Articoli di riviste sul tema "Civilization, western – fiction"

This study focuses on the clash between two civilizations, i.e., Islam and the West in works of fiction that were produced after the September 11 attacks and that deal with the attacks. The novel selected for this study is Falling Man (2007) by Don DeLillo. Through critical engagement by Samuel P.Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations", this study tries to discover how the clash has been presented in the novel. The conflict portrayed in the novel has been analyzed qualitatively through Miles et al. 'Noting Patterns and Themes' and by using archival methods. Islamist terrorism, Religion Islam, Financial opportunities, and Western Imperialism are depicted as the bone of contention between the two civilizations. The writer tries to resist the notion that Western civilization is imperialistic and portrays Islam as a religion advocating terrorism.

Houellebecq’s fiction isdiscussed, contested and critiqued, not only as a series of aesthetic objects but alsoin political, ideological or moral terms. This contribution is an invitation to thinkabout the centre of gravity inthe triangle of realism-fiction-authority in Submission, Michel Houellebecq’smost controversial novel. We advancethe hypothesis that Islam in Submissionhasa fictional function analogous to that of post-humanism in Atomised.That would be essentially a matter of surface, provocation to draw attention to an older deeper crisis. This crisis would be that of Western civilization, onethatFrance willnot escapefrom, characterizedby a process of generalized«untying», or even«disintegration» of « values»and the world that they formed.

Authors' note: Science fiction writers construct an imaginary future; historians attempt to reconstruct the past. Ultimately, both are seeking to understand the present. In this essay, we blend the two genres to imagine a future historian looking back on a past that is our present and (possible) future. The occasion is the tercentenary of the end of Western culture (1540 – 2073); the dilemma being addressed is how we – the children of the Enlightenment – failed to act on robust information about climate change and knowledge of the damaging events that were about to unfold. Our historian concludes that a second Dark Age had fallen on Western civilization, in which denial and self-deception, rooted in an ideological fixation on “free” markets, disabled the world's powerful nations in the face of tragedy. Moreover, the scientists who best understood the problem were hamstrung by their own cultural practices, which demanded an excessively stringent standard for accepting claims of any kind – even those involving imminent threats. Here, our future historian, living in the Second People's Republic of China, recounts the events of the Period of the Penumbra (1988 – 2073) that led to the Great Collapse and Mass Migration (2074).

Abstract There have been numerous studies of the frontier myth as it operated in the early republic and throughout our history. As a result of this work, we know a lot about the frontier myth, its history, elements, and ideological functioning. We know less, however, about how that myth developed when its ideological elements met the empirical realities of western emigration. I argue that four specific cultural fictions—erasure, civilization, community, and democracy—are integral elements of the larger fiction of the American frontier myth. By understanding them through the vehicle of the Donner Party narratives, we can deepen our understanding of that myth and the ways in which it operates and resonates throughout the national culture and contributes to the development of American national identity.

The essay discusses images of the future in solarpunk and post-apocalyptic fiction, focusing on their distinct approach to the narratives of progress, science, and individualism. The dystopian perspective of post-apocalyptic fiction is juxtaposed with the hopeful stance of solarpunk stories in order to outline the attempts to move beyond environmental pessimism and to imagine a liveable future. A reading of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), Erik M. Conway and Naomi Oreskes’s The Collapse of Western Civilization (2014), and Omar El Akkad’s American War (2017) provides an overview of early 21st-century dystopian motifs and visions, while the ideas and development of solarpunk fiction are discussed on the basis of three anthologies of short stories: Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Ecospeculation (2017), Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers (2018), and Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures (2021). The aim of the essay is to argue that apocalyptic and solarpunk fiction stand in a relationship of apposition to one another, representing dominant and emergent structures of feeling.

Films have the potential to play an active role in determining when and how to evoke certain realities depending on which issues are selected, what discourses are highlighted, how observations are framed, what associations (positive and negative) are established, which symbols are selected for representation, and in what ways thecontent is treated. Many studies conclude that Muslims and Islam have been receiving a negative treatment in films. This study evaluates major propositions and findings of recent research on trends and patterns of Muslims’ depictions in fiction films. The literature is evaluated for six themes, namely clash of civilization or arbitration,stereotyping as deficient or efficient information processing, framing as the “other,” marginalization and/or prominence, representative and referential, and market driven and/or popular taste.

Previous studies have found that the expected life span of eminent personalities may vary systematically according to the domain of achievement. The current investigation examines this phenomenon more closely by 1) introducing methodological controls for potential gender and cohort artifacts, 2) adding substantive predictors (e.g., suicide and homicide) that provide clues regarding the substantive basis for the differences, 3) scrutinizing a greater variety of achievement domains in both creativity and leadership, and 4) using a non-Western sample of historical figures (1,632 Japanese born between 450 and 1883 A.D.). Multiple regression analyses revealed domain contrasts in life expectancy (e.g., the shorter life spans of fiction authors and political figures, but the longer life spans of religious leaders and sword makers). In addition, the analyses helped decipher the extent to which these domain differences were due to violent death or to the stress of occupying high positions of power.

The increasing urbanization of the Arab world, especially the emergence of huge and ultra-modern cities such as Riyadh, Dubai, and Doha in the Arab Gulf, has renewed discussions and even debates on the nature of the Arabian civilization. Some people maintain that urban places such as the above-mentioned are only copies of Western cities within Arabia, and that there is no such thing as an Arab city, socioculturally speaking. This debate has also taken place informally in the office of the English Department at Qassim University, in a spare time that a number of faculty and staff (including the authors of this article) happened to have. We decided to take it further and look into the question more deeply. Therefore, we covered some relevant literature, including Islam’s important perspective on the issue. We eventually came up with the conclusion that the Arab city does exist and has existed long before the Industrial Revolution. Accounts of real and fictional cities in the Arab world, predating the industrial era, prove the validity of this assertion. Without advocating seclusion or withdrawal into themselves, we think that Arabs should stop thinking they owe the concepts of city, urbanization and therefore civilization to the West. There is certainly a lot that can be learned from each other on both sides, but importing everything wholesale from the West can only result in increasing social problems.

This essay advances a theory of black classicism as a mode of resistance to the dominant narrative of American history, according to which the United States was to be a new Rome, rooted in the best traditions of classical antiquity yet destined to surpass its antecedent through the redeeming power of American exceptionalism. In the late nineteenth century this narrative reemerged as a means of getting beyond sectional conflict and refocusing on imperial expansion and economic growth. For Charles Chesnutt, a post-Reconstruction African American writer, the progress of American civilization was a dubious notion, a fiction suited to the nation's imperial purposes. In opposition, Chesnutt developed an outsider classicism, challenging the figuration of the United States as inheritor of the mantle of Western civilization by linking the nation to the ancient world through the institution of slavery—a very present relic of the past.

Existentialism in Indian English Novel has its roots in western philosophy. Since our civilization has been heading towards westernization, and the life of man has been tending towards modernization. It has become inevitable for man to ask himself who he is and what his relation is to the physical and social world. The modern Indian is surrounded by the forces which are commanded and controlled by existentialist dilemmas. Modern fictional hero is a split-personality or a tortured individual through whose mind the novelist points out the social or national or human conditions. Modern heroes are not only emotionally wronged but also shaken at the existential level. The problems of existence are too wide to be managed by the modern man. The modern novel portrays outsiders, foreigners, who are empty in feelings, or incapable of communication, or unable to relate themselves meaningfully to the surroundings. Thus modern’s fiction in English reflects modern human predicament; life surrounded by forces of anxiety.

Human biology creates empathy through storytelling and emulation. Throughout history, humans have honed their capacity to understand optimum storytelling and relate to others in new ways. The bioethical concepts of Leon Kass’s Wisdom of Repugnance and Arthur Caplan’s Yuck Factor attempt to describe, and in Kass’s case even support, society’s abhorrence of that which is strange, against God or nature, or simply the “other.” However, speculative fiction has been assessing the “other” for as long as we’ve told speculative stories. The last thousand years of social liberalization and technological progress in Western civilization can be linked to these stories through feedback loops of storytelling, technological inspiration and acceptance, and social change by growing the audience’s empathy for these speculative characters. Selecting highlights of speculative fiction as far back as the Bible and as recently as the latest movie blockbusters, society has grappled back and forth on whether monsters, superhumans, aliens, and the “other” are considered villainous, frightening and yucky, or heroic, aspirational and yummy. The larger historical arc of speculative fiction, technological acceptance and history demonstrates the clear shift from yucky to yummy. Works include The Bible, Talmud, stories of alchemists and the Brazen Head, Paradise Lost, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, gothic horror films of Germany and the U.S., Superman and the Golden Age of comics, and recent blockbusters, among others.

The article deals with the doctrine of empire by the largest Russian Slavist, V.I. Lamansky. It is noted that for Lamansky the empire is not connected with any particular type of government, such as autocracy, but is a civilizational form. Politically, empire is ductile. It can include various state formations, en­suring peace and pious order within its borders. With its state power and mili­tary might, an empire unites peoples and regions by the strength of its spiritual superiority and cultural dominance. Historically, the first example of an empire was the Roman Empire, which was reborn in the East under the influence of Christianity. After the fall of Byzantium, Russia became the successor of the idea of empire. Its role in history was to protect and preserve the peoples of the Greco-Slavic or Middle World. The Empire, as a civilizational form, cre­ated conditions for distinctive political, religious, moral and cultural develop­ment of peoples and allowed them to act as independent subjects of world-his­torical development. At the same time Lamansky showed that in the West there were also attempts to revive the Empire, but all of them were fiction and usurpation, since in Europe, starting from Charlemagne, they reproduced only external attributes of the Empire and perceived it exclusively as a large state form, ignoring the religious and moral meaning of the idea of empire. The mod­ern heirs of the empire are Anglo-Saxon nations, and the center of the Western world is moving to North America. The article shows that, according to Laman­sky, the various types of intolerance and enmity of Romano-Germanic peoples to representatives of the Greek-Slavic world are only particular cases of civi­lizational antagonism of the two worlds. Lamansky’s analysis of empire is a part of his geopolitical and civilisational doctrine, which has only in recent years begun to attract the attention of researchers.

Modern documentary filmmakers use fiction-influenced narrative styles that blur the boundaries between fact and fiction, stretching the limits and rules of the genre set by what is referred to as classic or expository documentary. Another major change in the documentary form and narrative style is the inclusion of the filmmaker in the film. As a result of filmmakers starring in their own films, interacting with the subjects, and narrating the story themselves, documentaries have become more personality driven. In these modern methods, the voices of the narrators and/or the filmmakers carry a significant importance as narrative elements. Taking five music-related documentary films into account—Lot 63, Grave C (Sam Green); Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (Fatih Akin); Metal: A Headbanger's Journey (Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen, and Jessica Joywise); The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: Metal Years (Penelope Spheeris); and Searching for Sugar Man (Malik Bendjelloul)—this paper analyzes how the voices of the narrators and/or the filmmakers are used as narrative elements, and what effects these voices have on the narrative styles and the modes of these documentaries.

Abstract: By "Updike's wager" I mean a willed decision to believe in the face of counterevidence. Emotionally Updike's wager dates back to a crisis in his teens, intellectually to another in the early 1960s, but it assumed new urgency in the 1980s and later as developments in science made belief increasingly problematic. In "On Being a Self Forever" and some of the fiction and nonfiction of his last two decades, Updike sought to reground religion on the pragmatic basis of its consequences for living. Although he remained a churchgoer throughout his life, his practical belief came to consist in a non-doctrinal faith in divine beneficence, a love of Creation, a hope for eternal life in some unimaginable form, and a conviction that belief was essential for the continuity of the ideals and culture of Western civilization.

