Religious Syncretism

The modern universal significance of the all-human creative experience updates the scientific interest in phenomena of culture which concentrate and disseminate the theories, ideas and beliefs that claim universal significance and cause epochal changes over vast territories. Religion, as a way of spiritual and practical mastery of the world by man, is that part of culture that constantly changes its forms, throws off some and clothes itself in others, fixing itself in cultural systems and actively influencing the processes of their self-organization and selfregulation. Therefore, the object of this study is religious syncretism as a way of transforming components of different order of being into a powerful culturecreative potential. The purpose of the work is to study religious syncretism as a complex multilevel process of mutual influence of various types of religions, sacred ideological images and cultural archetypes (ethical, aesthetic, artistic). The parameters of openness, and the mixing and blurring of boundaries make it possible to consider religious syncretism as a creative factor of culture, giving it the necessary integrity and actual meaning. Analysis of traditional forms of reflection and regulation of socio-cultural processes (myth, ritual, religion, art) reveals syncretism as a way of filling the sacred and religious with a powerful cultural-creative force. The author reveals the entropic essence of religious syncretism and its creative role in overcoming fragmentation, simplification and monism by culture (especially in the interpretation of the concepts of life and death, being and nothing, beautiful and ugly, space and time, virtue, soul, faith). The methodological basis of the research was formed by a transdisciplinary approach establishing a systemic life stance interaction of structurally functional and historical analysis with cultural and philosophical reflection. The theoretical conclusions contained in the work open up new opportunities for further study of the influence of religions on the creativity of cultural systems. The study of the culture-creative potential of religious syncretism clearly demonstrates the unity of the primary causes of being and thus allows one to practically reduce the degree of modern interfaith tension.

Poetic Violence in the Book of Jeremiah

This chapter examines poetic images of violence in the book of Jeremiah from a literary perspective. In this analysis, Jeremiah’s images of poetic violence are rhetorically constructed and should not be viewed as descriptive of actual events. Although violent events may lie at the heart of these images, this chapter assumes they are designed primarily for their rhetorical impact and theological meaning, and not for their descriptive accuracy. After discussing broadly the meaning and purpose of poetic violence, the author considers three rhetorically effective images that appear frequently in Jeremiah—the wound, the maternal body, and the unburied corpse. These images share a common focus on the body and are intended to unsettle and to induce change in those who encounter them by communicating the physical threat to individuals within Israel, as well as to the community as a whole. Despite their power to unsettle, these images also convey hope by communicating alternative and positive realities, and by suggesting ways in which violence can be a creative force that transforms individuals and communities. If poetic violence is effective, transformation will occur and the wound, the maternal body, and the unburied corpse will make way for the healing, birth, and regeneration of Israel.

Age, experience and creative labour: Narratives of creative professionals over age 55 in the New York fashion industry

This qualitative study introduces six creative fashion professionals, aged 55–74, who started their careers in the 1980s. They have managed to overcome the complex challenges of employment and remain active in the highly competitive and youth-centric fashion industry of New York City. The participants represent key occupations that drive the behind-the-scenes creative force in the industry’s supply chain. While their long careers have equipped them with expertise, multiple transferable hard and soft skills and extensive professional networks, they have become a rare age demographic in the industry. We investigate the importance of professional experience that comes with age in the current workforce by exploring the participants’ self-reflections and assessments about their careers as ageing workers. We determine how exogenous factors such as globalization, trade agreements, changes in technology, the effect of politics and recessions, global health crises and endogenous factors, such as changes in positions, additional training and work–life balance, have influenced their careers. We highlight the benefits of intergenerational teams in which older workers are effectively able to transfer knowledge to and collaborate with younger co-workers and vice versa. Employing insights of the theory of experience, continuity theory, social exchange theory and generational theory, the study shows that intergenerational collaboration is critical to mastering creative processes in the fashion and textiles industry. Our research uncovers this demographic’s collective experience, tacit knowledge and resilience and proclaims their passion for their professions. It also illuminates the strategies the participants employed to remain professionally relevant as they adapted to the shifting landscape of the global fashion industry.

