Статті в журналах з теми "Neo-Hellenic literature (20th century)"

In this article we intend to demonstrate in how far the discussion about Latin American baroque and neo-baroque “catalysed” the approximations and cultural dialogues between Brazil and Hispanic America in the 20th century. The central axis of our analysis is the Brazilian poet, translator and critic Haroldo de Campos, who regretted the lack of approaches on several occasions and who tried to establish cultural bridges between both sides. After giving a short overview about his relationship to the Hispanic Literatures and his thoughts about a non-hierarchical conception of literature, we are going to focus on his theoretical considerations about the baroque as starting point to rethink Latin American Literature. Moreover, we intend to show some of the implicit and explicit literary dialogues between Brazil and Hispanic America which arised both from the historical and the neo-baroque.

Neo-geo, which appeared as an abstract and modern art movement towards the end of 20th century, has had its impact in 21st century as well. New geometry painting perception known as neo-geo is the works where materials and geometric forms are used in any environment. The effects of geometric forms are observed in fashion as in architecture and painting. Fashion designers are the people with an open perception who are able to manage to develop their artistic experience and knowledge using the current time and their abilities in a correct way. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the new geometry as an abstract and modern art movement and fashion interaction and determine its effect on fashion. In this research, the related literature was reviewed and the collections of the fashion designers who were impressed by this art movement was examined and some samples were given. Due to the fact that the art movement of neo-geo appeared towards late 1980s, clothing styles of 80s and its relation with the fashion in those days were given.Keywords: Fashion, neo-geo (new geometry), art.Â

Abstract The first part of this article examined the features that distinguish the language of the earliest Mandaean colophons from Classical Mandaic and demonstrated that many of these features are shared with the contemporary Neo-Mandaic dialects recorded in the research literature since the 20th century. Part 2 presents editions and translations of the source texts with some brief philological notes and seeks to identify the origins of the linguistic innovations.

Background/Context: This research is framed by both the historical lineage of the New Civics and the legacy of educational and curricular debates in the United States. It contributes to the literature on mid-20th century education. Purpose and Research Questions: This study explores the relationship between religion, civics, and education through the lens of university and faculty leaders at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale Universities in the mid-20th century. Research questions include (a) What were some of the major trends in curricular reform before totalitarianism emerged as an idea or concept, and how were they related to questions of freedom? (b) In the mid-to-late 1930s, how did the presidents of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale view the idea of totalitarianism/authoritarianism and its potential impact on these earlier reform efforts? In addition, what role did trustees, students, faculty, and other constituents play in these conversations? (c) What educational proposals were offered as solutions or counterattacks to totalitarian ideas? (d) What lessons can we draw today from these debates about educating for freedom? Research Design: This study utilized a historical case study design based on intellectual, educational, and cultural history. I examined more than 30 archival collections at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale; my focus was on curricular meeting minutes, presidential papers, dean’s papers, and individual manuscripts. Findings/Results: Most literature on 20th-century American education and civics focuses on secularization. My research instead emphasizes the dynamic relationship between religion and education, including the ways in which educational practices became religious in form and purpose. I illuminate the ways in which, even after World War II, Christian supernaturalism and secular facts were thought by a coterie of faculty and university leaders to be interconnected. Educators at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale referenced Christian Humanism—a fusion of supernatural and secular—as being highly relevant to their time.

During the last decades of the 20th century, Shining Path conceived Indian culture mainly as part of feudalist-capitalist alienation. Consequently, this insurrectionist organization aimed to mobilize the indigenous communities around a class-oriented revolutionary project. Although the academic literature has acknowledged and studied this process, its historical roots in the intelligentsia of the early 20th century remain under-examined. To contribute to their research, this article first analyzes the “neo-indigenist and indigenist discussion” of the first decades of the century, mainly through the works of Manuel González Prada, Luis Eduardo Valcárcel, and José Uriel García. The article will then focus on José Carlos Mariátegui and Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre to explore the discussion around the implementation of socialist thought in Peru. Finally, this research analyzes the influence of the previous authors on the configuration of Shining Path’s ideology, Pensamiento Gonzalo. The article argues that Shining Path intensified three tendencies of the 20th-century Peruvian intelligentsia: the need to assist Indians in the development of an effective discourse, the legitimation of revolutionary violence, and the Peruvian bourgeoisie’s leadership of the Indians. In conclusion, Shining Path’s ideology should not be regarded as a rara avis, but as the result of a dogmatic application of Maoism to already existing discussions of the Indian problem.

The image of Simon Ninheimer — the opponent of scientific and technological progress — is described by A. Azimov in the story «Galley Slave». It is used to develop the idea of resistance to mechanization, which is now finding increasingly supporters due to the increased influence of information and communication technologies in general and artificial intelligence and robotics in particular. The historical and conceptual foundations of neo-luddism are linked with modern trends calling for a gradual, controlled innovation. It is noticed that the ideas of the luddites have been preserved in romantic literature and transformed into neo-luddism in the 20th century. The theorists of this movement use philosophical concepts of different epochs (e.g. Socrates, J.-J. Rousseau and M. Heidegger) to confirm the legitimacy of their own status. As a result, in the 21st century more moderate areas of struggle against scientific and technological progress are actively developing under the influence of postmodernism. For example, the slow movement is growing strength, and its supporters are trying to slow down the pace of life and are calling for a thoughtful, responsible attitude towards emerging technologies. The positions underlying the slow movement are in tune with the dromology of P. Virilio and the slow philosophy of G. Fleistad. However, neo-luddism has social status of counterculture, but the situation can be changed due to the rapid and sometimes uncontrollable development of technology.

AbstractThis article is interested in the hegemony which neo-realism accomplished during the second half of the 20th century in both the academic field and policy making of I/international R/relations. Our examination posits the argument that neo-realism can be seen as an ideology rather than a theory of international politics. While this view can connect to individual voices from the 1960s as well as to an emerging body of critical literature since the 1990s, we propose an ideology critique to explore this argument. To unfold this approach we will elaborate some neo-realist misreadings which we think manipulate intellectual history (among others, the writings of Hans J. Morgenthau) and represent an ideological impact intrinsic in the development of IR. An ideology critical approach – which is inherent in Morgenthau's thoughts on international theory themselves and thus helps to reveal profound discrepancies at the heart of an ostensible ‘realist’-neo-realist ‘unity’ – has, firstly, to problematise those discrepancies and, secondly, to focus on hegemonic strategies applied to ideologise and mainstream the academic field. The first part of such an agenda is what we present here; the second part is what we outline methodologically and suggest for further studies in, and of, IR.

The ‘spatial turn’ in education policy studies fuelled interest in Lefebvre’s work: initially, in his work Production of Space and, more recently, Rhythmanalysis and Right to the City. Yet, although in these texts Lefebvre critiques universities and schools and introduces original pedagogical concepts, their educational strands have attracted little attention. Lefebvre’s other works available in English have been largely overlooked in education literature. As France’s first Professor of Sociology, Lefebvre was passionately engaged with education: in particular, teaching, competing for government grants and leading student activism. Critiques of education are threaded through Lefebvre’s three-volume Critique of Everyday Life, his writings on architecture and anthologies. Lefebvre’s work, The Explosion, is surprisingly neglected. A critique of French universities, it analyses student protests across Paris in 1968 – events in which Lefebvre was a leading activist. In geography and philosophy there are burgeoning secondary literatures on Lefebvre. Laying groundwork for such a literature in education, I survey Lefebvre’s references to education in all the works available in English. Arguing that Lefebvre was an educational thinker in his own right, this paper sketches a ‘roadmap’ for educational readings of Lefebvre’s prolific and largely sociological writing. This paper falls into three parts. The first uncovers core Marxist and phenomenological foundations of Lefebvre’s critiques of universities and schools. Building on these, it introduces Lefebvre’s pedagogical concepts. The second part contextualises these in relation to ‘New’ (or ‘Progressive’) education movements at ‘critical moments’ of 20th-century history. It includes a case study of one such moment – the 1968 Parisian student uprising – then outlines Lefebvre’s summation of education in the late 20th century. The third part draws together four ‘Lefebvrian’ pedagogical principles and considers their relevance today. Educational readings of Lefebvre, I suggest, can help educationists identify ‘cracks or interstices’ in ‘technocratic rationality’, suggesting strategies for resisting contemporary neo-liberal regimes.

The article deals with the specific model of translation of cultural codes in the 20th century Balkan literature and art. The author highlights explications of translation of various kinds: the motif of the crossing-bridge and the scheme of the narrator-mediator in I. Andrich’s prose, border forms in the South Slavic art of the neo-avant-garde of the 1960s (the group “Medial”), the multilevel borderzone in D. Ugreshich’s prose, problematic communication in visual concepts of Christo. The general strategy of translation-as a-transfer demonstrates an antinomy of the Balkan model of the world: the translation as a bridge designed to connect here divides the participants in the communicative process. The texts of different classes and poetic systems are marked with extremes: “translation” is implemented in the range from metaphorical silence to over-communication.

One of the composers who devoted a substantial part of their creative output to the Baltic Sea and Kashubia is Adam Świerzyński – he wrote numerous marine-themed pieces for varied performance groups. These compositions are not wide-known and some of them even get forgotten. Nevertheless, they are worth looking into due to their artistic value. Świerzyński’s works are eclectic in their style as in terms of their harmonic aspect they refer to Neo- Romanticism or aim towards modernist sounds. The composer’s instrumental lyric, which is based on inspirations by the nature of the sea as well as by historical events and folk elements, is an interesting area in the Polish 20th century literature. The present article relates to two compositions for viola and piano, i.e., Sea Impressions and Elegy, as well as viola transcriptions of Kashubian Fantasy and Lamento, Arend Dickmann in memoriam.

This paper offers a critical overview of the theology of personhood which has become one of the distinctive features of Orthodox theology in the 20th Century. A systematised synthesis of traits and elements within this movement is offered, thus rectifying a certain lack of it in current literature. On one hand it is shown that this theology springs forth from the neo-patristic ‘turn’ of Orthodox theology. On the other hand it is demonstrated how theoretical instances of this ‘turn’ bear upon, and appear within the model of the conception of personhood: in its Trinitarian, Christological, ecclesiological and anthropological dimensions. It is this model of personhood, in its basic elements and connections, which is at work in the ongoing debate on the human person in the Orthodox Church. The model of personhood and the model of eucharistic, i.e. ecclesial self-understanding of the Church are shown to implicate each other intrinsically.

The Hoffmann’s layer of intertext in the neo-romantic stories of Aleksandr Chayanov is manifested systematically in the form of «Hoffmann’s complex», which was formed at the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries and it is a part of «Hoffman text of Russian literature». Aleksandr Chayanov’s stories are his own modernist text, which includes not only features of Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann’s poetics, but also the totality of the subsequent of Hoffmann’s tradition, which was refracted in the works of Russian writers of the late 19th – early 20th century. One of the important aspects of the article is the analysis of individual elements of «Hoffmann complex», which are reflected in Aleksandr Chayanov’s stories (romantic irony and grotesque, psychologism, the problem of violent influence on the personality of another, the problem of echanisation of life and human, symbol images of the mask, doll, automaton, puppet and double, the symbol image of the mirror). Aleksandr Chayanov’s work becomes the final stage in the functioning of «Hoffmann’s complex « in the Fin de siècle and it is characterised by a conscious «play» with Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann’s style, images and plots, which allows us to talk about stylisation as one of the artistic techniques in Aleksandr Chayanov’s stories.

Sharia banking has been growing in many countries since the birth of post-neo revivalist movement in the mid-20th century. The development of Indonesian sharia banking began with a workshop related with interests and banking held by MUI in Cisarua on 18th to 20th of August 1990. Since 1992 to 2013 it has been established 11 sharia commercial banks and 24 sharia conventional banks that open sharia business units and 156 Islamic Financing Bank. In terms of existing office, Islamic banks in Indonesia have reached 1737 bank offices and also Islamic bank units. Moreover, the market share of Islamic banking has almost reached 5% of the total market share banking in Indonesia. Islamic banking also has a mortgage product that is essentially different from the existing mortgage in the conventional banking. It is expected that the Islamic mortgage product will result a profit. The product is a product released for customers who require financing from Islamicbank to have a house. This early study used literature review method and secondary data. This study built an analysis of the mortgage program issued by Islamic banks in Indonesia. Research concludes that the notion of Islamic banking on mortgage product, especially Islamic financing mortgage, from the internal party has not well distributed yet.

The paper offers an analysis of Yurii Kosach’s literary heritage in the context of the Ukrainian literary process of the 20th century. The main subject is biographical, ideological, aesthetic, and ethical factors that influenced the formation of the writer’s self-identity. Special attention is paid to the ambivalence of Kosach’s worldview, the duality of his status, which was reflected in his literary self-representation. The views of Yurii Kosach on the historical role, cultural and social aims of the emigrants have been clarified. The paper discusses the history of the conflict between Yurii Kosach and the circle of the post-war Ukrainian emigrants, the theme of Kosach’s collaboration with Soviet totalitarian political and literary environments. Yurii Kosach’s engagement in the Soviet literary process is considered in the context of myth about Faust and Mephistopheles, which serves as a political metaphor covering the entire totalitarian history of Ukrainian literature and culture. The writer’s split between various totalitarian ideologies is considered as one of the symbolic plots of his time and interpreted psychologically. One of the main plots in Kosach’s prose, realized in his various works, is a symbolic meeting of Ukraine and Europe. The paper considers his understanding of Europeanism, the crisis of Ukrainian literature, the problem of the writer’s self-sufficiency, etc. Such issues as mythological thinking of Yurii Kosach, the influence of the neo-baroque and neo-romantic traditions on his work, the appeal to Panteleimon Kulish’s idea of Ukrainian Europe, the writer’s participation in the ideological discussion about the national and cultural identity of Mykola Gogol have been outlined as well. The author of the paper marks out Yurii Kosach’s critical heritage of the Art Ukrainian Movement period and issues of ideological, aesthetic, and stylistic modernization of Ukrainian literature, which have been considered in the context of ideological discussions and philosophical searches of his contemporaries.

