In research interviews, interviewees are usually well aware of why they were selected, and in their narratives they often construct ‘default identities’ in line with the interviewers’ expectations. Furthermore, narrators draw on shared cultural knowledge and master narratives that tend to form an implicit backdrop of their stories. Yet in this article we focus on how some of these master narratives may be mobilized explicitly when default identities are at stake. In particular, we investigate interviews with successful female (...) professionals from diverse geographical contexts. We found that the interviewees deal with challenges to their ‘successful professional’ identities by drawing on categorical narratives or categorical statements. As such, the interviewees talk into being a morally ordered gendered worldview, thus making explicit gendered master narratives about their societies and workplaces. In general, this article shows that categorical narratives and statements can bring master narratives to the surface and that these can thus contribute to the narrators’ identity work. (shrink)

The article sets the future of Christianity within the context of different master narratives, beginning with those employed by social scientists, scrutinizing some of their key characteristics. It then considers characteristics of master narratives in general, before looking at paradoxes of universalism and particularity, the collective and the individual, in relation to the inherent character of political reason.

Infiltrated consciousness occurs when a subject's sense of self comes to be strongly and negatively shaped by victimizing master narratives. Consider the stay-at-home dad who has internalized a harmful narrative of traditional masculinity and so feels ashamed because he is not the family's bread winner. One way master narratives infiltrate consciousness is through conditioning self-simulation by assigning a hierarchy of values to different social roles. Further, master narratives confine self-simulation by prescribing certain social roles to an (...) individual and prohibiting others. One common suggestion for counteracting infiltrated consciousness is to transform it through membership in new communities with new master narratives. But how does such healing happen? This essay offers a response. Recent psychological research on constructivist theories of memory outlines a naturalistically plausible mechanism for self-simulation. I argue that this mechanism is implicated in transforming infiltrated consciousness. This clarifies features of our psychological architecture that make the alteration of self-concepts possible. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that medical professionals should protect a future child's rights by prohibiting disabled parents from using technology to deliberately have a disabled child because disability is taken as an inevitable, severe threat to a child's otherwise “open” future. I will first argue that the open future that allegedly protects a child's future autonomy is precluded by the very conditions needed to develop that future autonomy. Any child's future will be narrowed as they are socialized in a way (...) that gives them the capacity for autonomous choice. However, oppressive master narratives can diminish a future child's autonomy by distorting their narrative identity and constricting their agency. In fact, the open future argument does just this by advancing one of the most damaging master narratives about disability: that disability inevitably and severely restricts a person's autonomy and closes their future. (shrink)

While I agree with most of Maiese and Hanna’s (2019) claims in The Mind-Body Politic, I argue that it is possible to offer a fuller explanation of the effects of ideologies and how they are implemented by adopting a narrative analysis to examine the role that narratives play in shaping the social and material conditions of institutions, and individuals’ cognitive habits and affective frames. A narrative analysis maintains that much of our perceptions of and experiences in the world (...) are shaped by the synthesis of conceptual and affective knowledge that we encounter in socio-cultural narratives. Socio-cultural narratives are understood here as narratives that establish, shape, and reinforce cultural beliefs and practices or societal social structures, process, and organizations. By utilizing a narrative analysis we can then employ an additional methodology to examine and understand how we, as individuals, develop and change our particular embodied habits and affective framing patterns. I show how this can be done by focusing on, and expanding upon, Maiese and Hanna’s discussion of neoliberalism and the backfire effect, where individuals resist changes to their affective framing patterns and habitual ways of being in the world. (shrink)

In his Ecolinguistics, Stibbe (2020) declares the story of economic growth (the continuous increase in production and consumption) as the ‘master narrative’ that is at the same time the most harmful story we live by. This paper explains where this story of growth comes from and describes how it supplants or suppresses alternatives, such as stories of thrift and sharing. By connecting the biosemiotic model of Funktionskreis (e.g. Uexküll, 1920) as “the primary mechanism of meaning making” (Kull 2020) (...) to cognitive linguistics (e.g. Lakoff, 2009) and critical discourse analysis (e.g. van Leeuwen, 2018), this paper explores how stories of thrift and sharing can be turned into activism that seeks to reframe waste as surplus that can be shared; but they can also hide the old business models of the master narrative. Stories of sharing are often erased to protect corporate interests. Narratives of sharing can be duplicitous, especially in the context of the ‘sharing economy’. Attempts at reframing resources and energy as common wealth owned by everyone are squelched by the master narrative in contexts like resource and energy distribution. Can the new story of shrinking and degrowth become a new alternative to the master narrative and promote new decelerated semiotic habits (Maran, 2023) for a more fulfilling life with less (e.g. Herrmann 2022)? (shrink)

