Humor and Laughter in Modern Karaite Literature on the Example of the Comedy “Akhyr Zeman” (“the End of Time / Apocalypses”) by Aaron J. Levy

The article focuses on a close study of the comedy “Akhyr Zeman” by Aaron Levy. It was written at the close of nineteenth century and published in 1911. “Akhyr Zeman” is a peculiar cultural hybrid that combines in itself some elements of traditional and modern cultures. As a play, it introduced a brand new genre to Karaite culture. The plot treated the traditional arranged marriage among Karaites in terms of comedy and satire. From other hand, it was written on the vernacular language of the Crimean Karaites and showcased verbal dexterity like traditional Karaite folksongs, sayings and riddles. Some formal elements of its plot were borrowed from traditional homiletic literature. The text of “Akhyr Zeman” demonstrates a reasonable compromise between “old” and “new” in the life of Karaites at the turn of the century. The play represents a crucial moment in the development of modern Karaite drama: the shift from the drama in the Haskalah cast to “ethnographic” comedy. It exerted an influence on later Karaite drama, first of all, on literary works of Aaron Katyk.

“Hamsun's Liminality”

This study seeks to establish the extent to which In Wonderland is a cultural hybridity discourse and a writing-back to Euro-American travelogues. In this ‘different’ travelogue, Hamsun’s voice cuts through the borderlands of the Russian colonized Caucasus region to reveal contempt for acquired culture and a rejection of global uniform identities in a manner that accords with Homi Bhabha’s concept of ‘hybridity.’ While keeping in mind Hamsun’s undisputed parodic style, this postcolonial reading claims that mimicry, as applied by Hamsun, is a practical demonstration of Bhabha’s theory that reflects his propensity to destabilize the West’s monolithic stance as regards the Orient. It therefore reveals the manner in which his supposedly colonial discourse exposes the discriminatory nature of colonial dominance. Within this context, Hamsun has become a cultural hybrid who refuses to imitate conventional European travel narratives or follow in their differentiating paths. On the whole, the basic argument is that Hamsun’s travelogue which invariably asserts, subverts and removes boundaries, does not endorse Orientalism neither in its romantic nor in its subservient form.

Neuroscience

The claims that literary critics and theorists make about language, reading, emotions, and the social powers of literature are based on assumptions about cognition that can and should be tested against the relevant science. The findings of contemporary neuroscience will not settle all disputes about such matters, but the acceptance of some empirically tested postulates about the workings of the brain may at least rule some mistaken views out of bounds. The current scientific consensus is that language is a “bio-cultural hybrid” that develops through the interaction of inherited functions and anatomical structures in the brain with culturally variable experiences of communication and education. Any claims for cognitive or linguistic universality need to square with our bio-cultural hybridity. Brain-based, embodied cognitive processes constrain our experiences with literature, but they do not completely prescribe our responses or predetermine the effects of reading on our lives.

Vilnius archipelago: Performative walks around this performative city

Vilnius archipelago: Performative walks around this performative cityThe present study deals with the performative memory of a city, namely modern Vilnius, the capital of the Republic of Lithuania. The difficult past of Vilnius that is shared by other eastern and central European cities and is marked by the bitter legacy of the “city of changed blood” (Pl. “miasto o wymienionej krwi”, a notion introduced by M. Lewicka) has been subjected to a number of changes effected by modernity and dynamic Europeanization at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The confrontation between the past and modernity has resulted in serious social and national problems (e.g. Polish–Lithuanian relations) dating to the early as well as the most recent history of Lithuania and its capital. Having experienced various totalitarian regimes, Vilnius is an interesting example of the redefining of the memory of the space of a city at a time of a changing political system; it is also an example of the establishing of a hierarchy of new values and symbols. Vilnius is also a cultural hybrid resulting from long-lasting transgressions. However, a comprehensive account of its history still remains utopian. Drawing on the #skaitomevilniu (‘We read Vilnius’) project that was carried out in Vilnius in 2016–2017 and which adopted a performative perspective, the author of the present study attempts to describe a city that is constantly becoming. Archipelag Wilno. O performatywnym chodzeniu po performatywnym mieścieNiniejszy artykuł został poświęcony problematyce performatywnej pamięci miasta na przykładzie współczesnego Wilna, stolicy Republiki Litewskiej. Skomplikowana, choć tak charakterystyczna dla miast Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej, przeszłość Wilna, naznaczona bolesnym dziedzictwem „miasta o wymienionej krwi” (pojęcie M. Lewickiej), zderzyła się na przełomie XX i XXI wieku z pełną zmian nowoczesnością i pośpieszną europeizacją. Ta konfrontacja stała się źródłem poważnych problemów społecznych i narodowych (w tym relacji polsko-litewskich), których korzenie sięgają zarówno najodleglejszych, jak i nowszych dziejów Litwy i jej stolicy. Wilno jako miasto silnie nacechowane doświadczeniem totalitaryzmów jest ciekawym przykładem ilustrującym proces redefiniowania pamięci przestrzeni miasta w okresie transformacji ustrojowej oraz ustanawiania nowej hierarchii wartości i symboli. Jest także kulturową hybrydą będącą efektem wielowiekowych transgresji, której całościowy opis pozostaje ciągle badawczą utopią. Autorka artykułu podejmuje próbę opisu miasta, które „ciągle się staje”, na przykładzie realizowanego w Wilnie w latach 2016–2017 projektu #skaitomevilniu (pol. Czytamy Wilno) z zastosowaniem perspektywy performatywnej.