This article examines new notions about race, ethnicity and language current in modern movements of Arabic literary and cultural revival. I argue that the Arab print market before World War I adopted the racial category of the Semite as highly relevant to Arab ethnicity and language, but the philological and literary significations of the term subverted the negative constructions affiliated with the Semitic races in Western race theories. Combining elements from the study of linguistics, religion, and political philosophy, Arabic journals, books, and works of historical fiction, created a Semitic and Arab universe, populated by grand historical figures and mesmerizing literary and cultural artifacts. Such publications advanced the notion that the Arab races belonged to Semitic cultures and civilizations whose achievements should be a source of pride and rejuvenation. These printed products also conveyed the idea that the Arabic language and Arab ethnicity can create ecumenical and pluralistic conversations. Motivated by the desire to find a rational explanation to phenomena they identified with cultural and literary decline, Arab authors also hoped to reconstruct the modes with which their Semitic and Arab ancestors dealt with questions relating to community and civilization. By publishing scientific articles on philology, literature, and linguistics, the print media illustrated that Arabic itself was a language capable of expressing complex scientific concepts and arguments.

This paper considers five episodes from Charlie Brooker’s dystopian science fiction anthology series, Black Mirror (2011–present). The episodes selected are those that—as argued in this text—depict the role of technology as replacing that of religion. To build this claim, they will be compared to one another, to the Christian biblical concepts they mirror, and to historical events related to theological debates within Christianity.Throughout the history of Western civilization, Christian belief has played an important role in shaping cultural ideologies. For that reason, it could be argued that Christian ideas continue to penetrate our cultural narratives today, despite declining self-recognition in the West as religious or spiritual. Concepts of the afterlife, omniscience, vengeance, ostracism and eternal suffering spring up in some of the least expectedplaces within popular culture today. This paper argues that Black Mirror depicts the materialization of these concepts through imagined worlds, thus signaling the modern-day specters of Christianity.

We have hitherto only considered the viewpoint of men, but now it’s time to give women a fair shot as well. Every human being has the potential to learn about and advance science and technology, thus it is not only a field that is exclusively open to one gender. In movies, women play a supporting role for the men. An examination of the ways in which culture affects the evolving discussion of gender portrayals in cinema. Science fiction films are the ideal medium for discussing human habitation in the future because their content is an imaginative representation of civilization. Under the premise of a science fiction theme, it is necessary to re-examine and reinterpret the connection between genders considering modern technology. It has taken a while for the representation of women in movies to improve after years of under representation. Redemption of women altered significantly as nations advanced in modernity. The media had a significant impact on the modernization of societies and the perception of women in the contemporary world. Women are portrayed in modern movies as being more autonomous, self-assured, and career-focused. For example, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Avatar (2009), Mission Mangal (2019). As movies are a mirror of social structural changes, the goal is to connect the evolving roles performed by women in movies with the rising status of women. The hegemonic discourse of cinema that prescribes what constitutes appropriate gender roles. In order to achieve this, we will adopt a critical poststructuralist viewpoint on how body images are portrayed in well-known science fiction Movies that have been released in recent years. How women are portrayed throughout their development history using famous English-speaking science fiction films. The reflection and feedback of the sci-fi film as a social and cultural phenomenon on the reality of the western world. Sci-Fi movies can instruct and influence viewers in a useful way, such as by portraying positive female characters to encourage more women to shatter the stereotype and actively engage in science-related job or studies.

Purpose of the study: This study used an Anarchist framework to prove that Thinner than Skin by Uzma Aslam Khan explores the causes of the peripheral communities' shared precariousness and their fight to sustain and conserve life in a world encroached upon by civilization. Methodology: Using Anarchist's (Manicardi, 2012; Zerzan, 2006, Bookchin, 2005) framework that believes that this materialistic worldview can be refuted only by unveiling the oppressive conditions of our modern existence, looking for remedy of people's unbearable misery is tantamount to finding a cure for these miseries. Further, the research is qualitative and analytical in nature, using close textual analysis. Main Findings: The paper finds that Khan highlights the precarious condition of peripheral communities residing in the Northern region of Pakistan. The analysis has proved that Khan's fiction, particularly her novel Thinner than Skin expresses her anarchist vision and shows her detest for modern civilization which being steeped in anthropocentric ideology subjects all forms of life to extinction Applications of the study: The paper helps to identify in future studies that how perpherial people are kept oppressed and marginalized, and how they will be given agentic position to represent themesevels rather they are represented. Novelty/Originality of the study: The study is about nomadic tribes, residing in the womb of Himalayan ranges are subjected to a number of problems including natural disasters such as floods and climatic shifts which causes glacial melt and threatens to drown the adjacent areas in a few decades only to satiate big businesses' thirst for profit. The state fails miserably to defend its citizens from political and economic turmoil because the state serves as handmaiden to western countries and the business interests of their business tycoons.

Modern drama tends to catch up with the representation of the dystopian alternative worlds much like the contemporary mass culture. Sci-fi and dystopian productions become popular onstage because the medical and technological breakthroughs occur so rapidly in our present-day life that the humanity fails to reflect them properly. There are the following main features pertaining to science fiction in drama, namely dystopian play: fantastical concepts in tune with the modern scientific theory; the illusion of authenticity via scientific methodology; creation of a fictional world on the basis of the factors and tendencies of wide public importance. The aim of this article is to study the generic features of sci-fi subgenre of dystopia on the material of Henley’s drama “Signature” (1990). The play written by the US woman dramatist introduces the world deprived of meaningful lives for its characters whose fake values drive them to grave consequences (death, loss of the beloved). This text for staging warns the audience about the devaluation of human life in favor of elusive success. Henley’s 2052 Hollywood is a dystopic space for rather emotionless characters (the T-Thorp brothers, L-Tip, the Reader), who understand their failures and losses when it is too late. The only exception is William, selfless and unafraid of predicaments. The fundamental for the Western civilization phenomenon of love is distorted and disregarded in favor of immediate satisfaction and addiction to fame. Like her predecessors in sci-fi Henley predicts a mass human alienation in not so distant future. Yet the open end of Boswell’s story somewhat decreases the horror of dystopia – there is a remote chance that after anagnorisis the protagonist will find his beloved and make peace with her even though for a very short time. Henley’s dystopia constructs the ambivalent vision of the future, charged with questions of cryonics, cloning, global digitalization, omnipresent euthanasia, environmentalism and feminism.

Postmodernism is a Western philosophy, a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power”.Post-Modernists are independent while expressing their ideas, they never drop their statements and theory. It is more personal than identify with some other categories. The post-modernism was started in America around 16th century later it extended to Europe and other countries.Post-modern civilization fails to accept the modification between high and low class. There is a little place for modernism, originality or individual thinking. Bhagat has concentrated on the preconceptions of toppers, however there is more to life than these things your family, your friends, your internal desires and goals and the grades you get in dealing with each of these areas will define you as a person.The post-modernism has defused the difference between good and bad, moral and immoral, right and wrong. If there is a choice to select modern generation would not hesitate to go for one which is traditionally named as bad. Bhagat imbibed all these qualities in his writing. His characters go against the traditional customs and values. Bhagat represents intricate, deeply engrained socio-cultural complications of multicultural India, light-heartedly. He wishes readers to giggle at themselves, at their stupidities, their partialities, and their wrong-actions; not as a member but as a distant observer. He doesn’t bout them directly, but through fiction he attempts to understand their errors and gives a chance to rectify in the real life. Bhagat’s linking story telling method and the funny situations appeal readers.

In their introduction to a book entitled: Yorùbá creativity, fiction, language, life, and songs, Falola and Genova (2005) assert that creativity among the ̣ Yorùbá has a long history and the traditions of oral histories, storytelling, performances and dramas are parts of fundamental habit of their civilization. In the pre-colonial era, the authorship of the stories in the folktales and in some poetic genres could not be claimed by any particular artist/artiste, but due to the influence of colonial rule, western literary traditions, among others, storytellers can claim authorship of their works today. The Yorùbá make no distinction between myth, legend and history. They all come under ìtàn (Ogunsina, 1992). One Yorùbá novelist that has distinguished himself in the effective use of ìtàn (story) in novel writing is Adébáyò ̣ Fálétí. He is not only a storyteller, he is a literary historian. Every creative writer in Yorùbá society is admired and judged as competent or otherwise not only by writing in the medium of the language but by having captivating story line and on the basis of his/her use of ‘quality’ Yorùbá language (i.e. language full of proverbs and other rhetoric devices). An average Yorùbá reader of Fálétí’s novels, poetry, plays and viewer of his films usually responds with delight because of his powerful use of Yorùbá language and captivating story lines, plot construct, narrative techniques and thematic contents. Isọ la (1998) classifies all other Yorùbá major novelists apart from Fágúnwà ̣ into three groups on their use of language and creative pedigree (190). According to him, “some are mere story tellers” who use mainly casual language; 154 Lere Adeyemi there are others with mixed styles and there are a few of them who creatively exploit the genius of the language. He identifies Adébáyò ̣ Fálétí among few others as belonging to the genius category. Ogunsina (1992) groups Fálétí as a prominent historical novelist who incorporates historical materials into novel writing. I agree with Ogunsina that Fálétí’s effective transfer of histori ̣ - cal materials into fiction is a revelation of the novel’s eclectic quality and also a manifestation of Fálétí’s creative genius. Fálétí’s love of ìtàn (story) is reflected in all his literary works, be it poetry, play or novel. However, our focus in this study is to examine Adébáyọ̀ ̣ Fálétí as a Yorùbá novelist through his literary lens.

The aim of the article is to discuss how elements of food narratives meals and kitchen tools used for cooking are used in order to consolidate and shape the Croatian cultural memory, especially in the context of its Mediterranean heritage.For this reason, the texts by Veljko Barbieri, collected in the four volumes under the common and significant title Kuharski kanconijer. Gurmanska sjećanja Mediterana, are analysed. His circum-culinary narratives are a combination of encyclopaedic knowledge, references to historical and literary sources, personal memories and literary fiction. They can be easily inscribed in the Croatian (collective and individual) identity discourse since they are able to strengthen the collective (either national and supranational, or geo-regional) identity, and to construct the cultural memory. They also show Croatia's affiliation to the Western world along with its cultural-civilization rooting in antiquity, the Mediterranean region and Christianity, thus forming a part of the founding memory that develops a narrative about the very beginnings of Croatian presence on this land. The gastronomic narratives serve to create the cultural memory and this version of history which is to stabilize the social identity described by Pierre Nora and Andreas Huyssen. Through his stories, Barbieri shapes memory based on the representation of the past. In the analysed narratives, the memory carriers are dishes and plates which find reference to the oldest history of Croatia rendered by myths and other narratives. Associated with dishes, the pots enable the narrator to recall the past and the identity coded in individual dishes. They also participate in the processes of repeating, storage and remembering which generate a symbiotic relationship between man and thing. The memory carriers that is, food and plates depicted in Barbieri's culinary narratives do not convey their content in a neutral way, but construct their marked images.

