Showing papers on "Lust published in 2007"

For lust of knowing : the orientalists and their enemies

Abstract: Robert Irwin's history of Orientalism leads from Ancient Greece to the present. He shows that, whether making philological comparisons between Arabic and Hebrew, cataloguing the coins of Fatimid Egypt or establishing the basic chronology of Harun al-Rashid's military campaigns against Byzantium, scholars have been unified not by politics or ideology but by their shared obsession. "For Lust of Knowing" is an extraordinary, passionate book, both a sustained argument and a brilliant work of original scholarship.

Yoga, Eugenics, and Spiritual Darwinism in the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract: Put briefly: perhaps the entire evolution of the spirit is a question of the body; it is the history of the development of a higher body that emerges into our sensibility. The organic is rising to yet higher levels. Our lust for knowledge of nature is a means through which the body desires to perfect itself. Or rather: hundreds of thousands of experiments are made to change the nourishment, the mode of living and of dwelling in the body; consciousness and evaluations in the body, all kinds of pleasure and displeasure, are signs of these changes and experiments. In the long run, it is not a question of man at all: he is to be overcome (Nietzsche 1967: 358).

The Cinema of Ang Lee: The Other Side of the Screen

Abstract: Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration 1. Introduction: Ang Lee-A History 2. Ang Lee as Director: His Position in Asian and World Cinema 3. Confucian Values and Cultural Displacement in Pushing Hands 4. Transgressing Boundaries of Gender and Culture in The Wedding Banquet 5. Globalization and Cultural Identity in Eat Drink Man Woman 6. Opposition and Resolution in Sense and Sensibility 7. Fragmentary Narratives/Fragmented Identities in The Ice Storm 8. Race, Gender, Class, and Social Identity in Ride with the Devil 9. Wuxia Narrative and Transnational Chinese Identity in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 10. The Ultimate Outsider: Hulk 11. Transcending Gender in Brokeback Mountain 12. Eroticism and Performance in Lust/Caution 13. Memory, Narrative, and Transformation in Taking Woodstock 14. Storytelling and Truth in Life of Pi: A Spiritual Journey 15. Conclusion: The Dream of Cinema Notes Bibliography Index

Critiquing the excess of empire : A Synkrisis of john of patmos and Dio of Prusa

Abstract: Despite their many differences, John the Seer of Patmos and Dio the rhetorphilosopher of Prusa share a basic critique of the Roman Empire. Limiting the comparison to Rev. 18 and Dio's twelfth Olympic Oration (with an important reference to Dio's thirteenth Oration), this essay concludes that John and Dio critique the violence, exploitation and luxury of Rome, grounding their analysis in divine sovereignty over earthly rulers. This common critique suggests that John's message may have been sympathetically heard by a wider audience than simply a few Christian communities, and that Revelation should be reevaluated in this light.

On the Subjectivity of Lustful States of Mind

Abstract: This paper explores certain subjective dimensions of sexuality by proposing that erotic experience is predicated on an experience of otherness within the self. I suggest that the ability to lust where one loves is contingent on the capacity to bring this otherness of self forward in the context of attachment. The dampening or deadening of desire in long-term relationships may be understood, counterintuitively, not as a failure of the integration of lust with love but as a breakdown of the normative dissociative processes on which the emergence of lust depends. I theorize that the otherness of lustful states of mind emerges via the impact and dynamic interplay of social regulatory intrusions on identity formation. This understanding helps explain both the psychic tensions and potential sources of breakdown present in combining lust with love.

Sport, ethos and education

Abstract: The British climber David Sharp suffered a slow, painful death on Everest in May. As he lay dying, 40 climbers passed him by. Did their lust for the summit override their humanity? Peter Gillman investigatesA few days before Christmas last year, David Sharp sent an e-mail to a climbing friend in Kathmandu, saying: “I’m (stupidly) contemplating a final (final) attempt on Everest.” The friend, the New Zealander Jamie McGuinness, had been on Everest with Sharp when he failed in an attempt in 2003. Sharp had failed again in 2004, vowing not to return. Yet McGuinness was not surprised that Sharp was intent on a third try: “David knew he could do it, but he still had to prove it.” Another climbing friend, Richard Dougan, says that where Everest was concerned, “David had stars in his eyes.”