This comparative case study examines the place of white supremacy in teacher lessons on the U.S. South. Multi-day lesson plans and interviews with three teacher participants revealed that open encounters with white supremacist histories were supported by a high degree of professional freedom in their school settings. The teachers held a common commitment to teach about white racism and violence. However, extending these lessons into a more comprehensive confrontation with harmful white supremacist master narratives is complicated by highly varied (...) conceptions of the history classroom, among these teachers and in the field of social studies. This study supports continued efforts to provide teachers with resources and space to address racist legacies. I recommend that these efforts should be paired with an inspection of the individual and collective conceptions of social studies classrooms so that master narratives may be addressed more directly. (shrink)

Proposing narratives that reflect our values and address what we believe to be, and what in fact in this case are, valid concerns is no doubt an attractive venture. But good intentions are not enough, and often it is careful analysis that shows why this is the case. Alastair Morgan's (2023) essay Power, Threat, Meaning Framework: A Philosophical Critique is a bright example of philosophy-in-action; it demonstrates, to use a popular expression, that the road to hell is paved with good (...) intentions. In this commentary I argue that while the concerns of the authors of the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF) are valid, their proposed solutions lead us to yet another master narrative.The PTMF presents itself as an... Read More. (shrink)

Charles Taylor’s monumental book A Secular Age has been extensively discussed, criticized, and worked on. This volume, by contrast, explores ways of working with Taylor’s book, especially its potentials and limits for individual research projects. Due to its wide reception, it has initiated a truly interdisciplinary object of study; with essays drawn from various research fields, this volume fosters substantial conversation across disciplines.

Numerous social, economic and academic pressures can have a negative impact on representations of biomedical research. We review several of the forces playing an increasingly pernicious role in how health and science information is interpreted, shared and used, drawing discussions towards the role of narrative. In turn, we explore how aspects of narrative are used in different social contexts and communication environments, and present creative responses that may help counter the negative trends. As traditional methods of communication have (...) in many ways failed the public, changes in approach are required, including the creative use of narratives. (shrink)

Non-Western Christian missionaries from a variety of backgrounds represent Europe as being in decline in terms of its religiosity and morals. Such evaluations are set against a backdrop of Christian demographic shift from the global North to the global South and secularization theory. The shift in demographics is, however, unfinished, as is the inversion of relations implied by the vocal, critical presence of Southern Christians in Europe. There is great religious variety within Europe, the West and the global South. Hence (...) scholars are developing fresh theoretical lenses to take better account of contexts and connections in analyses, and further research into the relationship between rhetoric and reality is called for. (shrink)

After decades of Cold War stability, most participants experienced the collapse of communism in 1989-90 as an unforeseen “return of history.”1 The deep freeze of the Cold War made it seem that the East-West division had become permanent and that the best one could hope for was a gradual softening of the iron curtain. Repeated suppression of East European revolts by Soviet tanks and the failure of the communist parties in the West appeared to indicate that the domestic order of (...) the competing blocs would remain unchangeable. Just when most people had accepted the permanence of the post-war system. Gorbachev's…. (shrink)

Religious art within postmodernism is discussed. Postmodern art, I argue, projects the myth of a miraculously generating chaos which cannot be maintained as absolute and therefore postmodern art cannot be genuinely religious. The myth is adopted for ideological, not philosophical reasons and calls for alternatives to make religious art possible.

An intensely personal meditation on the nature of America by a White Philosopher who joined a Black Studies Department and found his understanding of the world transformed by the experience. (Literary Collections).

At the heart of the human experience lies anxiety caused by the realization that the world is unknown, forever eluding our control. And out of this anxiety arise the master passions of ambition and envy, which we repress to mask their power over our lives. Discussion of the role of the emotions in our lives is not new, but Mihnea Moldoveanu and Nitin Nohria go much further, showing how these passions shape not only our individual lives but our social (...) and organizational culture as well.The master passions are not pretty, and so we cover them with the more socially acceptable faces of reason and morality. Moldoveanu and Nohria guide the reader in revealing the real impetus behind such actions as firing a friend, leaving a lover, or even pillaging your own people. Below the rational explanation, they show, often lies a willingness to hurt or even destroy others to fuel our own ambitions or quench the fires of envy. The authors offer intriguing thought experiments and examples from their own lives as they expose the power of the master passions. Deftly weaving ideas from psychology, sociology, literature, and philosophy with the personal, they build a strong argument that society would be much healthier if we faced the deception and self-deception that pervade our lives. (shrink)

The master narrative of Apartheid South Africa created a specific identity for white boys and men and, together with this identity, a very particular role and place within the South African context. This identity was exemplified in the men who were conscripted into the military from 1967 until 1994, and who participated in operations on the border regions of Namibia and Angola as well as within local townships in the war of liberation against apartheid and minority rule. Many (...) veterans have been left grappling not only with the traumas associated with combat but also with the loss of their identities as war heroes in a country under changed political control. As a result, many of their personal stories and experiences of combat have been silenced by society at large and also, to varying degrees, within their own families, the Church, and among the younger generation who have grown up under a different dispensation. The conflict between vacillating narratives of villains who fought on the wrong side of history and victims of a closed socialisation system has supported the identity struggle faced by many veterans today. Against this backstory, this article explores the effects of storytelling as a trauma release using a narrative approach.Contribution: This article offers a contribution to the use of storytelling in pastoral conversations as a trauma release for untold stories. This insight links to the focus and scope of the journal as a pastoral narrative approach has been used under the umbrella of Practical Theology. (shrink)