I Have Been Teaching Literatures in English for Over Twenty-Five Years at the Universidad Nacional AutóNoma de México (Unam), Mexico's national university, where I received my undergraduate degree. My formative years were marked, undoubtedly, by the universalist ideal that defines the motto of the university, “Por mi raza hablará el espíritu” (“The spirit will speak on behalf of my race”). I cannot recall whether I was aware of the motto's real meaning, or of its cultural and social implications, but I suppose I took for granted that what I was taught as a student was as much part of a Mexican culture as it was of a “universal” one. Reading English literature at the department of modern languages and literatures in the late 1970s meant that I was exposed to a canonical view of literature shaped as much by The Oxford Anthology of English Literature and by our lecturers' (primarily) aesthetic approach to it as by the idea of “universal” literature conveyed in the textbooks for elementary and secondary education in Mexico. This conviction that as a Mexican I belonged to “Western” civilization greatly diminished when in the early 1980s I traveled to London for graduate studies and was almost shattered by the attitudes I encountered while conducting my doctoral research on the image of Latin America in British fiction. I was often asked whether I had ever seen a car (let alone ridden in one), or if there was electricity in my country, and the ambivalent, mostly negative, view of Latin Americans and Mexicans in what I read (authors like Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, Graham Greene, and Aldous Huxley, as well as more than three hundred adventure novels set in the continent) forced me to question the idea that one ought to read literature merely for the enjoyment (and admiration) of it or to analyze it with assumptions that fall roughly in the category of “expressive,” or “mimetic,” criticism, which was common in those days and often took the form of monographic studies, which relied heavily on paraphrase.

The existence of four directions of psychoanalysis realization in modern psychology is argued in the historical-psychological research, that is as an original method of treatment of neuroses and other mental disorders exclusively in a verbal way; as a theory of personality, that is, as a system of scientific knowledge about the formation of human character; as a systemic, often shocking, critique of Western civilization and as a new philosophy and thus a kind of worldview that sheds the light of truth on the unconscious sphere of its life. The historical way of formation of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis as a separate, biologically determined, naturally centered and culturally influential current of psychological science of the XX century is highlighted and the motivating influence of concepts and themes of B. Pascal, F. Nietzsche and especially J. Charcot is indicated on this formation, firstly as an idea and research program, then as a theory and method of psychotherapeutic practice. The exceptional importance of Freud’s creative collaboration with his older colleague Joseph Brier is emphasized, the productivity of which is confirmed by the jointly published book “The Study of Hysteria” published in 1895. It is it which initiates the expansive psychoanalytic discourse. It is noted that the idea and concept of displacement became the central core of Freudian psychology and made it possible to understand both individual works of fiction and classical works of art. It is stated that translations of selected Freud’s works into the native language were received by Ukrainian scientists only at the end of the last century, which, however, does not diminish the importance of psychoanalysis as a theoretical-empirical foundation of anthropology. Finally, based on the rich legacy of Philip Lersch, a conclusion is formulated about the prospects of a phenomenological approach to the cognition of human mental life in the context of urgent tasks of both theoretical psychology and applied, practice-oriented.

В статье исследуется жизненный путь, художественное творчество и публицистика крупнейшего французского католического писателя первой половины XX в. Жоржа Бернаноса. Несмотря на переводы на русский язык его художественных произведений, дневников и части публицистики, его политические взгляды, ангажированность почти не изучались. Вместе с тем они представляют интерес с точки зрения формирования правой, традиционалисткой позиции французских интеллектуалов перед лицом русской революции, советского опыта строительства нового общества социальной справедливости и равенства, торжества и крушения тоталитарных идеологий. Позиция Бернаноса – это позиция думающего католика, размышляющего о кризисе веры и причинах упадка западной христианской цивилизации, противостоящей советскому коммунизму. Восприятие Бернаносом революционных потрясений и тоталитарного опыта в Европе прошло через травматизм Первой мировой войны, разрыв с Шарлем Моррасом, морально-этический выбор в период гражданской войны в Испании и борьбу с фашизмом в годы Второй мировой войны. Статья написана на основе художественных произведений, дневников, эссе и статей в газетах, опубликованных Бернаносом в период между двумя мировыми войнами. The article examines the life path, artistic creativity and journalism of the largest French Catholic writer of the first half of the XX century, Georges Bernanos, was chosen. Despite the translations into Russian of his works of art, diaries and parts of his journalism, his political views and engagement were almost not studied. At the same time, they are of interest from the point of view of the formation of the right-wing, traditionalist position of French intellectuals in the face of the Russian revolution, the Soviet experience of building a new society of social justice and equality, the triumph and collapse of totalitarian ideologies. The position of Bernanos is the position of a thinking catholic reflecting on the crisis of faith and the causes of the decline of Western Christian civilization opposing Soviet communism. Bernanos perception of the revolutionary upheavals and totalitarian experience in Europe went through the traumatism of the World War I, the break with Charles Maurras, the moral and ethical choice during the Spanish Civil War and the fight against fascism during the World War II. The article is written on the basis of works of fiction, diaries, essays and articles in newspapers published by Bernanos in the Interwar period.

The article is devoted to the Alternative History (AH) genre in fiction and function of the “European Myth” in cryptohistorical writing. The article aims to determine the identity and path of the alternative historical novel in Ukraine and its comparative characteristics at the current stage of modern fiction. The tasks of the study are to determine the ways of European myth functioning in the artistic space of the neomodern AI novel in Ukraine which creates a new genealogical pattern in Ukrainian literary studies. Research methods are subordinate to the aim of the study and tasks. They are comparative, historicalliterary, descriptive, and analytical methods. The metagenre of alternative history has three key aspects, which seem to determine the comparative level of the American and European literature samples within this genealogical formation. These keys are the following: firstly, the story is supposed to completely match the recorded historical and geographical events up until the bifurcation point (in other words, a classic alternative history cannot be based on cryptohistory, hypothesis, fiction, however its background may be folklore or nation mythological heritage or known ancient culture); secondly, the historical figures should play a leading role in the storyline events, especially in the political context; thirdly, the key storyline is expected to relate to the history of a certain human community or civilization on the planet Earth up to the bifurcation point. Apart from the general experience about a different functional role of the time travel method in alternative history novel, we also have a new update, much more distant from the one declared by M. Schneider-Mayerson in 1995, namely, 1889, the year when M. Twain wrote the novel “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”. However, the novel by M. Twain was criticized due to its monoculturalism in the political worldview. Although all of these details are related to extraliterary factors. If we compare the invariant of American AH, presented for the first time in the novel by M. Twain, we want to talk about cryptohistory in Ukrainian and Western European literature. In his monograph T. Shippey refers to it as a pseudo-history (’Whig history’). It precedes the novelty of this article, which comes to conclusions about common things in the architectonic structure of the European Myth and cryptohistorical writing. That is why we qualify AH as a metagenre, and the political utopia, cryptohistory, allohistory, uchronia, metahistory, political fantasy novels as AH subgenres. One of the most valuable sources of the article is a set of AH novels by M. Twain, P.W.S. Anderson, S. King, V. Baziv, I. Bilyk, M. Brynykh, V. Vladko, V. Danylenko, R. Ivanenko, R. Ivanychuk, M. Kidruk, S. Protsyuk, V. Shevchuk, Ya. Yanovs’kyi, V. Kozhelyanko. To solve the article’s issues we used comparative and descriptive methods. Conclusions. Every metagenre formation itself has separated into individual genres and varieties during the century and accepted different fable schemes of the other genres, in particular canonical ones, such as historical novel, literary, detective novel, chronicle and fantasy. Cryptohistory is a subgenre of alternative history. In its genealogical formula, the actual story exists only theoretically, while the alternative history that forms the plot after the bifurcation point is based on unproven historical sources. It allows more freedom for the author’s imagination, where they may involve two or more bifurcation points. As previously mentioned, the second point of bifurcation would be based on an unreal story that is presented as a true one. Genre markers and plot schemes are identical to alternative history. Though the goal of reconstructing history disappears and is being replaced by other goals: restoration of national and mental mindset elements (V. Kozhelyanko’s “Ethiopian Sich”), humanization of the society (Kir Bulychov “A Reserve for Academics”), psychologization and/or logical construction of the historical course (H. Garrison`s trilogy “West of Eden”, “Winter in Eden”, “Return to Eden”), etc.

The research dealt with the civilizational confrontation and the image of the West in the modern Arab novel, and I took the novels of Ezz al-Din Shukri Fashir as a model to explain these civilizational gaps and the relationship of influence and influence of the different cultural patterns. The research came in two sections and a conclusion. The first section dealt with: ways of life and representations of the civilizational gap. The second section dealt with the West through fictional characters. The conclusion came it contains the most important results that I reached: Amog them: 1) Representations of the civilizational gap emerged in Ezz al-Din Fashir’s novels between the East and the West, and its manifestations varied, such as the concept of health care and citizen rights, the nature of Western thought and its view of life, and the nature of interaction between people. 2) Ezz al-Din Fishir was keen to approach Western civilization from an intellectual angle, and to rely on the principle of benefit, which justifies the means to reach the end. 3) Western society and the concept of globalization emerged in the author's novels. The Western ruling system is adopting a methodology that re-standardizes the human race. According to studied data and concepts aimed at unifying identity among the human race. 4) The author discussed the issue of fascination with Western civilization, and its locations were numerous in his novels, making clear to the reader the tendency of the Arab person, and other conquered peoples, to imitate the dominant, especially language and fashion, which reflects psychological defeat and a feeling of inferiority. 5) The author’s fictional characters expressed the image of the West, in a way that reflected his perceptions in the fields of: science, fashion, and human rights. Hence, the author’s novels surrounded multiple angles of Western civilization.المستخلص: تناول البحث المواجهة الحضارية وصورة الغرب في الرواية العربية الحديثة، وقد اتخذت من روايات عز الدين شكري فشير أنموذجًا لبيان تلك الفجوات الحضارية وعلاقة التأثير والتأثر للأنساق الثقافية المختلفة، وجاء البحث في مبحثين وخاتمة، فتناول المبحث الأوَّل: أساليب الحياة وتمثُّلات الفجوة الحضارية. وتناول المبحث الثَّاني: الغرب عبر الشخصيات الروائية. وجاءت الخاتمة: وفيها أهم النتائج التي توصلت إليها؛ منها: 1) برزت تمثُّلات الفجوة الحضارية في روايات عز الدين فشير بين الشرق والغرب وتباينت مظاهرها، كمفهوم الرعاية الصحية وحقوق المواطن، وطبيعة الفكر الغربي ونظرته للحياة، وطبيعة التعامل بين البشر. 2) حرص عز الدين فشير على تناول الحضارة الغربية من الزاوية الفكرية، واعتماده على مبدأ المنفعة الذي يبرر الوسائل للوصول للغاية. 3) برز المجتمع الغربي ومفهوم العولمة في روايات المؤلف؛ إذ تنتهج المنظومة الغربية الحاكمة منهجية تعيد تنميط الجنس البشري؛ وفقًا لمعطيات ومفاهيم مدروسة تهدف لتوحيد الهوية بين الجنس البشري. 4) ناقش المؤلف قضية الانبهار بالحضارة الغربية، وتعددت مواضعها في رواياته، فتجلى للقارئ ميل الإنسان العربي، وغيره من الشعوب المغلوبة، لتقليد الغالب، وخصوصًا اللغة والأزياء، مما يعكس هزيمة نفسية وشعورًا بالدونية. 5) عبَّرت الشخصيات الروائية لدى المؤلف عن صورة الغرب، على النحو الذي عكس تصوراته في مجال: العلم، الأزياء وحقوق الإنسان، ومن ثم، جاءت روايات المؤلف تحيط بزوايا متعددة من الحضارة الغربية.

Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which Said studies the cultural representations that are the bases of Orientalism, the West's patronizing perceptions and fictional depictions of "The East" — the societies and peoples who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Orientalism, the Western scholarship about the Eastern World, was and remains inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, which makes much Orientalist work inherently political and servile to power, and thus intellectually suspect.Orientalism is the exaggeration of difference, the presumption of Western superiority, and the application of clichéd analytical models for perceiving the Oriental world. As such, Orientalism is the source of the inaccurate, cultural representations that are the foundations of Western thought and perception of the Eastern world, specifically about the region of the Middle East. The principal characteristic of Orientalism is a “subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arab–Islamic peoples and their culture”, which prejudice derives from Western images of what is Oriental (cultural representations) that reduce the Orient to the fictional essences of “Oriental peoples” and “the places of the Orient”; such cultural representations dominate the communications (discourse) of Western peoples with non–Western peoples. Orientalism proposes that much of the Western study of Islamic civilization was an exercise in political intellectualism; a psychological exercise in the self-affirmation of “European identity”; not an objective exercise of intellectual enquiry and the academic study of Eastern cultures. Therefore, Orientalism was a method of practical and cultural discrimination that was applied to non-European societies and peoples in order to establish European imperial domination.

The legend of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table is immemorial. The heroic knights and their king’s tales contribute western society a great literature that is still well- known today. King Arthur along with the theme of chivalry greatly impacted not only western civilization, but all of society throughout the centuries. King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table have been around for thousands of years but are only legends. The first reference to King Arthur was in the Historia Brittonum written by Nennius a Welsh monk around 830A.D. The fascinating legends however did not come until 1133 A.D in the work Historia Regum Britaniae written by a Welsh cleric, Geoffrey of Monmouth. His work was actually meant to be a historical document, but over time many other writers added on fictional tales. The Round Table was added in 1155 A.D by a French poet Maistre Wace. Both the English and French cycles of Arthurian Legend are controlled by three inter-related themes:

The legend of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table is immemorial. The heroic knights and their king’s tales contribute western society a great literature that is still well- known today. King Arthur along with the theme of chivalry greatly impacted not only western civilization, but all of society throughout the centuries. King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table have been around for thousands of years but are only legends. The first reference to King Arthur was in the Historia Brittonum written by Nennius a Welsh monk around 830A.D. The fascinating legends however did not come until 1133 A.D in the work Historia Regum Britaniae written by a Welsh cleric, Geoffrey of Monmouth. His work was actually meant to be a historical document, but over time many other writers added on fictional tales. The Round Table was added in 1155 A.D by a French poet Maistre Wace. Both the English and French cycles of Arthurian Legend are controlled by three inter-related themes:

The author has given a socio-cultural interpretation of the phenomenon of laughter in the film "The Joker" (Todd, Phillips, 2019) as an individual as well as a social phenomenon of Western civilization. He considers the difference between the concepts of utopia, dystopia and utopistics as a possible solution to the problem that would avoid an optimistic and pessimistic view of the future of humanity. The author seeks a civilization parallel between the fictional world of film and the cultural elements of today. The necrophilic atmosphere of Gotham City is strikingly reminiscent of the spiritual lethargy that characterizes the postmodern metropolises of the 21st century. The fate of the film's protagonist could afflict any individual on our planet if they came to the realization that they are a personality, that they have created themselves, and that on their own spiritual skin they have felt the misunderstanding of others who do not wish to stand out from the crowd. The author notes that many protesters against the governing structures of the oligarchy of states around the world have identified themselves in their protest with the Joker, an anti-hero who in a century of tolerance defends with laughter when he feels that his existence is threatened. In this film, the Joker is the personification of a diseased society. Todd Philips' work is an attempt to draw attention to the fact that the stratification of the human community can lead to the breakdown of social relations, however much the governing establishment's media seek to entertain and laugh at masses of proletarians and homeless people without a cultural identity through entertainment shows. The impact of the film, as a work of art, was visible immediately after its broadcast in public. The failed clown Joker could not cure himself with laughter because his laughing was "crying upside down" out of despair that was contrary to the hope of a man who could seek the meaning of his life in two Christian virtues: faith and love. However, the author of this text offers a solution by reminding of the way of life of a specific person, which would save the world from moral panic. He introduces us to a man with an accomplished existence of being a clown and a university professor at the same time - E. Kiphard (1923-2010), who lived to help fellow men with a mission to treat people with laughter rather than to defend them with the Joker's unnatural and contagious laughter of an anti-utopian resident.

Poetic expressions may seem somewhat removed from a pragmatist social science, but the history of the development of Western civilization is such that the (knowingly) fictionalized renderings of human life-worlds that were developed in the classical Greek era (c700-300BCE) appear to have contributed consequentially to a scholarly emphasis on the ways in which people engage the world. Clearly, poetic writings constitute but one aspect of early Greek thought and are best appreciated within the context of other developments in that era, most notably those taking shape in the realms of philosophy, religion, rhetoric, politics, history, and education. These poetic materials (a) attest to views of the human condition that are central to a pragmatist philosophy (and social science) and (b) represent the foundational basis for subsequent developments in literary criticism (including theory and methods pertaining to the representation of human enacted realities in dramaturgical presentations). Thus, while not reducing social theory to poetic representation, this statement considers the relevance of early Greek poetics for the development of social theory pertaining to humanly enacted realities.

This study presents a critical and textual analysis of John Gardener’s novel, Grendel. Relying heavily upon aspects of post structuralism, the study examines the two texts, Beowulf, an anonymous medieval epic, and John Gardener’s Grendel in terms of their contexts and discourses. The study argues that Grendel is a hypertext that relates to Beowulf by means of transtextualty so as to tackle crucial perspectives of western philosophy, civilizational heritage and thus elucidates its existential discourse. The study concludes that Gardener’s novel is a revisionist narrative that aims at elaborating on the concept of heroic Self as opposed to the antiheroic ‘Other’. Further, the study concludes that Gardener’s, by means of adaptation, presents a new discourse that does not reduce Grendel, the monster in the original epic, to the demonic stereotype of the ‘wronged villain’. The significance of the study springs from the need to liberate literature from the anxiety of aimless imitation and thus enhancing Derrida’s poststructuralist notion which confirms that meaning has no definite closure. The study significantly examines the texts with reference to Gerard Genette’s structural narratology, John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction, and other critics who theorized the main key concepts in intertextuality, appropriation, and adaptation.

Area studies, as a newly fashionable field of academic research, needs to recognize its less likely precedents if it is going to secure for itself a fresh start. The question of “desire” is relevant here because it indicates the less value-free aspects in its genealogy. As shown in Emma Bovary's embellished representation of Paris at her provincial home, an understanding of an area often reflects the particular needs and desires of the one who understands that area. Such restricted and restricting views of an area repeats itself outside the world of literary fictions, as is shown by the example of Guizot's picture of Europe in which his own country is given a privileged place as the very center of Western civilization itself. An instructive case showing the thin line between the projected desire of one who strives to know a geographical area and the scientific purity of the labor itself is further offered by Napoleon Bonaparte's heavy reliance on Orientalist scholarship in his invasion of Egypt. Moving further east from Egypt to China, we witness the denigrating remarks on China made by the great German thinkers of the past century, Hegel and Weber. Although their characterization of Chinese culture could find echoes in unbiased empirical research, they reveal all the same the trace of Europeans' desire to affirm their superiority over the supposedly inferior and false civilization of the East. Similarly, the Americans who divided the Korean peninsular at the 38th Parallel, with unquestioning confidence in their knowledge of the area and in the justice of their action, rightfully deserve their place in the tradition of Western area studies of serving the needs to dominate, control and exploit an objectified overseas territory. He assumed that words had kept their meaning, that desires still pointed in a single direction, and that ideas retained their logic; and he ignored the fact that the world of speech and desires has known invasions, struggles, plundering, disguises, ploys. From these elements, however, genealogy retrieves an indispensable restraint: it must record the singularity of events outside of any monotonous finality; it must seek them in the most unpromising places, in what we tend to feel is without history—in sentiments, love, conscience, instincts; it must be sensitive to their recurrence, not in order to trace the gradual curve of their evolution, but to isolate the different scenes where they engaged in different roles. — Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” (Foucault 139–40).

This study highlights the subtle and complex environmental ethic in Cormac McCarthy’s select novels. By delineating the relationships McCarthy’s characters have with non-human nature, an ecocritical analysis views their alienation as the result of their separation from nature. At the root of this alienation is an anthropocentric and mechanistic mode of thinking that is dominant in Western philosophy and that this study defines as Cartesian. While McCarthy’s environmentalist heroes are persecuted by Cartesian institutions and displaced from the land on which they have defined themselves and made meaning, his Cartesian anti-heroes represent extreme manifestations of Cartesian thinking. McCarthy’s environmentalism is as much a critique and indictment of Cartesian thinking as it is a portrayal of the value of a life lived in close contact with nonhuman nature. McCarthy uses human treatment of non-human animals to evidence man's absolute desire to control the natural world and the beasts within the natural world. Animals often figure prominently in Cormac McCarthy’s fiction, taking on mystical significance or even mirroring human nature. At other times, McCarthy portrays astriking intimacy between animals and men. The animals in McCarthy’s novels also represent a link to an older, natural order and a vanishing (or vanished) way of life. The representations are clearly myriad and diverse, but the one thing that can be asserted for certain is that the overarching tendency is to elevate animals to positions of great significance; they inhabit a space that, while often overlapping with the human realm, is distinctive and important. In All the Pretty Horses John Grady Cole is virtually defined by his relationship to horses, and there are moments of striking intimacy between him and horses in the novel. Wolves assume a similar place of significance in The Crossing. The ranchers discus show the cattle, in their domestication and defenselessness, “puzzle” the wolves, who kill the cattle in a much more savage manner than they do wild quarry, “as if they were offended by some violation of an old order. Billy also experiences moments of intimacy with the pregnant she-wolf that echo John Grady Cole’s relationship to horses, and this happens at the same two levels: in both the dream world and the tangible world. In McCarthy’s borderlands novels there is always the looming awareness that civilizations will rise and civilizations will fall, but what is constant is war, brutality, and death. This is why his books, particularly his works concerning the Southwest and Mexico, are littered with apocalyptic themes and images—until, of course, he delivers the death of all civilizations in the post-apocalyptic rendering The Road (2006).

On the verge of the twenty-first century, the world witnesses anunprecedented instability. Wars and culture conflicts widen the gapbetween the various civilizations and sow the seeds of hatred betweenindividuals. Islam, with its universal precepts of peace and respect for thedignity of humanity, was and still is the most misunderstood religion.When represented in the West, it is always associated with negativeimages that repel Westerners from seeing what Islam really is. Hence thegreat necessity for a peaceful and enlightened dialogue between theworld of Islam and the West.A great deal has been said and written on the subject of Islam andthe West and many conferences have been convened, yet no discernibleprogress has been made in bringing a better understanding or dampeningthe assault on Islam and the Muslims in the western media. PrinceCharles noted in his lecture at Oxford:The depressing fact is that, despite the advances in technologyand mass communications of the second half of the twentiethcentury, despite mass travel, the intermingling of races, the evergrowingreduction- or so we believe- of the mysteries of ourworld, misunderstandings between Islam and the West continue.Indeed, they may be growing.The misrepresentation of Islam, which was limited in the past tothe printed word, has now mushroomed to all forms of mass communication.The entertainment industry, news telecasts, radio shows, themovie industry, children’s television programs, and even commercialson billboards all have become vehicles for propagating the misrepresentationof Islam in the West. Literary fiction and nonfiction remainamong the most insidious vehicles for permanently damaging theimage and concept of Islam in the minds of non-Muslim readers ...