Le Donne di Dante: An Historical Study of Female Characters in The Divine Comedy

Abstract: This thesis explores the characterizations of women in Dante’s Divine Comedy and uses this information to assess Dante’s opinion of women, including their behaviors, traits, and roles in society. It approaches The Comedy from a specific historical angle and requires a basic knowledge of the poem in order to understand some of the references. The entire text incorporates historical sources and evidence to support these interpretations of women in The Comedy, as they demonstrate why and how Dante might have characterized women in the way he did. Many of the arguments are supported by the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas and several texts by Aristotle, as both of these writers influenced Dante’s writing. The first chapter examines the women of the Inferno, especially those punished for lust, and determines that Dante considered women to be less reasonable and more susceptible to temptation than men. This chapter also highlights Dante’s use of the defiled female body to portray the perversion that results from sin as well as the dangers of female sexuality. The second chapter looks at the women of Purgatorio and deduces that Dante placed immense power in feminine prayer. Most of the evidence for this argument comes from the fact that several male souls in Purgatory emphasize the importance of the prayers from their female relatives in shortening their stay in Purgatory. The third chapter studies the women of Paradiso and shows that Dante believed that women possessed free will that allowed them to resist temptation and make rational decisions. This chapter also shows that Dante had a high regard for mothers, as is evident by his worship of the Virgin Mary. It also shows that Dante advocated separate social spheres for men and women and endowed each sex with a different set of appropriate virtues. The final chapter focuses on Beatrice and shows that, although Dante believed women inherently lacked the courage, strength, and intelligence of men, they possessed the capacity for revelation, which they could use not only to help themselves understand divine truth but also reveal these truths to others. Overall, the paper concludes that, although Dante agreed with many of his contemporaries that women were physically and mentally weaker than men and that they should not take up the same social functions as men, he believed that, in the afterlife, men and women could achieve equality and that, due to their immense spiritual power, women could potentially become perfect. Table of

The Rub: Sexual Interplay as a Nexus of Lust, Romantic Love, and Emotional Attachment

Abstract: Sexual interplay and intercourse itself involve not just an erotic impulse, but a web of mating drives that coincide and diverge. Affectionate, romantic, and companionate feelings color the sexual experience to varying degrees in conjunction with lust itself. The rhythmic cadence of each of these mating urges during sexual interplay is just as important as the orgasmic goal. The role of the “rub”—a kind of constructive friction, of healthful pushing against, of a vital opposition between self and other—creates a dynamic excitement that has hitherto been underappreciated by our focus on orgasm itself. The experience of opposing another and being opposed promotes psychic growth and change. For their invaluable insights in relation to earlier drafts of this paper, I am greatly indebted to Drs. Dodi Goldman, Ladson Hinton, Raelene Gold, Michael Horne, Judy Kantrowitz, Adrienne Harris, Stephen Seligman, and Joyce Slochower. For his similarly incisive feedback, I am grateful as well to Joseph Canarelli.

Defeating the Male Monster in Halloween and Halloween H2O

Abstract: In "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Films," Carol Clover argued that Laurie Strode, of Halloween, became empowered as the film's Final Girl by fighting off Michael's monstrous attacks long enough to be rescued. However, Laurie's need to be rescued by a male figure, Michael's psychiatrist, negates her characterization as a Final Girl. It is not until Halloween: H2O (1998) that Laurie becomes empowered as a Final Girl, by taking on Michael's own masculine weapons and lust for violence in finally defeating the monster.

