Dialetics and Structural Organization in the Ẹ̀bìbì Festival Performances of the Ẹ̀pẹ́ People in Lagos State, Nigeria

There is growing interest in the study of festivals by literary scholars in African orature. In Nigeria, the festival resources of the Ìjèbú in southwest ̣ - ern Nigeria, specifically the Èbìbì ̣ festival, has been given cursory multi-disciplinary attention in areas such as anthropology, sociology, religions and history. However, scant attention has been paid to the literariness of this corpus of festivals. Moreover, the variety of the festival celebrated by the Èpẹ́ ̣ people in the coastal area of the Ìjẹ̀bú people appears to have been neglected in previous studies of Ìjẹ̀bu festivals. Using salient aspects of literary semiot ́ - ics, this paper explores the Èbìbì ̣ festival of the Èpẹ́ ̣ people by undertaking a literary evaluation of the structural organization, dialetics and interconnectedness of the performances. Observations revealed that levels of structural organization are interconnected to various degrees. Narrative and textual structures are maintained in spite of translations into other languages. Èbìbì ̣ is structured beginning with formulaic exchanges, invocation by the Oluwo and the beating of the sacred Gbẹ̀du drums. Performers sometimes use the formula within a performance to develop oral text. Actions include flogging, as well as acrobatic and gymnastic displays by the performers. The costumes and masks have motifs of riverine animals and fishing accessories. Color codes are symbolically white for cleansing, green for fertility, brown for earth and red for positive energy. The Èbìbì ̣ festival celebrated in Èpẹ́ ̣ is indeed rich in oral 200 Babatunde Olanrewaju Adebua and Mobolanle Ebunoluwa Sotunsa aesthetic forms such as narration, wording, texture and dramatization which enhance its performance aesthetics to a large degree.

‘A Construction in the Void’, Formal Architecture in the Novels of Edith Wharton

<p>Edith Wharton has been persistently framed as an author detached from the ‘modern’ twentieth century literary world she inhabited. Intellectually compromised by critical conceptions of her as the “last Victorian”, and Henry James’s “heiress”, Wharton’s attentiveness to modernism’s fractured worldview and her original employment of literary form to redress this perspective have been largely overlooked. This thesis seeks to re-evaluate Wharton’s ‘old-fashioned’ authorial persona. Instead of reading her commitment to a past perspective as evidence of her literary obsolescence, this thesis argues that her adherence to a bygone worldview serves as a means of managing the disorientation and disorder of the modern, incomprehensible present. Following Wharton’s evolving conception of stylised aesthetic form across pre-war and post-war worlds, I suggest that Wharton’s literature evidences a tension between two opposing literary aspirations. On the one hand, her texts reveal a desire to abandon aesthetic enclosures and realise an unbounded, authentic interior reality. Yet on the other hand, Wharton’s works underscore the poignant sense of fulfillment acquired within a life bound by such aesthetic architecture. Chapter One outlines Wharton’s critical stance in relation to both realism and modernism. It discusses the way in which the outbreak of the Great War motivated Wharton’s implementation of a critical ‘interior architecture’, in which a modernist interiority is held in play alongside an encompassing realist reality. Chapter Two assesses the stunted nature of stylised aesthetic forms in the pre-war world as evinced in The House of Mirth (1905). There, Wharton demonstrates how a lack of grounding in reality renders such aesthetics devoid of an internal anchorage that clarifies their purposeful relation to the world around them. Vacant of real-world relation, such forms abstract, disintegrating into formlessness. In Chapter Three, I reveal how Wharton moves from scorning to celebrating the artificial nature of aesthetic form in the wake of the Great War. In The Age of Innocence (1920), aesthetic forms deemed arbitrary and artificial in The House of Mirth are reevaluated and revealed as possessing an invisible, intrinsic real-world purpose. From denying realism, stylised aesthetics are redeemed in their attempt to frame individuals in relation to a formless world. Though such forms are inherently fictitious, Wharton asserts that their provision of an illusion of structure aids in the preservation of interpersonal and intergenerational connection. These forms thus cultivate an interior architecture within which society can shelter against an intrinsically unstable reality.</p>