The present paper aims to shed light on certain methodological challenges that Chinese intellectuals faced in the process of coming to terms with Marxist thought. Even at the beginning of these processes, i.e., in the first decades of the 20th century, Chinese theorists faced several difficulties regarding the issue of cross-cultural philosophical syntheses. Thus, in their endeavours to adapt Marxism to the specifically Chinese worldview, they sought suitable adaptations of traditional philosophical methodologies that would enable them to fruitfully integrate classical Chinese and modern Marxist discourses. Zhang Dainian 張岱年 (1909–2004) has played a particularly prominent role in this process. Therefore, this paper aims to shed light on his contribution to the establishment of new Chinese and cross-cultural philosophical methodologies. In terms of exploring general philosophical issues, Zhang established a unique philosophical system known as “neo-materialism” in which he attempted to integrate Marxist materialism with some basic approaches of traditional Chinese philosophy. The crucial features that defined this philosophical system were based on his innovative methodology, which is critically presented in this paper.

Fang Dongmei (1899–1977) is among the most influential Chinese philosophers who lived and worked in Taiwan during the second half of the 20th century. The present article aims to clarify his view on the basic nature of the human Self. This assessment is more multifaceted than it seems at a first glimpse, for Fang’s philosophy is also more complex than it seems. As a member of the so-called neo-conservative streams of thought, he criticized the Western-type modernization and aimed to revive the holistic onto-epistemology of classical Confucianism. On the other hand, he highlighted the importance of its basic paradigm which underlay the Confucian discourses from their very beginning, i.e. since the Book of Changes, namely the principle of creative creativity (shengshengbuxi 生生不息). The alleged contradiction between his advocating of holism and creativity, has been reflected in the apparent dichotomy between the social and relational essence of the Confucian Moral Self on the one side, and individual uniqueness on the other. The paper aims to show that both seeming contradictions are actually parts of the same theoretical principle defining the complementary interactions of binary oppositions.

Benediktas Labenskas-Labėnas (1919–1949), a little-known literary figure from the Žemininkai generation, was a soldier and partisan, who died in the early post-war guerrilla warfare. The article presents a part of his work written in gymnasium, in military school and on the Eastern Front. It traces author’s evolution, discusses the relationship of his works to literary tradition, and highlights the distinctive nature of his themes and style. The research employs a hermeneutical approach, the perspective of the history of literature, and the socio-cultural aspect, which enable to identify the ideological and cultural reverberations of a specific historical time and their influence in the works of the young author. Labėnas’s oeuvre grows out of the neo-romantic tradition of 20th-century Lithuanian literature, the songs of volunteers and soldiers’ marching, as well as Christian culture. It takes root in social, psychological, and impressionistic prose. Labėnas’s work is characterized by a sense of harmony between the world and a human being, the imperative of the task of life, an ethical approach, and literary sense of genre and style that became increasingly pronounced with the time.On the one hand, Labėnas’s work has very little in common with the creative engagement of his generation, such as the inclination to existential questions and modern poetic language. On the other hand, his works are associated with a strong connection with the earth and reflection on that connection.

This celebration of modern Chinese literature is a tour de force, David Wang's third major summation in English. He is even more prolific in Chinese. Wang's command of the creative and critical literatures is unrivalled.Monster's subject is “the multivalence of Chinese violence across the past century”: not 1960s “structural violence” or postcolonial “epistemic violence,” but hunger, suicide, anomie, betrayal (though not assassination or incarceration), and “the violence of representation”: misery that reflects or creates monstrosity in history. Monster thus comments on “history and memory,” like Ban Wang's and Yomi Braester's recent efforts, although for historical reasons modern Chinese literature studies are allergic to historical and sociological methodologies.Monster is comparative, mixing diverse – sometimes little read – post-May Fourth and Cold War-era works with pieces from the 19th and 20th fins de siècle. Each chapter is a free associative rhapsody (sometimes brilliant, sometimes tedious; often neo-Freudian), evoking, from a recurring minor detail as in new historicist criticism, a major binary trope or problematic for Wang to “collapse” or blur. His forte is making connections between works. The findings: (1) decapitation (loss of a “head,” or guiding consciousness?) in Chinese fiction betokens remembering or “re-membering” (of the severed), as in an unfinished Qing novel depicting beheaded Boxers, works by Lu Xun and Shen Congwen, and Wuhe's 2000 commemoration of a 1930 Taiwanese aboriginal uprising; (2) justice is poetic, but equals punishment, even crime, in late Qing castigatory novels, Bai Wei, and several Maoist writers; (3) in revolutionary literature, love and revolution blur, as do love affairs in life with those in fiction; (4) hunger, indistinct from anorexia, is excess; witness “starved” heroines of Lu Xun, Lu Ling, Eileen Chang and Chen Yingzhen; (5) remembering scars creates scars, as in socialist realism, Taiwan's anticommunist fiction, and post-Mao scar literature; (6) in fiction about evil (late Ming and late Qing novels; Jiang Gui), inhumanity is all too human and sex blurs with politics; (7) suicide can be a poet's immortality, from Wang Guowei to Gu Cheng; (8) cultural China's most creative new works invoke ghosts again, obscuring lines between the human, the “real,” and the spectral.

This article aims to study the development of Arabic poetry from its early phase to its modern one. Having used a historical-diachronic study of form and content of Arabic poetry, this article concludes that Arabic poetry, as the oldest genre in the Arabic literary tradition, has hardly developed. Not until the 20th century, more commonly known in the history of Arabic literature as As}r al-Nahd}ah, that the awareness of the absence of creativity in Arabic poetry and external factors due to the interaction of Arab with the West have given birth the seeds of modern Arabic poetry. At least, there are five schools of modern Arabic poetry, namely: Neo Classical (al-Muhāfizun) with such its central figures as Mahmud Sami and Ahmad al-Barudi Syauqy; Western Romanticism, which was pioneered by Khalil Mutran; Madrasah Dīwān, which was propagandized by Abd al-Rahman Shukri, Abbas Mahmud al-'Aqad, and Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini; Madrasah Apollo, which was carried by Ahmad Zaki Abu Syadi; and Madrasah al-Muhajir, which is pioneered by Jibran Khalil Jibran. Each has contributed their part in Arabic poetry formally as well as contentially. Those schools have became a tradition of modern Arabic poetry. The emergence of modern Arabic poetic tradition has been accompanied by three general pattern- the influence of literary patterns of the more advanced cultures, the escapism, and the search for identity.

Neoromanticism or the Neo romantic movement may be easier to define, than it is to frame within a strict time framework. Some see it as a 20th-century resurgence of romantic ideas which began around 1928 and lasted up to the mid-1950s, while others locate it within a larger framework going back to the 1880s (being a reaction against naturalism) and lasting up to today. Depending on which timeline one adopts, it is sometimes synonymous with post-romanticism and late romanticism. However, regardless of its timeline, the movement has had profound effects lasting well into the end of the 20th century, becoming a reaction against modernism and postmodernism, and spreading into areas such as painting, music, literature, cinema, as well as architecture. As a movement, neoromanticism seeks to revive both romanticism and medievalism (the influence and appearance of ‘the medieval’ in the society and culture of later ages) by promoting the power of imagination, the exotic, the unfamiliar, further characterized by the expression of strong emotions (such as terror, awe, horror and love) as well as the promotion of supernatural experiences, the use and interest in Jungian archetypes and the semi-mystical conjuring of home. Furthermore, neoromanticism feels strongly against industrialization and the disconnectedness from nature in the modern world, rejecting the dichotomy between society and nature. It also embodies a wish or desire for a Utopian connection to nature uncoupled from social expectations and tradition, and going back to nature that has not been victimized by human civilization and industry. Most of these ideas may be found embodied in both the life and the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien, who famously declared to his son that he was, in fact, a Hobbit. His writings abound in creatures who not only live in harmony with nature (the Elves, the Hobbits), but embody it as well (the Ents) because romanticism (and subsequently neoromanticism) is, in essence, all about nature. In contrast, the evil of the main antagonists in his mythology (Melkor/Morgoth, Sauron, Saruman) is seen through their destruction of nature. Tolkien actually reverses the romantic line of vision with the creation of the Shire, which is seen as a ‘post-medieval’ society that has developed out of the Middle Ages, making Tolkien a medievalist dreaming of an organic and harmonious continuation of transformed and ‘purified’ Middle Ages as found in the Shire. This essay will present several of these characteristics mentioned and how the creatures of Tolkien’s mythology present a reaction against the industrialization of his time and neighboring county, while showing how these are ideas are still (perhaps even more so) relevant in the 21st century as well.

The essay is focused on the classic of the 20th century Ukrainian literature Valerii Shevchuk and his complex and diverse literary work in various genres. He is a writer (poet, prose writer, play writer), historian of culture, literary scholar, archivist, translator, memoirist, prominent representative of Kyiv Sixtiers, leader of ‘Zhytomyr prose school’ and forerunner of Ukrainian postmodernists. Special attention is paid to the sources of the author’s work, its metaphysical connection with Zhytomyr where he was born, and Kyiv where he has been living and writing and endured a decade of forced solitude remaining free, where he truly established himself as a Ukrainian writer. His research activity and translation work, focused on Ukrainian history and Old Ukrainian literature (particularly of the 16th–18th centuries), provoked the writer’s interest in Ukrainian Baroque tradition and its transformation in his own works. It all started with poetry, which he never stopped writing. That is why the subjective stuff is also important in his prose, which is rational in its neo-baroque basis. The essay provides a general overview of the specific features of Shevchuk’s individual style, which is characterized by combination of realistic authenticity with convention or irreality, ‘high’ and ‘low’ narration style, travesty of storylines and images, parabolic technique, historiosophy, irony, etc. Worthy of separate attention and high esteem is the scholarly work of the writer and his contribution to the general field of culture. This activity includes preparation of different anthologies and collections, numerous translations of Kyivan Rus texts into modern Ukrainian, many articles, prefaces, extensive historical and cultural studies, etc. The work of Valerii Shevchuk is important for the humanities and promotes self-consciousness and self-empowerment of Ukrainians, as well as their communication with the world cultural heritage.

In this article, the authors make an attempt based on an analysis from the point of view of neo-historicism to look again at the history of the development of Buryat novels, to analyze the features of constructing the identity of the main characters in works written by famous Buryat writers at different historical stages. The relevance is due to the absence of scientific works devoted to identifying the transformation of the identity of literary characters under the influence of historical eras. The purpose of this article is also to study the influence of various historical contexts on the work of writers in order to find out the pattern of manifestation of the ethnic identity of the Buryats in the historically determined dynamics of social development and their artistic embodiment. The most famous novels by Buryat writers of the 20th century served as the material for the study. Being a significant genre of Buryat literature, the novel has a natural connection with history since its inception, which makes it another channel for understanding the influence of the historical process on the identity of the Buryats. The authors analyze Buryat novels, which are an artistic medium for Buryat writers, with which they can write about national identity. Buryat novels are influenced by the social and historical environment and have features at different stages of history. Historical events and characters depicted in Buryat novels reflected the process of identity transformation in artistic form. The authors come to the conclusion that the identity of the heroes goes through stages from the desire for unification under the influence of Soviet ideology to the formation of a new identity of a USSR citizen, and to the conclusion about the revival of ethnic identity at a new stage. The research perspectives include the study of the transformation of identity in other genres of Buryat literature.

Postmodern architectural products that can be described as kitsch have become rapidly consumed objects because they have appealed to the whole society. As a demand stimulating, easily comprehensible, and rapidly consumable product, kitsch has gained an important place in postmodern culture and architecture. These features of kitsch have easily made it a paradoxical part of consumption culture. After the Neoclassical boom in the 18th century, architectural movements such as Eclecticism, Orientalism, and Historicism became widespread in the 19th century. Towards the end of the 20th century, these tendencies came to the fore again within the Postmodern paradigm, and new kitsch architectural structures have begun to be produced in these undertakings in accordance with the spirit of the period. Eclecticism which has become prominent again in postmodern architecture has been referred to as neo-eclecticism or eclectic populism and has been defined as a style that ‘complexity, uncertainty and contradictions’ are expressed, ‘references from history and symbolic elements are used. Together with various historical forms in the postmodern period, orientalist images have been also used. Images consisting of stylized views of the Western culture on the Orient and that are not based on an authentic eastern depiction have been used in the production of orientalist architectural form. In recent years, eclectic, kitsch, orientalist, neoclassical forms that are independent of context and time have been frequently encountered in architectural applications in also Turkey. On one hand, elements from Turkish culture have been used and on the other hand, architectural elements from foreign cultures have been preferred. It is seen that there have been contradictions between form and meaning in educational structures built in Turkey during the period that the paradigms of the Postmodern era have been dominant. In this study, it is aimed to read and analyze the concepts of kitsch, eclecticism, neoclassicism, orientalism in the postmodern paradigm on recent university buildings and campus portals. In line with this purpose, an extensive literature research was conducted within the scope of the study; in the case study, recent university buildings and portals were analyzed in terms of postmodernism, the historical periods and architectural elements they derived were determined.

Relevance of research. The introduction to the musicological using of the manuscript of M. Verikyvskyi's early work, which was previously only briefly mentioned in the literature, is connected with the current scientific trend of studying little-known pages of the history of Ukrainian music of the era of national liberation struggles of the 20th century. The return of the forgotten artefact of the composer's heritage is intended to contribute to the establishment of more complete and objective picture of the development of genres, stylistic trends, individual authorial style, etc. The purpose of the study. The purpose of the article is to explore the principles of processing folklore in the M. Verikyvskyʼs cycle "Five pieces for a string quartet on folk themes" in the genrestylistic aspect, to find out the extent of the influence of theoretical views and didactic instructions of B. Yavorskyi on the writing of the work, to outline the meaning of the composition in the context of the evolution of the author's creativity and directions development of Ukrainian quartet music of the 20th century. Methods. The article uses source, genre and style studies, structural and intonationalconstructive methods of analysis of musical work. The results and conclusions. The composer's notes in the margins of the manuscript are commented in the context of the artist's creative life (1921), social-political and aesthetic-artistic trends of the era, communication with the teacher of composition. The stylistic features of neofolklorism were revealed in the work: appeal to folk archaic and principles of folklore thinking, combination of folk elements with technical and compositional means of the modernist era, subjugation of the folklore theme to an individual artistic idea. The influence of the theoretical and didactic instructions of B. Yavorskyi, M. Verikyvskyiʼs teacher at the Kyiv Conservatory, can be observed on two levels: 1) general aesthetic views on the use of folklore in the composer's work, 2) specific compositional and stylistic techniques in the plane of lado-harmonic processes (the role of the tritone, constructive and modal continuous exposition), dynamization of the metrorhythm, texture, formation. In the composer's creativity, this work initiates the genre of instrumental folklore composition, prepares the appearance of large-scale neo-folkloric compositions (oratorio, symphonic uite, ballet, opera), tests for the first time the model of the five-part suite cycle, built on the principles of contrast, symmetry and concentricity. In Ukrainian quartet music, this opus is located near the origins of the folklore line of development of the genres of piece (folk miniature) and suite.