Aim. The article aims at examining Joseph Conrad’s vision of the Malay region and its image building forces in his story «Karain: A Memory» (1897), which articulates the representation of some late 19th-century social and cultural constructs of the Other and becomes a part of literary dialogue between East and West. Methods. An imagological approach and the strategies of cultural studies are applied in the article to highlight how Conrad’s story «Karain: A Memory» is used to assert the Other’s cultural identity, constructing and deconstructing some national stereotypes and cultural prejudices of the period. Results. The idea is that the fictional world of the Malayan Archipelago as reconstructed by Conrad through the narrative of «Karain: A Memory» contributes to the meanings attached to the image of the Malays (that is national characterisation) and serves as a medium in the accumulative Western construction of the East and the cultural Other. Scientific novelty. There has been made an attempt to prove that Conrad’s works demonstrate the complex manner of textual representations in which nineteenth-century cultural assumptions, concerning European civilization and colonial periphery, are simultaneously revived and challenged. The practical significance. The article may serve for the further research of the cultural Other and its representation in the English literature. Key words: cultural Other, national stereotypes, cultural identity, colonial discourse, Joseph Conrad.

Muslim students and communities in Western sociopolitical and educational contexts confront substantive challenges of racisms, Islamophobia, and under- and misrepresentations in media as well as in literature. Creating a robust repertoire of curricular resources for teaching and learning, teacher development programs, and schooling in general offers a promise of developing classroom practices, which in turn promotes an inclusive discourse that recognizes the unique position and presence of a Muslim child. The present article examines the prospects of developing such a curriculum called Muslim Children’s Literature for inclusive schooling and teacher development programs in the context of public education in Ontario, Canada. It is situated in the larger umbrella of creating specific theory and methodology for education that lend exposure to Muslim cultures and civilizations. Development of such a literature as curricular resources addresses the questions of Muslim identities through curriculum perceptions so as to initiate critical conversations around various educational challenges that the development and dissemination of Muslim curricular resources faces today. I make a case for developing Muslim Children’s Literature to combat the challenges of having limited repertoire to engage with Muslim students in public schools and teacher candidates in teacher development programs. With the description of the necessity of such a literature, this article outlines characteristics of the proposed genre of Muslim Children’s Literature, as well as the unique position of a Muslim child in the current educational scenarios. A brief peek into select fiction on Muslim themes available in English internationally that can be used as curricular resources at elementary and secondary level serves towards reinforcing the definition of Muslim Children’s Literature. Further, these offer a sample that may be promoted under the proposed genre of Muslim Children’s Literature.

Melville’s fictional narrative The Encantadas (1854) and his letter to his brother Gansevoort, a democratic politician who passionately supported U.S expansionism, will allow us to explore Melville’s politics of action; i.e., his critique of the Mexican war and his doubts about Manifest Destiny. Simone De Beauvoir, French writer and feminist, insists that we are ethically compelled to do all we can to change oppressive institutions. De Beauvoir demonstrates the need to take sides, acting politically and with an ethical vision. Her action illustrates the links she sees between the embodied individual consciousness and political action. For her the alternative is simple and clear-cut. Either you align yourself with the “contemporary butchers rather than their victims” (1962: 20) or reject their atrocities and stand against them through active fights. The idea of narrative secrecy - Hunilla’s rape - is gradually revealed to the reader through Melville’s narrative omission revealing the female character as a practitioner of narrative secrecy as her right. This paper explores the female character’s twofold otherness, the native and female as distinguished from the civilized and male, which designates her as the living embodiment of these dualities, the binary oppositions upon which Western Civilization rests. Her ‘double otherness’ is expressed in the figure in which race and gender emblematically intersect. The racial and sexual differences are equated to dramatize the power relationship between the native and the colonizer where the white male colonizer has both racial and sexual superiority. Hunilla’s otherness is most fully articulated by textual interruptions. The denunciation of rape through a narrative strategy – elision - mediates Melville’s politics as action.

This article aims at describing the social life of the American people in several places that made the adventures of John Steinbeck as the author of the novel Travels with Charley in Search of America around the 1960s. American people’s lives are a part of world civilizations that literary readers need to know. This adventure was preceded by an author’s trip in New York City, then to California, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, New Jersey, Saint Lawrence, Quebec, Niagara Falls, Ohio, Chicago, Illinois, Michigan, North Dakota, the Rocky Mountains, Washington, the West Coast, Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, New Orleans, Salinas, and again ended in New York. In processing research data, the writer uses one of the methods of literary research, namely the Dynamic Structural Approach which emphasizes the study of the intrinsic elements of literary work and the involvement of the author in his work. The intrinsic elements emphasized in this study are the physical and social settings. The research data were obtained from the results of a literature study which were then explained descriptively. The writer found a number of descriptions of the social life of the American people in the 1960s, namely the life of the city, the situation of the inland people, and ethnic discrimination. The people of the city are busy taking care of their profession and competing for careers, inland people living naturally without competing ambitions, and black African Americans have not enjoyed the progress achieved by the Americans. The description of American society related to the fictional story is divided by region, namely east, north, middle, west, and south. The social condition in the eastern region is dominated by beaches and mountains, and is engaged in business, commerce, industry, and agriculture. The comfortable landscape in the northern region spends the people time as breeders and farmers. The natural condition in the middle region of American is very suitable for agriculture, plantations, and animal husbandry. Many people in the western American region facing the Pacific Ocean become fishermen. The natural conditions from the plains and valleys to the hills make the southern region suitable for plantation land.

In this piece, I examine the role of authority in Yorùbá society and how au[1]thority is subverted by moral conflicts generated in the political evolution of the Yorùbá state from city state to empire, leading to disastrous consequences in the society at large as presented in the films of Adébáyọ Fálétí, specifically in Àfọnjá (2002), Basọrun Gáà (2004) and Ṣawo Ṣẹgbẹ ̀ rì̀ (2005). I argue that such pains and pangs of transformation are not unique to Yorùbá society but mirror similar political evolutions in other societies such as Rome and Greece. Such political upheavals led to the celebrated assassination of Julius Caesar in Rome and Alexander the Great of Macedonia. In particular Àfọnjá ̀ and Baṣọrun ̀ Gáà dramatize evocatively the poignancy of the attendant confrontations. In addition, I evaluate Adébáyọ Fálétí as a Nigerian and African foundational practitioner in the global field of cultural studies and his use of cultural post materialism in his work. Adébáyọ Fálétí can be regarded as the father of modern Nigerian Cultural Studies and in Africa in general in line with the way that the discipline is understood the world over standing, as it were, on the cusp of traditional Nigerian and African drama and modern drama in African mother tongues. In addition, Fálétí epitomizes what modern cultural studies world-wide represent as a cross between the traditional discipline of drama and the television 172 Olayinka Agbetuyi industries as well as filmic industries, along with advertisements, which together constitute what is today known as the culture industries. As defined in the words of Chris Barker, “Culturalism focuses on meaning production by human actors in a historical context.”1 Fálétí’s historical drama and films fall within such category. Barker added that Culturalism focuses on interpretation as a way of understanding meaning.”2 These are the hallmarks of the historical drama that formed the basis of two of the films by Fálétí being examined here. In addition, he stated that cultural studies deal with subjectivity and identity or how we come to be the kinds of people we are. Fálétí’s Afọnja and Gáà’s thematic preoccupation is how the Yorùbá subjectivity has been constituted over time through its political evolution. The three films also demonstrate what Stuart Hall considers to be the connection that cultural studies seeks to make to matters of power and cultural politics.3 With regards to the role of Fálétí as pioneer in the area of radio-vision cultural industries the broadcasting mogul narrated the manner in which he pioneered the phone-in radio broadcast in Nigeria on the programme “Ѐyí Àrà” at the Broadcasting Corporation of Ọyọ̀ ́ State, Ibadan (BCOS) after pioneering Yorùbá broadcasting on Africa’s first television station Western Nigeria Television (WNTV) twenty years earlier.4 Fálétí’s career spanning close to seven decades dovetails public services with private engagement with drama production. He was one of the earliest organizers of a drama performing company in 1949 to produce his own plays. His career development can be divided into three phases: the formative traditional drama performance phase, the literary drama phase which dovetails into his career as a public servant in a symbiotic relationship and his post public service movie production phase which coincided with the efflorescence of the Nollywood. The three works examined here straddle Fálétí’s second and third phases of engagement in drama production. Both Basọrun Gáà (to be hereafter referred to as Gáà) and Ṣawo Ṣẹgbẹ ̀ rì ̀ were first staged in the second phase of Fálétí’s development as a theatre practitioner. In addition to being staged in the theater, Gáà and Ṣawo Ṣẹgbẹ ̀ rì̀ were produced for tele[1]vision audiences as dramatic thrillers and became household favourites in the ‘70s and ‘80s at the time of his career as a radio/television broadcaster. Fálétí’s retirement from public service provided the opportunity needed to build on the experience gained in the television industry to launch a full-blown film production career for which his earlier experience seems to have been a tutelage. Àfọ̀njá (2002), Gáà (2004) and Ṣawo Ṣẹgbẹ ̀ rì ̀ (2005) are part of the products of this final phase. Although Àfọ̀njá preceded the other two in movie 1 Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. London: Sage, 2012. 2 Barker. 2012, 17 3 Barker, 5. 4 Nigerianfilms.com. February 17, 2008. Accessed Aug 10 2018. Authority and Moral Conflicts in the Films of Adébáyọ Fálétí 173 production, it was the last to be written among the three and is organically a prequel which builds on the success of Gáà and extends a thematic continuum in the Fágúnwà-esque manner of the novels Ògbójú Ọde Ninu Igbó Irunmọlẹ and Igbo Olódùmarè. While Àfọ̀njá and Gáà are historical drama based on actual events in the history of the Yorùbá Empire, Ṣawo Ṣegberi is purely fictional and is based on a postcolonial Nigerian setting. The movies therefore take a reverse order to the chronology of writing and stage performance while Ṣawo Ṣẹ̀gbẹ̀rì, which was the first to be staged among the three, was not written for stage and television performance until it was script-written for film production.5 Àfọ̀njá, Gáà and Ṣawo Ṣẹgbẹ ̀ rì ̀ are each set in a cosmopolis where the Yorùbá citizens have to deal with other nationals in the context of Yorùbá mores within a broader cosmopolitan ethos. In Àfọ̀njá and Gáà that context is provided by the empire phase of Yorùbá civilization in which Yorùbá civilization was the dominant point of reference; in Ṣawo Ṣẹgbẹ ̀ rì ̀ the drama is situated in the context of postcolonial Nigerian city, in a nation that boasts large ethnic nationalities of which the Yorùbá are only one and in which Yorùbá culture is mediated by the postcolonial state with its symbol of the English language as the means of communication and its cultural spin offs. Fálétí demonstrates the mastery of dramaturgy in Àfọ̀njá and Gáà by juxtaposing the dynamics of running a state originally built on a confederation of city state structure very much like the Greek city state structure, at the latter’s comparative stage of political evolution, with a new imperial structure and the conflicts generated by the flux of the two systems; whereas in Ṣawo Ṣẹ̀gbẹ̀rì moral conflict is generated by interpersonal amatorial clashes as well as models of expertise.