Institutional Traps for the Development of a Corporation's Creative Potential

The process of free formation and development of the creative potential of corporations in the context of the expansion of the digital economy is associated with the emergence of specific obstacles, which in economic theory are called development traps. Verifying this position, the article analyzes the institutional pitfalls of the development of creative potential caused by modern transformations. The concept of the institutional trap, first formulated in the works of P. David and D. North, and further developed in the works of A. Auzan, E. Balatsky, G. Kleiner, V. Polterovich seems to have been known and developed for a long time, but this is the trap of the trap itself. Despite all the banality and familiarity of the category of institutional trap in the Russian economy associated with the establishment of an inefficient norm, in recent years it has again attracted the attention of participants in various areas of scientific research, since it has significant hidden opportunities in the study of the formation and development of the creative potential of the corporation in the era of modern transformations. The creative potential, represented as a powerful creative force, endowed with special intellectual capital and competencies, is actively involved in accelerating transformations, the results of which are not always predictable, expected, accompanied by certain obligations and very unpredictable inertial results. Effective implementation of the creative potential of the corporation and its intellectual core involves expanding the opportunities for free generation of the creative potential of the corporation and overcoming specific obstacles to this formation associated with the processes of large-scale economic transformations, network development, corporate standardization and nationalization. We present the creative potential of the corporation as a kind of intellectual core, consisting of professional intellectuals who are able to generate new business development ideas and offer capital combinations of resources that do not fit into the standards, claiming to be the main ones. Through the prism of the pitfalls of developing the creative potential of the corporation, the author examines the main problems and contradictions of the transformations taking place in the Russian economy at the present stage. The research was conducted using the resources of the system economy, creative economy, knowledge economy, institutional economy, dialectics method, comparative analysis method, and empirical method.

atrever-se a uma escrita infantil: a infância como abrigo e refúgio

The present text is a childlike exercise in writing. In responding to an invitation to write an adult, academic text, we the authors found that the presence of a child's standpoint acted to change the expressions that were to be elucidated, and that the project that adult writing represents was suspended by the creative force of childhood. "Philosophy for children" became "children for philosophy"; "moral education" became "the end (of) morality" and "conceptions of childhood" became the "childhood of conceptions." As such our text is divided into different sections, in each of which we explore the implications of allowing ourselves to be transformed in our practice by recognition of the child’s voice; the problematization of conventional educational programmatics for one, and the opening of new pedagogical pathways, which recognize childhood as a moving force of thinking, as opposed to an object of study and manipulation. To this end, we engage several interlocutors from different fields--literature, philosophy, education, "philosophy for children", and from chronological children themselves. We conclude by proposing, based on an encounter with the work of H. Cisoux and J. Derrida, that we think about the relations between deconstruction and childhood in such a way that our affirmation of childhood leads to a transformation of the text itself—not only in its content but in its form. As such, we present the reader with a fundamentally childlike text.

Making Kin With Plastic Through Aesthetic Experimentation

Recent scholarship in childhood studies has raised concerns about humancentric, singular discourses regarding human-plastic relations. As a result, questions of how to develop new forms of learning with materials in environmental education are now an important issue for researchers, educators, and policymakers. This paper activates a feminist new materialist ontology to position plastic as an active participant in the formation of knowledge. Drawing on visual imagery of children’s and artists’ aesthetic experimentations, we explore the intra-related and complex relationship between plastic, children, and the planet. Haraway’s concept of making kin is operationalized to highlight plastic’s multidimensional complexities as both a destructive and creative force, producing a novel framework for understanding and learning with plastic in early childhood education.

Paleolithic Women’s Spirituality and its Relevance to us Today

In this paper, I consider Paleolithic women's spirituality as expressed through various aspects of their artwork found in the caves of Spain and the ‘Venus figurines and suggest these icons may be seen as an attempt by some of early these women artists to translate their own inner experiences and insights cataphatically, and thereby reconcile the tension between the image-less I experience ineffable transcendence using didactic expression grounded in images. This method was used later by the Spanish mystic Santa Teresa, who clearly felt the mystery needs to be related to personally; it is not an abstract mystery, but a mystery that is alive, that vibrates through us and is what animates every cell in our body; we are an embodiment of this living mystery. Whereas in the 16 Century it was normal for Teressa to consider the mystery as God, it was most likely customary for Paleolithic women to think of the mystery as the Universal or Great Mother, an insight some of them probably arrived at through analogy with the creative force expressing itself through their pregnant bodies. Whereas Santa Teresa employed images that meant something to the people living during her time, these ancient women probably did the same. From this perspective, their artwork may be seen as pointers to this 'entity' or mystery, which, is both immanent in creation and at the same time is beyond duality and all definitions. Here, I also submit that they probably realized the creative aspect of the enigma through their pregnancies, and, in their death, they recognized it as the destructive or dark phase in the cycle of life that is so necessary for ‘rebirth’ to occur, and, in its expression through celestial events, they probably celebrated it through their rituals and their pilgrimages which took place at specific times of the year.