The Lithuanian folktale “The Sister as Duck” (AT 452C*), most commonly known under the name of “Sigutė”, is generally regarded as a popular narrative. It is appreciated for the rich mythical imagery: after the female protagonist is burned and the cow licks the ashes, the duck appears; the snow is allegedly sparkling because of the witch’s brains (bones) scattered there, etc. Moreover, the tale abounds in expressive song insertions.This tale has been published both in academic and popular editions. Its images are widespread in popular culture, even becoming stereotypical. However, in the card file catalogue of the Lithuanian folk narratives, only 17 variants of this tale and 5 fragments recorded from oral tradition can be found.By using contextual analysis, the author of the article attempts establishing when, how, and due to what circumstances this tale has turned into a phenomenon of popular culture.Its first recording from oral tradition in the 19th century purported to serve as illustration of the peculiarities of a particular Lithuanian dialect. After the ban of the Lithuanian press in Latin alphabet was lifted in the beginning of the 20th century, this variant of the tale was included into a published collection of folktales for children, subsequently spreading to various schoolbooks, which commonly used it for didactic purposes, such as educating empathy in children.During Soviet times, the tale found its way into several academic editions, afterwards crossing into popular folktales’ collections for children published in thousands of copies. The tale also became popular in audial shape: its sound recordings were published both in Lithuania and abroad.The analysis of the tale’s variants recorded from the oral tradition highlighted certain characteristics indicating that its popularity must have depended on the written culture. In the five variants of the tale recorded in 1936–1959, the female protagonist is not once called Sigutė or turns into the duck. However, the eleven variants recorded in 1962–1980 include most of the structural components or certain peculiar details from the first published variant of the tale, e.g. the song insertions, the girl’s name, the duck motive. In most cases, the girl turns into duck here, and only once into a cuckoo. This testifies to the obvious influence of the published variant.The folktale “Sigutė” earned phenomenal popularity also due to its artistic interpretations. In the beginning of the 20th century, it inspired works by such Lithuanian neo-romanticists as Vydūnas, Salomėja Nėris and others. During Soviet times, this story served as basis for plays and theater performances for children, thus further paving its way into popular culture.The fate of the folktale “Sigutė” may be regarded as a certain case of folktale canon formation: the folk text originating in oral tradition is affected by instruments of the written culture, turning into a narrative of national renown and importance. Possibly such cannon formation was also determined by the decline of the traditional folk culture, as result of which the educated people selecting the folk texts to inspire their creativity particularly favored the ones characterized by a dramatic story line and impressive tragic developments, which therefore could be easily adapted into individual literary compositions.Thus, the literary and musical interpretations of the folktale “Sigutė” have significantly added to its popularity, turning it into a canonic childhood text. Lacking popularity in the oral tradition and recorded as just a few fragmented variants, most likely retold from the published folktale collections, the folktale “Sigutė” became a special phenomenon of the written Lithuanian culture.

In 2020 the international philosophical community celebrates the 250th anniversary of the birth of G.W.F. Hegel. This anniversary provides an excellent opportunity to once again reconsider to the iconic works of the great German philosopher, among them, special attention should be paid to The Phenomenology of the Spirit, which is universally considered as one of the most famous works of world philosophical literature. Being the first of Hegel’s major works and, at the same time, the first and only part of the early version of his system of absolute idealism, this book, largely due to the efforts of the French Neo-Hegelians, acquired the status of one of the most famous philosophical works. Meanwhile, The Phenomenology of the Spirit is rightfully considered one of the most complex philosophical texts, which does not cease to attract attention, including due to the intricacies of its style. Being called by K. Marx “the true point of origin and the secret of the Hegelian philosophy,” this work, among other numerous “secrets” and “mysteries,” undoubtedly hides the mystery associated with the terminological and stylistic features of Hegel’s writing. Noting the serious difficulties encountered in reading The Phenomenology of the Spirit, the author of the article shows that Hegel wrote it, developing a new philosophical language, creating a range of linguistic innovations, also using Germanized Latin and Greek terms. Along with Spinoza’s Latin terminology, he borrowed some concepts from his compatriots (Wolf, Kant, Fichte and others), deliberately altering their meaning. The article also shows that, being an extremely complex (both in stylistic-linguistic and structural aspects) philosophical work, Hegel’s The Phenomenology of the Spirit had a huge impact on the development of intellectual culture of the 20th century, and not only due to its conceptions. Its language itself greatly contributed to the formation of special philosophical terminology and anticipated a number of significant changes in the structure and composition of philosophical texts.

The article presents for the Lithuanian audience an interdisciplinary approach of literary canon studies that integrates diverse methods of various disciplines (sociology of literature and culture, literary and cultural history, teaching of literature, text reception and aesthetic response history, memory and media research and bibliography studies). The most intense development of literary canon studies can be observed in Western Europe and the United States in the last decade of the 20th century. This was due to the fact that the scholars engaged in the field of postcolonialism, gender studies and neo-Marxism gave it a strong impulse by initiating a debate about insufficient representation of some social groups (women, racial or ethnic minorities and people from lower social strata) in high school curricula in the USA. The debate was expanded into theoretical polemics of whether the canon is formed by means of objective aesthetic criteria or, on the contrary, canon depends on the social contract. Methodologically, investigations of literary canon that are genetically related to the tradition of sociology of culture seem to be the most productive, while this perspective provides an apparatus for a detailed investigation of relations between specific interests of literary field and wider national, social or group interests.The framework of this article is based on the studies of John Guillory, Renate von Heydebrand and Simone Winko. Their essential starting point is the understanding of the canon as a sociocultural process in which the political elite selects a corpus of significant texts in accordance with tradition and formulates practices that ensure the transmission of those texts for future generations. Therefore, canon formation turns to be a strategy based on complex relations of evaluation, cognition and actions that aims to conserve this selected knowledge and transmit it to future generations. The structure of the canon is directly related to the notion of literature and literariness; a society (or its group) defines its canon by considering what they recognize as valuable.Unlike religious canons, which can only be constructed by theologians, there are a lot of canonizing institutions (schools, universities, literary criticism, theatre repertoire, book market, libraries, etc.) involved in the formation of literary canons. They do not create any well-balanced system of the canon but rather conduct diverse practices of canonization. We can distinguish a micro and macro level in the process of canon formation. The micro level contains a lot of separate actions of canonization that propel the canonization process which enables the canon formation at macro level. Origin, stabilization and transformation of literary canon are multidimensional processes, thus it is essential not to lose sight of the interaction of separate dimensions.

The article considers the possibility to interpret motive and concept as two parallel ways of pre-predicative matter of internal speech incarnation. Lev Vygotsky’s doctrine about thought and word, which arose in the philosophical context of neo-Kantianism and dialectics peculiar to the beginning of the 20th century, creates the possibility of such interpretation. The primacy and substantiality of art’s content before its incarnation was recognized and declared by such thinkers and poets of The Silver Age as Andrey Bely and Boris Pasternak. The word “matter” itself was a working concept in the aesthetic reflections of Pasternak. In his own work, invariant themes were embodied in both narrative and lyrical modality, and in the form of reasoning. Generic boundaries, thus, shown their permeability and, therefore, a conventionality. On the other hand, the adjacent status of artistic and theoretical ways of speech was realized in the search of the formal school of poetics in 1920s. Boris Tomashevsky in his classical textbook of poetics interpreted the “theme” as an atom of “matter”. In the status of thematic units, that is, units of “matter” division, the scientist considered both the plot and the motive. With this, he stated the possibility of two paths to dispose thematic elements: fabulous story based on causal- temporal relationships, and without fable. On the second way, according to Tomashevsky, lyrical works emerge, and it also generates dialectics of theoretical reasoning. This allows to consider theoretical reasoning as a parallel method of organizing thematic material – “matter”. Concepts are joined in the propositions exactly the same as the motives are combined in the plots. Additional similarity of concepts and motives is created by the only systemic way of their existence, established by such researchers as, on the one hand, Lev Vygotsky, on the other, Vladimir Propp. So there is a prospect of parallel systematization of categories: motive, concept, plot, proposition, and others related to them. Reference to the experience of literature shows that the thematic elements of the matter can be embodied both as concepts and as motives even within one work. The example is the “Word of Law and Grace”, in which the themes of Law and Grace, first, are revealed in the conceptual comparison, and secondly, are embodied in the images of Hagar and Sarah from the Old Testament. So clearly appears concurrency of concepts and motives as ways of realization of thematic “matter”.

The article presents a semiotic inquiry into a particular rendering of the theme of love. The object of analysis is a novel by Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas, In the Shadow of Altars (Altorių šešėly; 1933), one of the first and most prominent Lithuanian novels about love (it involves Liudas Vasaris, the protagonist, ‘breaking free’ from being first a seminary student and then a priest, to being a poet and a married man). Prior critique of the novel highlights the psychological-existential character and thematic autonomy of love therein. However, the outcome of the present analysis is quite the opposite: in the novel, love stories are actually organized according to fairytale principles of narrative structure, and developed on the basis of sociocultural stereotypes that do not imply any direct experience or an existential dimension.Our research employed a number of theoretic and methodological supports: R. Barthes’ notion of figure, presented in Fragments d’un discours amoureux; 1977, A. J. Greimas’ canonical narrative schema, developed on the basis of fairy-tale research, and Y. Lotman’s notion of worldview, presented in his works on individual selfperception and behavior patterns. These devices were applied according to the specific character and structural unity of the text.Structural analysis of sections devoted to love stories and of their relation with other sections reveals that love in this novel is not important per se, but as a means of becoming of a man-creator. The becoming of Liudas Vasaris as a creator – a utopian image of personal fulfillment in one’s own society – is made possible in the novel by the exploitation of a fairy-tale love narrative. Therefore, the novel presents a ‘love tale’ rather than a love story rendered by novelistic narration. This also determines the thematic treatment of love. In the Shadow of Altars love does not become an independent theme, problem or value; it is dissociated both from the novel’s historic-sociocultural framework and from any manifestations of subjectivity. Love situations are composed by reproducing sociocultural and literary stereotypes of behavior and perception, thus unconsciously propagating underlying patriarchal notions and rituals. Therefore, the results of this inquiry call for an adjustment of In the Shadow of Altars’ critical reception, a re-evaluation of the novel's character and of the possibilities for an adequate reading. This also encourages broader questions about love in Lithuanian literature, from the possibilities of its existence to its authenticity.Furthermore, recognizing the primacy of the story of becoming of a man-poet allows for an identification of the tensions and polemic between poetic currents in the Lithuanian literary field of the first three decades of the 20th century. The trajectory of becoming of Vasaris-poet begins with an orientation towards a ‘poetry of ideas’, continues into a stage of decadent neo-romanticism (an important element of the latter stage are decadent relations with decadent women), and ends its development with a program of hypothetical harmonious neo-romanticism (together with the discovery of ‘truthful’ love and way of life). In this sense, this analysis is a contribution to ongoing research of interaction between textual and non-textual structures, text and context, semiotics and cultural studies.

Andrejs Papārde’s real name is Miķelis Valters (1874–1968), he was born and raised in Liepāja in a family of dock workers. Valters is a versatile personality – a Doctor of Juridical Science, a social worker, a politician and a diplomat with outstanding accomplishments in Latvian history. Valters was also an art theorist and poet. He signed his literary works with a pseudonym Andrejs Papārde. In literature, Papārde announces himself in the 1890s with works of short prose and reflections, later also with poetry. In book shape, his poetry is published after the 1905 Russian Revolution. He has three collections of poems published. The first collection of poems “Tantris” was published in 1908 in Helsingfors. The collection consists of little poems in short verses, without titles, but listed with roman numerals from one to eighty-nine. The poems are written in free verse, without rhymes, and they are characterized by allegoric expression and symbolic characters. The poetry is allegorically symbolic, with no specific place and time. The inflecting sound of verses is dominated by a pessimistic and depressive feel. The common gloomy atmosphere of the poems in the collections is formed by the imagery of pessimistic expressions, the dominance of the black colour and a severely dramatic sense of the world of the main character. The scenes with depressive characters capture the horror of a global apocalypse as well as the fear of an individual threat. The atmosphere of misery and hopelessness is created by grim stylistics and negative semantic characters. The very few characters of positive expression cannot dispel the overall dreary and sorrowful mood. Andrejs Papārde’s second poem collection “Ēnas uz akmeņiem” comes out in 1910 in Riga. The collection consists of seventy poems numbered with Arabic numerals. Interestingly, the pages are not numbered, thus only the number of a poem can be indicated in the references. All of the poems are of small scale, ranging from five to twelve lines, most of them are poems of six to eight short lines. All of the poems from the collection are without titles, written in free verse and without rhymes. The form of the poems is almost compressed to a maximum. The free verse and the intelligent dimension of the poems allow perceiving Papārde’s poetry similarly to Japanese haiku or tanka. Verses filled with depressive feelings in a way persist in his second collection of poems, however this time in not so unvaryingly dull manner and not so fatally obedient. More often, but not entirely levelled, optimistic tunes are played. The night continues to reign, there is still a lot of black colour, but more often there are mentionings of mornings. Notably, for expressing optimistic feelings, verbs are used in the future tense. Papārde’s second poem collection “Ēnas zem akmeņiem” ends on an optimistic tune, but that is certainly not a naive optimism of non-existing problems. Papārde’s third poem collection “Mūžība” subtitled “Mana dziesma” was published in 1914 in Helsingfors. Unlike in the previous collections, in this one, all of the poems have titles, and they are no longer numbered. The author consistently keeps writing in a rhymeless free verse. Almost like with inertia, there is still skepticism and disappointment. But there is much more confidence than before, the willingness to withstand difficulties, hard times, and there is hope for the tomorrow, for the “Easter morning”, for a new day. In this poem collection, Papārde and the main character slowly turn into an ambassador of light and an admirer of the sun, thus joining the many sun worshipers and the light announcers in Latvian literature. The character system close to romanticism, individual sovereign subjectivity, intimate sounding verses, dynamic use of abstractions and symbols are all associated with the 20th-century romanticism, or in other words, the neo-romanticism. The dominance of the pessimistic atmosphere differentiates this poetry as a depressive neo-romanticism or so-called catastrophic romanticism poetry.