Cities have been magnets for a wide diversity of talent and have captured the human imagination as centers of intellectual and cultural achievement since humans began to live together. To learn from the city means to engage with its assets and riches, but also with its pressing problems, contradictions, and paradoxes. It also means to reflect upon urban settings as places where civilizations often meet and define themselves, and where populations and infrastructure change over time, sometimes slowly, but in other cases, rapidly. Precisely because they are multi-layered, multi-dimensional, complex and challenging, cities offer rich opportunities for study abroad students to learn, no matter their disciplinary interests. The environmental issues and public health concerns manifested in cities, for example, offer many opportunities for disciplinary and interdisciplinary inquiry in the sciences, social sciences, as well as in the humanities, if to a lesser degree. The social fabric of cities, as well as their social inequities and other problems, can appeal to students in the social sciences, while the many varieties of cultural expression, both “high” and “low”, found it cities invite both exploration and creation. Cities’ many layers of history, their locations in particular geographical locales, their changing infrastructure and transitions in population, all can teach students to ask about how places (urban and non-urban) came to be what they are today, and how they might be in the future. Investigations of the city also allow students to think about who they are in relationship to others, what their relationship is to places, and which roles they will play in determining the future of the cities and other places they will call home in the future. In short, the cities where students study abroad can serve as laboratories for learning, rather than simply temporary residences or arenas for taking pleasure. The contributors to this volume are doing just this kind of work: asking how and why cities are appropriate venues for study abroad, and experimenting with ways to allow cities to become arenas for learning. The role of cities as sites for learning is not, of course, new. It was in Classical Athens (480–336 BCC), for example, that Western conceptions of philosophy, history, drama, and education emerged. Without the city, it would be hard to imagine the intellectual development and the enduring educational legacy of Socrates (e.g.dialectical reasoning, learning through persistent questioning and analysis, intellectual self-discipline, autonomous thinking, self-examination, self-criticism, high standards of moral conduct, intellectual honesty, and life-long learning). Cities in the Middle Ages (400–1400) hosted universities, where learning was considered sacred, not merely practical. Thus, Timbuktu became a vibrant center of learning, with libraries that rivaled anything in Christian Europe and the highest literacy rate in Africa. A quantum leap in cultural evolution, commercial vitality, technical innovation and new consciousness of humans at the center of the action took place over a two hundred year period beginning around 1450. This would have been unthinkable without great Renaissance cities such as Florence and Venice. Indeed, for the nature of learning, arguably the farthest-reaching long-term consequence of the Renaissance was the development of the scientific method, a truly intellectual and conceptual revolution that made human beings think differently about the world and themselves. Similarly, many of the great intellectual and practical breakthroughs of the Scientific Revolution (1500–1700) are nearly unthinkable without the city. Emerging from the intellectual cauldron of the city were, among others, the great minds of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Newton, Descartes, Galileo, and Bacon. The goal of education, if we follow Bacon, is knowledge in the service of improving the human condition. This continues to this day to be a goal of many study abroad students. Finally, the intellectual achievements that characterize the Enlightenment (1700–1800): secularism, cosmopolitanism, skepticism, security for the individual through the rule of law, personal freedom and autonomy, deep respect for human dignity, and intellectual and scientific inquiry are based in the interactions with others that are essential components of urban life. The articles in this volume offer their own contemporary examples of study abroad and the city, considered through an impressive range of approaches.The articles provide a balance between different theoretical and pedagogical approaches to the topic. Theoretical perspectives on the cities are central to a number of discussions in the volume. Lance Kenny, in “First City, Anti-City: Cain, Heterotopia, and Study Abroad,” argues that the time has come to underpin the practice of study abroad with theoretical perspectives. As an example, he suggests that the work of theorists such as Foucault (heterotopias) and Virilio (the anti-city) can provide study abroad students with the analytical tools to “know” the city. Rodriguez and Rink use Walter Benjamin’s notion of the flâneur to incorporate technology as a way for students to engage with the city. Benjamin’s writing on the flâneur is also introduced to students studying abroad in Athens by Augeri et al., who also draw on Dubord’s derive and psychogeography to provide students with frameworks for understanding urban realities and their reactions to them. Augeri et al. turn to de Certeau’s work on walking as rhetorical practice, while Patrick McGuire and James Spates demonstrate how the urban sociologist Jane Jacobs’ work helps students understand cities as shaped by culture and the residents who live in them. To discuss the impacts of globalization on cities, Gristwood and Woolf draw on theoretical writings about the city (Raban), fiction and poetry (Kurieshi, Brecht, Eliot, Ackroyd, Zephaniah), writers writing about writing (Sandhu and Upstone, for example), perspectives from geography (Halbert and Rutherford, Massey, Wills et al.) and sociology (Castells, Jacobs, Sassen), and government statistics. Milla Cozart Riggio, Lisa Sapolis, and Xianming Chen also look at how globalization is transforming cities and discuss how their home city, Hartford, is used as the starting point for students’ engagement with cities and globalization. Other articles focus on pedagogical approaches to assisting American students abroad engage with their study abroad cities. Scott Blair points out that American students frequently have never learned to read a map, and delineates how mapping can be employed as a tool for analysis, as well as for fostering intercultural learning and tolerance for diversity and.engaged experiential learning. Mieka Ritsema, Barbara Knecht, and Kenneth Kruckemeyer also point to mapping as a useful tool for engaging students with cities encountered during study abroad. Thomas Ricks offers strategies for understanding Jerusalem’s multi-layered history through its contemporary reality. Evidence for the power of experiential learning in study abroad cities is offered by Thomas Wagenknecht. Wagenknecht’s interviews with educators in Germany, however, find that experiential learning has not yet earned the status of “academic” learning, and calls for more evidence about its outcomes. Finally, two articles discuss the impact of engaging home-campus faculty themselves as learners in cities abroad. Anne Ellen Geller, discussing a faculty writing institute, shows how engagement with daily life in contemporary Rome helps faculty understand and value the study abroad experience. Elizabeth Brewer discusses Beloit College’s faculty members’ experimentation with mapping, walking, and ethnographic research methods, including participant-observation. It has been humbling and enriching to read the rich work being undertaken on the city and study abroad and to work with the authors who contributed to this volume. It is hoped that the examples and discussions offered in this volume not only will be productive in themselves for readers, but also will generate new discussion, ideas, and practices. Elizabeth Brewer Beloit College Michael Monahan Macalester College Brethren Colleges Abroad

In her recent book published after the election of Donald Trump as the US President in 2016, Cynthia Enloe argues that the patriarchy, similar to our smart phones, has updated itself as a reaction against the achievements of the second and third wave feminisms. The updated patriarchy has this time renewed itself through the beliefs and values about the ways the world works (2017). The competing foreign policies representing the hypermasculine hegemonic masculinity of the current world politics and its authoritarian leaders are the outputs of this new updated version of patriarchy. Enloe doubts that having gained sustainability with its updates, the patriarchy could be fought against simply with street demonstrations, as it was before. The patriarchy could be forced to retreat only by incessantly asking “curious” feminist questions that would expose all masculine patterns of life (2017). Continuously asking questions without giving up or giving in would make the patriarchy transparent and vulnerable. In the face of curious, non-stop questions from a gender perspective and the conscious use of the terms supporting gender equality, the patriarchy, albeit updated and sustained, does not stand a chance. Enloe explains the reason why incorporating gender in International Relations has been considered irrelevant by the power- and security dominated character of the discipline. Also, because the heavy majority of the academics associated with International Relations are male, it is them who choose what is important and worthy of ‘serious’ investigation (Enloe, 2004, 96). This masculine attitude, however, has been clearly excluding multiple human experiences and hindering their capacity to create new possibilities for peaceful co-existence in international relations (Youngs, 2004). As a matter of fact, when we look at the emergence of International Relations as a separate discipline, and the political theories that it takes as its first point of reference, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen) – the human rights document at the time of the French Revolution – Machiavelli’s The Prince; and Man, the State and War, written in 1959 by Kenneth Waltz, the founder of neo-realism, were the mainstream writings that brought liberal (libertarian) and realist perspectives to the discipline of International Relations, respectively. The fundamental aim of these texts was, in fact, to make an analysis based on history and ‘his’ problems. Although these texts put forward a desire for rights and freedoms, as well as the achievement of peace, these values are mostly targeted towards men. Thus, over time, the prominent concepts of International Relations, such as security and hegemony, were defined from a masculine and patriarchal perspective. For instance, from the theoretical view of realists, hegemony is attributed to the order established and led by the most powerful state of the international system– both militarily and economically– while sovereignty evokes the Hobbesian Leviathan (the Devil), with its masculine nature and might. Raewyn Connell responds to these masculine conceptualizations by pointing out that hegemony includes organized social domination in all spheres of life, from religious doctrines to mundane practice, from mass media to taxation (1998: 246). As Connell reminds us, “hegemonic masculinity” expresses the domination of men over women intellectually, culturally, socially, or even politically, thus establishing an unequivocal linkage between gender and power (Connell, 1998). Just as the Western approach to reading and identifying the East and its fiction found an answer in Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism, the theory of political realism put forth by Hans Morgenthau was criticized by Ann Tickner for conceptualizing international politics through the lens of an assumed masculine subject (Tür & Koyuncu, 2010: 9). Critical theory and postmodernism, as alternative approaches in International Relations, drew attention to the otherization of different geographies, civilizations and identities. Yet, on the issue of gender equality, the otherization of women has not been sufficiently recognized; the superiority of man and patriarchy is made possible through the othering of women. From this point of view, it would be beneficial to make a holistic reading of the International Relations literature, and to dismantle these masculine concepts by asking “curious” questions of the discipline. In Terrell Carver’s words, “Gendering IR” is...a project; “gendered” IR is an outcome” (Carver, 2003: 289). In order to achieve such outcome, it bears utmost importance for the gender-equality advocates to insist on, institutionally and practically, gender-based approaches and to not agree with the priority list of the masculine agenda. Security, order, control and retaliation increasingly dominate the discourse shaping the world politics. The gender perspective in International Relations develops to create alternative paradigms that would break this vicious circle of (in)security. Feminist theory in International Relations has demonstrated significant progress since the 1990s and opened pathways in an uncharted territory. Cynthia Enloe, Ann Tickner, Spike V. Peterson and Christine Sylvester, among others, are the most prominent forerunners of this field. Through their works, feminist theory has adopted a perspective critical of the masculinity and the masculine values of international politics by taking not only ‘women’ but a wider category of gender into its centre. These feminist scholars have deconstructed International Relations theories by posing gender-related questions and displayed the masculine prejudice embedded in the definitions of security, power and sovereignty. The feminist theories of International Relations have thus distinguished themselves from the other theories of the discipline by paying a ‘curious’ attention to the power hierarchies and relation structures through inclusiveness and self-reflexivity (True, 2017: 3). As Cynthia Enloe puts it, the gender perspective in International Relations must first be guided by a feminist consciousness (2004: 97). The feminist International Relations, however, although more than a quarter of century has passed since its emergence, are still struggling with the masculine theories to be considered as an equally legitimate way of understanding how the world works. Various epistemological, ontological and ethical debates may have enriched the field (True, 2017: 1), but at the same time, too many as they are, such debates may paradoxically be accusing the spreading-thin of the gender coalition. The capacity of the feminist International Relations’ ethical principles to participate in the global politics has been limited to the United Nations Security Council’s decision number 1325 and the Swedish feminist foreign policy. The feminist attempt to facilitate substantial change and interaction by creating a normative agenda has been called ‘normative feminism’ by Jacqui True (2013: 242). Normative feminism is a project of institutionalising gender in foreign policy by focusing on socio-economic and political changes. The special issue here is our attempt to partake in this project of change in international relations. We have aimed to enhance the visibility of the gender norms of behavior and decision-making with the presupposition that they would pose an alternative to the masculine norms in International Relations by better supporting the human priorities of peace and co-existence. Adopting Judith Butler’s notion of performativity, the feminist existence in international politics has an undeniable connection to engaging in continuous activities. As Rihannan Bury suggests, “what gives a community its substance is the consistent repetition of these ‘various acts’ by a majority of members.” “Being a member of community,” therefore, “is not something one is but something one does” (2005: 14). In Turkey, too, in order to challenge the recognition of the ‘hyper’ version of the hegemonic masculinity as the only viable world view, gender-charged normative discourses, interactions and agendas must be continuously created and multiplied. We hope that the Turkish literature-review and the articles published here will serve this purpose. As is the situation in all disciplines, the feminist International Relations has nurtured many onto-epistemologies, some in competition with one another. Such multitude, though definitely a richness, has been challenging the feminist stance’s capacity to stand united against the hypermasculine hegemonic masculinity. In her latest book, Enloe calls for a continuous struggle of a new and wider feminist coalition against the updated authoritarianism of the patriarchy –inspiring our title “Don’t Give Up! Don’t Give In!.” Such expanded coalition could rise on the common purpose of fighting male dominance and ignore the differences of discourse created by the debate on identity. The gender-guided change and transformation desired in international politics could be achieved more easily in this way (Hemmings, 2012: 148, 155). On this account, in parallel with Enloe’s proposal of establishing a wider consensus simply on peace and co-existence (2017), a new era, in which questions of identity will, for some time, not be asked, may be dawning. A grand coalition of consensus has better chance of resisting the authoritarian leaders of hyper hegemonic masculinity. Our special issue of Gender and International Relations opens with a Turkish literature review with the aim of introducing the topic to Turkish readers. Çiçek Coşkun, against a historical background, presents some of the prominent feminist scholars who have left their footprints in this very masculine area with their fresh gender perspectives. In doing that she offers us a comparative framework in which works by the Turkish and international scholars could be assessed simultaneously. Nezahat Doğan’s article seeks to establish the relation between global peace and gender by using the data obtained from the Global Peace Index, Gender Inequality Index and Social Institutions and Gender Index. In this way, adopting a currently trendy approach, Doğan investigates the interaction between gender and International Relations through a quantitative method. Zehra Yılmaz’s article discusses the temporary position of Syrian women asylum seekers in Turkey from the perspective of the post-colonial feminist concept of subaltern. The article aims to combine feminist migration studies and post-colonial feminist literature within the context of International Relations. Sinem Bal’s article questions whether the EU has designed its gender policies as an aspect of the human-right norms of the European integration or as a way to regulate market economy. Bal pursues such questioning through the reading of the official documents of the EU that prescribes what Europeanization is for Turkey. Thus, all articles constitute a well-rounded understanding of what gendered approaches can achieve in the current practice of international studies. The co-authored article written by Bezen Balamir-Coşkun and Selin Akyüz examined how the images of women leaders in international politics were presented in the international media. The selected images the three most powerful women political leaders list of Forbes in 2017 –Angela Merkel, Theresa May and Federica Mogherini were analysed in the light of the political masculinities literature from a social visual semiotics perspective. It is believed that such an analysis will contribute to the debates about gendered aspect of international relations as well as the current debates on political masculinities. Gizem Bilgin-Aytaç points out that the global policy that emerged after the Cold War and the emergence of the new way of approaching the IR from a feminist perspective have improved the scope of conceptual analysis in peace theories as well. Bilgin-Aytaç discusses global peace conditions with a gender perspective - in particular, referring to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, with a focus on exemplary contemporary issues. Fulden İbrahimhakkıoğlu, in her article, discusses the debate between Ukraine-based feminist group FEMEN staged several protests in support of Amina Tyler, a Tunisian FEMEN activist receiving death threats for posting nude photographs of herself online with social messages written on her body and the Muslim Women Against FEMEN who released an open letter criticizing the discourse FEMEN used in these protests, which they found to be white colonialist and Islamophobic. Thus, İbrahimhakkıoğlu aimes to examines the discursive strategies put forth by the two sides of the very debate, and unveiling the shortcomings of liberalism as drawn on by both positions, the author attempts to rethink what “freedom” might mean for international feminist alliances across differences.