Reading John Climacus: Rhetorical Argumentation, Literary Convention and the Tradition of Monastic Formation

Abstract: This thesis offers an investigation of the literary form and the literary composition of The Ladder by John Climacus, as well as a study of how the author uses the tradition to form his reader. Besides a brief introduction with a survey of the previous research, the study comprises four chapters. In the first chapter it is shown, from a number of detailed text analyses, that the material in the steps is not arranged at random, but ordered according different literary conventions in order to lead the reader along a specific trail of teaching. In the second chapter the observations are confirmed by a comparison with literary practice. From the considerable correspondence regarding the literary composition between The Ladder and the moral treatises of Seneca the Younger and Plutarch of Chaironeia, it is argued that we need to revise our understanding of the literary form of the text. What is at hand is not a gnomic collection, but an argumentative moral treatise. In the third chapter The Ladder is investigated in terms of literary style. It is shown that the composition of the text, to a great extent, seems to be determined by stylistic ideals. The fragmentary impression of the text, it is argued, is not unlikely the effect of what has been called the jeweled style of late antique poetry and prose. In the fourth chapter it is demonstrated, not just that John Climacus to a great extent is working with the monastic tradition in terms of texts, but also that he uses texts and textual patterns to suit his own purpose and argument. It is argued in contrast to previous research that The Ladder ought to be understood, not as a systematisation or a summary of the doctrines of the desert fathers, but as a teaching where the tradition is reused with a specific aim: to prepare the monk in the monastery for solitude. It is also shown how John Climacus rereads the heritage from Evagrius Ponticus; the focus in the ascetic struggle is changed from anger and the attainment of a pure mind, to lust and a purified and transformed body.

Comparative excellence : new essays on Shakespeare and Johnson

Abstract: David Bevington, "The Siren Call of Earlier Editorial Practice: Why Johnson Failed to Respond Fully to His Own Intuitions About the Principles of Textual Criticism and Editing" Robert DeMaria, "Samuel Johnson and the Saxon Shakespeare" Peter Holland, "Playing Johnson's Shakespeare" Nicholas Hudson, "Shakespeare's Ghost: Johnson, Shakespeare, Garrick and Constructing the English Middle-Class" Jack Lynch, "The Dignity of an Ancient: Johnson Edits the Editors" Anne McDermott, "Johnson's Editing of Shakespeare in the Dictionary" Claude Rawson, "Cooling to a Gypsy's Lust: Johnson, Shakespeare and Cleopatra" Stephen Orgel, "Johnson's Lear" Aaron Santesso, "'Now in London Place Him': Shakespeare and Johnson as Londoners" Tiffany Stern, "'I Do Wish That You Had Mentioned Garrick': The Absence of David Ganick in Johnson's Shakespeare".

Lust, caution and other stories

Abstract: In 1940s Shanghai, beautiful young Jiazhi spends her days playing mahjong and drinking tea with high society ladies. But China is occupied by invading Japanese forces and things are not always what they seem in wartime. Jiazhi's life is a front. A patriotic student radical, her mission is to seduce a powerful employee of the occupying government and lead him to the assassin's bullet. Yet as she waits for him to arrive at their liaison, Jiazhi begins to wonder if she is cut out to be a femme fatale and coldly take Mr Yi to his death. Or is she beginning to fall in love with him? A passionate tale of espionage, deception and love, "Lust, Caution" is accompanied here by four further dazzling short stories by Eileen Chang.

Desire, ritual, and cuisine

Abstract: In the past decade, what might be called a collective “lust for food” has permeated mainstream American culture. One need not look further than magazine racks, cable television shows, and the Internet to find a society in the grip of an obsession with food and its purveyors. As a departure from the 1950s meat and mashed potatoes mentality, we have evolved into an era in which the desire for creative and beautiful food seems insatiable. This lust for food in popular culture has also been reflected in academic culture: Food studies as a scholarly area of inquiry has seen an explosive growth, with the development of a number of scholarly associations, journals, classes, and conferences devoted to food and foodways (Cargill, 2005; Goldstein, 2002). This interdisciplinary area of study spans the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, and draws from anthropology, sociology, and history, among others. Psychology and psychoanalysis, however, are curiously underrepresented in this body of work, often because they are not viewed by other scholars as relevant. Given that the historical focus of psychoanalysis has been almost exclusively on pathological eating behaviors such as clinical eating disorders and childhood feeding disturbances (Crastnopol, 2001; A. Freud, 1946; Krueger, 1997; Petrucelli & Stuart, 2001; Shainess, 1979), this has served to reinforce the long-standing criticism from both within and outside of the discipline that psychology and psychoanalysis are overly focused on the individual and fail to adequately take social context into account (Ainslie & Brabeck, 2003; Cushman, 1996; Ingham, 1996; Schwartz, White, & Lutz, 1992). In order to more fully engage in the academic dialogue on the study of food and society, this paper advances an interdisci