In which ways was Medieval and Byzantine History embedded in the Greek national narrative in the first life steps of the Greek state during the 19th century? In which ways has it been related to the emerging nationalism in the Balkans, and to relationships with the West and the countries of south-eastern Europe during the Balkan Wars, the First and Second World Wars, and especially the Cold War, until today? In which ways does Byzantium correlate with the notion of Greekness, and what place does it occupy in Neo-Hellenic identity and culture? Moreover, which role does it play in history teaching, and what kind of reactions does any endeavour of revision or reformation provoke? To answer the above questions I performed a comparative analysis on the following categories of sources: (a) Greek national and European historiography, (b) School history curricula and textbooks, (c) Public history sources, (d) The new History Curriculum for primary and secondary school classes, and (e) The principles and guidelines of international organizations such as the Council of Europe. In the first three sections of this paper, I provide an overview of the conformation and integration of the Byzantine period in Greek national historiography, in association with the dominant European philosophical and historical perspectives during the era of modernity, as well as the evolving national politics, foreign affairs, prevailing ideological schemas and the role of history teaching in shaping the common identity of the Neo-Hellenic society throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The fourth section briefly deals with the current situation in history teaching in Greek schools, while the fifth section critically presents the innovative elements and features of the new History Curriculum, which, to some degree, aspires to be considered a paradigm shift in the teaching of Medieval History in school education. Finally, I summarize and draw several conclusions.

The present paper is aimed at studying the artistic mind of the modern English writer John Fowles as the creator of the original worldview in its postmodern style. It has been specified that British artistic culture does not demonstrate neither the extremes, peculiar to the art of “transition” or “frontier” nor sharp denial of everything that seemed inviolable. Inclining towards realistic forms of the English classics, a lot of postmodern authors, including Fowles, prefer a synthesis of the old with the new. This applies both to postmodernism and all avant-garde and neo-avant-garde movements, aimed at fundamental changing of the general ideas about the beauty and ugliness. “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”, written by John Fowles, proposes such a postmodern synthesis in the context of the “playing with the past” thesis. In his novel, the author presents a special type of “new reality”, corresponding to the period of the profound changes inside the movement during the period starting from the end of the 19th century till the end of the 20th century. Instead of the typical for English literature “hero in search”, the novel under consideration demonstrates an existential type of a man. The above-mentioned hero, who is embodied in the images of Charles and Sarah, seeks his individual freedom and “corrects” his own destiny. It should be emphasized that gaining true freedom is possible only through overcoming various life and social obstacles associated with breaking class and social ties, as well as with great internal suffering. Fowles’s peculiar style of narration helps to reveal the main theme of the novel. The author uses postmodern irony, which is meta-irony, and pastiche. The method of “overlapping epochs” forms an original intertext whereby the semantic field of the novel increases. The literary significance of the outlined method is multifaceted: an elitist reader perceives text-subtext-intertext; a “mass” reader gets acquainted with the work at the level of an entertaining storyline. The author of the article also analyses a mythological component of the novel “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”. A mention should also be made that Fowles in the analysed work acts both as a creator and a destroyer of the socio-ethical and literary myth of the Victorian era. Of primary interest to the writer was the literary myth of the time of Queen Victoria, which in the minds of readers has long been romanticized and become a legend. Therefore, the article shows the connection of everything that happens according to the tradition of English romantic narration and the principles of reformation of characters and situations that no longer correspond to the romantic worldview. The ironic understanding of the gentleman’s code of honor and the object of his passion, the reduction of love conflicts and places of romantic meetings are illustrated by specific examples from the text of the novel. The present paper has also devoted considerable attention to the psychology of the protagonists as well as the problem of the plot and compositional unity of the novel “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”. It is proved that the development of the storyline of the novel is a polystructural and polysemantic phenomenon. If Sarah’s character combines the traditional features of both “woman with a secret” and “infernal woman”, then respect for Charles’s traditional aristocracy is being called into question: it is repeatedly mentioned that he did not receive a Cambridge diploma, that he is an amateur paleontologist, that he considers the possibility of getting married for money, and that there is a very strong element of carnal passion in his romantic relationship with Sarah. The article offers the author’s commentary on the compositional completion of the novel. It is argued that the trinity of the epilogue, first of all, explains the “world-chaos” antithesis. The formula of the dissipating world, according to the author of the article, was supposed to become the basis of the postmodernist text in the original version of the novel “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”.

The purpose of this study is to characterize the image of the protagonist of the saga of the boxer Rocky through the prism of mythopoetics as a type of new cultural hero in the field of sports. Research methods are historical and cultural, mythopoetic, and comparative. Its application allows to outline the genetic connection of the image of the hero-boxer with the literary tradition; identify its main parameters as a mythohero; allocate the points of intersection of the author's myth with the myth of the American dream; consider the acquisition of the mytheme of Rocky the beginnings of the ideologeme.Results of the research: The genesis of the image goes back to the traditions of neo-romantic literature. The active appeal to a ritual and a myth, and a new wave of interest in sports as an embodiment of the principle of agony and, therefore, the popularity of sports drama, resulted in the mythologization of the boxer character in the culture of the 20th century. The distinct feature of the movie is a genre syncretism; it is a combination of sports drama, film-biography, action, and melodrama with typical for mytho-scenario archetypic situations. This determines the mass audience and the range of interpretation of Rocky’s story, formed as a mythological scenario. Rocky’s biography interweaves the facts of life of the real prototypes (boxers Rocky Marciano, Rocky Graziano), fictional characters (heroes of Hollywood sports movies), and autobiographical (Sylvester Stallone). The connection with sports as a ritual gives the film a mythological connotation. Simultaneously, it highlights the utilitarian aspect, inherent in the American tradition of Enlightenment and focused on the practical application of the context. The stories of Rocky’s boxing matches, and the stories of his relationships we perceive as “steps” of his initiation to a new cultural hero or a hero of mass culture. This occurs in a chronotope with characteristics of large (Philadelphia) and small (boxing ring) topos as places of professional and personal recognition. Rocky IV stands out among the films of the franchise; the protagonist embodies the athlete-defender of the national way of life that fights against a boxer from the “empire of evil”; and from the cult hero from of mass culture he turns into a mytho-ideology.Conclusions. The popular character of world cinema Rocky Balboa realizes the typical for the 20th century need for the new cultural heroes. Belonging to the two entertainment spheres – cinema and sports – the character created by Stallone gained immense popularity and a long screen “life”. Whereas Rocky’s assertion to the mytheme, and then ideologeme, led to a “fantastic” origin as a character, that is, a combination of biographies of real and fictional prototypes; connection of life scenario with rituals; correlation of moral and ethical beliefs of the hero with the ideas of the national myth of the American dream; his life trials as stages of initiation in the sacred chronotope.Key words: Rocky, mythohero, ritual, sports drama, chronotope, mytho-ideology. Мета цієї студії – схарактеризувати образ протагоніста кіносаги про боксера Роккі крізь призму міфопоетики як тип нового культурного героя із царини спорту. Методами дослідження є історико-культурний, міфопоетичний і порівняльний. Їх застосування дає можливість окреслити генетичний зв’язок образу героя-боксера з літературною традицією; визначити його основні параметри як міфогероя; вказати на точки перетину авторського міфу з міфом американської мрії; розглянути набуття міфологемою Роккі обрисів ідеологеми.Результати дослідження: з’ясовано, що ґенеза образу персонажа-спортсмена сягає неоромантичної традиції. Тоді як міфологізація кіногероя-боксера в культурі ХХ ст. зумовлена активним зверненням до ритуалу і міфу; новою хвилею інтересу до спортивних змагань як втіленням принципу агонічності; популярністю жанру спортивної кінодрами. Разом із тим масову глядацьку аудиторію і потужний інтерпретаційний потенціал персонажа Роккі забезпечував і жанровий синкретизм фільмів про нього: поєднання елементів спортивної драми, фільму-біографії, бойовика, мелодрами з типовими для міфосценарію архетипними ситуаціями. Визначено, що в екранній історії Роккі переплітаються факти з життя боксерів Р. Марчіано, Р. Граціано, героїв спортивних кінодрам і факти біографії самого С. Сталлоне. Зв’язок зі спортом як ритуалом надає фільмам про Роккі міфологічного підтексту і водночас окреслює його «утилітарний» аспект, притаманний американській просвітницькій традиції і орієнтований на практичне застосування переглянутого. Історії боксерських поєдинків кіногероя разом з історіями взаємин із «ближнім колом» сприймаються етапами ініціації на шляху до нового культурного героя у хронотопі, де великий (Філадельфія) і малий (ринг) топоси стають місцями здобуття ним професійного і особистісного визнання. Наголошено, що серед фільмів франшизи виокремлюється четвертий епізод, де Роккі втілює спортсмена-захисника національного способу життя, виступаючи проти боксера з «імперії зла». У такий спосіб герой масової свідомості переходить у міфоідеологему.Висновки. У культовому персонажеві світового кінематографу Роккі Бальбоа зреалізована характерна для людини маси ХХ ст. потреба в нових культурних героях. Завдяки приналежності до двох видовищних сфер – кіно і спорт – персонаж, створений С. Сталлоне, здобув величезну популярність і тривале екранне «життя». Тоді як утвердження Роккі у статусі пев-ної міфологеми, а потім й ідеологеми, зумовило «чудесне» походження як персонажа, тобто поєднання біографій реальних і фікційних прототипів; зв’язок життєвого сценарію з ритуалами; кореляцію морально-етичних переконань героя з ідеями національного міфу американської мрії; його життєві випробування як етапи ініціації в сакральному хронотопі.Ключові слова: фільм «Роккі», міфогерой, ритуал, спортивна драма, хронотоп, ідеологема.

from different fi elds of art refer to the same topic. Stable repetition of phenomena, the names of which were originally perceived in the poetic and metaphorical way, indicates the formation of a certain genre branch, little developed in scientifi c research. Genre neoformations of this kind include walks, behind the semantic layer of which a certain set of stylistic means shines through. It is not by chance that attempts are made to comprehend this phenomenon in aesthetic and artistic aspects. Objectives. The purpose of the article is to highlight the phenomena of artistic culture with the most vivid signs of promenade elements, to consider a set of musical instruments used by French composers of the late 19th – early 20th century in the music “walks”. Methods. To determine the role of walks in the genre palette of the music of the 20th century, the historical biographical and the comparative research methods were used. Results. The author of the article reveals the role of walks in the French national life and culture. Their characteristic signs are the following: desire for rest, lightness of being, enjoying the moment. From here, the verbal landscapes from the “In Search of Lost Time” novel by M. Proust take their beginning in, which were inspired by his walking in the Bois de Boulogne forest, in the outskirts of Paris, the province of Illiers-Combray, where the writer took care of fl owers, trees and shrubs. A similar passion for walking and studying the fl ora was also experienced by the enlightener J.-J. Rousseau. He was known to spend a long time feasting eyes on plants, collecting herbariums, often recording his observations. This also explains why C. Monet loved wandering in the wilds. The famous artist, known for his landscape paintings, bought from the local farmers a piece of land that bordered with his estate in order to freely wander around the fi elds in search of the right object, favorable angle or necessary lighting. As a result, promenade walking, being a typical national feature, is often embodied in French music and poetry. This phenomenon is common outside of French art as well. In music, we can refer to “The Walk” by S. Prokofi ev and “The Walk” from the “Pictures at an Exhibition” by M. Mussorgsky; in prose - “The Walk” by N. Karamzin, “Walking in Rome” by G. Morton, “Walking with Pushkin” by A. Tertz, “Six Walks in the Fictional Woods” by U. Eco; in painting – “The Walk” by M. Chagall, “An Evening Walk”, “A Man and a Woman on a Walk in the Forest” by A. Toulouse-Lautrec, “A Walk”, “A Walk” by P. Delvaux, “A Walk” by E. Degas. Quite a few works in the genre of walks revealed such areas of public knowledge as lecture sessions, historical excursions and reviews of art. Thus, the art critic, historian, art historian S. Stavitsky organized a lecture session “Walk as a genre of modern art”, which consisted of three meetings: “Walk Aesthetics”, “Walk and Neo-avant-garde”, and “Actionist Walks”. Polish literary critic Z. Kopech published a collection of articles called “Walks in Modern Polish Literature” devoted to the issues of national prose, poetry and drama. E. Kulikova wrote the work called “Walks in the Lyrics of Anna Akhmatova”, where the author reviews several of her poems , including “The Walks”. B. Godard’s piano cycle “Chemin Faisant” (1880–1881) was analyzed, where each of the pieces appears as a sketch, a “photography” of a walking person. The fi rst three items of the cycle – “Going Over”, “Crying” and “Singing”, form a mini-cycle, since they contrast with each other in terms of image and content, although they remain related in terms of the selected means complex. Among them are: fi gures of movement, repetition, dynamic approach of “moving closer-moving away”, staccato technique in outside pieces. The unifying principle is the direction of all stylistic means to visualize a music image. This explains the presence and individual traits, since the character’s image created by the composer is endowed with a unique identity. The distinctness, tangibility of B. Godard’s musical images makes one ponder over the impact of cinema on musical art: its abilities through the details – expressions of eyes, facial expressions, turns of the head – transmit a change of emotional state, moods, put together a special emotional and psychological plot. A different approach to a descriptive music in “The Walks” (1921) by F. Poulenc is revealed, where the composer does not present a character on a walk, and does not tell stories. Instead, he creates the appropriate surrounding, inspires us with the atmosphere of such different and contrasting walks with the help of harmonic colors, tempos, texture, dynamic and articulation means. His music language is far from being simple, it is full of bizarre rhythms and complex chords, thus putting forward serious technical requirements. Above all, the composer’s targeted attitudes when creating the visible realism of his urban plots are evidenced by numerous text remarks, which are designed to guide a musician as accurately as possible towards the required performance character. They are found everywhere and relate to all components of the music: tempo, sound level, mood, articulation, agogics, pedal usage. A set of various sound and visual means help a performer to implement the composer’s instructions. Conclusions. The universal and wide compositional possibilities of walks as a special artistic genre are proved by its relevance in various types of art and scientifi c knowledge. The authors use different means of declaring their idea, and different way to materialize it. This versatile experience opens the way to comprehending the new and the unexplored, steadily and leisurely, as if you are just a curious walking person.

