IRONIC CORRELATIONS AND SCEPTICISM IN THE JOY STATEMENTS OF QOHELETH?

This is the second instalment of a two part study examining scepticism and ironic correlations in the joy statements of Qoheleth. In this article, the concept of irony is examined in relationship to Gattungen and scepticism in order to discern irony's literary effect. It provides a historical overview of the concept of irony in philosophical context - as well as looking at the role of context in interpreting irony - and whether or not irony is compatible with scepticism. The essential elements and definition of irony are then provided followed by a critical assessment of the above. The article then moves on to examine possible ironic interpretations of the joy statements illuminated by some ironic commentaries of Qoheleth. The article then runs the joy statements through a series of possible ironic Gattungen in order to interpret them followed by a critical assessment. Finally, the article draws some conclusions regarding ironic correlations and scepticism in the joy statements of Qoheleth.     

Blood,Justice, and American Citizenship: An Interpretation of Gangs of New York

An ironic exploration of Aristophanes' anticipation of many of the doctrines of postmodernism including the notions that social conventions can be deconstructed, that speech constructs reality, and that poets, or writers, are the creators of human horizons. Despite his seeming agreement with postmodernists, Aristophanes comes to quite different conclusions about how readily the "truth" of postmodern ideas should be disseminated. Aristophanes' Clouds is examined as a postmodern text.     

Houses,Objects, and the Politics of Inheritance in Josep Maria de Sagarra's Vida privada

Josep Maria de Sagarra's novel Vida privada (1932) portrays an upper-class Catalan family, the Lloberolas, as unable to adapt to the new economic and political situation taking place in the city of Barcelona at the end of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship and at the beginning of the Second Republic in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Through a close reading of this family's houses, furniture, and personal belongings, I argue that material elements in this novel are central to the narrator's ethical critique and moral judgment of Barcelona's elite. The Lloberolas treat humans as objects and objects as humans, and I contend that, in an ironic emulation, the narrator also objectifies the Lloberolas and equates them with their objects. This comparison elucidates the family's superficiality and corrupted morals. Objects are also essential in destabilizing public and private boundaries because they often transcend the private domain and expose—to the readers and to the other inhabitants of Barcelona—the protagonists’ personality. Moreover, in Vida privada, houses, furniture, and surnames are understood as an inheritance that transfers very specific ideals of social status from parents to children. By presenting this material heritage with the exemplifying case of the Lloberola family, Sagarra offers a sharp critique of the Catalan upper classes and their superficial values. Their necessity to cling to an inherited world centered on material possessions finally results in their loss of power and evidences their economic and moral decline.     

Ema is by Nature a Political Animal: Politics and Capitalism in César Aira's Ema,la cautiva

Where much research focuses on comic and playful elements in César Aira's work, or on the forms of Aira's literature and its relationship with Argentine or Latin American literary tradition, this paper constructs a political reading of Aira's novel Ema, la cautiva. I consider the historical circumstances of the periods in which Aira set and published his novel (immediately prior to the culminating episode in the Conquest of the Desert in 1879 and during the military government of 1976–1983 when references to the Conquest of the Desert were utilised to justify the ‘dirty war’) to argue that, although Aira's ironic mode of writing makes the development of parallels between historical periods fraught with difficulty, the novel contains a latent critique of the military government, of the dirty war and of Peronist economic policies prior to the coup of 1976. Additionally, I argue that Ema, la cautiva contains a political critique of the arguments for the capitalist system at its inception and that the novel can be read together with the work of Deleuze and Guattari to explore the development of capitalism and expose the apparent freedoms gained through it as allusive and as substitutes for a new type of subjection.     

