Humanities

10 pages, 243 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Black Noise from the Break: Ma and Pa’s Black Radical Lyricism

by Julia Reade

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 35; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020035 - 19 Apr 2023

Viewed by 1292

Kendrick Lamar’s 2022 track “We Cry Together” is, if nothing else, a masterful piece of wordplay and rhythm. Lamar manages to create a lyrical conversation that sounds both dialectical and diametric. Both the song and album are a definitive break from his earlier [...] Read more.

Kendrick Lamar’s 2022 track “We Cry Together” is, if nothing else, a masterful piece of wordplay and rhythm. Lamar manages to create a lyrical conversation that sounds both dialectical and diametric. Both the song and album are a definitive break from his earlier tenor that struck a mass appeal. A private conversation between two people, “We Cry Together”, insofar as it captures the intimate interiority of a couple, is also a break within the album itself. Textual renderings of Black performances cut away in ways similar to Lamar’s song or the soloist in a jazz ensemble, their breaks signifying sound. Invoking as aural praxis the language of jazz musicology and Black lyrical theory of Fred Moten, this article closely reads chapter four in George Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin as one such special representation of textual aurality. First, it identifies multiple manifestations of “the break” before probing the deeply conflicted concept of Black noise as the racialized, resistant, resilient, and resonant octave of radical Black performance. A lyrical improvisation of a Black noise defiant in its indeterminacy, Ma and Pa’s duet cuts away from Castle’s polyphonic ensemble, creating the break within a break, within a break. Lingering in the cut, listening as Fred Moten, Douglas Kearney, Ren Ellis Neyra, and Zadie Smith encourage, the article arrives at a euphonic reproduction as induction into a legacy of synesthetic, lyrical, radical Black noise. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sound Studies in African American Literature and Culture)

19 pages, 354 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Reproductive Rights and Ecofeminism

by Sally L. Kitch

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 34; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020034 - 11 Apr 2023

Viewed by 3632

Abstract

The U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in its Dobbs decision in June 2022 came as a shock. Yet, upon reflection, the decision simply reinforced what history has shown: women’s rights and opportunities have always been subject to controls, fluctuations, and [...] Read more.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in its Dobbs decision in June 2022 came as a shock. Yet, upon reflection, the decision simply reinforced what history has shown: women’s rights and opportunities have always been subject to controls, fluctuations, and specious rationales. Dobbs is one in a long line of legal edicts in the U.S. and elsewhere that either allow or curtail and control female agency, including reproductive agency. The decision’s devastating consequences for U.S. women’s reproductive lives are damaging enough, but they are only part of the story. In addition to its hobbling effects on reproductive rights and justice, the Dobbs decision goes hand in hand with the underlying causes of today’s unparalleled environmental emergency. This article argues, through ecofeminist theory and feminist and Native American climate fiction, that Dobbs is a catalyst for understanding the role of patriarchy—as a particularly insidious form of androcentrism—in the destruction of our planet. Evidence is mounting to support claims made by ecofeminists since the 1970s: patriarchy and resulting masculinist values have been foundational to the extractive and exploitative attitudes and practices regarding marginalized peoples, colonized lands, and racialized entitlements to natural resources that have endangered the earth’s biosystems. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Reconstructing Ecofeminism)

21 pages, 454 KiB

Open AccessArticle

What Performative Contradiction Reveals: Plato’s Theaetetus and Gorgias on Sophistry

by Robert Metcalf

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 33; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020033 - 10 Apr 2023

Viewed by 1641

Abstract

Socrates’ use of performative contradiction against sophistic theories is a recurrent motif in Plato’s dialogues. In the case of Plato’s Theaetetus and Gorgias, Socrates attempts to show that Protagoras’ homo mensura doctrine and Gorgias’ doctrine of the power of logos are each [...] Read more.