Eteocles' Moral Awareness in Aeschylus' Seven

Abstract: Eteocles displays outstanding moral awareness for a tragic hero. He enters the Seven innocent of wrongdoing against father or brother. His religious understanding is extraordinary in the shield scene, and he rightly accepts the inevitable fratricide, choosing the ethic of the warrior and city-defender. He concedes that he is inspired by a Fury-driven battle lust, which is more amor fati than fraternal hatred. Though "free will" is strictly an anachronism, he and the chorus assume throughout that he possesses sufficient autonomy to decide and act, even if this restricts him to accepting stoically the inevitable.

Koranna struggle against the colonial church: the case of Brandewynsfontein

Abstract: Although Goliath Yzerbek, in his struggle to safeguard the perceived land rights of the Koranna, had to deal with many more obstacles than the colonial church, only the interactions of the Berlin Missionary Society with the Koranna of Brandewynsfontein will be reviewed in this study. The story of Brandewynsfontein offers two perspectives: on the one hand, the colonial church's insatiable lust for land and the devastating results thereof for the Koranna; and on the other, one individual's ceaseless struggle to retain the land that rightfully belonged to his people.

George and Ruth: An Interview with George Elliott Clarke about Writing and Ethics

Abstract: KK: In your 2002 book Odysseys Home you describe yourself as the type of academic who ‘wears placards, leads protests, shouts through bullhorns’ and enters the public square ‘with a dash of menace – like sugar – in my speech’ (‘Embarkation,’ 6). Later in the collection you also express wariness about the ‘awful intoxication’ of literary theory, which offers up the possibility ‘that one can do socio-political good, dispelling illiberal forces of malice and ignorance, delivering into the illumination of academic discourse entire canons – or communities – which have been consigned to the limbo of marginality’ (‘Harris,’ 253). Can you discuss how you see the ethical role of the literary critic in light of both your personal convictions and your warning about avoiding this ‘missionary position’? GEC: I’m not sure it’s possible to avoid the pitfalls of positivist humanism, or of materialist progressivism: the lust to enforce (good) change in the public sphere, especially in terms of engineering the uplift of marginalized communities, may spur on great, strategic feats of criticism – a Panama Canal–sized bibliography here, a Civil War–combative anthology there. One may very well want to feel the missionary zeal to enlighten dark continents of ivory towers, so as to have the energy to blast through barricades, logjams, and to blaze proverbial new paths of thought. Yet, a measure of caution – I mean, humility – is also necessary, so that, in the flush of ‘discovery,’ one does not go about trampling down the local exotica, or uprooting flowers because they resemble weeds. I think an ethical critical methodology is exemplified by the magnificent anthropological study Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (1977), by Lawrence W. Levine. A EuropeanAmerican scholar and, thus, half-divorced from the lived experience of African America, Dr Levine manages, in this brilliant book, to excavate the consciousness of a people. It is a spellbinding accomplishment. It seems to me that Dr Levine acts, in his text, with wholesome, holy humility: he listens to Black Americans; he holds up a stethoscope, so to speak, to their paper archives and their vinyl records, and he records, objectively, what he hears – or what is sounded. The soundscape reproduced is neither minstrelsy nor the bourgeoisie, but the teeth-sucking, foot-stomping, handclapping, and piano-tickling reality of church, brothel, bar, and worksite. By doing the people the favour of letting them speak (through many forms