‘A Construction in the Void’, Formal Architecture in the Novels of Edith Wharton

<p>Edith Wharton has been persistently framed as an author detached from the ‘modern’ twentieth century literary world she inhabited. Intellectually compromised by critical conceptions of her as the “last Victorian”, and Henry James’s “heiress”, Wharton’s attentiveness to modernism’s fractured worldview and her original employment of literary form to redress this perspective have been largely overlooked. This thesis seeks to re-evaluate Wharton’s ‘old-fashioned’ authorial persona. Instead of reading her commitment to a past perspective as evidence of her literary obsolescence, this thesis argues that her adherence to a bygone worldview serves as a means of managing the disorientation and disorder of the modern, incomprehensible present. Following Wharton’s evolving conception of stylised aesthetic form across pre-war and post-war worlds, I suggest that Wharton’s literature evidences a tension between two opposing literary aspirations. On the one hand, her texts reveal a desire to abandon aesthetic enclosures and realise an unbounded, authentic interior reality. Yet on the other hand, Wharton’s works underscore the poignant sense of fulfillment acquired within a life bound by such aesthetic architecture. Chapter One outlines Wharton’s critical stance in relation to both realism and modernism. It discusses the way in which the outbreak of the Great War motivated Wharton’s implementation of a critical ‘interior architecture’, in which a modernist interiority is held in play alongside an encompassing realist reality. Chapter Two assesses the stunted nature of stylised aesthetic forms in the pre-war world as evinced in The House of Mirth (1905). There, Wharton demonstrates how a lack of grounding in reality renders such aesthetics devoid of an internal anchorage that clarifies their purposeful relation to the world around them. Vacant of real-world relation, such forms abstract, disintegrating into formlessness. In Chapter Three, I reveal how Wharton moves from scorning to celebrating the artificial nature of aesthetic form in the wake of the Great War. In The Age of Innocence (1920), aesthetic forms deemed arbitrary and artificial in The House of Mirth are reevaluated and revealed as possessing an invisible, intrinsic real-world purpose. From denying realism, stylised aesthetics are redeemed in their attempt to frame individuals in relation to a formless world. Though such forms are inherently fictitious, Wharton asserts that their provision of an illusion of structure aids in the preservation of interpersonal and intergenerational connection. These forms thus cultivate an interior architecture within which society can shelter against an intrinsically unstable reality.</p>

Within the Whirlwind of the Encounter

In this interview with Okwui Okpokwasili, Kristin Juarez and the artist discuss Okpokwasili's iterative practice Sitting On a Man's Head as it took shape during her exhibition Utterances from the Chorus at Danspace Project (New York, New York) in 2020. Inspired by a form of Igbo women's protest called “sitting on a man,” Okpokwasili elaborates on the ways she utilizes slowness to generate somatic experiments in sociality. As they discuss the impact of slowness on the voice and body, Okpokwasili and Juarez consider the possibilities within the tremble and Juarez's notion of the trembling archive. Thinking with Saidiya Hartman's elaboration of the chorus, Okpokwasili's practice offers consideration of the archive as tremulous, in which fragments of imagination and memory cannot be disentangled. As she draws on an unruly lineage of embodied protest practices, the artist discusses the relationship between aesthetic forms and social formation. The interview also offers insight into Okpokwasili's ongoing conversations with Ralph Lemon, Asiya Wadud, and Tina Campt.

Beethoven and Buddhism in a Japanese Religion: Culture as Cultivation in Soka Gakkai

Why is the museum at the headquarters of the lay Japanese Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai full of pianos? How did Gakkai members in Japan come to revere the compositions and ethos of Ludwig van Beethoven as means of defending Buddhist orthodoxy? And how did this Buddhist organization come to rely on classical music as a key form of self-cultivation and institution building? This article draws on ethnographic engagements with musicians in Soka Gakkai, along with study of the Gakkai’s development in 20th-century Japan, to detail how practitioners’ Buddho-cultural pursuits demonstrate ways cultural practices can create religion. Attention to Soka Gakkai’s fusions of European high culture with lay Buddhist teachings and practices troubles static definitions of “Buddhism” and signals the need for broader inquiry into the nature of religious belonging through investigations of aesthetic forms.

The Aesthetics and Emotions of Religious Belonging: Examples from the Buddhist World

The articles in this special issue illuminate the importance of aesthetics, affect, and emotion in the formation of religious communities through examples from the Buddhist world. This introduction reads across the contributors’ findings from different regions (China, India, Japan, and Tibet) and eras (from the 17th to the 21st centuries) to highlight common themes. It discusses how Buddhist communities can take shape around feelings of togetherness, distance, and absence, how bonds are forged and broken through spectacular and quotidian aesthetic forms, and how aesthetic and emotional practices intersect with doctrinal interpretations, gender, ethnicity, and social distinction to shape the moral politics of religious belonging. We reflect on how this special issue complicates the idea of Buddhist belonging through its focus on oft-overlooked practices and practitioners. We also discuss the insights that our studies of Asian Buddhist communities offer to the broader study of religious belonging.