Prior to Chinese unification in 221 bc and the beginning of imperial history, there was a “golden age” of philosophical debate among various scholars about the best way to live life, construct a social contract, and act in harmony with heaven and earth. The most influential of these scholars, collectively called the “various masters,” or zhu zi 諸子, attracted disciples who recorded the teachings of their “masters” and passed these teachings on. These texts, collectively called “masters- texts”, became the bedrock (...) of Chinese intellectual history. (shrink)

Our paper proposes to follow the history of the “Burning Bush”, a spiritual and cultural movement in the 1940s in Romania that had proposed the solution of spiritual resistance to communism through culture and faith. The analysis holds as key-concepts: discourse analysis, narrativity, semantics and hermeneutics, following the discourse of the Securitate’s archives with reference to the Burning Bush in terms of: - conflictual discourses: inquisitor vs. imprisoned; - motives and themes of the incriminatory discourse of the Securitate; - the (...) existence of a master narrative of the archives. (shrink)

In “Whole Life Narratives and the Self” David Lumsden (2013) has provided us with a clear review of the debate over narrative and personal identity and has staked out his own position in that debate. Arguing against neo-Lockean views of an atomistic self, he defends a narrative component in personal identity. Specifically, he argues that personal identity or self involves “a bundle of narrative threads” (p. 1), but does not require the grand unity of a master (...) narrative—a whole life narrative. It follows for him that the understanding—and treatment—of fragmented psychiatric states does not require whole life narratives. In his analysis, he is both defending a philosophical position regarding narrative and personal .. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the issue of truth-telling in non-fictional narratives of (in)justice. Based on examples of rape narratives, domestic abuse narratives, human trafficking narratives and asylum seeker narratives, I examine the various difficulties in telling the truth in such stories, particularly those related to various culturally conditioned ideas of how the world works, which at the same time form the basis of, among other things, legal discourse and officials’ decision-making processes. I will also demonstrate that such culturally conditioned ideas, (...) which are the basis of official discourse, can be considered within the category of both the social imaginary of the just world in the Taylorian sense of the term, and the social master narrative, which in the case of stories of (in)justice is often based on the just world hypothesis. (shrink)

This paper investigates Danto’s claims that the narrative of art is over. In this state, which Danto sees as ideal, art is free from any master narrative, and its direction cannot be predicted. The claim that art ought to remain in its current state—pluralistic, free and with no further historical development—is problematic. Danto is correct that late 20th c. art could not be explained through a single narrative, and the myriad forms art takes demonstrate its pluralism. (...) But Danto’s claim that freedom is the outcome of inexplicability, and progress is measured by amenability to narrative, does not follow. Based on Gombrich’s theory of pictorial representation, I provide an alternative explanation of Danto’s claim that art no longer manifests the narrative of the era of art, arguing that the shift in art’s preferred form of presentation, though no longer supporting narrative explanation, is developing as a language of disclosure. (shrink)

This essay suggests that a narrative genre of “kill stories” has a prominent philosophical function in the Zhuangzi 莊子. Kill stories depict the domestication and disciplining of “wild” living beings eventually resulting in their death. They typically show an incongruity between the moral attitude of the perpetrators and their destructive deeds. Thereby, they illustrate a critique of a broader sociopolitical “master narrative” associated with the Confucian tradition that had a strong impact on ideology and ethical values in (...) early China. In the diagnosis of the kill stories, ritual practice and civilizational ordering inevitably produce discontent and unease. A second narrative genre that I call “survival stories” corresponds to the kill stories and connects with the medicinal orientation of the Daoist tradition. As therapeutic allegories, the survival stories reflect strategies for maintaining sanity and ease within society. Rather than advocating escapism or a return to a primitivist state, they promote the cultivation of immunity against consumption by social demands and pressures based on an insight into the inescapability and contingency of social roles. (shrink)

This article traces the competing meanings of "master narrative" in current theoretical debates over history and culture. The phrase "master or meta narrative" has grown popular for describing stories which seem to assimilate different cultures into a single course of history dominated by the West. Master narrative, like its predecessors Universal History and speculative philosophy of history, has become something to avoid. But our increasingly global situations demand stories that can describe and explain the (...) worldwide interactions of diverse cultures and communities. From this convergence--a growing wariness of global stories coupled with situations which seem to demand them--has emerged a popular new double plot of world history in which cultural differentiation and cultural homogenization go hand in hand. The development has led to some surprising homologies and contrasts among the new histories created by thinkers from Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jean-François Lyotard to James Clifford and Francis Fukuyama. But our new "postmodern" distinctions between master and local narratives have carried over the venerable antinomy of people with and without history, and the search for timeless formal principles differentiating "historical" and "nonhistorical" modes of discourse and ways of being threatens to create new varieties of essentialism. (shrink)