Socrates’ use of performative contradiction against sophistic theories is a recurrent motif in Plato’s dialogues. In the case of Plato’s Theaetetus and Gorgias, Socrates attempts to show that Protagoras’ homo mensura doctrine and Gorgias’ doctrine of the power of logos are each performatively contradicted by the underlying activity of philosophical dialogue. In the case of the Theaetetus, Socrates’ strategy of performative contradiction hinges on Protagoras’ failure to perform in the way that he theorized the sophist performing—namely, being able to change appearances through logoi (Theaetetus 166d–167d). In parallel fashion, Gorgias’ account of the power of rhetoric is performatively contradicted by the orator’s inability to prevail over Socrates, instead resorting to insincere responses to Socrates’ questions in order to save face—a dialogical “performance” that ties directly to Socrates’ portrait of Gorgianic rhetoric as a matter of pandering to the audience (Gorgias 460a–465a). Plato’s aim in dramatizing these performative contradictions, I argue, is to illuminate both the proximity between Socrates and the great sophists, particularly with respect to Socrates’ practice of elenchos, but also the distance between Socrates and the sophists in how they conceive of our situatedness within the world of human concerns. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ancient Greek Sophistry and Its Legacy)

17 pages, 302 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Shakespeare and the Book of Henry

by Peter C. Herman

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 32; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020032 - 05 Apr 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2135

Abstract

In this article, I argue that the four plays of the Henriad (Richard II, 1 and 2 Henry IV, and Henry V), as presented in the 1623 Folio, constitute a unified whole intended for reading. The plays are connected [...] Read more.

In this article, I argue that the four plays of the Henriad (Richard II, 1 and 2 Henry IV, and Henry V), as presented in the 1623 Folio, constitute a unified whole intended for reading. The plays are connected not only by the endings of one play leading directly into the beginning of the next, but they are also unified by thematic and verbal echoes. I will focus first on establishing the connections between the plays, and then on the thematic resonances. I show how the plays are connected by verbal echoes, some thematically relevant, some not. I then show how Shakespeare provides differing accounts of Richard’s fall and invites the reader the compare and contrast them with each other. Finally, I turn to Shakespeare’s treatment of the common soldier, which culminates in the confrontation between the disguised Henry V and Michael Williams, Alexander Court, and John Bates, a scene not present in the quarto version of this play. Although this scene can stand alone, one has to have read the previous chapters of the Henriad to comprehend the full force of Shakespeare’s revision. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Literature in the Humanities)

17 pages, 362 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Planet YouPorn: Pornography, Worlding, and Banal Globalization in Michel Houellebecq’s Work

by Gustaf Marcus

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 31; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020031 - 30 Mar 2023

Viewed by 3612

Abstract

This article studies mediated erotic content, especially pornography, as a form of worlding in Michel Houellebecq’s work. Whereas love creates a space of alterity, pornography paradoxically combines the most intimate spatiality of the body with ever-expanding technological systems and global forms of mediation. [...] Read more.

This article studies mediated erotic content, especially pornography, as a form of worlding in Michel Houellebecq’s work. Whereas love creates a space of alterity, pornography paradoxically combines the most intimate spatiality of the body with ever-expanding technological systems and global forms of mediation. This short-circuiting of space points to a new sense of being in the world, which is studied in selected passages from the novels La Possibilité d’une île and Soumission, as well as in the essay “Prise de contrôle sur Numéris.” With reference to Ulrich Beck’s description of “banal cosmopolitanism,” I argue that otherness is either reduced to free-floating objects of consumption or to an experience of absence in these texts. Furthermore, this duality is refracted as two “reflexively” interwoven discourses or voices in the work. One is associated with prose and with the bringing of the world to the body of the subject, and the other with poetry and the dissolution of the body into the space of the world. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Literature in the Humanities)

11 pages, 262 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Cosmopolitanism of the Early Sophists: The Case of Hippias and Antiphon

by Giovanni Giorgini

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 30; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020030 - 24 Mar 2023

Viewed by 1174

Abstract

An investigation of the emergence of the notion of ‘Cosmopolitanism’ in 5th century Greece. The author focusses on the early sophists, and specifically on Antiphon and Hippias. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ancient Greek Sophistry and Its Legacy)

16 pages, 338 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Dancing with the Sniper: Rasha Abbas and the “Art of Survival” as an Aesthetic Strategy

by Moritz Schramm

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 29; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020029 - 16 Mar 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1347

Abstract

In the last few decades, a growing dissatisfaction with traditional approaches can be observed in migration and refugee studies. In particular, the widespread focus on the “refugee” and “migrant” as exclusive objects of study has been criticized for its underlying tendency of repeating [...] Read more.