The Art and Times of ABDIAS NASCIMENTO: QUILOMBOLA EXTRAORDINAIRE

This paper explores the aesthetic trajectory of Abdias Nascimento in the context of his life’s work, arguing that he has to be apprehended as a Quilombola warrior figure, through his entwinement of political and artistic agency. More specifically, it explores how Nascimento harnesses the creative matrix found in the lived history, myth and figuration from candomblé as a dramatist and as a painter. First, it delves into his creation of the Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN), the first black theater in Brazil and his use of candomblé as a template of dramaturgy in his play, Sortilégio. However, the main analysis centers on his paintings, which combines candomblé symbology, along with other African cultural forms, to create culturally meaningful aesthetic forms that affirmed Afro-Brazilian subjectivity and their historical belonging in the nation and connection to the larger Africana world.

A Call to Otherness: Inscribing Digital Vernaculars into the Art Institution

In the mid-2010s, a number of renowned museums and galleries across the world held retrospective exhibitions positioning digital arts within western art history. While inscribing some techno-aesthetic forms and behaviours into the contemporary arts institution, these exhibitions nevertheless cemented the exclusion of others. By examining the role and shortcomings of curatorial practices in this process, this article seeks to frame curating as an art of inclusion able to carve institutional and epistemic space for otherness. In doing so, I argue for the relevance of devices for noticing, defined as a range of tactics that enable the apprehension of digital vernaculars – everyday, ‘lower’ expressions of digital media culture – within institutional sites and discourses. Through these tactics, curators may provoke under-represented cultural actors, forms and behaviours into recognition, reverse the violence of institutional occlusion, and fertilize art histories.

The ‘Ark Re-Imagined’

The ‘Ark Re-Imagined’ is an art project that envisions a Mesopotamian ark based on Iraq’s ancient boat types and vernacular architectural forms. Through exploring and documenting what remains of traditional boatbuilding techniques and related crafts in today’s Iraq, the project breaks new ground in the study of Mesopotamian maritime heritage. Engaging at the intersection between art, cultural heritage, ecology and development, the project’s ‘expeditionary art’ approach seeks tangible means to reconnect with the land and rivers through a palette of making techniques and aesthetic forms that have persisted in the region for many millennia. It holds global relevance through its imaginal engagement with the present situation of systemic crisis and potential transformation, drawing parallels between the current climate emergency and that of the Great Flood, and asking what kinds of knowledge, resources and practices an ark for our times needs to preserve.

Estetyka komunikacji jako wyraz grzeczności

Podstawowym celem niniejszego artykułu jest określenie tego, na ile estetyka komunikacji jest wyrazem grzeczności. Szczególna uwaga zostanie zwrócona na znaczenie estetyki komunikacji werbalnej oraz niewerbalnej. Tak postawiony cel badawczy można przedstawić w następujących pytaniach szczegółowych: w jakim znaczeniu estetyka komunikacji może być formą grzeczności w komunikacji? W czym przejawia się estetyka komunikacji werbalnej oraz niewerbalnej? Artykuł ma charakter przeglądowy; zastosowano tu przede wszystkim metodę analizy zawartości literatury przedmiotu. Odpowiedzi na wymienione wyżej pytania, uzyskane w wyniku przeprowadzonej analizy, pozwolą zaproponować standardy bycia uprzejmym w komunikacji z uwzględnieniem estetycznych form przekazu. Aesthetics of Communication as an Expression of Politeness The main purpose of this article is to determine the extent to which the aesthetics of commu­nication is an expression of politeness. Particular attention will be paid here to the importance of the aesthetics of verbal and non-verbal communication. This research objective can be presented in the following specific questions: In what sense can the aesthetics of communication be a form of politeness in communication? How does the aesthetics of verbal and nonverbal communication manifest itself? The article is a literature review; therefore, the method of critical analysis of the subject literature was primarily used. The answers to the above-mentioned questions, obtained as a result of the conducted analysis allowed to recom­mend standards of being polite in communication, taking into account the aesthetic forms of communication.