Laughing at a saint? Miracle and irony in the Vita Gangulfi prima

This article examines the Vita Gangulfi prima, a text which was frequently copied and widely circulated in the Middle Ages. It argues that the text can be understood as an ironic discourse on miracle stories in hagiographical texts: the central message of the Vita is that meek and penitential living leads to sanctity, and not the enjoyment of stories about miracles. At the same time, the Vita presents the reader to some extent with a performance of this idea. The reader who sees through to the Vita's ironic intent is encouraged to laugh at the saint and thereby comes to comprehend the very sin for which the various characters in the Vita are punished, while the text simultaneously depicts penitence as the way out of this sinfulness. The Vita's critique of miracle stories made an eccentric contribution to a discourse which was also carried on in a number of other hagiographical texts of the early tenth century.     

Zwischen investitur und testament beobachtungen zur rezeption des josuabuches im liber antiquitatum biblicarum

Bible scholars feel the sexual heat of Jael's assassination of Sisera but deny the fire. Victor Matthews says these verses are about hospitality, not sex. Mieke Bal says they are about maternity, not sex. Yair Zakovitch says they used to be about sex, but the sex has been censored out. My close reading evidences that the Jael-Sisera episode is indeed about sex—about a woman's sexual dominance over a man. Using more of the text than other explications, this understanding reveals the bawdy ridicule of Sisera and resolves the difficulties that adhere to previous analyses. Arguing the synchronicity of Judges 4 and 5, it illuminates these chapters' correspondence and agreement, their identical style of ironic humor, and their unifying linguistic craftsmanship.     

THE REFLEXIVE TEST OF HAYDEN WHITE'S METAHISTORY

This paper assesses Hayden White's Metahistory through the test of reflexivity; that is, it asks whether the book's “general theory of the structure of that mode of thought which is called ‘historical”’ applies, as it should, to its own history of nineteenth‐century “historical consciousness.” Most components of the theoretical apparatus—the various concepts invoked in the “theory of the historical work” and in the “theory of tropes”—fail the reflexivity test; further, it emerges that those same components are also seriously flawed on other grounds. The sole and partial exception is the concept of emplotment, which passes the reflexivity test, albeit with qualifications, but more particularly has the virtue of illuminating the traditional history of history against which Metahistory's own story was pitched; and this result provides an ironic and unexpected vindication of Metahistory's underlying vision. Thus the book's fundamental insight—that the form of historical writing is epistemologically consequential—can be retained, even though its two theories should now be set aside.     

Renewing the Political Perspective: Reflections on James Ceaser,Political Science,and Liberal Democracy

Abstract

This is a response to the contributions to the symposium on David Walsh's trilogy on modernity: After Ideology (1990), The Growth of the Liberal Soul (1997), and The Modern Philosophical Revolution (2008). After expressing appreciation for the careful reading the work has received, it enters into a reflection on the underlying unity of the studies. This is intended to address the common concerns that center on the issue of how the modern world is to be understood. It emphasizes the impossibility of separating the attempt to understand modernity from the need to take responsibility for it. This is the perspective that has illuminated the totalitarian catharsis, the durability of liberal political regimes, and the existential turn within modern philosophy. In the latter part of the essay, a response is offered to specific objections and characterizations that individual symposiasts raise.     

French Intellectuals and the Iraq War

Because of its representation of marginal and often violent milieux, the status of noir fiction has long been that of an ‘inferior’, less ‘literary’ genre. It could be argued that its frequent references to popular culture, and especially television and film, explain its appeal to a wide audience, one that does not necessarily read other genres. The intrigue and setting of the noir novel enables it to be perceived primarily as a ludic activity while often dealing with issues which are both political and ideological. Brigitte Aubert's work makes frequent references to film, TV and popular literature, and this article aims to examine the way these are used, how they play with notions of reality and fiction, how they can create an ironic distance which allows the writer both to create a sense of complicity with the reader and to criticise the society she presents.     

