems that display unpredictable behaviour that is actually determined by deep structures of order and stability. At its most basic level, chaos corresponds with the way in which serial dramas are both complex and simple at the same time; beneath the complexity of serial dramas are fundamental building blocks that are used to generate innovative, challenging and unpredictable narratives.  I apply the findings from my critical examination of chaos and TV drama narratives to the creation of my own TV projects, which employ the inherent structures and patterns of TV drama narratives in a way that produces innovative and complex stories. In doing so, I intend to highlight the potential of serial dramas to be endlessly creative yet consistently the same.</p>

Health Equity, Aboriginal Peoples and Occupational Therapy

2012 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 70-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet E. G. Jull ◽  
Audrey R. Giles
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Therapy ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Occupational Therapists ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Aboriginal Peoples ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Canadian Health ◽  
At Risk Populations ◽  
Foundational Belief

Background. In Canada, Aboriginal peoples are affected by colonial relations of power that result in poor health outcomes. Despite occupational therapists' efforts to work in a safe and competent manner with people experiencing challenges to participating in daily life, Western healthcare models reflect values that often undermine Aboriginal peoples' health and well-being. Purpose. Meaningful, effective, and culturally appropriate healthcare practices cannot be fully implemented by occupational therapists without an ongoing and critical examination of occupational therapy's foundational belief systems. Only a critical examination of these foundational belief systems will enable occupational therapists to take action towards addressing these inequities, which is an important step in moving towards culturally safe care. Key Issues. Canadian health professions, including occupational therapy, have the potential to create positive change at a systems level through the critical exploration of underlying professional assumptions. Implications. To advance dialogue about Aboriginal peoples' health, occupational therapists must engage in exploration of their profession's underlying theoretical concepts or risk participating in the perpetuation of health inequities for already at-risk populations.

‘Je ne parle pas français’: Reading Mansfield’s Underground Man

2017 ◽  
pp. 11-23
Author(s):  
David Rampton
Keyword(s):  
Belief Systems ◽  
Good Faith ◽  
Principal Character ◽  
Emotional Commitment ◽  
The Way

Mansfield’s “Je ne parle pas francais”, a story about unrequited desire and its effects, is narrated by its principal character. He is an unscrupulous, unsavoury type, which has helped make Mansfield’s critics quasi-unanimous in condemning him for his role in the events portrayed and questioning the way he describes them. His bitterness and scepticism have reminded some of Mansfield’s readers of Dostoevsky’s “Notes from Underground”. The proto-existentialist aspect of the stories, their preoccupation with “good faith”, their scepticism concerning belief systems and grand abstractions more generally, the difficulties of escaping various kinds of isolation, the difficulties of sustained emotional commitment, all these help make the case for reading the stories in conjunction. Mansfield use a number of strategies – literary allusions, thematic echoes, self-reflexiveness –to help readers negotiate the story’s complexities. In the end, the large questions may remain unanswered, but that is as may be. “Je ne parle pas francais” firmly establishes her as an important modernist writer and a valuable link with Dostoevsky and the great Russian forebears in whom she took such an interest.

Foggy Muddle

2020 ◽  
pp. 113-128
Author(s):  
Jesper Gulddal
Keyword(s):  
Popular Fiction ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Modes Of Operation ◽  
Circular Structure ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Car Accident ◽  
Investigative Process ◽  
The Way

This chapter on Dashiell Hammett’s The Dain Curse takes a narratively unmotivated car accident as the starting point for a discussion of genre negation as a force of innovation in Hammett’s writing. As a violent interruption of preestablished modes of operation, the accident embodies the way in which the novel relates to the conventions of popular fiction only to wreck and overturn them. Thus, the linearity of the investigative process is replaced with a circular structure; the purity of genre is replaced with references to a catalogue of popular fiction templates, none of which are fully executed; narrative closure is replaced with ambiguity and contingency; and the classic figure of the ‘sidekick’ is literarily blown to pieces in what Gulddal reads as another emblematic representation of the principle of genre mobility.