This transdisciplinary study will examine how the narration of self, motivation, and eudaimonic virtues like wisdom and compassion develop within a social ecology of family master narratives and social institutions that either foster or constrain the development of such virtues. Drawing from a larger, longitudinal study of character development and life stories in adulthood, we will interview individuals and their families about virtue-relevant events in life, such as conflicts of belief, virtue-focused projects and activities, and self- and family-defining memories. (...) Narratives will be analyzed qualitatively and critically as well as quantitatively and in relation to other measures of eudaimonic and personal development. We expect that specific virtues will serve as motivational themes in personal and family stories and that these narrative themes will predict specific paths of virtuous self-development. We further expect that specific inequalities in family and social-institutional contexts will correspond to specific conflicts in the development of eudaimonic qualities in individuals’ lives. (shrink)

One of the many reasons for the sustainability of the Arthurian legend in popular culture would seem to involve its educational aspects: most particularly, the educational narrative that describes the relationship between Merlin and Arthur. However much the other elements of the legend suffer alterations through their many retellings, generally the story of Arthur's instruction under Merlin remains unchanged. The reason for this involves the sort of master Merlin is. From his earliest manifestations to present-day representations, Merlin remains (...) a pedagogical hybrid. In one respect, his instruction of Arthur and his motivations for this instruction call to mind the classical conventions of the mentor: conventions... (shrink)

The increasing role played by medical ethicists in the clinical setting both as teachers and consultants has brought with it a demand for new methodologies that speak more precisely to the multiple problems encountered in actual attempts at case resolution. Some of these moves have to do with a revival of the truly classic case study approach to ethics, casuistry. This approach is anchored in the revelatory text of Jonsen and Toulmin, TheAbuseofCasuistry. A fine example of this methodology is an (...) article in TheJournalofClinicalEthics, Conjoined to this approach is a renewed interest in virtue ethics. The groundwork for this was laid by MacIntyre's masterful history of its demise in AfterVirtue. A clear and concise application of this ancient but always new approach is given in Pellegrino and Thomasma's book TheVirtuesinMedicalPractice. This way of doing ethics is particularly congenial to the practice of healthcare ethics in that it understands that virtue is just a rather fancy name for a good habit or skill. Since the practice of clinical medicine is quintessentially the learning and application of a range of often highly complex patterns of professional abilities and skills, a virtue ethics approach will allow for the concomitant development of a whole set of ethical skills. But both casuistry and virtue ethics may well be seen to be operative in a larger context now known as narrative ethics. (shrink)

In his monograph Narrative Justice, Rafe McGregor offers an argument for the role narrative can play as part of an aesthetic education of justice—a form of moral development that, he argues, has the potential to reduce criminal inhumanity including terrorism and radical extremism by revealing the problematic master narratives that promote epistemological vices in individuals. Although he makes an important argument about the nature and value of narrative, I argue that a look to poetry will help (...) us see the bigger picture for what engagement with literature can offer in terms of such aesthetic education. I offer a way of developing McGregor's theory to accommodate the role and value of... (shrink)

Those masterful images because complete Grew in pure mind, but out of what began? A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street, Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can, Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone, I must lie down where all the ladders start In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"To make a difference...":Narrative Desire in Global MedicineByron J. Good and Mary-Jo DelVecchio GoodIf, as Arthur Frank (2002) writes, "moral life, for better and worse, takes place in storytelling," this collection of narratives written by physicians working in field settings in global medicine gives us a glimpse of some aspects of moral experience, practice, and dilemmas in settings of poverty and low health care resources. These essays are (...) written from the midst of practice, in diverse settings in Africa, South Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. The majority of the writers are practitioners of contemporary 'global medicine'—physicians from North America or Europe who spend part of their lives flying into settings of poverty or special need to practice medicine and work with on-going collaborative clinical and public health systems—while a smaller number are working in the societies in which they were born. Although a few work for classic humanitarian organizations or have developed their own local NGO's, the great majority are engaged in the 'hybrid life' described by Robert Riviello and noted by Renée Fox, moving between academic medical centers and distant health care systems that are supported by local governments, major international organizations and funding agencies, and international NGO's like Partners in Health. These diverse forms of practice have become a common model for contemporary clinicians engaged in what has emerged as a new discipline of global health or global medicine, and these narratives give us a glimpse of some of the enduring, as well as newly emerging, forms of moral practice and ethical dilemmas characteristic of today's global medicine.Many of these stories are filled with the tension and pathos that makes clinical narratives powerful to read. Physicians are forced to make unfathomable decisions about whether to resuscitate and keep a baby alive, using all means available, or to let the infant die, whether to carry out a procedure that will save an infant in birth but would put the mother at risk, about how to deal with a cancer found in a very advanced state. However, virtually all of the stories transcend these classical stories of the decisions physicians are forced to make by being placed in settings of great scarcity of resources, which stand in particular contrast to the academic medical settings in North America or Europe where many of these global medicine specialists have trained and many continue to practice. The unspeakable inequality of resources emerges throughout these narratives as a kind of master theme, as the underlying moral, as opposed to plot, which gives meaning and sense to the stories. For those who practice medicine in such settings, global inequalities and scarcity of medical resources are deeply felt. They produce the rage that Jeffrey Deal describes. ("I learned to despise American churches during that time, a time when my world encompassed a dying newborn in Sudan, as well as the air conditioned padded seats [End Page 121] of our affluent suburban church.") They produce the distinctive experiences of helplessness and pain felt by clinicians who cannot separate how they would be able to treat such a patient at home from how they have to practice in these settings. For those clinicians working in their own societies, scarcity of resources often produces deep anger at the corrupt governments that fail to support basic human services for the great majority of their population. ("We were temporary actors performing in the cynical play of scarcity on permanent display in Port-au-Prince," writes Haitian physician Paul Pierre about his experience prior to joining Partners in Health.)But for those who regularly travel back and forth across the divide between rich and poor, whether across national boundaries or within their own society, the challenge to live a moral life is unendingly complicated. While becoming a part of a struggle for global justice with colleagues and advocates from both sides of the divide, few of the narrators can avoid personal feelings of ambivalence and guilt at being able to easily move from one side of that divide to the other back home. Many fantasize about giving up their lives in the north to devote themselves... (shrink)