Neste trabalho, refletimos sobre a natureza das motivações defendidas pelo romancista brasileiro Gonzaga Filho em sua obra “A Mais Encantadora Mulher”, publicada em 1903. Além das proposições etimológicas, fonéticas e prosódicas, o autor faz uso de uma proposição muito particular, que ele nomeia de harmonia neo-natina. Para o autor, não havia, até a data de publicação de seu romance, no mundo lusófono, nenhum léxico que se impusesse como autoridade a ser seguida. Através da obra de Gonzaga Filho, observamos o comportamento do movimento metaortográfico que se desvelou, no início do século XX, para a constituição ortográfica da língua portuguesa em sincronias passadas e sua importância no processo de estandardização da grafia. In this work, we reflect on the nature of the motivations defended by the Brazilian novelist Gonzaga Filho in his work “A Mais Encantadora Mulher”, published in 1903. In addition to the etymological, phonetic and prosodic propositions, the author makes use of a very particular proposition, which he names neo-natin harmonization. For the author, there was not, until the date of publication of his novel, in the Portuguese-speaking world, no single lexicon that would impose itself as an authority to be followed. Through the work of Gonzaga Filho, we observe the behavior of the metaorthographic movement that was unveiled, at the beginning of the 20th century, for the orthographic constitution of the Portuguese language in past synchronisms and its importance in the standardization process of spelling

In the history of the Dostoevsky’s and Tolstoy’s reception in modern philosophical thought, a philosophical tradition of German-Jewish origin has a prominent role. Product of a singular “spiritual synthesis”, as observed by Michael Löwy, the thought of Franz Kafka, George Lukács, Ernst Bloch, and Walter Benjamin has appeared in modern times as the sign of messianic claim for a libertarian, radical, and revolutionary socialism. Bearing in common the experience of not being reconciled with the world and history, this generation of intellectuals from Central Europe had “Jewish messianism” and “German romanticism” as privileged sources of their world-view. The religious concept of redemption and the political notion of libertarian utopia were combined in the trajectory of this German-Jewish intelligentsia that promoted an unprecedented reconfiguration of philosophical thought. It is well-known that the works of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy traverse the messianic and utopian imagery of this generation of revolutionary intellectuals and, as professor Michael Löwy assertively stated, “the utopian Bloch finds in Dostoevsky elements that legitimize The Principle of Hope: Aliocha Karamazov would be a precursor to the ‘religious kingdom of justice’…”. Such an observation is at the heart of a critical fortune accumulated in the works of Löwy and opens paths of analysis that have yet to be made in relation to the reception of Russian literature in modern Jewish philosophy. Michael Löwy is director of research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS-Paris) and is one of the most significant and creative intellectuals of today. The Marxist philosopher’s work offers a rare intertwining of socialism and surrealism, and establishes a meticulous approximation between philosophy and literature. The acuity with which Löwy interprets the German-Jewish messianism and romanticism, the tragic negativity and the ethical and human claims brought to light by such a tradition presents us with a revolutionary and libertarian state of being that only has equivalents in the utopian-messianic glimpses we find in the great Russian novels. The concept of “Romantic anti-capitalism”, which made it possible to read the romantic tradition in a revolutionary way, can be interpreted as the fil rouge that connects the world of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to the messianic utopianism of modern Judaism. The reception of Russian literature in the philosophical thought of the 20th century was complex and polyphonic, and the example of Dostoevsky, a thinker who, for Löwy, “is clearly situated on the grounds of the romantic world-view”, becomes significantly emblematic. Although a conservative romanticism has found in the author of The Brothers Karamazov elements that could legitimize the nationalist desire for roots arising from a conservative tradition (Moeller van den Bruck, Goebbels, Heidegger), the utopian-revolutionary interpretation of the Russian writer made by “Jews of German culture” is among the most creative pages of modern philosophy. The set of analyses offered by Michael Löwy on the Jewish and neo-romantic tradition represented by authors such as Kafka, Lukács, Bloch, and Benjamin is an essential material for those who seek to better understand the reception and influence of Russian literature, especially Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, in the philosophical constellation of Judaism in the first half of the 20th century. The elective approximation carried out by the Franco-Brazilian philosopher between the “spiritual culture” expressed in the works of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and the historical condition of Jewish intellectuals in Central Europe appears here as an essential element. An anecdote told by Emmanuel Levinas during an interview with François Poirié reveals that, during the visit of an Israeli from Eastern Europe to his home, the visitor noticed the complete works of Pushkin on the bookshelves and stated: “One immediately sees that we are in a Jewish house”. In the interview we present here and, above all, in the greatness of Michael Löwy’s works, we can find fundamental clues to interpret the spiritual proximity between a Central European Jewish tradition and the great Russian literature. This “attractio electiva”, coming from a neo-romantic Jewish intelligentsia in relation to the theological and utopian residues that are embodied in the works of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy (residues that may be essentially Jewish), can be interpreted as the most explosive element of modern philosophical messianism.

A well-worn platitude holds that surprise (admiration for the Greeks, but closer to astonishment for their successors) is the starting point of philosophy (while carefully distinguishing philosophical surprise from the routine kind). Surprise also functions as an important concept in aesthetics. Russian formalism elucidates it through the concepts of ostranenie and defamiliarization. Roman Jakobson in 1919 began a heuristically rich analysis that reveals the role of metonymy in prose and new poetry — in contrast to the centrality of metaphor in traditional poetry. This reassessment of the role of contiguity (as well as of randomness and arbitrariness) as opposed to similarity (or, stated another way, syntax vs. paradigmatics) has found some resonance in (mainly, but not exclusively, French) thinking about the concept of event. After its introduction in Gilles Deleuze’s The Logic of Sense (1969), the real apotheosis of the event unfolds among different thinkers (Derrida, Badiou, neo-phenomenologists) who glorify the unexpectedness, unforeseeableness, ineffability and causelessness of the event. The article shows that this kind of event theorizing (with its inherent optimism and joyous enthusiasm for new horizons and possibilities) is bound to the type of event within which that thinking took shape, the “revolution” (as it conceived itself) of May 1968. This “theory” cannot fully account for either certain previous events (the Holocaust) nor subsequent ones (such as 9/11 or the pandemic). Parallel with the thinking about the May 1968 event came reflections on subjectivity, or rather on the rapid alteration in its historical types during the 20th century accompanied by efforts to grasp what has taken the place once occupied by the subject. This new and elusive entity (referred to as advenant or “coming about” by Claude Romano) corresponds to the metonymic, contingent nature of current social and/or semantic reality itself.

Одна из значимых проблем мировой художественной культуры – проблема взаимосвязи и взаимовлияния литератур. Она еще более актуальна в России, которая позиционируется как многонациональное государство. Потому роль межкультурного диалога русской и осетинской литературы, возникшего в конце 19 века, лишь увеличивалась в последующие десятилетия. Ощутимым в развитии этого диалога представляется творчество выдающегося российского поэта, прозаика, переводчика, журналиста, педагога и художника Сергея Митрофановича Городецкого, вошедшего в русскую литературу на рубеже XIX и XX веков в рамках культуры «Серебряного века». Эта эпоха составила гордость отечественной литературы, дав миру А. Блока, А. Ахматову, С. Есенина, И. Бунина, В. Брюсова, Н. Гумилева, К. Бальмонта, О.Мандельштама, В.Маяковского, М.Волошина и многих других. Наследие С. Городецкого поражает жанровым многообразием – поэзия, проза, драматургия, оперные либретто, публицистика, критика, литературоведческие статьи, переводы. Его долгое творчество развивалось под влиянием русского фольклора, символизма, неоромантизма, неомифологизма, он сформулировал задачи акмеизма. Предлагаемая работа посвящена осетинским литературным связям Городецкого, практически не отраженным ни в его биографиях, ни в исследованиях творчества. В 1919 г. журналистская судьба привела поэта на Кавказ, полюбившийся ему на всю жизнь. Его знакомство с Осетией началось с Нартовского эпоса, с перевода в 1920 г. нартовской легенды об Ацамазе и Агунде. В 1928 г. он обратился к осетинскому Даредзановскому эпосу и творчеству осетинского драматурга Е.Бритаева, создав либретто оперы «Амран», поставленной на сцене Большого театра. В 30-е годы со знакомства с поэтом Харитоном Плиевым начинается новый этап осетинских литературных связей Городецкого. Началом их многолетней творческой дружбы стал перевод стихотворения Х. Плиева «Æнæхуыссæг æхсæв», написанного на смерть Кирова. Городецкий, опытный переводчик, приложил немалые старания в поисках адекватности образности, художественных особенностей, выразительности осетинской поэтической речи. Помощь в этом ему оказали знания, приобретенные в середине 20-х гг., когда в качестве корреспондента газеты «Известия» он побывал в Осетии, познакомился с ее этнографией, культурой, эпосом, обрядами и обычаями, встречался с народом Осетии. Затем Городецкий обращается к образу выдающегося осетинского поэта Коста Хетагурова, любовь к которому, обусловленная общностью идейной направленности их творчества, отношения к народу, к фольклору, оставалась неизменной до конца жизни. В статье рассмотрены переводы Городецкого стихотворений Харитона (Хадо) Плиева, посвященных Коста. Их отличает высокое качество перевода, глубокое проникновение в специфику осетинской поэтической речи, художественного мышления национальных поэтов, их духовно-нравственных ценностей. Также проанализировано стихотворение Городецкого «Коста Хетагурову», написанное в 1939 г. к юбилею поэта и прочитанное им на торжествах во Владикавказе (тогда Орджоникидзе). Через несколько десятилетий это стихотворение перевел на осетинский язык поэт Хаджи-Мурат Дзуццати. One of the significant problems of world art culture is the problem of the interconnection and mutual influence of literature. It is even more relevant in Russia, which is positioned as a multinational state. Therefore, the role of intercultural dialogue between Russian and Ossetian literature, which arose at the end of the 19th century, only increased in the following decades. The work of the outstanding Russian poet, prose writer, translator, journalist, teacher and artist Sergei Mitrofanovich Gorodetsky, who entered the Russian literature at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries as part of the Silver Age culture, seems to be tangible in the development of this dialogue. This era was the pride of Russian literature, giving the world A. Blok, A. Akhmatov, S. Yesenin, I. Bunin, V. Bryusov, N. Gumilyov, K. Balmont, O. Mandelstam, V. Mayakovsky, M. Voloshin and many others. S. Gorodetsky’s heritage is striking in its genre diversity – poetry, prose, dramaturgy, opera libretto, journalism, criticism, literary articles, and translations. His long work developed under the influence of Russian folklore, symbolism, neo-romanticism, neo-mythology, he formulated the tasks of acmeism. The proposed work is dedicated to the Ossetian literary connections of Gorodetsky, which are practically not reflected either in his biographies or in his studies of his creations. In 1919, the journalistic fate brought the poet to the Caucasus. His acquaintance with Ossetia began with the Nart epic, with the translation in 1920 of the Nart legend of Atsamaz and Agunda. In 1928, he turned to the Ossetian Daredzan epic and the work of the Ossetian playwright E. Britaev, creating the libretto of the opera Amran, staged in the Bolshoi Theater. In the 30s, a new period in the Ossetian literary relations of Gorodetsky began with his acquaintance with the poet Khariton Pliev. The beginning of their creative friendship was the translation of the poem by Kh. Pliev “Ænækhuyssæg ækhsæv”, written on the death of Kirov. Gorodetsky, an experienced translator, made considerable efforts in the search for the adequacy of imagery, artistic features, and expressiveness of Ossetian poetic speech. The knowledge acquired in the mid-1920s, when he visited Ossetia as a correspondent for the Izvestia newspaper, got acquainted with its ethnography, culture, epos, rites and customs, and met with the people of Ossetia, helped him a lot. Then Gorodetsky turned to the image of the outstanding Ossetian poet Kosta Khetagurov, whose love, due to the common ideological orientation of their work, attitude to the people, to folklore, remained unchanged until the end of his life. The article considers the translations of Gorodetsky poems by Khariton (Hado) Pliev dedicated to Kosta. They are distinguished by the high quality of translation, deep penetration into the specifics of Ossetian poetic speech, the artistic thinking of national poets, their spiritual and moral values. Gorodetsky’s poem “Kosta Khetagurov”, written in 1939 for the poet’s anniversary and read by him at the celebrations in Vladikavkaz (then Ordzhonikidze), is also analyzed. A few decades later, this poem was translated into Ossetian by the poet Haji-Murat Dzutstsati.

