Death Reminders

Discussing school shootings as current or historical events in social studies classrooms can be a difficult endeavour, as it requires confronting death and making sense of violent human behaviour. This chapter asserts that existential anxiety plays a role in helping us better understand these tragedies. Terror management theory (TMT) accounts for existential anxiety as a driver of human behaviour and can be a powerful conceptual tool to help students and teachers unpack the difficult subject matter of school shootings, as well as provide insight for behavioural responses that may emerge in the classroom in response to these discussions. As a result, TMT contributes a classroom of care that fosters a sense of student agency for which to imagine a preferable future.

Expressionist Narrative of War (Vasyl Stefanyk’s Novellas in the Western European Context)

This article shows how the influence of Western European expressionism on Ukrainian art contributed to the formation of its national version in the works of Vasyl Stefanyk. The research applied comparative, biographical methods and method of close reading. The outcome of this detailed analysis demonstrates that the common features of Stefanyk’s antimilitary novels and Western European Expressionists are similar and feature such themes as the crisis of cultural values, anti-military issues, condemnation of murder, states of existential anxiety, tragedy of human existence and eschatological feeling. Furthermore, Expressionists and Stefanyk focus on the psychophysical states of characters ‒ death, madness, injury, numbness, screaming, fear, panic, despair, agony, anxiety, prayer.

Danse devant le miroir de François de Curel, ou d’une “pièce bien faite” à une “pièce bien défaite”

François de Curel ha pasado a la posteridad como autor de la “obra bien hecha”. Sin embargo, al estudiar su obra, en este caso La Danse devant le miroir (La danza frente al espejo), nos damos cuenta de que el escritor no respeta todas las reglas del arte dramático. De hecho, el escritor parece, en primer lugar, cuestionar la fábula de la forma canónica, que se construye sobre un mecanismo lógico de acción que conduce, a través de una tensión cada vez mayor, al desenlace final. La composición clásica se desvanece en la obra detrás de la evocación de los estados anímicos de los protagonistas, presos de la angustia existencial y, por tanto, notamos el paso de un drama agonista a un drama ontológico. El trabajo de socavar el "drama absoluto" también se manifiesta en un nuevo enfoque del personaje. Desprovisto de sus atributos activos, prefiere cuestionar su vida, repetir sus contratiempos antes que actuar, el personaje en acción deja paso al personaje en reflexión François de Curel has gone down to posterity as an author of the “well-made play”. However, while studying his work, in this case, La Danse devant le miroir (The Dance in Front of the Mirror), we realize that the writer does not respect all the rules of dramatic art. In fact, the writer seems, in the first place, to call into question the fable of the canonical form which is built on a logical mechanism of action leading through ever-increasing tension to the final denouement. The classical composition fades into the play behind the evocation of the protagonists’ emotional states in the grip of existential anxiety and, therefore, we note the passage from an agonistic drama to an ontological drama. The work of undermining the “absolute drama” is also manifested by a new approach to the character. Deprived of his active attributes, he prefers to call into question his life, rehash his setbacks rather than act. The character in action is giving way to the character in reflection.

The Relationship Between Spiritual Health With Existential Anxiety and Morbid Anxiety in Female Patients With Breast Cancer

Background and Aim: Anxiety is one of the common disorders affecting the treatment process in patients with breast cancer. Regarding the importance of spiritual health on anxiety in cancer patients, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between spiritual health with existential anxiety and morbid anxiety in the female with breast cancer. Methods & Materials: The research method was descriptive-correlational. The statistical population included all female patients with breast cancer referred to Imam Reza Oncology and Radiotherapy Center in Mashhad in 2017. A total of 195 patients with breast cancer were selected through random sampling. Data collection tools included Beck Anxiety Inventory (1990), Lawrence & Good Existential Anxiety Inventory (1974), and Paulotzin & Ellison Spiritual Health Inventory (1982). Data were analyzed using Pearson correlation and multivariate regression. Ethical Considerations: This study was registered by the Ethics Committee of Islamic Azad University E-Campu (Code: 950261902191). Results: The results showed a significant positive relationship between spiritual and existential dimensions of spiritual health with existential anxiety (P>0.01). But the relationship between two dimensions of spiritual health and patients’ anxiety was not significant (P>0.01). Conclusion: Considering the importance of spiritual health in existential anxiety and morbid anxiety, strengthening spiritual health can influence cancer patients’ anxiety.

Al-Maʿarrī’s Anxious Menagerie: The Epistle of the Horse and the Mule

Around the year 411/1021, blind author and controversial freethinker Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī (449/1057) wrote Risālat al-ṣāhil wa-l-shāḥij (The Epistle of the Horse and the Mule), a meandering prose work populated by animal characters who talk about Syrian society on the eve of the crusades. The story exudes a brand of fictionality, namely creative literary exaggeration designed to call forth mental pictures, that sets it apart from other animal texts due to the overwhelming ambiguity it creates. The animal characters suffer existential anxiety when, for instance, they realize that concepts like genus (jins) and species (nawʿ) turn out to be fuzzier than they thought, thereby calling into question whether any species—be it biological or linguistic—is a stable class. Animal ontology gets further confused by just-so stories about hybrids and crossbreeds, and by terms for philosophical contingency that question whether talking animals even exist—this is not just a story that did not happen, but a story that cannot happen except in the imagination. On the other hand, those same philosophical terms may yet affirm that speaking animals could exist, and that they have value in themselves, by hinting at their place in a cosmic order that radiates the goodness of its Source.

Infodemic: the effect of death-related thoughts on news-sharing

Research on the sharing of fake news has primarily focused on the manner in which fake news spreads and the literary style of fake news. These studies, however, do not explain how characteristics of fake news could affect people’s inclination toward sharing these news articles. Drawing on the Terror Management Theory, we proposed that fake news is more likely to elicit death-related thoughts than real news. Consequently, to manage the existential anxiety that had been produced, people share the news articles to feel connected to close others as a way of resolving the existential anxiety. Across three experimental studies (total N = 416), we found that it was not news type per se (i.e., real versus fake news) that influenced news-sharing intentions; instead, it was the increased accessibility to death-related thoughts elicited from the content of news articles that motivated news-sharing. The findings support the Terror Management framework and contribute to the existing literature by providing an empirical examination of the underlying psychological motive behind fake news-sharing tendencies.