Jafta Kgalabi Masemola is the longest serving (1963–1989) anti-apartheid political prisoner in South Africa’s notorious Robben Island. Although Masemola is well known in the struggle narratives, not much has been written about him and his practices as a political organiser beyond biographical and anecdotal narratives. This article considers, with a certain degree of detail, an even more unthought aspect of Masemola’s life, his creative productions; in particular, the aesthetic logic that underwrites the master key that he cloned from a (...) bar of soap while jailed in Robben Island. Looking from the vantage point of aesthetic and critical discourse, the article attempts to open up new vistas and interests in Azanian cultural praxis. (shrink)

This article investigates textual representations of the Confucius figure outside the philosophical mainstream, in writings such as apocrypha (chenwei), records of the strange (zhiguai), and popular narratives from Dunhuang. It argues that Confucius's predictive capacities and his comprehensive knowledge of natural and supernatural phenomena played an important and hitherto neglected role in early imperial times. Simultaneously, a sense of close familiarity with the Confucius figure gave rise to various playful depictions which transcended any clear intellectual distinctions between “Confucians” and “anti‐Confucians” (...) and which appropriated initially serious tropes and motifs for ludic purposes. (shrink)

This essay examines Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) in light of new archival findings on the medical practices of Dr. James Norcom (Dr. Flint in the narrative). While critics have sharply defined the feminist politics of Jacobs’s sexual victimization and resistance, they have overlooked her medical experience in slavery and her participation in reform after escape. I argue that Jacobs uses the rhetoric of a woman-led health reform movement underway during the 1850s to (...) persuade her readers to end slavery. This essay reconstructs both contexts, revealing that Jacobs links enslaved women’s physical and sexual vulnerability with her female readers’ fears of male doctors’ threats to modesty and of their standard bleed-and-purge treatments. Jacobs illustrates that slavery damages women’s health as much as heroic medicine, and thus merits the political activism of her readers. Specifically, Jacobs dramatizes her conflicts with the rapacious physician-master at moments that are crucial to women’s health: marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood. Ultimately, this essay advances a new understanding of the role of health reform in social change: it galvanized other movements such as women’s rights and abolition, particularly around issues of bodily autonomy for women and African Americans. (shrink)

This article explores the extent to which millenarianism can be understood as a narrative structure and even a potential "master plot" akin to quest and stranger motifs. The idea of a radical, utopian response to sociocultural crisis is a recurrent theme in literature, most apparent in science fiction and fantasy but also present in "literary" fiction, poetry, and drama. There have been previous attempts to describe millenarianism as a narrative, but such attempts have been in the direction (...) of sociologists or anthropologists using literary theory to elucidate millenarianism. My methodology is reversed, and my focus is on the way millenarian literature can be understood through a narrative framework. If... (shrink)