Totalitarian Lust: From Salò to Abu Ghraib

Abstract: "Totalitarian Lust: From Salo to Abu Ghraib": As Dahlia Lithwick expressed it recently, the purpose of our open torture camps, scientific torture methods and torture laws is not to manipulate or destroy people, nor to win a war against a conceptually volatile representation of terrorism. The rationale of torture precisely in its most arbitrary, irrational and useless forms, as shown in Abu Ghraib or in Guantanamo, is the spectacle of an absolute power. This explains why torture nowadays (as it was in the era of the Inquisition under Spanish-Christian imperialism) has become a public fact, a media show, and even an academic debate (unlike other even more lethal topics such as the use of depleted or enriched uranium in postmodern missile warfare). Spectacle is not just a system of representations, as cultural studies scholars believed. Its function is the constitution of hard facts, powerful realities, and new orders. My essay points out the mere fact that in the history of modern civilization, as defined by the Christian theology (Eymerich), or by enlightened secular philosophy (Sade), torture has had and still has a moral and political function constitutive of any rational system of totalitarian power.

Can Christians Be Patriots

Abstract: In the middle of her wonderful, difficult book, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine,1 Ellen Charry works through the Sermon on the Mount. After a blessed beginning with the Beatitudes, Jesus launches into a list of seemingly extravagant ethical demands on such matters as divorce, vengeance, and retaliation. Any sense of blessedness that we might feel at the beginning of his sermon dissipates as Jesus condemns lust of the heart, evil in the eye, anger, and other perfectly normal human emotions. I take some satisfaction in having steered clear of divorce, but the roving eye and the lustful heart is me all over. What does Charry make of such searing divine scrutiny? She concludes, “The rhetoric aims at making the hearers uncomfortable.”

Tell it like it is! The case to include the story of the rape of Tamar in children's bibles as an awareness tool : colloquium article

Abstract: This article contains the story of a story. This is the story of the ancient narrative of the rape of Tamar, set in the ancient Near East, found in the Old Testament book of 2 Samuel, Chapter 13, and how it became a contemporary instrument as an awareness tool about sexual violence. The "too hot to handle" story of the rape of Tamar is absent in children's Bibles. This narrative has the potential to engage children on the issues of rape, gender-violence, love and lust. I will strongly advocate for this text to be included in children's Bibles.

Tell it like it is! the case to include the story of the rape of tamar in children's bibles as an awareness tool 1

Abstract: This article contains the story of a story. This is the story of the ancient narrative of the rape of Tamar, set in the ancient Near East, found in the Old Testament book of 2 Samuel, Chapter 13, and how it became a contemporary instrument as an awareness tool about sexual violence. The “too hot to handle” story of the rape of Tamar is absent in children’s Bibles. This narrative has the potential to engage children on the issues of rape, gender-violence, love and lust. I will strongly advocate for this text to be included in children’s Bibles.

The Rape of Lucrece (Le Viol de Lucrèce) (review)