For those seeking a diversion from the drudgery of work there are a number of websites offering to take you away. Consider the case of wasteaminute.com. On the site there is everything from flash video games, soft-core pornography and animated nudity, to puzzles and parlour games like poker. In addition, the site offers links to video clips grouped in categories such as “funny,” “accidents,” or “strange.” With its bright yellow bubble letters and elementary design, wasteaminute will never win any Webby awards. It is also unlikely to be part of a lucrative initial public offering for its owner, a web marketing company based in Lexington, Kentucky. The internet ratings company Alexa gives wasteaminute a ranking of 5,880,401 when it comes to the most popular sites online over the last three months, quite some way behind sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, and Windows Live.Wasteaminute is not unique. There exists a group of websites, a micro-genre of sorts, that go out of their way to offer momentary escape from the more serious work at hand, with a similar menu of offerings. These include sites with names such as ishouldbeworking.com, i-am-bored.com, boredatwork.com, and drivenbyboredom.com. These web destinations represent only the most overtly named time-wasting opportunities. Video sharing sites like YouTube or France’s DailyMotion, personalised home pages like iGoogle, and the range of applications available on mobile devices offer similar opportunities for escape. Wasteaminute inspired me to think about the relationship between digital media technologies and waste. In one sense, the site’s offerings remind us of the Internet’s capacity to re-purpose old media forms from earlier phases in the digital revolution, like the retro video game PacMan, or from aspects of print culture, like crosswords (Bolter and Grusin; Straw). For my purposes, though, wasteaminute permits the opportunity to meditate, albeit briefly, on the ways media facilitate wasting time at work, particularly for those working in white- and no-collar work environments. In contemporary work environments work activity and wasteful activity exist on the same platform. With a click of a mouse or a keyboard shortcut, work and diversion can be easily interchanged on the screen, an experience of computing I know intimately from first-hand experience. The blurring of lines between work and waste has accompanied the extension of the ‘working day,’ a concept once tethered to the standardised work-week associated with modernity. Now people working in a range of professions take work out of the office and find themselves working in cafes, on public transportation, and at times once reserved for leisure, like weekends (Basso). In response to the indeterminate nature of when and where we are at work, the mainstream media routinely report about the wasteful use of computer technology for non-work purposes. Stories such as a recent one in the Washington Post which claimed that increased employee use of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter led to decreased productivity at work have become quite common in traditional media outlets (Casciato). Media technologies have always offered the prospect of making office work more efficient or the means for management to exercise control over employees. However, those same technologies have also served as the platforms on which one can engage in dilatory acts, stealing time from behind the boss’s back. I suggest stealing time at work may well be a “tactic,” in the sense used by Michel de Certeau, as a means to resist the rules and regulations that structure work and the working life. However, I also consider it to be a tactic in a different sense: websites and other digital applications offer users the means to take time back, in the form of ‘quick hits,’ providing immediate visual or narrative pleasures, or through interfaces which make the time-wasting look like work (Wagman). Reading sites like wasteaminute as examples of ‘office entertainment,’ reminds us of the importance of workers as audiences for web content. An analysis of a few case studies also reveals how the forms of address of these sites themselves recognise and capitalise on an understanding of the rhythms of the working day, as well as those elements of contemporary office culture characterised by interruption, monotony and surveillance. Work, Media, Waste A mass of literature documents the transformations of work brought on by industrialisation and urbanisation. A recent biography of Franz Kafka outlines the rigors imposed upon the writer while working as an insurance agent: his first contract stipulated that “no employee has the right to keep any objects other than those belonging to the office under lock in the desk and files assigned for its use” (Murray 66). Siegfried Kracauer’s collection of writings on salaried workers in Germany in the 1930s argues that mass entertainment offers distractions that inhibit social change. Such restrictions and inducements are exemplary of the attempts to make work succumb to managerial regimes which are intended to maximise productivity and minimise waste, and to establish a division between ‘company time’ and ‘free time’. One does not have to be an industrial sociologist to know the efforts of Frederick W. Taylor, and the disciplines of “scientific management” in the early twentieth century which were based on the idea of making work more efficient, or of the workplace sociology scholarship from the 1950s that drew attention to the ways that office work can be monotonous or de-personalising (Friedmann; Mills; Whyte). Historian JoAnne Yates has documented the ways those transformations, and what she calls an accompanying “philosophy of system and efficiency,” have been made possible through information and communication technologies, from the typewriter to carbon paper (107). Yates evokes the work of James Carey in identifying these developments, for example, the locating of workers in orderly locations such as offices, as spatial in nature. The changing meaning of work, particularly white-collar or bureaucratic labour in an age of precarious employment and neo-liberal economic regimes, and aggressive administrative “auditing technologies,” has subjected employees to more strenuous regimes of surveillance to ensure employee compliance and to protect against waste of company resources (Power). As Andrew Ross notes, after a deep period of self-criticism over the drudgery of work in North American settings in the 1960s, the subsequent years saw a re-thinking of the meaning of work, one that gradually traded greater work flexibility and self-management for more assertive forms of workplace control (9). As Ross notes, this too has changed, an after-effect of “the shareholder revolution,” which forced companies to deliver short-term profitability to its investors at any social cost. With so much at stake, Ross explains, the freedom of employees assumed a lower priority within corporate cultures, and “the introduction of information technologies in the workplace of the new capitalism resulted in the intensified surveillance of employees” (12). Others, like Dale Bradley, have drawn attention to the ways that the design of the office itself has always concerned itself with the bureaucratic and disciplinary control of bodies in space (77). The move away from physical workspaces such as ‘the pen’ to the cubicle and now from the cubicle to the virtual office is for Bradley a move from “construction” to “connection.” This spatial shift in the way in which control over employees is exercised is symbolic of the liquid forms in which bodies are now “integrated with flows of money, culture, knowledge, and power” in the post-industrial global economies of the twenty-first century. As Christena Nippert-Eng points out, receiving office space was seen as a marker of trust, since it provided employees with a sense of privacy to carry out affairs—both of a professional or of a personal matter—out of earshot of others. Privacy means a lot of things, she points out, including “a relative lack of accountability for our immediate whereabouts and actions” (163). Yet those same modalities of control which characterise communication technologies in workspaces may also serve as the platforms for people to waste time while working. In other words, wasteful practices utilize the same technology that is used to regulate and manage time spent in the workplace. The telephone has permitted efficient communication between units in an office building or between the office and outside, but ‘personal business’ can also be conducted on the same line. Radio stations offer ‘easy listening’ formats, providing unobtrusive music so as not to disturb work settings. However, they can easily be tuned to other stations for breaking news, live sports events, or other matters having to do with the outside world. Photocopiers and fax machines facilitate the reproduction and dissemination of communication regardless of whether it is it work or non-work related. The same, of course, is true for computerised applications. Companies may encourage their employees to use Facebook or Twitter to reach out to potential clients or customers, but those same applications may be used for personal social networking as well. Since the activities of work and play can now be found on the same platform, employers routinely remind their employees that their surfing activities, along with their e-mails and company documents, will be recorded on the company server, itself subject to auditing and review whenever the company sees fit. Employees must be careful to practice image management, in order to ensure that contradictory evidence does not appear online when they call in sick to the office. Over time the dynamics of e-mail and Internet etiquette have changed in response to such developments. Those most aware of the distractive and professionally destructive features of downloading a funny or comedic e-mail attachment have come to adopt the acronym “NSFW” (Not Safe for Work). Even those of us who don’t worry about those things are well aware that the cache and “history” function of web browsers threaten to reveal the extent to which our time online is spent in unproductive ways. Many companies and public institutions, for example libraries, have taken things one step further by filtering out access to websites that may be peripheral to the primary work at hand.At the same time contemporary workplace settings have sought to mix both work and play, or better yet to use play in the service of work, to make “work” more enjoyable for its workers. Professional development seminars, team-building exercises, company softball games, or group outings are examples intended to build morale and loyalty to the company among workers. Some companies offer their employees access to gyms, to game rooms, and to big screen TVs, in return for long and arduous—indeed, punishing—hours of time at the office (Dyer-Witheford and Sherman; Ross). In this manner, acts of not working are reconfigured as a form of work, or at least as a productive experience for the company at large. Such perks are offered with an assumption of personal self-discipline, a feature of what Nippert-Eng characterises as the “discretionary workplace” (154). Of course, this also comes with an expectation that workers will stay close to the office, and to their work. As Sarah Sharma recently argued in this journal, such thinking is part of the way that late capitalism constructs “innovative ways to control people’s time and regulate their movement in space.” At the same time, however, there are plenty of moments of gentle resistance, in which the same machines of control and depersonalisation can be customised, and where individual expressions find their own platforms. A photo essay by Anna McCarthy in the Journal of Visual Culture records the inspirational messages and other personalised objects with which workers adorn their computers and work stations. McCarthy’s photographs represent the way people express themselves in relation to their work, making it a “place where workplace politics and power relations play out, often quite visibly” (McCarthy 214). Screen SecretsIf McCarthy’s photo essay illustrates the overt ways in which people bring personal expression or gentle resistance to anodyne workplaces, there are also a series of other ‘screen acts’ that create opportunities to waste time in ways that are disguised as work. During the Olympics and US college basketball playoffs, both American broadcast networks CBS and NBC offered a “boss button,” a graphic link that a user could immediately click “if the boss was coming by” that transformed the screen to something was associated with the culture of work, such as a spreadsheet. Other purveyors of networked time-wasting make use of the spreadsheet to mask distraction. The website cantyouseeimbored turns a spreadsheet into a game of “Breakout!” while other sites, like Spreadtweet, convert your Twitter updates into the form of a spreadsheet. Such boss buttons and screen interfaces that mimic work are the presentday avatars of the “panic button,” a graphic image found at the bottom of websites back in the days of Web 1.0. A click of the panic button transported users away from an offending website and towards something more legitimate, like Yahoo! Even if it is unlikely that boss keys actually convince one’s superiors that one is really working—clicking to a spreadsheet only makes sense for a worker who might be expected to be working on those kinds of documents—they are an index of how notions of personal space and privacy play out in the digitalised workplace. David Kiely, an employee at an Australian investment bank, experienced this first hand when he opened an e-mail attachment sent to him by his co-workers featuring a scantily-clad model (Cuneo and Barrett). Unfortunately for Kiely, at the time he opened the attachment his computer screen was visible in the background of a network television interview with another of the bank’s employees. Kiely’s inauspicious click (which made his the subject of an investigation by his employees) continues to circulate on the Internet, and it spawned a number of articles highlighting the precarious nature of work in a digitalised environment where what might seem to be private can suddenly become very public, and thus able to be disseminated without restraint. At the same time, the public appetite for Kiely’s story indicates that not working at work, and using the Internet to do it, represents a mode of media consumption that is familiar to many of us, even if it is only the servers on the company computer that can account for how much time we spend doing it. Community attitudes towards time spent unproductively online reminds us that waste carries with it a range of negative signifiers. We talk about wasting time in terms of theft, “stealing time,” or even more dramatically as “killing time.” The popular construction of television as the “boob tube” distinguishes it from more ‘productive’ activities, like spending time with family, or exercise, or involvement in one’s community. The message is simple: life is too short to be “wasted” on such ephemera. If this kind of language is less familiar in the digital age, the discourse of ‘distraction’ is more prevalent. Yet, instead of judging distraction a negative symptom of the digital age, perhaps we should reinterpret wasting time as the worker’s attempt to assert some agency in an increasingly controlled workplace. ReferencesBasso, Pietro. Modern Times, Ancient Hours: Working Lives in the Twenty-First Century. London: Verso, 2003. Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000.Bradley, Dale. “Dimensions Vary: Technology, Space, and Power in the 20th Century Office”. Topia 11 (2004): 67-82.Casciato, Paul. “Facebook and Other Social Media Cost UK Billions”. Washington Post, 5 Aug. 2010. 11 Aug. 2010 ‹http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/05/AR2010080503951.html›.Cuneo, Clementine, and David Barrett. “Was Banker Set Up Over Saucy Miranda”. The Daily Telegraph 4 Feb. 2010. 21 May 2010 ‹http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/sydney-confidential/was-banker-set-up-over-saucy-miranda/story-e6frewz0-1225826576571›.De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Vol. 1. Berkeley: U of California P. 1988.Dyer-Witheford, Nick, and Zena Sharman. "The Political Economy of Canada's Video and Computer Game Industry”. Canadian Journal of Communication 30.2 (2005). 1 May 2010 ‹http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/1575/1728›.Friedmann, Georges. Industrial Society. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1955.Kracauer, Siegfried. The Salaried Masses. London: Verso, 1998.McCarthy, Anna. Ambient Television. Durham: Duke UP, 2001. ———. “Geekospheres: Visual Culture and Material Culture at Work”. Journal of Visual Culture 3 (2004): 213-21.Mills, C. Wright. White Collar. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1951. Murray, Nicholas. Kafka: A Biography. New Haven: Yale UP, 2004.Newman, Michael. “Ze Frank and the Poetics of Web Video”. First Monday 13.5 (2008). 1 Aug. 2010 ‹http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2102/1962›.Nippert-Eng, Christena. Home and Work: Negotiating Boundaries through Everyday Life. Chicago: U. of Chicago P, 1996.Power, Michael. The Audit Society. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. Ross, Andrew. No Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2004. Sharma, Sarah. “The Great American Staycation and the Risk of Stillness”. M/C Journal 12.1 (2009). 11 May 2010 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/122›. Straw, Will. “Embedded Memories”. Residual Media Ed. Charles Acland. U. of Minnesota P., 2007. 3-15.Whyte, William. The Organisation Man. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957. Wagman, Ira. “Log On, Goof Off, Look Up: Facebook and the Rhythms of Canadian Internet Use”. How Canadians Communicate III: Contexts for Popular Culture. Eds. Bart Beaty, Derek, Gloria Filax Briton, and Rebecca Sullivan. Athabasca: Athabasca UP 2009. 55-77. ‹http://www2.carleton.ca/jc/ccms/wp-content/ccms-files/02_Beaty_et_al-How_Canadians_Communicate.pdf›Yates, JoAnne. “Business Use of Information Technology during the Industrial Age”. A Nation Transformed by Information. Eds. Alfred D. Chandler & James W. Cortada. Oxford: Oxford UP., 2000. 107-36.