HISTORY,AFRICA, AND DEFAMILIARIZATION: A COMMENT

After initially identifying defamiliarization as a central aspect of Nancy Rose Hunt's essay “History as Form,” this comment reflects on the implications that her reading of Georg Simmel and her emphasis on objects and materiality have for the writing of history. If Hunt suggests, with Simmel, that the form of history is autonomous from history as it unfolds, the claim here is rather that there is no necessary relationship between writing and its topic. Considering how earlier European historiography excluded Africa (in particular) from the domain of history, it is no coincidence that this contingent relation between form and history has been particularly energizing for Africanist historiography—leading to innovations both in practice and theory. The comment concludes by briefly discussing three concepts that have informed such innovation: the vernacular, suturing, and multiple temporalities.     

Philosophy,Eros, Judaism

Abstract

A careful reading of Caritas in Veritate shows it to be framed and permeated by two principles. The first is that human persons in their consciences and deeds are the principal agents of economic and political life, whether directly in interpersonal relations or mediated through their work in and for institutions. The second is that human persons as citizens are best prepared to promote “integral human development” and “the common good” when they are urged on by charity or love that is lived in truth. In these respects Caritas in Veritate is a clear continuation of the line of thought that Benedict developed in his earlier encyclicals Deus Caritas Est and Spe Salvi, and before that in his theological writings as Joseph Ratzinger. Benedict's work thus underscores the need modern societies and political communities have for charity, and thus for faith and for hope. We explicate this aspect of Benedict's political vision throughout this essay, anticipating and beginning to respond to some objections to the thesis that politics even in a secular age requires theological virtues to flourish.     

The voice of the dead king Chindasuinth: poetry,politics, and the discourse of penance in Visigothic Spain

Around ad 653, Eugenius II, bishop of Toledo, composed a first‐person poetic epitaph for the deceased Visigothic king Chindasuinth (r. 642–53) in which the monarch is made to speak with self‐deprecating candour. This paper offers a reassessment of the poem's language and rhetorical strategy by situating it within contemporary discourses surrounding royal admonition and penance. Rather than interpreting Eugenius's composition as an act of defamation, as the majority of critics have done, it reads the poem as a dignifying literary expression of atonement. This reading corresponds with other specimens of Eugenius's poetry and evidence from a developing literary culture at Chindasuinth's court.     

Ida Vera Simonton's Imperial Masquerades: Intersections of Gender,Race and African Expertise in Progressive‐Era America

Ida Vera Simonton, a New York socialite, visited the French colony of Gabon in 1906 and 1907. Her subsequent narratives about her stay demonstrate a very ambiguous view of the horrors of European colonialism that she claimed to despise and the amoral nature of Africans. Simonton ultimately employed her stay in Gabon to claim a right to form female self‐defence squads in New York and to act as an independent defender of white women. By carefully shaping her public persona to alternately appropriate discourses of masculine regeneration through empire and to highlight her female vulnerability, she made herself into a provocative spectacle. In an ironic twist, given how much Simonton embellished on her own experiences, Broadway producers in 1925 plagiarised her 1912 novel Hell's Playground in their successful play White Cargo. Simonton successfully sued for damages, thus upholding her highly edited version of her trip in law. Her writings expose the intersections of racial anxieties, gendered visions of empire and feminist aspirations in the United States during the Progressive era.     

‘Global Capitalism’ vs ‘End of Socialism’: Crux Theologica? Engaging Liberation Theology and Theological Postliberalism

Abstract

This article offers a critical assessment of two political theologies: liberation theology and theological postliberalism, as represented by the writings of Gustavo Gutiérrez and John Milbank. Paying particular attention to the concepts of society and Church, a partial defence of liberation theology is offered in tandem with a critical affirmation of some aspects of postliberal political theology. The discussion is then contextualized historically in relation to the ‘victory’ of global capitalism and the ‘end’ of socialism. I conclude that the renewal of political theology in the twenty-first century will aim to overcome the ironic crux theologica of this article's title.     