The hope of moving beyond formalism is one of two things that unites an otherwise diverse group of literary theorists who have begun to explore the role of desire in narrative. Peter Brooks, for example, in Reading for the Plot, says in more than one place that his interest in desire “derives from my dissatisfaction with the various formalisms that have dominated critical thinking about narrative.”3 Leo Bersani sees desire as establishing a crucial link between social and literary (...) structures. Teresa de Lauretis faults structuralist models for their inability to disclose the ways in which narrative operates, through the desire it excites and fulfills, to construct the social world as a system of sexual differences. Other names could be added, both within and outside the field of narrative theory—Nancy Armstrong, Roland Barthes, Georges Bataille, Jessica Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, René Girard, Luce Irigaray, Fredric Jameson, Peggy Kamuf, Linda Kauffman, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Jean Laplance, Catharine A. McKinnon, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick—for desire has become one of the master tropes of contemporary criticism. 3. Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative , p. 47; hereafter abbreviated RP.4. Leo, Bersani, A Future for Astyanax: Character and Desire in Literature , p. 13; hereafter abbreviated FA.5. Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit, The Forms of Violence: Narrative in Assyrian Art and Modern Culture , p. v; hereafter abbreviated FV. Although Bersani coauthored this book with Dutoit, for convenience I refer to it by Bersani’s name alone. This practice is justified by two considerations: first, most of the arguments about narrative, violence, and desire are elaborations of positions that Bersani has taken in earlier works; second, passages and examples in the sections with which I shall be dealing are reprinted with only minor changes from an article that Bersani published under his own name. Jay Clayton, associate professor of English at Vanderbilt University, is the author of Romantic Vision and the Novel and coeditor of Contemporary Literature and Contemporary Theory . He is currently completing a study of contemporary American literature and theory, Narrative Power. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Opening a Mountain: Kōans of the Zen Masters, and: The Kōan: Texts and Contexts in Zen BuddhismEric Sean NelsonOpening a Mountain: Kōans of the Zen Masters. By Steven Heine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 200 pp.The Kōan: Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism. Edited by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 322 pp.The Zen koan is mysterious to many and its significance remains (...) disputed by scholars. Is it a challenging therapeutic device, to be left behind like a raft after crossing the river, or a self-transparent statement of the liberated mind? Is it a logic-defying paradox or does it have its own performative rationality? Is it a spontaneous and often irreverent oral expression or a complex and staged literary form understandable within its context? Is it a narrative with multiple levels of meaning or something that potentially interrupts the work of meaning, narrative coherence, and conventional understanding?Although paradoxical and even shocking language occurs in other traditions, these two provocative volumes illustrate the uniqueness, significance, and interpretive difficulty of one of Zen's primary practices. Both works are valuable contributions to understanding the context, development, and meaning of the koan from its origins and growth in T'ang and Sung China to later Japanese developments.Steven Heine's Opening a Mountain: Kōans of the Zen Masters includes translations of sixty koan cases, selected traditional commentary, and his account of each case. This rich work gathers significant koans about Zen's encounter with its "other" from a variety of koan collections compiled in Sung China and Kamakura Japan.The volume is organized around the theme of "opening a mountain." Masters opened up mountains for Zen by confronting and converting local spirits, hermits, and other forces that would prevent or endanger its practice. It refers more broadly to the confrontation and contest between Zen masters and figures representing supernatural forces, indigenous and popular religiosity, and rival forms of practice such as that of the isolated hermit without vows and outside the Buddhist community.The koans are presented and discussed in five sections concerning: (1) supernatural mountain landscapes; (2) irregular rivals such as hermits, wizards, and dangerous women; (3) supernatural experiences in which bodhisattvas, demons, and magical animals are encountered in dreams and visions; (4) the use of symbols of authority and transmission such as the flywhisk; and (5) experiences of confession, repentance, self-mutilation, death, and the afterlife.Heine argues that emphasizing the ritual, symbolic, and cultural dimensions of the koan complements understanding it as using paradoxical language to free one from the reification of language through aporia and double-binds. He insightfully shows through his translations and discussions the often ignored mythological and religious dimension of many koans. Even when koans use mythic or supernatural elements ironically, it is still in reference to such a context of belief. Since the outcomes [End Page 284] of these confrontations between Zen iconoclasm and irregular practices and unconventional beings are often uncertain, the koan embodies these tensions between supernaturalism and iconoclasm, ritual and meditative clarity, devotion and enlightenment. Zen masters are not always unambiguously victorious in their confrontations and competition with popular religion in these stories of opening mountains and taming and converting spirits, shamans, hermits, unconventional and rival women (such as the "Zen grannies" and the nuns of cases 23-26), and other irregular practitioners and dangerous forces.Zen iconoclasm is best exemplified by Lin-chi (J.:Rinzai), known for his advice to kill the Buddha and the patriarchs, who forbade travel to Mount Wu-t'ai, where popular devotional Buddhists believed Mañjus´rī appeared (see cases 13-15). Lin-chi's Mañjus´rī cannot be seen on sacred mountains but is manifested in your own activity. However, even some koans involving Lin-chi focus on his ambiguous success in dealing with P'u-hua (cases 16, 57), an irregular practitioner attributed with magical powers. Despite such warnings, the bodhisattva of compassion's sacred mountain continued to appeal to ordinary Buddhists and even Zen practitioners. In these koans, Zen is not simply demythologizing. It is playing a dangerous game of ironic ambiguity and... (shrink)