“The intellect must not only desire surreptitious delights; it must become completely free and celebrate Saturnalia.” (Nietzsche 6) Theory-jamming suggests an array of eclectic methods, deployed in response to emerging conditions, using traditional patterns to generate innovative moves, seeking harmony and syncopation, transparent about purpose and power, aiming for demonstrable certainties while aware of their own provisional fragility. In this paper, theory-jamming is suggested as an antidote for the confusion and disarray that typifies communication theory. Communication theory as the means to conceptualise the transmission of information and the negotiation of meaning has never been a stable entity. Entrenched divisions between ‘administrative’ and ‘critical’ tendencies are played out within schools and emerging disciplines and across a range of scientific/humanist, quantitative/qualitative and political/cultural paradigms. “Of course, this is only the beginning of the mischief for there are many other polarities at play and a host of variations within polar contrasts” (Dervin, Shields and Song). This paper argues that the play of contending schools with little purchase on each other, or anything much, has turned meta-discourse about communication into an ontological spiral. Perhaps the only way to ride out this storm is to look towards communication practices that confront these issues and appreciate their theoretical underpinnings. From its roots in jazz and blues to its contemporary manifestations in rap and hip-hop and throughout the communication industries, the jam (or improvised reorganisation of traditional themes into new and striking patterns) confronts the ontological spiral in music, and life, by taking the flotsam flung out of the spiral to piece together the means to transcend the downward pull into the abyss. Many pretenders have a theory. Theory abounds: language theory, number theory, game theory, quantum theory, string theory, chaos theory, cyber-theory, queer theory, even conspiracy theory and, most poignantly, the putative theory of everything. But since Bertrand Russell’s unsustainable class of all classes, Gödel’s systemically unprovable propositions and Heisenberger’s uncertainty principle, the propensity for theories to fall into holes in themselves has been apparent. Nowhere is this more obvious than in communication theory where many schools contend without actually connecting to each other. From the 1930s, as the mass media formed, there have been administrative and critical tendencies at war in the communication arena. Some point to the origins of the split in the Institute of Social Research’s Radio Project where pragmatic sociologist, Paul Lazarsfeld broke with Frankfurt School critical theorist, Theodor Adorno over the quality of data. Lazarsfeld was keen to produce results while Adorno complained the data over-simplified the relationship between mass media and audiences (Rogers). From this split grew the twin disciplines of mass communication (quantitative, liberal, commercial and lost in its obsession with the measurement of minor media effects) and cultural/media studies (qualitative, post-Marxist, radical and lost in simulacra of their own devising). The complexity of interactions between these two disciplines, with the same subject matter but very different ways of thinking about it, is the foundation of the ontological black hole in communication theory. As the disciplines have spread out across universities, professional organizations and publishers, they have been used and abused for ideological, institutional and personal purposes. By the summer of 1983, the split was documented in a special issue of the Journal of Communication titled “Ferment in the Field”. Further, professional courses in journalism, public relations, marketing, advertising and media production have complex relations with both theoretical wings, which need the student numbers and are adept at constructing and defending new boundaries. The 90s saw any number ‘wars’: Journalism vs Cultural Studies, Cultural Studies vs Cultural Policy Studies, Cultural Studies vs Public Relations, Public Relations vs Journalism. More recently, the study of new communication technologies has led to a profusion of nascent, neo-disciplines shadowing, mimicking and reacting with old communication studies: “Internet studies; New media studies; Digital media studies; Digital arts and culture studies; Cyberculture studies; Critical cyberculture studies; Networked culture studies; Informatics; Information science; Information society studies; Contemporary media studies” (Silver & Massanari 1). As this shower of cyberstudies spirals by, it is further warped by the split between the hard science of communication infrastructure in engineering and information technology and what the liberal arts have to offer. The early, heroic attempt to bridge this gap by Claude Shannon and, particularly, Warren Weaver was met with disdain by both sides. Weaver’s philosophical interpretation of Shannon’s mathematics, accommodating the interests of technology and of human communication together, is a useful example of how disparate ideas can connect productively. But how does a communications scholar find such connections? How can we find purchase amongst this avalanche of ideas and agendas? Where can we get the traction to move beyond twentieth century Balkanisation of communications theory to embrace the whole? An answer came to me while watching the Discovery Channel. A documentary on apes showed them leaping from branch to branch, settling on a swaying platform of leaves, eating and preening, then leaping into the void until they make another landing, settling again… until the next leap. They are looking for what is viable and never come to ground. Why are we concerned to ground theory which can only prove its own impossibility while disregarding the certainty of what is viable for now? I carried this uneasy insight for almost five years, until I read Nietzsche on the methods of the pre-Platonic philosophers: “Two wanderers stand in a wild forest brook flowing over rocks; the one leaps across using the stones of the brook, moving to and fro ever further… The other stands there helplessly at each moment. At first he must construct the footing that can support his heavy steps; when this does not work, no god helps him across the brook. Is it only boundless rash flight across great spaces? Is it only greater acceleration? No, it is with flights of fantasy, in continuous leaps from possibility to possibility taken as certainties; an ingenious notion shows them to him, and he conjectures that there are formally demonstrable certainties” (Nietzsche 26). Nietzsche’s advice to take the leap is salutary but theory must be more than jumping from one good idea to the next. What guidance do the practices of communication offer? Considering new forms that have developed since the 1930s, as communication theory went into meltdown, the significance of the jam is unavoidable. While the jam session began as improvised jazz and blues music for practice, fellowship and fun, it quickly became the forum for exploring new kinds of music arising from the deconstruction of the old and experimentation with technical, and ontological, possibilities. The jam arose as a spin-off of the dance music circuit in the 1930s. After the main, professional show was over, small groups would gather together in all-night dives for informal, spontaneous sessions of unrehearsed improvisation, playing for their own pleasure, “in accordance with their own esthetic [sic] standards” (Cameron 177). But the jam is much more than having a go. The improvisation occurs on standard melodies: “Theoretically …certain introductions, cadenzas, clichés and ensemble obbligati assume traditional associations (as) ‘folkways’… that are rarely written down but rather learned from hearing (“head jobs”)” (Cameron 178-9). From this platform of tradition, the artist must “imagine in advance the pattern which unfolds… select a part in the pattern appropriate to the occasion, instrument and personal abilities (then) produce startlingly distinctive sound patterns (that) rationalise the impossible.” The jam is founded on its very impossibility: “the jazz aesthetic is basically a paradox… traditionalism and the radical originality are irreconcilable” (Cameron 181). So how do we escape from this paradox, the same paradox that catches all communication theorists between the demands of the past and the impossibility of the future? “Experimentation is mandatory and formal rules become suspect because they too quickly stereotype and ossify” (Cameron 181). The jam seems to work because it offers the possibility of the impossible made real by the act of communication. This play between the possible and the impossible, the rumbling engine of narrative, is the dynamo of the jam. Theory-jamming seeks to activate just such a dynamo. Rather than having a group of players on their instruments, the communication theorist has access a range of theoretical riffs and moves that can be orchestrated to respond to the question in focus, to latest developments, to contradictions or blank spaces within theoretical terrains. The theory-jammer works to their own standards, turning ideas learned from others (‘head jobs’) into their own distinctive patterns, still reliant on traditional melody, harmony and syncopation but now bent, twisted and reorganised into an entirely new story. The practice of following old pathways to new destinations has a long tradition in the West as eclecticism, a Graeco-Roman, particularly Alexandrian, philosophical tradition from the first century BC to the end of the classical period. Typified by Potamo who “encouraged his pupils instead to learn from a variety of masters”, eclecticism sought the best from each school, “all that teaches righteousness combined, the complete eclectic unity” (Kelley 578). By selecting the best, most reasonable, most useful elements from existing philosophical beliefs, polymaths such as Cicero sought the harmonious solution of particular problems. We see something similar to eclecticism in the East in the practices of ‘wild fox zen’ which teaches liberation from conceptual fixation (Heine). The 20th century’s most interesting eclectic was probably Walter Benjamin whose method owes something to both scientific Marxism and the Jewish Kabbalah. His hero was the rag-picker who had the cunning to create life from refuse and detritus. Benjamin’s greatest work, the unfinished Arcades Project, sought to create history from the same. It is a collection of photos, ephemera and transcriptions from books and newspapers (Benjamin). The particularity of eclecticism may be contrasted with the claim to universality of syncretism, the reconciliation of disparate or opposing beliefs by melding together various schools of thought into a new orthodoxy. Theory-jammers are not looking for a final solution but rather they seek what will work on this problem now, to come to a provisional solution, always aware that other, better, further solutions may be ahead. Elements of the jam are apparent in other contemporary forms of communication. For example bricolage, the practice from art, culture and information systems, involves tinkering elements together by trial and error, in ways not originally planned. Pastiche, from literature to the movies, mimics style while creating a new message. In theatre and TV comedy, improvisation has become a style in itself. Theory-jamming has direct connections with brainstorming, the practice that originated in the advertising industry to generate new ideas and solutions by kicking around possibilities. Against the hyper-administration of modern life, as the disintegration of grand theory immobilises thinkers, theory-jamming provides the means to think new thoughts. As a political activist and communications practitioner in Australia over the last thirty years, I have always been bemused by the human propensity to factionalise. Rather than getting bogged down by positions, I have sought to use administrative structures to explore critical ideas, to marshal critical approaches into administrative apparatus, to weld together critical and administrative formations in ways useful to both sides, bust most importantly, in ways useful to human society and a healthy environment. I've been accused of selling-out by the critical camp and of being unrealistic by the administrative side. My response is that we have much more to learn by listening and adapting than we do by self-satisfied stasis. Five Theses on Theory-Jamming Eclecticism requires Ethnography: the eclectic is the ethnographer loose in their own mind. “The free spirit surveys things, and now for the first time mundane existence appears to it worthy of contemplation…” (Nietzsche 6). Enculturation and Enumeration need each other: qualitative and quantitative research work best when they work off each other. “Beginners learned how to establish parallels, by means of the Game’s symbols, between a piece of classical music and the formula for some law of nature. Experts and Masters of the Game freely wove the initial theme into unlimited combinations.” (Hesse) Ephemera and Esoterica tell us the most: the back-story is the real story as we stumble on the greatest truths as if by accident. “…the mind’s deeper currents often need to be surprised by indirection, sometimes, indeed, by treachery and ruse, as when you steer away from a goal in order to reach it more directly…” (Jameson 71). Experimentation beyond Empiricism: more than testing our sense of our sense data of the world. Communication theory extends from infra-red to ultraviolet, from silent to ultrasonic, from absolute zero to complete heat, from the sub-atomic to the inter-galactic. “That is the true characteristic of the philosophical drive: wonderment at that which lies before everyone.” (Nietzsche 6). Extravagance and Exuberance: don’t stop until you’ve got enough. Theory-jamming opens the possibility for a unified theory of communication that starts, not with a false narrative certainty, but with the gaps in communication: the distance between what we know and what we say, between what we say and what we write, between what we write and what others read back, between what others say and what we hear. References Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 2002. Cameron, W. B. “Sociological Notes on the Jam Session.” Social Forces 33 (Dec. 1954): 177–82. Dervin, B., P. Shields and M. Song. “More than Misunderstanding, Less than War.” Paper at International Communication Association annual meeting, New York City, NY, 2005. 5 Oct. 2006 http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p13530_index.html>. “Ferment in the Field.” Journal of Communication 33.3 (1983). Heine, Steven. “Putting the ‘Fox’ Back in the ‘Wild Fox Koan’: The Intersection of Philosophical and Popular Religious Elements in The Ch’an/Zen Koan Tradition.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 56.2 (Dec. 1996): 257-317. Hesse, Hermann. The Glass Bead Game. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” New Left Review 146 (1984): 53-90. Kelley, Donald R. “Eclecticism and the History of Ideas.” Journal of the History of Ideas 62.4 (Oct. 2001): 577-592 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Pre-Platonic Philosophers. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001. Rogers, E. M. “The Empirical and the Critical Schools of Communication Research.” Communication Yearbook 5 (1982): 125-144. Shannon, C.E., and W. Weaver. The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949. Silver, David, Adrienne Massanari. Critical Cyberculture Studies. New York: NYU P, 2006. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Stockwell, Stephen. "Theory-Jamming: Uses of Eclectic Method in an Ontological Spiral." M/C Journal 9.6 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0612/09-stockwell.php>. APA Style Stockwell, S. (Dec. 2006) "Theory-Jamming: Uses of Eclectic Method in an Ontological Spiral," M/C Journal, 9(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0612/09-stockwell.php>.