In the last few decades, a growing dissatisfaction with traditional approaches can be observed in migration and refugee studies. In particular, the widespread focus on the “refugee” and “migrant” as exclusive objects of study has been criticized for its underlying tendency of repeating the binary polarization between migrant and non-migrant, native and foreign as well as majority and minority. This chapter considers the short stories of Syrian journalist and writer Rasha Abbas against this background. Instead of reducing her stories to the depiction of flight and exile, this chapter explores her stories as aesthetic expressions of what can be called the “art of survival”—the concept focusing on strategies of empowerment and tactics to regain autonomy. In Abbas’ prose, this “art of survival” is achieved and expressed through the blending of times and spaces as well as the aesthetic transformation of reality into surreal realms. Experiences of war, displacement, exile, and patterns of exclusion in the new homeland merge into complex pictures of the human capacity to reframe and reinvent a given reality. When viewed from this perspective, the surreal and psychedelic nature of her writing intensifies the power of aesthetic freedom, thus helping overcome traditional representations of migrants and refugees in cultural expressions and literature. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation)

12 pages, 268 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Precarity and Class Consciousness in Contemporary Swedish Working-Class Literature

by Magnus Nilsson

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 28; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020028 - 15 Mar 2023

Viewed by 1180

Abstract

This article analyses aesthetical–political strategies for the promotion of class consciousness among workers in a few examples of contemporary Swedish working-class literature from different genres that describe and criticize precarious working conditions. Special attention is given to how these texts engage in dialogue [...] Read more.

This article analyses aesthetical–political strategies for the promotion of class consciousness among workers in a few examples of contemporary Swedish working-class literature from different genres that describe and criticize precarious working conditions. Special attention is given to how these texts engage in dialogue with the notion of the precariat and to the authors’ use of decidedly literary forms. One important result is that Swedish working-class writers highlight the heterogeneity among those working under precarious conditions while also arguing that they share certain economic conditions, both amongst each other and with members of other groups (especially the traditional working class). Furthermore, it is argued that the use of literary forms (as opposed to, e.g., reportage or documentary) reflects the absence in the precariat of class consciousness, and the authors’ belief that literature can contribute to the creation of such a consciousness. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Swedish Working-Class Fiction)

14 pages, 286 KiB

Open AccessArticle

From Global Studies to Global Humanities

by Stefan Amirell

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 27; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020027 - 14 Mar 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2733

Abstract

In contrast to the field of global studies, which has seen spectacular expansion and institutionalisation since the turn of the twenty-first century, there have to date been only a few attempts to promote or institutionalise global humanities as a field of study or [...] Read more.

In contrast to the field of global studies, which has seen spectacular expansion and institutionalisation since the turn of the twenty-first century, there have to date been only a few attempts to promote or institutionalise global humanities as a field of study or research. Moreover, even though several disciplines in the humanities have undergone global turns in recent years, the humanities, with the exception of a certain brand of global history, are not prominent within the field of global studies. Against this background, this article surveys the various attempts that have been made in recent years to promote the concept of global humanities in the form of international scholarly networks, departments, and study programs, and the handful of attempts to sketch the outlines of a research agenda for global humanities. The strengths and limitations of the current approaches are discussed, and the articles advocating the notion of global humanities as a field or framework of research are brought into conversation with one another. Some common themes are identified in the literature on global humanities to date, such as the ambition for the field to be globally inclusive, critical, and transdisciplinary. Building on the recent global turns in some of the humanities disciplines and the steps that have been taken to purge these of traditional national and Eurocentric biases, global humanities should aim to develop frameworks of analysis that can be used to study all cultural expressions of humankind and to foster intercultural dialogue and understanding. Such an undertaking goes beyond the study of modern globalisation, which is the subject matter of global studies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Transdisciplinary Humanities)

23 pages, 6132 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Influence of Dutch Genre Painting in Emblematic Prints: Jan Luyken’s Des Menschen, Begin, Midden en Einde (1712)

by Sooyun Sohn

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 26; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020026 - 10 Mar 2023

Viewed by 1629

Abstract

This paper examines Dutch printmaker Jan Luyken’s visual strategy represented in his emblem book, Des Menschen Begin, Midden en Einde (1712). As a poet as well as a printmaker, Luyken wrote a poem in this book and produced image prints by himself. Jan [...] Read more.