Teachers’ engagement in critical intellectual and research work in England has been challenged in recent years under hegemonic policies and practices in teacher education. Since 2019, centralisation, standardisation and accountability in teacher education have intensified, along with explicit criticism of university involvement. Some describe teaching in England as a ‘semi-profession’ where teachers are positioned as technicians and their engagement in wider ethical, moral and intellectual endeavours are discouraged. Within this challenging policy and practice context, this paper argues that there is (...) a need to reconsider the space of professional learning over professional development for teachers, and that Master’s level qualifications can be site for potentially transformative learning experiences for teachers. An empirical research project is reported, where teachers’ lived experiences of engaging in critical intellectual and research work through part-time MA Education were systematically mapped and interrogated. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and video diaries. Analysis of significant episodes of each teacher’s narrative unlocked an understanding of their shared journeys as ‘becoming’, ‘being’ and ‘belonging’ as a teacher and a researcher. Conclusions and recommendations are presented which challenge current reductive policies and practices along with a call to prioritise teachers’ critical and intellectual knowledge and research work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mechanisms of Violent Retribution in Chinese Hell Narratives Charles D. Orzech University ofNorth Carolina Greensboro Ai! The criminals in this hell have all had their eyes dug out and the fresh blood flows [from them], and each of them cries out, their two hands pressing their bloody eye-sockets—truly pitiful! To the left a middle-aged person is just having an eye pulled out by one of the shades; he struggles (...) unceasingly, screaming; his left eye has already been extracted... (56b) Ai-yah!... Each of the criminals is bound to a an iron pillar and the ox-headed demons are in the process of administering punishment—using iron or copper blades they peel the skin of the person's face, just as a butcher kills a pig and then flays it. Each of the criminal ghosts screams in pain... (59b) The criminal ghost's hands are bound about an iron pillar which is entirely red [with heat] and the criminal ghost's two hands are entirely cooked and it is unbearable... (126a) Record ofA Journey to Hell These passages are found, not in some medieval description of hell, nor in a work for sadists, but in a modern and quite popular Chinese "good book" (shan-shu) titled Record ofA Journey to Hell (Ti-yu yu-chi). Record ofA Journey to Hell is the most recent work of a genre which emerged in tenthcentury China and which may be found throughout Asia from Vietnam to Japan. This persistent fascination with gruesome scenes of torture stands in striking contrast to Michel Foucault's observations that by the first quarter of the nineteenth century "punishment had gradually ceased to be a spectacle" in Europe (9). In Record ofA Journey to Hell we are not faced with a seachange in the discourse and practice of a society. Rather, we must come to 112Charles D. Orzech grips with and seek to understand the persistence of images oftorture as well as actual torture and public execution in some modern Chinese societies. The Chinese hells—more properly purgatories, as punishment there is not eternal—are a product of cultural adaptation and interaction. Before the first century of our era we have evidence of only the most attenuated notions of the underworld, a "yellow springs" (huang-yiian) where "all, good and bad, huddled together in darkness being guarded jealously by the god of the Soil who ended by devouring them" (Thompson 29). The ruling elite avoided this fate through elaborate ancestral ritual indexed by the possession of a surname. Social status was, from the earliest times, "inscribed" on tablets which gave visible form to both social and cosmological hierarchies (Li 247-54). However, the rise of the Taoist Celestial Masters movement (T'ien-shih tao, second century) with its heavenly and infernal bureaucracies soon coupled with newly imported Indian Buddhist descriptions of the workings of karma and the hells. The result of this amalgam is the popular Chinese vision of the underworld as a vast bureaucracy centered on ten "courts," and headed by Yama, the South Asian lord of the dead (Seidel). At death the soul is summoned before the lords of hell who administer punishments appropriate to the misdeeds of the soul. After almost interminable periods of suffering, often in all of the hells in succession, the soul is reborn as a human, an animal, or even an insect, to start the whole process again. By the tenth century this distinctly Chinese version ofthe underworld had found wide dissemination and was the framework for worship and ritual directed to the recently dead.18 Unlike the South Asian prototypes, Chinese hells appear to be modeled on the imperial bureaucracy and administered by a hellish staff. The "court" layout often major and numerous subsidiary hells mimics Chinese palace and temple architecture and is quite distinct from the mandala-like layout found in "orthodox" Buddhist prototypes. Taoist priests, Buddhist monks and nuns, and a variety of folk practitioners and mediums act as intermediaries between this world and the other. They grease the wheels of the bureaucracy with their ritual knowledge and with community offerings to obtain release for imprisoned souls. Knowledge of the workings of the underworld is, according... (shrink)