Abstract: The Rape of Lucrece (Le Viol de Lucrece) Presented by the MC93 Bobigny, the Theatre National du Luxembourg, and the Theater im Pfalzbau Ludwigshafen, at the Theatre National de Toulouse, Toulouse, France. October 17-20, 2006. Adapted for the stage and directed by Marie-Louise Bischofberger. Translation by Yves Bonnefoy. Set by Raymonde Couvreu. Lighting by Marie-Christine Soma. Sound by Nathalie Cabrol. Choreography by Arco Renz. Costumes by Marie-Louise Bischofberger, Jean-Daniel Vuillermoz, Comedie Francaise. With Pascal Bongard (Narrator, Tarquin, the Nurse, a Messenger, Collatine), and Veronique Sacri (The Wife, Lucrece). In his 1594 narrative poem, William Shakespeare plunges the reader in medias res at the heart of the crime. The poetic text compels us to follow Tarquin's unnatural pilgrimage to Lucrece's shrine of chastity. In Bischofberger's 2006 adaptation, we followed a different and unusual guide into this tale: a twenty-first-century couple tells a bedtime story of love, lust and martyred chastity. This exploitation of the dramatic nature of Shakespeare's poem in both its poetic and dramatic translation was grounded on the theme of the fracture. The poem has been fractured by its author who gave it a hybrid nature, both poetic and dramatic, then fractured by the translator, Yves Bonnefoy, who transposed the inner dynamic of its words into a foreign tongue; lastly, it was fractured by the director who gave the poem in translation a full theatrical shape. The fractured text of The Rape of Lucrece was a significant raw material for the audience as it already symbolized the discordant world of the protagonists. The polyphonic effect of the Shakespearean text was carried a step further by Bischofberger. Firstly, she chose to modify the argument so as to lull the spectator into the tale of Tarquin and Lucrece; but this was not enough. The scenography chose to retain the text's poetical and philosophical culture at the margins of the stage. The Argument of the poem was turned into a choric interlude enabling both audience and characters to enter the action with the same subtle brutality as in the Shakespearean poem. A woman entered in an elegant, immaculate evening gown, followed by her husband in a dark suit. A small door opened upstage to let them on the main stage: a massive reclining surface torn in the middle by an impressive trap system bordered on the left-hand side corner by a simple white mattress. The playing space was set up as a resolutely modern loft with eclectic objects (a Spartan helmet, a sword, a basin, pieces of armor, a locker, a lamp, and on each side two music stands) scattered about. The bedroom, as a visual and diegetic hub, was slightly off-center. The bed loomed over the central abyss, and its unsteady position foreshadowed the chaotic intercourse to come. At the very beginning of the performance, the couple circled around the wooden floor of the stage before settling amorously on the bed. The sheer contrast between the military paraphernalia invading three corners of the reclining platform stage and the bed was both an ominous warning and a way of establishing this prologue as part of an archetypal world of courtly love. The couple seemed oblivious to the visual chaos around them and absorbed in trying to stop time and to enter the mythical stage of absolute love. The husband offered to tell his wife a tale of love and dignity, of sadness and cruelty. Suddenly, the amorous face-to-face was turned into a cruel game between lovers. The husband-narrator started putting on pieces of the armor before ending his prologue and lying on the bed with his wife. The unnatural superimposition of the military and the domestic worlds foreshadowed the imminent rape. We, as well as the characters, were on a dramatic threshold. The Prologue was about to give way to the main plot and the characters were about to alter their identities to perform the rape. The pieces of armor were no longer mere stage objects, but full props, dramatizing the poetic paradox of Tarquin's armor of nudity: "he doth despise / His naked armour of still-slaughtered lust. …

Whoring Priests and Godly Citizens: Law, Morality, and Clerical Sexual Misconduct in Late Medieval London

Abstract: In 1483, William Caxton published his translation of The Book of the Knight of the Tower — or, in Caxton’s title, The booke which the knyght of the toure made and speketh of many fayre ensamples and thensygnementys and techyng of his doughters.1 The Book of the Knight, written in the late fourteenth century by the French aristocrat Geoffroy de La Tour Landry, was meant to serve as a guide to proper behaviour for young aristocratic women; in Caxton’s translation, it would almost certainly have been read by London’s haute bourgeoisie, too, important as that market was for Caxton’s products.2 The Book offered up a highly entertaining collection of tales drawn from biblical exempla, saints’ lives, chronicles, fabliaux and other sources3 as well as the Knight’s own experience as a northern French aristocrat. The appeal of the stories undoubtedly lay in their commixture of salacious detail and moralistic retribution.4 This narrative style was shown to its best advantage in one of the Book’s recurring topoi, the unbridled lust of (some) men of religion and women’s dangerous but irresistible sexual attraction to them.5 In the Knight’s Book, fornicating monks and priests inevitably came to a sticky end, targets of bloody vengeance wrought by deceived husbands and fathers, in plotlines that did not bother with questions of due legal process. It is easy to imagine a late medieval London alderman nodding vigorously as the clerics’ unrighteousness was brutally punished: the alderman, too, had to deal with this problem of whoring priests.

Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing. The Orientalists and their Enemies

Abstract: L’Orientalisme n’est pas mort contrairement aux vaticinations de quelques participants du Congres des Orientalistes, convoque a Paris, pour commemorer le Centenaire du premier (1873), tenu a l’epoque de son affirmation. Cent ans apres, l’ambiance vecue etait celle du post-colonialisme et du tiers-mondisme qui eurent un impact devastateur sur le prestige de cette branche du savoir. La publication de Orientalism (1978) par Edward Said a declenche de nouveau le debat en imputant a l’orientalisme...