...profoundly influential in helping us understand the nature of our society. Their critical analysis provides a platform through which we can engage in pragmatic debate. This paper will attempt to explain the views of both authors while giving a comparative analysis of their ideas. In the early 19th century, renowned French political thinker Alex de Tocqueville embarked on a journey across the Atlantic Ocean to America. His mission was to understand what exactly made American democracy so special. Along the way, much was revealed about the American way of life. In his findings he noted the prevailing sense of individualism amongst the population. He found that most people where predominantly occupied by the notion of the “self” rather than the collective. Unsurprisingly, Tocqueville came to the conclusion that such a way of life would inevitably cause a collapse in America’s social framework. In what can only be called a remarkable display of socio-political prescience, Tocqueville also concluded that the American civilization was destined to adopt a form of governance wherein all actions would be designed to satisfy the will of the individual rather than the will of the collective. The trend towards individualism and selfishness that Tocqueville identified prompted him to come to a series of revealing predictions. He found that a culture predicated on egotism, selfishness and individualism would promote a sort of despotism whereby individuals would become apathetic to their...
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...Minimalist contentions: Fight Club Introduction Chuck Palahniuk is one of the most influential American fiction writers who emerged in the 1990s. His debut novel, Fight Club (hereafter: FC) reached cult status after the film adaptation by David Fincher was released in 1999, and widespread and divided critical reception was soon to follow. Much of the current debate about Fight Club focuses on the political implications of the text, but most often recourse to it by way of referencing the film. These arguments usually question or celebrate the transgressive potentials of the book (Giroux; Mendieta), or address issues of masculinity brought into the fore by their literary and cinematic representations emergent in the same decade (Tuss; Friday). However, few, if any, have addressed the literary aspirations of the text and its author. Although none of the approaches to the thematic concerns of Fight Club are unjustified, in the argument that follows I will suggest that conclusions drawn and critical judgments passed have been hasty, and not only failed to take into account the formal aspects of story-telling, but that the narrative features of Palahniuk’s text have largely went unexplored, and constitute a blind spot of the reception. Critics condemning or acclaiming the novel, and, indeed, many a cultic reader of Palahniuk ignored Fight Club as a literary narrative, and have inadvertently been repeating the catchphrases of the text, either reinforcing or trying to undermine what...
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...described [and] which occurs after severe mechanical concussions, railway disasters and other accidents involving a risk to life; it has been given the name of traumatic neurosis’ (12). Freud’s remark brings to the fore the traumas of the industrial age as both individually and publicly experienced and negotiated. This condition of trauma as private and public, individual yet also societal is held in tension throughout Cunningham’s novel. Reflecting on the otherness of trauma and its vexed relationship to representation, this article will consider some aspects of the writing of trauma in Michael Cunningham’s 2005 novel Specimen Days; a text that offers a particularly powerful literary imaging of culture’s disavowals that return to haunt. In my discussion of Cunningham’s engagement with trauma, and in particular social and ‘insidious’ forms of trauma, the main concerns will be firstly how the text...
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...Relations, foreign policy, and security studies. Primarily developed by Joseph S. Nye, the concept is typically drawn upon to emphasize the more intangible dimensions of power in a field long dominated by overtly material (i.e. military) power. Recently, some scholars have reframed soft power — specifically the key notion of attraction — as a narrative and linguistic process. This literature, however, has downplayed some of the other deep-seated underpinnings of soft power, which this article argues lie in the dynamics of affect. Building upon the International Relations affect and aesthetics literatures, this article develops the concept of soft power as rooted in the political dynamics of emotion and introduces the concept of affective investment. The attraction of soft power stems not only from its cultural influence or narrative construction, but more fundamentally from audiences’ affective investments in the images of identity that it produces. The empirical import of these ideas is offered in an analysis of the construction of American attraction in the war on terror. Keywords Affect, discourse, emotion, narrative, Nye, soft power Introduction In her confirmation hearings in January 2009 before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argued that to deal with a multiplicity of pressing global issues, the US ‘must...