逆谐表达的应用语言学透视

本文描述了现代流行表达之一--逆谐的几种常见方式,运用应用语言学的基本理论和研究方法分析了逆谐表达产生和存在的内部语言机制及外部文化因素,并试图运用社会语言学定量分析的方法进行了逆谐表达规范度的考查。     

Wenceslao Fernández Flórez: The Evolution of His Technique in his Novels

The widely divergent and sometimes hostile reactions to literary texts whose writers use irony signal the complexity of this type of interaction between writer, reader, and text. Particularly when there is also an ironic main character, varied understandings of these texts can reveal a shifting network of discursive communities. Linda Hutcheon's Irony's Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony analyzes how and why these communities are formed or disrupted. Maryse Condé's Hérémakhonon and Mongo Beti's Mission terminée are examples of texts whose writers were criticized for reasons that appear to be related to the ways in which the irony of both writer and narrator led to a disruption of the discursive communities whose shared contexts make irony possible.     

A Feminist Literary Cartography of the Canadian North: Women,writing and place in Aritha van Herk's Places Far From Ellesmere

This article examines the idea of North in Aritha van Herk's (1990) Places Far From Ellesmere, a feminist rereading of Anna Karenin that is also an exploration of place—Ellesmere Island—and of gender, identity and belonging. I situate my reading of Ellesmere firstly within feminist literary theory, focusing on the concept of intertextuality and on the implications of the concept, from the perspective of feminist theorists, for the acts of writing and reading. I further contextualise van Herk's work by outlining the growing sensitivity to the complexities of writing Canadian space in Canadian literary criticism. The focus then shifts to Ellesmere, beginning with an investigation of van Herk's representational practices and philosophies, which are organised around a critique of the relationship between writing, gender and power. I argue that van Herk's insistence upon the power of feminist textual rereadings, an insistence that results from her aversion to authority, critically shapes her geographical imaginary, and her understanding of North. By extending the text and thereby the practice of reading to geography, van Herk makes possible a feminist representation or rereading of the North that simultaneously contests the conventions of literature, of place and of gender. Ultimately, I argue that it is van Herk's commitment to investigate the processes of representation in which she is engaged that makes her representation of the North such a valuable text for feminist and literary geographers.     

Martin Amis,neo-Orientalism,and hubris

This article puts forward a reading of Martin Amis’s 2008 book The Second Plane with an emphasis on its cultural politics. It reconsiders Amis’s book from a distance of almost a decade in light of recent global developments, including the rise of ISIS in the Middle East, the resurgence of acute Islamophobia in Europe and the US, and Tony Blair’s public acknowledgement of the shortcomings of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. With these factors in mind, the essay argues that it is possible to detect in Amis’s book early warning signs of how the West’s relationship with both Islamism and Islam would develop in the period following its publication. Drawing on William Connolly’s work on tragedy and Edward Said’s work on Orientalism, the essay argues that The Second Plane ought to be read as advancing a hubristic ‘neo-Orientalist’ cultural and political agenda which today threatens to lock much of the world into an ongoing cycle of recrimination and revenge. Against this, a case is made for an appreciation of the complex circumstances which give rise to suicide terrorism and for a sense of history largely absent from Amis’s writing on the subject.     

Informant disavowal and the interpretation of storytelling revival

The scholarship of traditional arts revivals is often ironic. Revivalists' activity has been understood as a rational, politically nostalgic, and symbolic re‐enactment of a fictional past. In this, scholars have underestimated the significance of disavowal; that is, informants' neutral or negative responses to analytical methods and conclusions. Interviews with English storytelling revivalists reveal a coherent and significant consensus of disavowal, showing their primary concern to be not with nostalgic self‐rationalisation, but with basic practical issues of artistic and sociable interaction. Storytelling revival involves nostalgic displays that are actually fragmentary, superficial, and subordinate to practical concerns. This suggests that revivalists are seeking not to symbolise an imagined past for political purposes, but to familiarise recently appropriated performance genres for artistic purposes. This conclusion is hypothetically applicable to the uses of nostalgic rationalisation within other revival movements.