Introduction Most developed countries, including Australia, have a strong focus on national, state and local strategies for emergency management and response in the face of disasters and crises. This framework can include coping with catastrophic dislocation, service disruption, injury or loss of life in the face of natural disasters such as major fires, floods, earthquakes or other large-impact natural events, as well as dealing with similar catastrophes resulting from human actions such as bombs, biological agents, cyber-attacks targeting essential services such as communications networks, or other crises affecting large populations. Emergency management frameworks for crisis and disaster response are distinguished by their focus on the domestic context for such events; that is, how to manage and assist the ways in which civilian populations, who are for the most part inexperienced and untrained in dealing with crises and disasters, are able to respond and behave in such situations so as to minimise the impacts of a catastrophic event. Even in countries like Australia that demonstrate a strong public commitment to cultural pluralism and social cohesion, ethno-cultural diversity can be seen as a risk or threat to national security and values at times of political, natural, economic and/or social tensions and crises. Australian government policymakers have recently focused, with increasing intensity, on “community resilience” as a key element in countering extremism and enhancing emergency preparedness and response. In some sense, this is the result of a tacit acknowledgement by government agencies that there are limits to what they can do for domestic communities should such a catastrophic event occur, and accordingly, the focus in recent times has shifted to how governments can best help people to help themselves in such situations, a key element of the contemporary “resilience” approach. Yet despite the robustly multicultural nature of Australian society, explicit engagement with Australia’s cultural diversity flickers only fleetingly on this agenda, which continues to pursue approaches to community resilience in the absence of understandings about how these terms and formations may themselves need to be diversified to maximise engagement by all citizens in a multicultural polity. There have been some recent efforts in Australia to move in this direction, for example the Australian Emergency Management Institute (AEMI)’s recent suite of projects with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities (2006-2010) and the current Australia-New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee-supported project on “Harnessing Resilience Capital in Culturally Diverse Communities to Counter Violent Extremism” (Grossman and Tahiri), which I discuss in a longer forthcoming version of this essay (Grossman). Yet the understanding of ethno-cultural identity and difference that underlies much policy thinking on resilience remains problematic for the way in which it invests in a view of the cultural dimensions of community resilience as relic rather than resource – valorising the preservation of and respect for cultural norms and traditions, but silent on what different ethno-cultural communities might contribute toward expanded definitions of both “community” and “resilience” by virtue of the transformative potential and existing cultural capital they bring with them into new national and also translocal settings. For example, a primary conclusion of the joint program between AEMI and the Australian Multicultural Commission is that CALD communities are largely “vulnerable” in the context of disasters and emergency management and need to be better integrated into majority-culture models of theorising and embedding community resilience. This focus on stronger national integration and the “vulnerability” of culturally diverse ethno-cultural communities in the Australian context echoes the work of scholars beyond Australia such as McGhee, Mouritsen (Reflections, Citizenship) and Joppke. They argue that the “civic turn” in debates around resurgent contemporary nationalism and multicultural immigration policies privileges civic integration over genuine two-way multiculturalism. This approach sidesteps the transculturational (Ortiz; Welsch; Mignolo; Bennesaieh; Robins; Stein) aspects of contemporary social identities and exchange by paying lip-service to cultural diversity while affirming a neo-liberal construct of civic values and principles as a universalising goal of Western democratic states within a global market economy. It also suggests a superficial tribute to cultural diversity that does not embed diversity comprehensively at the levels of either conceptualising or resourcing different elements of Australian transcultural communities within the generalised framework of “community resilience.” And by emphasising cultural difference as vulnerability rather than as resource or asset, it fails to acknowledge the varieties of resilience capital that many culturally diverse individuals and communities may bring with them when they resettle in new environments, by ignoring the question of what “resilience” actually means to those from culturally diverse communities. In so doing, it also avoids the critical task of incorporating intercultural definitional diversity around the concepts of both “community” and “resilience” used to promote social cohesion and the capacity to recover from disasters and crises. How we might do differently in thinking about the broader challenges for multiculturalism itself as a resilient transnational concept and practice? The Concept of Resilience The meanings of resilience vary by disciplinary perspective. While there is no universally accepted definition of the concept, it is widely acknowledged that resilience refers to the capacity of an individual to do well in spite of exposure to acute trauma or sustained adversity (Liebenberg 219). Originating in the Latin word resilio, meaning ‘to jump back’, there is general consensus that resilience pertains to an individual’s, community’s or system’s ability to adapt to and ‘bounce back’ from a disruptive event (Mohaupt 63, Longstaff et al. 3). Over the past decade there has been a dramatic rise in interest in the clinical, community and family sciences concerning resilience to a broad range of adversities (Weine 62). While debate continues over which discipline can be credited with first employing resilience as a concept, Mohaupt argues that most of the literature on resilience cites social psychology and psychiatry as the origin for the concept beginning in the mid-20th century. The pioneer researchers of what became known as resilience research studied the impact on children living in dysfunctional families. For example, the findings of work by Garmezy, Werner and Smith and Rutter showed that about one third of children in these studies were coping very well despite considerable adversities and traumas. In asking what it was that prevented the children in their research from being negatively influenced by their home environments, such research provided the basis for future research on resilience. Such work was also ground-breaking for identifying the so-called ‘protective factors’ or resources that individuals can operationalise when dealing with adversity. In essence, protective factors are those conditions in the individual that protect them from the risk of dysfunction and enable recovery from trauma. They mitigate the effects of stressors or risk factors, that is, those conditions that predispose one to harm (Hajek 15). Protective factors include the inborn traits or qualities within an individual, those defining an individual’s environment, and also the interaction between the two. Together, these factors give people the strength, skills and motivation to cope in difficult situations and re-establish (a version of) ‘normal’ life (Gunnestad). Identifying protective factors is important in terms of understanding the particular resources a given sociocultural group has at its disposal, but it is also vital to consider the interconnections between various protective mechanisms, how they might influence each other, and to what degree. An individual, for instance, might display resilience or adaptive functioning in a particular domain (e.g. emotional functioning) but experience significant deficits in another (e.g. academic achievement) (Hunter 2). It is also essential to scrutinise how the interaction between protective factors and risk factors creates patterns of resilience. Finally, a comprehensive understanding of the interrelated nature of protective mechanisms and risk factors is imperative for designing effective interventions and tailored preventive strategies (Weine 65). In short, contemporary thinking about resilience suggests it is neither entirely personal nor strictly social, but an interactive and iterative combination of the two. It is a quality of the environment as much as the individual. For Ungar, resilience is the complex entanglements between “individuals and their social ecologies [that] will determine the degree of positive outcomes experienced” (3). Thinking about resilience as context-dependent is important because research that is too trait-based or actor-centred risks ignoring any structural or institutional forces. A more ecological interpretation of resilience, one that takes into a person’s context and environment into account, is vital in order to avoid blaming the victim for any hardships they face, or relieving state and institutional structures from their responsibilities in addressing social adversity, which can “emphasise self-help in line with a neo-conservative agenda instead of stimulating state responsibility” (Mohaupt 67). Nevertheless, Ungar posits that a coherent definition of resilience has yet to be developed that adequately ‘captures the dual focus of the individual and the individual’s social ecology and how the two must both be accounted for when determining the criteria for judging outcomes and discerning processes associated with resilience’ (7). Recent resilience research has consequently prompted a shift away from vulnerability towards protective processes — a shift that highlights the sustained capabilities of individuals and communities under threat or at risk. Locating ‘Culture’ in the Literature on Resilience However, an understanding of the role of culture has remained elusive or marginalised within this trend; there has been comparatively little sustained investigation into the applicability of resilience constructs to non-western cultures, or how the resources available for survival might differ from those accessible to western populations (Ungar 4). As such, a growing body of researchers is calling for more rigorous inquiry into culturally determined outcomes that might be associated with resilience in non-western or multicultural cultures and contexts, for example where Indigenous and minority immigrant communities live side by side with their ‘mainstream’ neighbours in western settings (Ungar 2). ‘Cultural resilience’ considers the role that cultural background plays in determining the ability of individuals and communities to be resilient in the face of adversity. For Clauss-Ehlers, the term describes the degree to which the strengths of one’s culture promote the development of coping (198). Culturally-focused resilience suggests that people can manage and overcome stress and trauma based not on individual characteristics alone, but also from the support of broader sociocultural factors (culture, cultural values, language, customs, norms) (Clauss-Ehlers 324). The innate cultural strengths of a culture may or may not differ from the strengths of other cultures; the emphasis here is not so much comparatively inter-cultural as intensively intra-cultural (VanBreda 215). A culturally focused resilience model thus involves “a dynamic, interactive process in which the individual negotiates stress through a combination of character traits, cultural background, cultural values, and facilitating factors in the sociocultural environment” (Clauss-Ehlers 199). In understanding ways of ‘coping and hoping, surviving and thriving’, it is thus crucial to consider how culturally and linguistically diverse minorities navigate the cultural understandings and assumptions of both their countries of origin and those of their current domicile (Ungar 12). Gunnestad claims that people who master the rules and norms of their new culture without abandoning their own language, values and social support are more resilient than those who tenaciously maintain their own culture at the expense of adjusting to their new environment. They are also more resilient than those who forego their own culture and assimilate with the host society (14). Accordingly, if the combination of both valuing one’s culture as well as learning about the culture of the new system produces greater resilience and adaptive capacities, serious problems can arise when a majority tries to acculturate a minority to the mainstream by taking away or not recognising important parts of the minority culture. In terms of resilience, if cultural factors are denied or diminished in accounting for and strengthening resilience – in other words, if people are stripped of what they possess by way of resilience built through cultural knowledge, disposition and networks – they do in fact become vulnerable, because ‘they do not automatically gain those cultural strengths that the majority has acquired over generations’ (Gunnestad 14). Mobilising ‘Culture’ in Australian Approaches to Community Resilience The realpolitik of how concepts of resilience and culture are mobilised is highly relevant here. As noted above, when ethnocultural difference is positioned as a risk or a threat to national identity, security and values, this is precisely the moment when vigorously, even aggressively, nationalised definitions of ‘community’ and ‘identity’ that minoritise or disavow cultural diversities come to the fore in public discourse. The Australian evocation of nationalism and national identity, particularly in the way it has framed policy discussion on managing national responses to disasters and threats, has arguably been more muted than some of the European hysteria witnessed recently around cultural diversity and national life. Yet we still struggle with the idea that newcomers to Australia might fall on the surplus rather than the deficit side of the ledger when it comes to identifying and harnessing resilience capital. A brief example of this trend is explored here. From 2006 to 2010, the Australian Emergency Management Institute embarked on an ambitious government-funded four-year program devoted to strengthening community resilience in relation to disasters with specific reference to engaging CALD communities across Australia. The program, Inclusive Emergency Management with CALD Communities, was part of a wider Australian National Action Plan to Build Social Cohesion, Harmony and Security in the wake of the London terrorist bombings in July 2005. Involving CALD community organisations as well as various emergency and disaster management agencies, the program ran various workshops and agency-community partnership pilots, developed national school education resources, and commissioned an evaluation of the program’s effectiveness (Farrow et al.). While my critique here is certainly not aimed at emergency management or disaster response agencies and personnel themselves – dedicated professionals who often achieve remarkable results in emergency and disaster response under extraordinarily difficult circumstances – it is nevertheless important to highlight how the assumptions underlying elements of AEMI’s experience and outcomes reflect the persistent ways in which ethnocultural diversity is rendered as a problem to be surmounted or a liability to be redressed, rather than as an asset to be built upon or a resource to be valued and mobilised. AEMI’s explicit effort to engage with CALD communities in building overall community resilience was important in its tacit acknowledgement that emergency and disaster services were (and often remain) under-resourced and under-prepared in dealing with the complexities of cultural diversity in emergency situations. Despite these good intentions, however, while the program produced some positive outcomes and contributed to crucial relationship building between CALD communities and emergency services within various jurisdictions, it also continued to frame the challenge of working with cultural diversity as a problem of increased vulnerability during disasters for recently arrived and refugee background CALD individuals and communities. This highlights a common feature in community resilience-building initiatives, which is to focus on those who are already ‘robust’ versus those who are ‘vulnerable’ in relation to resilience indicators, and whose needs may require different or additional resources in order to be met. At one level, this is a pragmatic resourcing issue: national agencies understandably want to put their people, energy and dollars where they are most needed in pursuit of a steady-state unified national response at times of crisis. Nor should it be argued that at least some CALD groups, particularly those from new arrival and refugee communities, are not vulnerable in at least some of the ways and for some of the reasons suggested in the program evaluation. However, the consistent focus on CALD communities as ‘vulnerable’ and ‘in need’ is problematic, as well as partial. It casts members of these communities as structurally and inherently less able and less resilient in the context of disasters and emergencies: in some sense, as those who, already ‘victims’ of chronic social deficits such as low English proficiency, social isolation and a mysterious unidentified set of ‘cultural factors’, can become doubly victimised in acute crisis and disaster scenarios. In what is by now a familiar trope, the description of CALD communities as ‘vulnerable’ precludes asking questions about what they do have, what they do know, and what they do or can contribute to how we respond to disaster and emergency events in our communities. A more profound problem in this sphere revolves around working out how best to engage CALD communities and individuals within existing approaches to disaster and emergency preparedness and response. This reflects a fundamental but unavoidable limitation of disaster preparedness models: they are innately spatially and geographically bounded, and consequently understand ‘communities’ in these terms, rather than expanding definitions of ‘community’ to include the dimensions of community-as-social-relations. While some good engagement outcomes were achieved locally around cross-cultural knowledge for emergency services workers, the AEMI program fell short of asking some of the harder questions about how emergency and disaster service scaffolding and resilience-building approaches might themselves need to change or transform, using a cross-cutting model of ‘communities’ as both geographic places and multicultural spaces (Bartowiak-Théron and Crehan) in order to be more effective in national scenarios in which cultural diversity should be taken for granted. Toward Acknowledgement of Resilience Capital Most significantly, the AEMI program did not produce any recognition of the ways in which CALD communities already possess resilience capital, or consider how this might be drawn on in formulating stronger community initiatives around disaster and threats preparedness for the future. Of course, not all individuals within such communities, nor all communities across varying circumstances, will demonstrate resilience, and we need to be careful of either overgeneralising or romanticising the kinds and degrees of ‘resilience capital’ that may exist within them. Nevertheless, at least some have developed ways of withstanding crises and adapting to new conditions of living. This is particularly so in connection with individual and group behaviours around resource sharing, care-giving and social responsibility under adverse circumstances (Grossman and Tahiri) – all of which are directly relevant to emergency and disaster response. While some of these resilient behaviours may have been nurtured or enhanced by particular experiences and environments, they can, as the discussion of recent literature above suggests, also be rooted more deeply in cultural norms, habits and beliefs. Whatever their origins, for culturally diverse societies to achieve genuine resilience in the face of both natural and human-made disasters, it is critical to call on the ‘social memory’ (Folke et al.) of communities faced with responding to emergencies and crises. Such wellsprings of social memory ‘come from the diversity of individuals and institutions that draw on reservoirs of practices, knowledge, values, and worldviews and is crucial for preparing the system for change, building resilience, and for coping with surprise’ (Adger et al.). Consequently, if we accept the challenge of mapping an approach to cultural diversity as resource rather than relic into our thinking around strengthening community resilience, there are significant gains to be made. For a whole range of reasons, no diversity-sensitive model or measure of resilience should invest in static understandings of ethnicities and cultures; all around the world, ethnocultural identities and communities are in a constant and sometimes accelerated state of dynamism, reconfiguration and flux. But to ignore the resilience capital and potential protective factors that ethnocultural diversity can offer to the strengthening of community resilience more broadly is to miss important opportunities that can help suture the existing disconnects between proactive approaches to intercultural connectedness and social inclusion on the one hand, and reactive approaches to threats, national security and disaster response on the other, undermining the effort to advance effectively on either front. This means that dominant social institutions and structures must be willing to contemplate their own transformation as the result of transcultural engagement, rather than merely insisting, as is often the case, that ‘other’ cultures and communities conform to existing hegemonic paradigms of being and of living. In many ways, this is the most critical step of all. A resilience model and strategy that questions its own culturally informed yet taken-for-granted assumptions and premises, goes out into communities to test and refine these, and returns to redesign its approach based on the new knowledge it acquires, would reflect genuine progress toward an effective transculturational approach to community resilience in culturally diverse contexts.References Adger, W. Neil, Terry P. Hughes, Carl Folke, Stephen R. 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NotesThe concept of ‘resilience capital’ I offer here is in line with one strand of contemporary theorising around resilience – that of resilience as social or socio-ecological capital – but moves beyond the idea of enhancing general social connectedness and community cohesion by emphasising the ways in which culturally diverse communities may already be robustly networked and resourceful within micro-communal settings, with new resources and knowledge both to draw on and to offer other communities or the ‘national community’ at large. In effect, ‘resilience capital’ speaks to the importance of finding ‘the communities within the community’ (Bartowiak-Théron and Crehan 11) and recognising their capacity to contribute to broad-scale resilience and recovery.I am indebted for the discussion of the literature on resilience here to Dr Peta Stephenson, Centre for Cultural Diversity and Wellbeing, Victoria University, who is working on a related project (M. Grossman and H. Tahiri, Harnessing Resilience Capital in Culturally Diverse Communities to Counter Violent Extremism, forthcoming 2014).