Hybrid Marriage Breakdown in Hamka’s Novel Merantau Ke Deli

The two main characters in the novel, a man from Minang ethnic and a Javanese woman, meet and unite in a hybrid marriage institution, referring to the concept of combining two objects in one unit, part of a cultural hybrid and then analyzed through descriptive qualitative method reviewing the existence of marriage of different ethnics, part of a social problem in accordance with the function of literature as a medium for disclosure of social problems. Data and sources of data obtained are novels and words, phrases and sentences in the novel pointing to the discussion points. Tolerance, mutual understanding, solidarity, mutual support and not disputing cultural background are the main requirements in carrying out a hybrid marriage and all these requirements do not exist enough in the male character of this novel and eventually the marriage experiences a severe shock and ends in divorce. Disclosure of causal factors is the purpose of this study and the results are the norms of cultural traditions conveyed by a group of people and self-centeredness triggers the breakdown of the marriage.

Historicising appropriability: Hybrid Shakespeare and the challenges of history

With the aid of a specific (or idiosyncratic) understanding of the concept of appropriation that suggests that appropriations are reciprocal manoeuvres of hybridisation that negotiate and construct both their subjects and their objects at the same time, this article explores Shakespeare as a cultural hybrid. In closing, it deploys the preceding theoretical considerations to investigate the cultural and temporal aspects of an anecdote about the Hungarian theatre director Arthur Bárdos.

THE CYBORG AS THE CODE OF A NEW ONTOLOGY. POLITICAL AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HYBRID BODIES

The article considers the concept of “the cyborg” which has become a code in contemporary culture thanks to A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway. The cyborg is the first natural-cultural hybrid of a new ontology that rejects the classical division between nature and culture along with the power and gender aspects of this distinction. The cyborg is neither a subject, nor an object; it is not a network. The cyborg may be conceived only from the perspective of non-classical epistemology. But then the frame of the customary political oppositions and social norms shifts. In the paper the author considers what epistemological resources that made such a radical position possible. Cyberpunk cyborgs buy into the classical ontological binary: they conspire to obtain power while fearing self-generating machines and the biological individualized person. Haraway’s cyborg, however, is based on a feminist critique of the subject and of the objectification of femininity. That critique in combination with post-positivism and anarcho-epistemology has enabled the development of a new code of ontology in which the opposition between nature and culture is radically rejected and replaced by a hybrid symbiosis without external foundations. This approach has paved the way for contemporary contingent/unstable ontologies, agent realism and the new materialism. A political position derived from contingent ontology would not formulate antagonistic oppositions of doubtful genesis. It would instead construct new algorithms, connections, and interactions in a fragile non-repressive natural-cultural reality bombarded by a constant influx of new data.

Decolonizing African Christian Spirituality

Africa is mired in problems and has been so for a very long time. In their attempts to rescue the situation, our forefathers took upon themselves the task of decolonization. Although this process began in earnest in the early 1960s, it has since stalled. Today there are few Africans, either in the secular realm or in religious orders, who dare to speak about decolonization. It is as if the continent is in a coma, its attendants paralyzed. We all seem to have reached the conclusion that the current worldview, provided by the neo-conservatives in Washington and London, is an unassailable universal, a definitive and final creed. This paper is an attempt to break the deadlock of the world’s current commitment to a monoculture. Focusing on the religious domain, in particular prayer, and using historical and critical methods, I argue that African Christians are alienated from their cultural beliefs, and as such their quest for meaning in life is eschewed. I maintain that the spirituality of individualism characterising Christianity is detrimental to Africa and as such it has to be replaced by the ‘spirituality of community’, which is grounded in African traditions and cultures. I conclude by suggesting that if African people want to find meaning in their life and existence here on earth, then they must do so by looking very carefully into their own cultures and traditions, and not disappear into alien cultures, or into some mono-cultural hybrid we witness today.

Not So Dangerous Liaisons: Interstitial Subjectivities and the Autobiography of Arab Women

This research re-examines “cultural hybridity” from an Arab female standpoint. The concept is widely researched in post-colonial discourse, and in texts of bi-cultural Arab women, it is re-envisioned in the light of the specificity of their experience. Amidst a maze of proliferating theories, the study utilizes critical discussions in post-colonial discourse pertinent to the central argument namely; what does it mean to be hybrid for Arab women, and how do they perform cultural hybridity in their autobiographical writing? This study sets itself is to formulate a framework that allows us to talk about Arab women’s autobiography in this context. It explores a space that would take into account ethnic and gender linked issues to investigate alternatives for Arab female self-identification in cultural hybrid contexts. For case study, I use Assia Djebar’s Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade (1985) and Ahdaf Soueif’s In the Eye of the Sun (1992) as texts as growing out of, and emerging against the culturally hybrid reality in which the autobiographical persona finds herself; a reality from which these self -representations evolve and authors begin to tell their stories. The study yields inferences regarding the potential of interstitial subjectivities as catalyst for agency, and a site of resistance and subversion. Cultural hybrid reality, for Arab women, is a site of contested and complex identities. It opens up a playing field of performative contestation in which identity thrives in ongoing endeavor to reformulate the debates on assimilation, integration, and identity politics within such a discursive territory.