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...Beyond Consumerism: New Historical Perspectives on Consumption Author(s): Frank Trentmann Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Jul., 2004), pp. 373-401 Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3180734 . Accessed: 21/03/2011 08:15 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=sageltd. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Sage Publications, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access...
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...citizenship yet were always looked down upon by those in my family with citizenship. Prior to this course I felt compelled to go right along with that notion. I have learned the most about immigrants and their experiences from the two video assignments, VIDEO 1, and VIDEO 2. The videos brought real human examples of our broken system and gives us the element of humanity to it. It is incredibly easy to learn concepts and memorize definitions, but in a course about humans, I believe a connection is truly formed when we can associate faces with the concepts. While each immigrant group sparked some kind of emotional response from me, the group that affected me the most was children born to immigrant parents. As the module...
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...readers with a “motiveless world” of terror in which “no identity is reliable, no theory waterproof” (45). Ondaatje’s novel tells the story of Anil Tessera, a Sri Lankan expatriate and forensic anthropologist working for a UN-affiliated human rights organization. Haunted by a strong sense of personal and cultural dislocation, Anil takes up an assignment in Sri Lanka, where she teams up with a local archeologist, Sarath Diyasena, to uncover evidence of the Sri Lankan government’s violations of human rights during the country’s period of acute civil war. Yet, by the end of the novel, Anil has lost the evidence that could have indicted the government and is forced to leave the country, carrying with her a feeling of guilt for her unwitting complicity in Sarath’s death. On one hand, Anil certainly embodies an ethical (albeit rather schematic) critique of the failure of global justice. On the other, her character stages diaspora, in Vijay Mishra terms, as the “normative” and “ exemplary … condition of late modernity” (“Diasporic” 441) — a condition usually associated with the figure of the nomad rather than the diasporic subject — and thus raises questions about the novel’s regulatory politics of diasporic identity. In contrast, Anita Rau Badani’s The Hero’s Walk represents the formation of diasporic identities as an empowering process shaped by multiple changes on the local level rather than by transnational mobility. Set in a fictive seaside town in...
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...Women: A Personal Worldview Narrative An individual’s worldview may originate from how and manner through which knowledge and understanding are offered and obtained. A world view in my opinion, worldview is an introspective view on how everyday activities are color, organized, filtered, and interpreted in regards to personal cultural perceptions. Additionally, my worldview, which continues to develop, is an interpersonal process, which began when I was a young man in rural society of Africa and subsequently in civilized society of Europe, Asia and America. Thinking about the concept of worldview found me rendering deep thoughts about my life so far. Why? One may ask; well, the total sum of my worldview is directly and indirectly shaped by the different assumed and certain roles women plaid in my life. These experiences gave me a unique interpretation of the world. Fifteen years was the age I realized that my culture is one that discriminates against women. It is a culture where women are viewed as property and used only to satisfy the sexual libido of their male counterparts; a culture where women has no opinion either in the family or society, except for that of their husband if married and father’s if unmarried; and finally a culture where female genital cutting is still practiced. Ultimately, there is no potential for women to actually have and fulfill a dream. In such culture, there were three women-my mother, and two grandmas. Domestic violence, abusive behavior, and...