Ambivalent Relationships: The Portuguese State and the Indian Nationals in Mozambique in the Aftermath of the Goa Crisis, 1961–1971

Itinerario ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-139
Author(s):  
Susana Trovão ◽  
Sandra Araújo
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Sensitivity ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Internment Camps ◽  
Protective Measures ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
Economic Vulnerability ◽  
Indian Origin ◽  
The Way

AbstractGrounded in written historical records and oral sources, this exploratory article addresses the Portuguese policy that targeted Indian nationals settled in Mozambique in the aftermath of the liberation/occupation of Portuguese India in December 1961. It equally tackles the views, concerns, and responses developed by Indian nationals to cope with their confinement in internment camps, frozen assets, seizures and liquidation, and deportation. The analysis evinces the inbuilt ambivalence in the way Portuguese colonial authorities constructed the internment of Indian nationals as humanitarian and protective measures, while displaying their dispossession and repatriation as harsh retaliatory political measures, at odds with the purported political and legal principles of colonial governance based on Portuguese Luso-tropical exceptionalism. The differentiated impact of such political measures, far from being univocal and uncompromising, is discussed as marred by innumerable contradictions resulting from the Portuguese economic vulnerability and dependence on Indian subaltern elites in Mozambique. Furthermore, the article presents a particular analytical sensitivity to the ambivalence surrounding the modes in which men and women of Indian origin related to Portuguese colonial power and responded to its governance.

scholarly journals 7th ICSDAP Conference in Bangladesh: Some Experiences and Reflections for the Way Forward

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-282
Author(s):  
Asok Kumar Sarkar ◽  
Mamunur Rahman ◽  
Manohar Pawar
Keyword(s):  
Social Development ◽  
Capacity Building ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
The Way

In the light of the unique experiences of the 7th ICSDAP Conference, this article includes a brief background, details of activities, challenges and opportunities, and outputs and outcomes. Our experiences and reflections suggest that organising international conferences to bring social development scholars together to deliberate on mutual areas of research and practice interests undoubtedly contributes to critical examination and dissemination of knowledge, at least to some extent. In addition, what is equally important, the process and experience of organising conferences appear to enhance our and host organisation’s learning and capacity-building, yielding benefit for everyone to build a better future by overcoming all the odds.

Sitting Bull’s Second Grave: Colonial Metamorphoses in Twentieth-Century America

2013 ◽  
Vol 68 (01) ◽  
pp. 131-165
Author(s):  
Thomas Grillot
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Native Populations ◽  
Sitting Bull ◽  
Symbolic Interactions ◽  
Twentieth Century America ◽  
Internal Colonization

The Lakota leader Sitting Bull was first buried on the Standing Rock reservation, only to be disinterred and re-buried sixty years later. A historical study of these graves leads less to the commemoration of a great man than an opportunity to reexamine colonialism within America. While American colonial power was a fragile one and challenged by some, it was also deeply rooted in the symbolic interactions that took place on and around the reservations, which involved depriving people of land, singling out certain segments of the population, and Americanizing people’s belief systems. While this attempt at internal colonization has been considered a massive failure due to the resistance of native populations, this article seeks to lend nuance to this interpretation and analyze the situation in all its complexity

scholarly journals A theoretical approach to understanding the global/local nex-us: the adoption of an institutional logics framework.

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-19
Author(s):  
Karen Parish
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Education ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Institutional Logics ◽  
Human Rights Education ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Comparative And International Education ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Way

This paper takes as its starting point the theoretical debate within the field of Comparative and International Education surrounding the way in which the global/local nexus is understood and researched. Attempting to move the debate forward, the paper introduces the institutional logics approach as one way in which the global/local nexus can be explored. Institutional logics focus on how belief systems shape and are shaped by individuals and organisations. A framework, based on the institutional logics approach, is presented in this paper taking the phenomena of human rights education as an illustration. The author proposes that by adopting an institutional logics approach and framework we can gain a better theoretical and empirical understanding of the global/local nexus and at the same time provide a much needed bridge between the opposing views within this ongoing debate within the field of Comparative and International education.  

Negotiating ownership and agency in social media: Community reactions to Amazon’s acquisition of Goodreads

First Monday ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Mette Bech Albrechtslund
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Social Spaces ◽  
Social Network Site ◽  
Network Site ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Way

This paper presents an in-depth study and a discussion of Goodreads users’ reactions to the acquisition of the popular social network site for readers by Amazon in 2013. The purpose is to provide an empirical and critical examination of the negotiations over agency and ownership evident in the discussions ensuing the acquisition. The boundaries and norms of Goodreads are negotiated by its users, and the threats to withdraw their active contributions in the wake of the Amazon acquisition are seen as a way to negotiate a definition of what the site should be. Goodreads is shown to be an example of the way online social spaces become contested because of different interpretations of their purpose and functions, and it is argued that its success is ultimately dependent on users’ self-understanding as a community.

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