This study examines the memoirs and letters of Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil, one of the prominent Turkish writers of the late Ottoman and early Republican periods, by focusing on the author's understanding of European civilization. Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil's memoirs titled Kırk Yıl, Saray ve Ötesi, Kenarda Kalmış and Almanya Mektupları, which were published as a book while he was still alive, are the texts that this study focuses on. Although the author's book titled Sanata Dair was not written in memoir or letter format, it is been included in the study because it contains critical reflections of Uşaklıgil regarding the subject examined in this study. The corpus mentioned above shows us that Uşaklıgil's understanding of European civilization delves into five topics. These topics can be listed as follows: East and West as subjects of history, the contribution of education to civilization, Western understanding of art and its conribution to civilization, religious lifestyle of East and West, and finally, the question of who is a civilized person. The study carried out a memory research specific to Uşaklıgil's non-fiction texts and subjected the mentioned texts to a discursive analysis by considering the five topics mentioned above in tandem with Jacques Lacan's concepts of I and the Other. Uşaklıgil's memoirs and letters enable us to examine the differences between Eastern and Western civilizations from a new perspective, peculiar to Ottoman intellectual figures of his time. This point of view reveals I and the Other, as subjects of the historical flow and society, were conceived on various lines of tension with an ambivalent attitude in the late Ottoman and early Republican period literature and Uşaklıgil's world of thought.

This paper investigates Tariq Ali’s representations of Islamic civilization and the relationship between Islam and the West during the medieval times in his novel A Sultan in Palermo (2005). The paper argues that by means of resorting to history, Ali reflects on the current affairs between Islam and the West, particularly with regard to the ongoing “War on Terror”. Making use of postcolonial approaches, particularly Edwards Said’s views on the relationship between Islam and the West as well as Hayden White’s ideas on history and historical fiction, the article contends that Ali renarrates history from the view point of the colonized to challenge ideas behind Samuel Huntington’s theory of the “Clash of Civilizations” as well as contemporary Western media’s depictions of Muslims and Islamic cultures as backward and violent. The article maintains that by providing horrendous depictions of war and by suggesting that military action breeds further violence, Ali undermines the ongoing political discourse that the “War on Terror” can defeat terrorism and contribute towards establishing peace worldwide.

The ageing body and old age issues are among the prominent concerns of Western civilization throughout 21st century. The body, as the new raw material of consumer society, is perceived as something that can be changed as a result of medical developments and even bought and sold like other commodities. Furthering the cause of this transformations Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory which evokes the quintessence of social pressure on elder people may help to receive the complexity of the issue. In his theory, Erikson posits eight stages of development with specific tasks and crisis peculiar to each stage throughout the life span. This paper represents an attempt to examine Hanif Kureishi’s The Body novella within the framework of Eriksonian psychosocial theory of human development. Admittedly, Kureishi’s short fiction appears to be in the main dealt with ethnicity and identity matters that render the postcolonial approach. Yet, this study is significant in that it deals with the pressures of society, becoming increasingly severe against old people, on ageing, which points out the last stage of Erikson, integrity vs. despair. It also reveals that past experiences and personal desires affect someone’s psyche. Through The Body, the tie between society and individual, desires and realities, appearance and internal existence have been affirmed. It may be concluded when Hanif Kureishi’s The Body is evaluated within the framework of Erikson’s psychosocial development theory, the accuracy of the effects of socio-cultural factors on personality development has been determined.

Roslynn D. Haynes, From Faust to Strangelove, Representations of the Scientist in Western Literature , Baltimore and London. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, Pp.417, paperback £16.50, (Hardback £45.50). ISBN 0-89263-314-X. Roslynn Haynes, who is Associate Professor of English at the University of New South Wales, has written a scholarly tour de force ; a detailed study of the way in which scientists have been represented in Western literature from the late fourteenth to the late twentieth centuries. Though Chaucer’s deceitful alchemist, the Canon of the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale , was probably the earliest scientist to appear in Western literature, she settles upon the Faust story, in its several manifestations, as archetypical: the scientist seen as one whose arrogant search for knowledge, usually by arcane means, destroys his humanity, encroaches on matters forbidden by God, and ultimately brings terrible retribution. Dr Faustus, Victor Frankenstein and Dr Strangelove provide her with temporal landmarks in a wide-ranging exploration of the fluctuating literary images of scientists down the centuries, extending into film and pulp science fiction. Amoral, arrogant, bumbling, clumsy, deceptive, devious, forgetful, insensitive, irreligious, power-obsessed, at best grossly misguided, the scientist has usually been anathema to the holistic, religious, naturalistic, aesthetic writer over the centuries. It is almost a relief to come across periods when the benefits of advancing technology briefly overrode fear and loathing of science, and scientists were depicted more positively, as in the mid nineteenth century, (e.g. the upright, reforming Dr Lydgate of George Eliot’s Middlemarch ), or the early twentieth century (e.g. Holsten, who salvages civilization in H.G. Wells’s The World Set Free ). I wish she had included William Cooper’s subtle corrective to C.P. Snow, The Struggles of Albert Woods (1952), an accurate and amusing account of the scientist as a Perfectly Ordinary Person, which was seminal among other post-war British writers such as Kinglsey Amis. However, Roslynn Haynes’s report on her area of literature is generally comprehensive and well indexed, and the notes fill out the text admirably, often with fascinating snippets, such as the origin of the name ‘Bovril’ for a proprietary meat extract, or the titles of the nineteen Frankenstein spin-off films.