Why and how do women engage with Buddhism and philosophy? The present volume aims to answer these questions by examining the life and philosophy of a Korean Zen Buddhist nun, Kim Iryŏp (1896–1971). The daughter of a pastor, Iryŏp began questioning Christian doctrine as a teenager. In a few years, she became increasingly involved in women’s movements in Korea, speaking against society’s control of female sexuality and demanding sexual freedom and free divorce for women. While in her late twenties, an (...) existential turn in her thinking led Iryŏp to Buddhism; she eventually joined a monastery and went on to become a leading figure in the female monastic community until her death. -/- After taking the tonsure, Iryŏp followed the advice of her teacher and stopped publishing for more than two decades. She returned to the world of letters in her sixties, using her strong, distinctive voice to address fundamental questions on the scope of identity, the meaning of being human, and the value of existence. In her writing, she frequently adopted an autobiographical style that combined her experiences with Buddhist teachings. Through a close analysis of Iryŏp’s story, Buddhist philosophy and practice in connection with East Asian new women’s movements, and continental philosophy, this volume offers a creative interpretation of Buddhism as both a philosophy and a religion actively engaged with lives as they are lived. It presents a fascinating narrative on how women connect with the world—whether through social issues such as gender inequality, a Buddhist worldview, or existential debates on human existence and provides readers with a new way of philosophizing that is transformative and deeply connected with everyday life. Women and Buddhist Philosophy: Engaging Zen Master Kim Iryŏp will be of primary interest to scholars and students of Buddhism, Buddhist and comparative philosophy, and gender and Korean studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Distance of Irish Modernism: Memory, Narrative, Representation by John GreaneyXiaojing Chen and Hamid FarahmandianThe Distance of Irish Modernism: Memory, Narrative, Representation, John Greaney; 248 pp. London: Blooms-bury Academic, 2022.In his thought-provoking book The Distance of Irish Modernism, John Greaney embarks on a metacritical journey to unravel the paradoxical nature of Irish modernist fictions. The book delves into the enigma of how these works serve as (...) vessels for national and transnational histories while simultaneously presenting themselves as elusive and peculiar in terms of their temporal and geographical settings. Greaney skillfully examines the complexities of Irish modernism in the twenty-first century through close reading, formal analysis, narratology, philosophical accounts of literature, historicist and materialist approaches, and postcolonial and world literature paradigms. The result is a groundbreaking narrative that challenges existing notions of Irish modernism and offers a fresh perspective on the cultural memories they portray.IThe book's introduction, "The Vicinities of Irish Modernism," sets the stage for an engaging exploration of the subject matter. Greaney adeptly frames the paradox inherent in Irish modernist fictions and introduces the central question of how these texts function as mirrors of historical events and realities. By drawing attention to the proximities and distances between modernist aesthetic practices and the history of modernity in Ireland and beyond, the introduction lays the foundation for the subsequent chapters' analysis.In chapter 1, "Samuel Beckett and the Contexts of Modernism," Greaney evaluates the works of the renowned Irish author. Greaney meticulously examines Beckett's literary legacy, probing the contexts that shaped his artistic expression. Through comprehensive scrutiny, Greaney highlights how Beckett's writings transcend conventional boundaries and invite interpretations that go beyond the historical and geographical confines of Ireland. This chapter masterfully [End Page 251] combines textual analysis with an exploration of Beckett's broader contributions to the modernist movement."Brian, Flann, Myles and the Origins of Irish Modernism," the second chapter, delves into the works of one man—but three pivotal figures—in Irish literature: Brian O'Nolan, who wrote under the pen names Flann O'Brien and Myles na gCopaleen. Greaney uncovers the origins of Irish modernism through the lens of this iconic author, shedding light on his creative methodology and his impact on the Irish literary landscape. By situating his works within the broader modernist context, Greaney reveals the ways in which this writer revolutionized Irish literature and paved the way for the future generations of Irish modernists.Chapter 3, "Elizabeth Bowen's Modernist History," focuses on well-known novelist Elizabeth Bowen. Greaney conducts an in-depth analysis of Bowen's modernist approach to historical events, providing an intriguing investigation of how her texts intertwine with the collective memory of Ireland. Bowen's unique style and intricate narratives come under scrutiny, offering readers a profound understanding of her role in shaping Irish modernism and her contribution to the literary canon.Moving forward, "Kate O'Brien's 'Flawed' Modernism" explores the works of another significant figure in Irish literature. Greaney examines the perceived flaws in O'Brien's modernist approach, challenging conventional criticism and reevaluating her contributions to the Irish modernist tradition. By deftly analyzing O'Brien's works, the chapter seeks to reposition her within the context of Irish modernism, enriching the reader's comprehension of this multifaceted literary movement.The subsequent chapter, "John McGahern and the Limits of Irish Modernism," centers on an author whose writings have earned him a prominent place in Irish literature. Greaney investigates the boundaries and constraints of Irish modernism as portrayed in McGahern's oeuvre. By unraveling the complexities of McGahern's narratives, the chapter sheds light on how his works both align with and challenge the conventions of Irish modernism. This nuanced exploration opens up new perspectives on the extent of Irish modernist expression in the literary realm.The epilogue serves as a captivating conclusion, drawing together the threads of the preceding chapters to present a cohesive reflection on the book's core themes. Greaney reinforces the idea that the examination of Irish modernism necessitates a multifaceted approach, one that embraces various critical lenses and paradigms. The epilogue encourages readers to reevaluate their perceptions of Irish modernism, urging them... (shrink)