This paper examines Dutch printmaker Jan Luyken’s visual strategy represented in his emblem book, Des Menschen Begin, Midden en Einde (1712). As a poet as well as a printmaker, Luyken wrote a poem in this book and produced image prints by himself. Jan Luyken has long been omitted from surveys of Dutch art due to the absence of archival evidence about his life and works. The themes that Luyken employed in his prints, such as parents’ virtue, mother and child, and children’s play, and his genre style, including doorsien, are all examples of contemporary pictorial devices of genre painting prevalent in Luyken’s time. An analysis of the similarities between Des Menschen Begin, Midden en Einde and contemporary genre paintings demonstrates that Luyken’s prints coincided with the development of Dutch Golden Age art. Luyken consciously employed a strategy of incorporating trendy interior items and idealized figures to make his pieces more attractive to his contemporaneous buyers. This is contrary to evaluations of him as an outdated artist indifferent to the contemporary art world. Full article

► Show Figures

Figure 1

14 pages, 272 KiB

Open AccessArticle

“What to Do with the Dangerous Few?”: Abolition-Feminism, Monstrosity and the Reimagination of Sexual Harm in Miguel Piñero’s “Short Eyes”

by Laura E. Ciolkowski

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 25; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020025 - 09 Mar 2023

Viewed by 1683

Abstract

The problem of child sexual abuse (CSA) is a crucial point of entry into abolition-feminist conversations about justice and punishment, healing and repair. The popular belief that the “child sex offender” is uniquely irredeemable, eternally depraved and dangerous can trouble abolition-feminist efforts to [...] Read more.

The problem of child sexual abuse (CSA) is a crucial point of entry into abolition-feminist conversations about justice and punishment, healing and repair. The popular belief that the “child sex offender” is uniquely irredeemable, eternally depraved and dangerous can trouble abolition-feminist efforts to address the devastating harm of CSA without reproducing the violence of prison and punishment. It also forces us to return to the question of “what to do with the dangerous few?” A familiar “tough on crime” refrain, this question mystifies the social, economic, and political conditions that nurture interpersonal violence. It also illustrates how centering our attention on “the monster in our midst” feeds an attachment to the mistaken belief that sexual harm is locatable in individual, bad people; that it is fixable by criminal law, and, in short, that justice and repair can be measured by the number of years one is sentenced to live behind bars. Miguel Piñero’s 1972 play “Short Eyes” exposes the failure of our attempts to incarcerate our way out of child sexual abuse and opens a literary-artistic space in which to explore the roots of violence and the abuse of power. The play dramatizes the particular ways in which the incarceration of those deemed the worst of the worst does not alleviate suffering or promote safety; rather, it prevents us from getting to the root of even the most horrific forms of abuse and from fully engaging, confronting and, finally, interrupting the daily, quotidian acts of sexual violence that are hiding in plain sight. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Twentieth-Century American Literature)

20 pages, 300 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Making Bedlam: Toward a Trauma-Informed Mad Feminist Literary Theory and Praxis

by Jessica Lowell Mason

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 24; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020024 - 09 Mar 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1974

Abstract

Building on what Margaret Price describes as the “long history of positive and person-centered discourses” of the term Mad, this article seeks to offer a (re)tooling and (re)theorization of the not-so-antiquated concept of “bedlam” as part of a Mad feminist literary theory and [...] Read more.

Building on what Margaret Price describes as the “long history of positive and person-centered discourses” of the term Mad, this article seeks to offer a (re)tooling and (re)theorization of the not-so-antiquated concept of “bedlam” as part of a Mad feminist literary theory and practice that aims to situate reading and writing practices on the subject of madness within a trauma-informed Mad framework and to (re)shape reading and writing practices by (re)seeing or seeing-in-a-new-and-old-Mad way the concept of “bedlam”—rendering it agential and unhinging it from its historical meanings. The article theorizes “bedlam” as a form of deliberate Mad literary practice, offering two examples of “bedlam-making”, one in the poetry of Anne Sexton’s 1960 collection To Bedlam and Part-way Back and the other in the historical fiction of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The article strives to re-articulate “bedlam” in a way that draws attention to the agency of language on the subject of madness, when written and read by writers and readers aware of the acute violences and traumas performed upon bodies exiled from “Reason”, attending to the ways in which writers and readers make a subjectivity of “bedlam” or a resistance to and critique of systemic oppression that gives social agency to Mad literary action. “Making bedlam”, it is argued in this essay, is a Mad feminist literary theory and practice, part of social justice discourses and liberation-focused action, which is deeply connected with other liberation movements in pursuit of the end of systemic violences. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Trauma, Ethics & Illness in Contemporary Literature and Culture)

17 pages, 5732 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Representation of Whom? Ancient Moments of Seeking Refuge and Protection

by Elena Isayev

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 23; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020023 - 07 Mar 2023

Viewed by 1519

Abstract

Within the ancient corpus we find depictions of people seeking refuge and protection: in works of fiction, drama and poetry; on wall paintings and vases, they cluster at protective altars and cling to statues of gods who seemingly look on. Yet the ancient [...] Read more.