The Value of Intertextuality in Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners and Naipaul’s The Mimic Men

Studies on comparative literature have been fragmentary concentrating on one or two aspects of the thematic concerns of novels without emphasizing the concepts of divergent and convergent intertextuality. This paper aims to revisit Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners re-reading it in dialogue with Naipaul’s novel The Mimic Men. The selected novels are controversial. Criticism deployed on all fronts conveys the pluralities and oppositions that are in fact the novels’ hallmarks. Yet, the aspects criticized attest to, and confirm, the authors’ taking of the less trodden track. The comparative analysis within the scope of this paper will show that Naipaul’s and Selvon’s fictional representations of creolized Trinidadian and English societies highlight specific cultural and linguistic aspects and that intertextuality is either convergent or divergent. For instance, the structure of Naipaul’s text takes as much from Caribbean orature and the wake of Caribbean plantation culture. However, Selvon’s novel takes the form of flashbacks. Naipaul innovates and transforms Selvon’s structure to generate a Caribbean context, par excellence. Traces of Selvon’s style are present in Naipaul’s corrosive voice of representing Caribbean identity. Naipaul brings to an apotheosis the creative force already illustrated in the remarkable works of Selvon. This paper aims to track these traces and foreground the idea that texts can speak to each other. More significantly, this paper assesses the main characters’ fates to re-question the status of creoles, a status deliberately put between parentheses, denying them the right to voice their hybrid identities. Above all, the close textual reading of Galahad’s and Singh’s stories is meant to value the trope of intertextuality.

The “Secret Recipe” of Galápagos

Galápagos tortoises demonstrate the special “creative force” of evolution in the archipelago, having radiated into 15 species—each with a characteristic shell shape—within the last 3.2 million years. Formed over an active mid-ocean volcanic hotspot, Galápagos islands have also changed dramatically in the same period, providing new and diverse “petri dishes” for tortoise evolution. In these new homes, which are low, dry islands, where the tortoise’s main food is prickly pear cactus (which has concurrently evolved a protective treelike stature), tortoises evolved impressive new features, including saddlebacked shells and extra-long limbs. On all the islands where they occur, tortoises serve as “ecological engineers,” building suitable niches for themselves (and incidentally for other species). In the case of domed-shell tortoises, those niches include tortoise-maintained wallows, meadows, and migration trails. Heavily hunted in Galápagos history, most tortoise species are rebounding today, some from tortoises rediscovered in the novel places they had been carried by early mariners in their quest for food.

The Value of Intertextuality in Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners and Naipaul’s The Mimic Men

Studies on comparative literature have been fragmentary concentrating on one or two aspects of the thematic concerns of novels without emphasizing the concepts of divergent and convergent intertextuality. This paper aims to revisit Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners re-reading it in dialogue with Naipaul’s novel The Mimic Men. The selected novels are controversial. Criticism deployed on all fronts conveys the pluralities and oppositions that are in fact the novels’ hallmarks. Yet, the aspects criticized attest to, and confirm, the authors’ taking of the less trodden track. The comparative analysis within the scope of this paper will show that Naipaul’s and Selvon’s fictional representations of creolized Trinidadian and English societies highlight specific cultural and linguistic aspects and that intertextuality is either convergent or divergent. For instance, the structure of Naipaul’s text takes as much from Caribbean orature and the wake of Caribbean plantation culture. However, Selvon’s novel takes the form of flashbacks. Naipaul innovates and transforms Selvon’s structure to generate a Caribbean context, par excellence. Traces of Selvon’s style are present in Naipaul’s corrosive voice of representing Caribbean identity. Naipaul brings to an apotheosis the creative force already illustrated in the remarkable works of Selvon. This paper aims to track these traces and foreground the idea that texts can speak to each other. More significantly, this paper assesses the main characters’ fates to re-question the status of creoles, a status deliberately put between parentheses, denying them the right to voice their hybrid identities. Above all, the close textual reading of Galahad’s and Singh’s stories is meant to value the trope of intertextuality.