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...erian novelJournal of Education and Practice ISSN 2222-1735 (Paper) ISSN 2222-288X (Online) Vol 2, No 4, 2011 www.iiste.org A Study on Gender Consciousness in Nigerian Autobiographical Narratives and Power of the Interview Ogunyemi, Christopher Babatunde Department of English, College of Humanities, Joseph Ayo Babalola University PMB 5006 Ilesa 233001 Osun State, Nigeria. bbcoguns2@yahoo.se Akindutire, Isaac Olusola Department of Physical and Health Education, Faculty of Education University of Ado Ekiti Ado Ekiti. Ekiti State, Nigeria ioakindutire@yahoo.com Adelakun, Ojo Johnson Department of Economics, Joseph Ayo Babalola University, PMB 5006 Ilesa 233001, Osun State, Nigeria joadelakun@yahoo.co.uk Abstract The study explores some self-created metaphors in male autobiographical writings in Nigeria. It visualizes the negation of female gender in art. The paper investigates the dichotomy of language, the use of irony and situational metaphors to displace conventional ones; it blends theories with critical evaluation of discourse. The research uses empirical methods in solving hypothetical questions with the use of extensive and relatively unstructured interviews. It examines the interviews of twenty five people independently, these people include: University lecturers, students, administrative and technical staff. The work analyzes concurrently their interview testimonies to search for congruence. Data analysis begins with a detailed microanalysis in which emergent concepts...
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...of 20. He wrote three of the most highly regarded autobiographies of the 19th century, while he only began learning to read and write when he turned 12 years old. After an early life of hardship and pain, Douglass escaped to the North to write three autobiographies, which spaced along decades. He wrote about his life as a slave and a freeman. The institution of slavery scarred him so intensely that he decided to devote his powers of speech and prose to fighting it. Douglass wrote three biographies about his life as a politician, slave, and abolitionist. However, the historical value of these works does not remain as important as the quality of the works themselves. Frederick Douglass’ writing deserves recognition in the canon of great American authors, because his work meets the chosen criteria for inclusion in a collection of important literature. Douglass influenced many famous abolitionists with his literary works, and this impact, coupled with his desire to write an expose about oppression in America, makes him a winning candidate. Although his published works, mostly autobiographies, received much acclaim from abolitionists, this paper explores the quality of Douglass’s work from a literary standpoint. To fully appreciate the impact of Douglass’s autobiographies, we must examine violent period in which he lived. Douglass, born in 1818, grew up as a slave on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation in eastern Maryland. At the time, abolitionist movements started gaining speed as popular...
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...MS 38733, USA; The College Board, Chicago, USA Tourism can serve as a vehicle for sustainable community development by contributing to equity and social justice. This happens as tourists learn about marginal groups through educational tourism, engage in development projects with host-area residents, undertake pilgrimages that bring greater meaning and cohesiveness to an ethnic identity, or encounter stories that transform their view of social injustice and spur further action to reduce inequities. Tourism planning can produce a sense of reconciliation when it brings historically divided groups together. An example is found in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, where a group of white and African American residents are collaborating to develop tourism projects designed around a narrative of reconciliation, while they use the process of tourism planning to work towards racial reconciliation within their community. This case illustrates strategies tourism planners employ and challenges they face when they envision tourism as more than merely a means of economic growth. Keywords: heritage tourism; Mississippi Delta; racial reconciliation; social justice; sustainable community development The advantages of tourism to rural communities are generally painted as economic: developing a tourism industry brings in ‘‘fresh’’ dollars, provides jobs and offers opportunities for local entrepreneurship (National Agricultural Library, 2008; World Travel & Tourism...
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...http://www.historytoday.com/jerome-de-groot/signposts-historical-fiction These were some of the questions raised at a recent conference at the Institute of Historical Research at which History Today Editor, Paul Lay, hosted a discussion between Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall, and the Tudor historian David Loades. Historians often describe themselves as detectives, seeking out a kind of truth among the conflicting evidence of the past. There is, furthermore, a large and growing subgenre of historical crime fiction. From C.J. Sansom to Philip Pullman, from Orhan Pamuk to Walter Mosley, from Ellis Peters to Boris Akunin, novelists have been keen to use the past as a backdrop for their stories of detection and mystery. The most famous historical detective might be Brother William of Baskerville in Umberto Eco’s peerless The Name of the Rose (Il nome della rosa, 1980). Recently we have seen a flowering of historical crime fiction as the subgenre attains maturity and becomes increasingly popular and innovative. Jason Goodwin, Philip Kerr and Susan Hill were all shortlisted for the prestigious Crime Writers Association Dagger this year (recent historical winners include Arianna Franklin, Jake Arnott and Craig Russell). Clearly the combination of thriller, crime and historical detail is compelling. Anne Perry’s new Inspector Pitt novel, Betrayal at Lisson Grove (out in paperback from Headline this year) is a pacy, twisting thriller. It is 1895 and Pitt is up against a conspiracy...