Within the ancient corpus we find depictions of people seeking refuge and protection: in works of fiction, drama and poetry; on wall paintings and vases, they cluster at protective altars and cling to statues of gods who seemingly look on. Yet the ancient evidence does not lend itself easily to exploring attitudes to refugees or asylum seekers. Hence, the question that begins this investigation is, representation of whom? Through a focus on the Greco-Roman material of the Mediterranean region, drawing on select representations, such as the tragedies Medea and Suppliant Women, the historical failed plea of the Plataeans and pictorial imagery of supplication, the goal of the exploration below is not to shape into existence an ancient refugee or asylum seeker experience. Rather, it is to highlight the multiplicity of experiences within narratives of victimhood and the confines of such labels as refugee and asylum seeker. The absence of ancient representations of a generic figure or group of the ‘displaced’, broadly defined, precludes any exceptionalising or homogenising of people in such contexts. Remaining depictions are of named, recognisable protagonists, whose stories are known. There is no ‘mass’ of refuge seekers, to whom a single set of rules could apply across time and space. Given these diverse stories of negotiation for refuge, another aim is to illustrate the ways such experience does not come to define the entirety of who a person is or encompass the complete life and its many layers. This paper addresses the challenges of representation that are exposed by, among others, thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Liisa Malkki and Gerawork Gizaw. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ethics and Literary Practice II: Refugees and Representation)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

11 pages, 238 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Foreshortened Future and the Trauma of a Dying Earth in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet

by Amar Singh

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 22; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020022 - 25 Feb 2023

Viewed by 2327

Abstract

An experience of anxiety is caused by the anticipation of unseen future events, especially in the context of ecological trauma, where the prospect of a world without humans in the distant future is often portrayed through mediated cinematic memories. As a result of [...] Read more.

An experience of anxiety is caused by the anticipation of unseen future events, especially in the context of ecological trauma, where the prospect of a world without humans in the distant future is often portrayed through mediated cinematic memories. As a result of anthropological intervention on our planet, it is feared that humanity will cease to exist unless steps are taken to prevent it. Furthermore, as climate change intensifies, humans are left with more questions regarding their future. One recent film that addresses this issue is Christopher Nolan’s Tenet (2020). The film explores the concept of a dying Earth in the future, whose inhabitants seek help from the past to restore the planet’s balance by reversing entropy. Despite failing to provide any remedy by revealing ‘What’s happened happened’, a viewpoint that Christopher Nolan, as an auteur, has already presented in his previous film Interstellar (2014), the film leaves the audience with the question, what is the purpose of projecting an unseen trauma? By evaluating the events that contributed to the image of a crumbling Earth in the film, this paper seeks to examine the concept of future trauma as an indication of post-traumatic stress disorder while simultaneously exploring it as a film that acknowledges Nolan’s own anxiety over the decline of a medium he cherishes. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Trauma, Ethics & Illness in Contemporary Literature and Culture)

11 pages, 241 KiB

Open AccessArticle

“People Who Fill the Spaces”: Jodi Picoult and the Sarah Josepha Hale Award

by Jordan Hansen

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020021 - 23 Feb 2023

Viewed by 1313

Abstract

This paper discusses the implications of Sarah Josepha Hale’s polarizing opposition to the franchise of women on her legacy award, given to many authors since its inception, but most notably to contemporary women writers whom Hale likely would have rejected. In 2019, the [...] Read more.

This paper discusses the implications of Sarah Josepha Hale’s polarizing opposition to the franchise of women on her legacy award, given to many authors since its inception, but most notably to contemporary women writers whom Hale likely would have rejected. In 2019, the award went to Jodi Picoult, an author who bridges journalistic writing on topics such as abortion, white supremacy, and gun violence, among others, with fiction novel writing. Hale’s own works are archived through the Richards Free Library, and as such, the award is given for the entire collective body of work of one nominated literary person. The award impacts not only Picoult’s career but Hale’s legacy as an open opposer to the franchise of women, as well as the opportunities for contemporary women writers. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eyes on the Prize: Women’s Writing and Literary Awards)

Journal Menu

Journal Browser

Humanities, Volume 12, Issue 2 (April 2023) – 15 articles

Further Information

Guidelines

MDPI Initiatives

Follow MDPI