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...Cultural Moves AMERICAN CROSSROADS Edited by Earl Lewis, George Lipsitz, Peggy Pascoe, George Sánchez, and Dana Takagi 1. Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies, by José David Saldívar 2. The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture, by Neil Foley 3. Indians in the Making: Ethnic Relations and Indian Identities around Puget Sound, by Alexandra Harmon 4. Aztlán and Viet Nam: Chicano and Chicana Experiences of the War, edited by George Mariscal 5. Immigration and the Political Economy of Home: West Indian Brooklyn and American Indian Minneapolis, by Rachel Buff 6. Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East,1945–2000, by Melani McAlister 7. Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown, by Nayan Shah 8. Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival, 1934–1990, by Lon Kurashige 9. American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Production of Popular Culture, by Shelley Streeby 10. Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past, by David R. Roediger 11. Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico, by Laura Briggs 12. meXicana Encounters: The Making of Social Identities on the Borderlands, by Rosa Linda Fregoso 13. Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, by Eric Avila 14. Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom, by Tiya Miles 15. Cultural Moves: African Americans and the Politics of Representation...
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...Postmodernism is dead A new exhibition signals the end of postmodernism. But what was it? And what comes next? by Edward Docx / July 20, 2011 / Leave a comment Published in August 2011 issue of Prospect Magazine I have some good news—kick back, relax, enjoy the rest of the summer, stop worrying about where your life is and isn’t heading. What news? Well, on 24th September, we can officially and definitively declare that postmodernism is dead. Finished. History. A difficult period in human thought over and done with. How do I know this? Because that is the date when the Victoria and Albert Museum opens what it calls “the first comprehensive retrospective” in the world: “Postmodernism—Style and Subversion 1970-1990.” Wait, I hear you cry. How do they know? And what was it? Postmodernism—I didn’t understand it. I never understood it. How can it be over? You are not alone. If there’s one word that confuses, upsets, angers, beleaguers, exhausts and contaminates us all, then it is postmodernism. And yet, properly understood, postmodernism is playful, intelligent, funny and fascinating. From Grace Jones to Lady Gaga, from Andy Warhol to Gilbert and George, from Paul Auster to David Foster Wallace, its influence has been everywhere and continues. It has been the dominant idea of our age. So what was it? Well, the best way to begin to understand postmodernism is with reference to what went before: modernism. Unlike, say, the Enlightenment or Romanticism, postmodernism (even as...
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...POLITICS, THEOLOGY AND HISTORY RAYMOND PLANT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Politics, Theology and History is a major new book by a prominent academic and an active politician. It ranges widely across the disciplines of theology, political theory and philosophy and poses acute questions about the basic moral foundations of liberal societies. Lord Plant focuses on the role that religious belief can and ought to play in argument about public policy in a pluralistic society. He examines the potential political implications of Christian belief and the ways in which it may be deployed in political debate. The book is a contribution to the modern debate about the moral pluralism of western liberal societies, discussing the place of religious belief in the formation of policy and asking what sorts of issues in modern society might be the legitimate objects of a Christian social and political concern. Raymond Plant has written an important study of the relationship between religion and politics which will be of value to students, academics, politicians, church professionals, policy makers and all concerned with the moral fabric of contemporary life. r ay m on d pl an t is Professor of European Political Thought at the University of Southampton and a Member of the House of Lords. He was a Home affairs spokesperson for the Labour Party from 1992 to 1996, and Master of St Catherine's College, Oxford, from 1994 to 2000. Lord Plant's main publications are Social and Moral Theory in Casework...
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