IntroductionIt has been nearly half a century since the appearance of Susan Sontag’s landmark essay “The Imagination of Disaster.” The critic wrote of the public fascination with science fiction disaster films, claiming that, on the one hand “from a psychological point of view, the imagination of disaster does not greatly differ from one period in history to another [but, on the other hand] from a political and moral point of view, it does” (224). Even if Sontag is right about aspects of the imagination of disaster not changing, the types, frequency, and magnitude of disasters and their representation in media and popular culture suggest that dynamic conditions prevail on both counts. Disaster has become a significantly urban phenomenon, and highly publicised “worst case” scenarios such as Hurricane Katrina and the Haiti earthquake highlight multiple demographic, cultural, and environmental contexts for visualising cataclysm. The 1950s and 60s science fiction films that Sontag wrote about were filled with marauding aliens and freaks of disabused science. Since then, their visual and dramatic effects have been much enlarged by all kinds of disaster scenarios. Partly imagined, these scenarios have real-life counterparts with threats from terrorism and the war on terror, pan-epidemics, and global climate change. Sontag’s essay—like most, if not all of the films she mentions—overlooked the aftermath; that is, the rebuilding, following extra-terrestrial invasion. It ignored what was likely to happen when the monsters were gone. In contrast, the psychological as well as the practical, social, and economic aspects of reconstruction are integral to disaster discourse today. Writing about how architecture might creatively contribute to post-conflict (including war) and disaster recovery, for instance, Boano elaborates the psychological background for rebuilding, where the material destruction of dwellings and cities “carries a powerful symbolic erosion of security, social wellbeing and place attachment” (38); these are depicted as attributes of selfhood and identity that must be restored. Similarly, Hutchison and Bleiker (385) adopt a view evident in disaster studies, that disaster-struck communities experience “trauma” and require inspired responses that facilitate “healing and reconciliation” as well as material aid such as food, housing, and renewed infrastructure. This paper revisits Sontag’s “The Imagination of Disaster,” fifty years on in view of the changing face of disasters and their representation in film media, including more recent films. The paper then considers disaster recovery and outlines the difficult path that “creative industries” like architecture and urban planning must tread when promising a vision of rebuilding that provides for such intangible outcomes as “healing and reconciliation.” We find that hopes for the seemingly positive psychologically- and socially-recuperative outcomes accompanying the prospect of rebuilding risk a variety of generalisation akin to wish-fulfilment that Sontag finds in disaster films. The Psychology of Science Fiction and Disaster FilmsIn “The Imagination of Disaster,” written at or close to the height of the Cold War, Sontag ruminates on what America’s interest in, if not preoccupation with, science fiction films tell us about ourselves. Their popularity cannot be explained in terms of their entertainment value alone; or if it can, then why audiences found (and still find) such films entertaining is something that itself needs explanation.Depicted in media like photography and film, utopian and dystopian thought have at least one thing in common. Their visions of either perfected or socially alienated worlds are commonly prompted by criticism of the social/political status quo and point to its reform. For Sontag, science fiction films portrayed both people’s worst nightmares concerning disaster and catastrophe (e.g. the end of the world; chaos; enslavement; mutation), as well as their facile victories over the kinds of moral, political, and social dissolution the films imaginatively depicted. Sontag does not explicitly attribute such “happy endings” to wish-fulfilling phantasy and ego-protection. (“Phantasy” is to be distinguished from fantasy. It is a psychoanalytic term for states of mind, often symbolic in form, resulting from infantile wish-fulfilment, desires and instincts.) She does, however, describe the kinds of fears, existential concerns (like annihilation), and crises of meaning they are designed (purpose built) to allay. The fears are a product of the time—the down and dark side of technology (e.g. depersonalisation; ambivalence towards science, scientists, and technology) and changes wrought in our working and personal lives by urbanisation. In short, then as now, science fictions films were both expressions of deep and genuine worries and of the pressing need to inventively set them to rest.When Sontag claims that “the imagination of disaster does not greatly differ” (224) from one period to another, this is because, psychologically speaking, neither the precipitating concerns and fears (death, loss of love, meaninglessness, etc.), nor the ways in which people’s minds endeavour to assuage them, substantively differ. What is different is the way they are depicted. This is unsurprisingly a function of the political, social, and moral situations and milieus that provide the context in which the imagination of disaster unfolds. In contemporary society, the extent to which the media informs and constructs the context in which the imagination operates is unprecedented.Sontag claims that there is little if any criticism of the real social and political conditions that bring about the fears the films depict (223). Instead, fantasy operates so as to displace and project the actual causes away from their all too human origins into outer space and onto aliens. In a sense, this is the core and raison d’etre for such films. By their very nature, science fiction films of the kind Sontag is discussing cannot concern themselves with genuine social or political criticism (even though the films are necessarily expressive of such criticism). Any serious questioning of the moral and political status quo—conditions that are responsible for the disasters befalling people—would hamper the operation of fantasy and its production of temporarily satisfying “solutions” to whatever catastrophe is being depicted.Sontag goes on to discuss various strategies science fiction employs to deal with such fears. For example, through positing a bifurcation between good and evil, and grossly oversimplifying the moral complexity of situations, it allows one to “give outlet to cruel or at least amoral feelings” (215) and to exercise feelings of superiority—moral and otherwise. Ambiguous feelings towards science and technology are repressed. Quick and psychologically satisfying fixes are sought for these by means of phantasy and the imaginative construction of invulnerable heroes. Much of what Sontag says can straightforwardly be applied to catastrophe in general. “Alongside the hopeful fantasy of moral simplification and international unity embodied in the science fiction films lurk the deepest anxieties about contemporary existence” (220). Sontag writes:In the films it is by means of images and sounds […] that one can participate in the fantasy of living through one’s own death and more, the death of cities, the destruction of humanity itself. Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects in art. In science fiction films disaster is rarely viewed intensively; it is always extensive. It is a matter of quality and ingenuity […] the science fiction film […] is concerned with the aesthetics of disaster […] and it is in the imagery of destruction that the core of a good science fiction film lies. (212–13)In science fiction films, disaster, though widespread, is viewed intensively as well as extensively. The disturbances constitutive of the disaster are moral and emotional as well as material. People are left without the mental or physical abilities they need to cope. Government is absent or useless. We find ourselves in what amounts to what Naomi Zack (“Philosophy and Disaster”; Ethics for Disaster) describes as a Hobbesian second state of nature—where government is inoperative and chaos (moral, social, political, personal) reigns. Science fiction’s way out is to imaginatively construct scenarios emotionally satisfying enough to temporarily assuage the distress (anomie or chaos) experienced in the film.There is, however, a tremendous difference in the way in which people who face catastrophic occurrences in their lives, as opposed to science fiction, address the problems. For one thing, they must be far closer to complex and quickly changing realities and uncertain truths than are the phantastic, temporarily gratifying, and morally unproblematic resolutions to the catastrophic scenarios that science fiction envisions. Genuine catastrophe, for example war, undermines and dismantles the structures—material structures to be sure but also those of justice, human kindness, and affectivity—that give us the wherewithal to function and that are shown to be inimical to catastrophe as such. Disaster dispenses with civilization while catastrophe displaces it.Special Effects and Changing StorylinesScience fiction and disaster film genres have been shaped by developments in visual simulation technologies providing opportunities for imaginatively mixing fact and fiction. Developments in filmmaking include computer or digital techniques for reproducing on the screen what can otherwise only be imagined as causal sequences of events and spectacles accompanying the wholesale destruction of buildings and cities—even entire planets. Indeed films are routinely promoted on the basis of how cinematographers and technicians have advanced the state of the art. The revival of 3-D movies with films such as Avatar (2009) and Prometheus (2012) is one of a number of developments augmenting the panoramas of 1950s classics featuring “melting tanks, flying bodies, crashing walls, awesome craters and fissures in the earth, plummeting spacecraft [and] colourful deadly rays” (Sontag 213). An emphasis on the scale of destruction and the wholesale obliteration of recognisable sites emblematic of “the city” (mega-structures like the industrial plant in Aliens (1986) and vast space ships like the “Death Star” in two Star Wars sequels) connect older films with new ones and impress the viewer with ever more extraordinary spectacle.Films that have been remade make for useful comparison. On the whole, these reinforce the continuation and predictability of some storylines (for instance, threats of extra-terrestrial invasion), but also the attenuation or disappearance of other narrative elements such as the monsters and anxieties released by mid-twentieth century atomic tests (Broderick). Remakes also highlight emerging themes requiring novel or updated critical frameworks. For example, environmental anxieties, largely absent in 1950s science fiction films (except for narratives involving colliding worlds or alien contacts) have appeared en masse in recent years, providing an updated view on the ethical issues posed by the fall of cities and communities (Taylor, “Urban”).In The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and its remakes (1956, 1978, 1993), for example, the organic and vegetal nature of the aliens draws the viewer’s attention to an environment formed by combative species, allowing for threats of infestation, growth and decay of the self and individuality—a longstanding theme. In the most recent version, The Invasion (2007), special effects and directorial spirit render the orifice-seeking tendrils of the pod creatures threateningly vigorous and disturbing (Lim). More sanctimonious than physically invasive, the aliens in the 1951 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still are fed up with humankind’s fixation with atomic self-destruction, and threaten global obliteration on the earth (Cox). In the 2008 remake, the suave alien ambassador, Keanu Reeves, targets the environmental negligence of humanity.Science, including science as fiction, enters into disaster narratives in a variety of ways. Some are less obvious but provocative nonetheless; for example, movies dramatising the arrival of aliens such as War of the Worlds (1953 and 2005) or Alien (1979). These more subtle approaches can be personally confronting even without the mutation of victims into vegetables or zombies. Special effects technologies have made it possible to illustrate the course of catastrophic floods and earthquakes in considerable scientific and visual detail and to represent the interaction of natural disasters, the built environment, and people, from the scale of buildings, homes, and domestic lives to entire cities and urban populations.For instance, the blockbuster film The Day After Tomorrow (2004) runs 118 minutes, but has an uncertain fictional time frame of either a few weeks or 72 hours (if the film’s title is to taken literally). The movie shows the world as we know it being mostly destroyed. Tokyo is shattered by hailstones and Los Angeles is twisted by cyclones the likes of which Dorothy would never have seen. New York disappears beneath a mountainous tsunami. All of these events result from global climate change, though whether this is due to human (in) action or other causes is uncertain. Like their predecessors, the new wave of disaster movies like The Day After Tomorrow makes for questionable “art” (Annan). Nevertheless, their reception opens a window onto broader political and moral contexts for present anxieties. Some critics have condemned The Day After Tomorrow for its scientific inaccuracies—questioning the scale or pace of climate change. Others acknowledge errors while commending efforts to raise environmental awareness (Monbiot). Coincident with the film and criticisms in both the scientific and political arena is a new class of environmental heretic—the climate change denier. This is a shadowy character commonly associated with the presidency of George W. Bush and the oil lobby that uses minor inconsistencies of science to claim that climate change does not exist. One thing underlying both twisting facts for the purposes of making science fiction films and ignoring evidence of climate change is an infantile orientation towards the unknown. In this regard, recent films do what science fiction disaster films have always done. While freely mixing truths and half-truths for the purpose of heightened dramatic effect, they fulfil psychological tasks such as orchestrating nightmare scenarios and all too easy victories on the screen. Uncertainty regarding the precise cause, scale, or duration of cataclysmic natural phenomena is mirrored by suspension of disbelief in the viability of some human responses to portrayals of urban disaster. Science fiction, in other words, invites us to accept as possible the flight of Americans and their values to Mexico (The Day After Tomorrow), the voyage into earth’s molten core (The Core 2003), or the disposal of lava in LA’s drainage system (Volcano 1997). Reinforcing Sontag’s point, here too there is a lack of criticism of the real social and political conditions that bring about the fears depicted in the films (223). Moreover, much like news coverage, images in recent natural disaster films (like their predecessors) typically finish at the point where survivors are obliged to pick up the pieces and start all over again—the latter is not regarded as newsworthy. Allowing for developments in science fiction films and the disaster genre, Sontag’s observation remains accurate. The films are primarily concerned “with the aesthetics of destruction, with the peculiar beauties to be found in wreaking havoc, in making a mess” (213) rather than rebuilding. The Imagination of Disaster RecoverySontag’s essay contributes to an important critical perspective on science fiction film. Variations on her “psychological point of view” have been explored. (The two discourses—psychology and cinema—have parallel and in some cases intertwined histories). Moreover, in the intervening years, psychological or psychoanalytical terms and narratives have themselves become even more a part of popular culture. They feature in recent disaster films and disaster recovery discourse in the “real” world.Today, with greater frequency than in the 1950s and 60s films arguably, representations of alien invasion or catastrophic global warming serve to background conflict resolutions of a more quotidian and personal nature. Hence, viewers are led to suspect that Tom Cruise will be more likely to survive the rapacious monsters in the latest The War of the Worlds if he can become less narcissistic and a better father. Similarly, Dennis Quaid’s character will be much better prepared to serve a newly glaciated America for having rescued his son (and marriage) from the watery deep-freezer that New York City becomes in The Day After Tomorrow. In these films the domestic and familial comprise a domain of inter-personal and communal relations from which victims and heroes appear. Currents of thought from the broad literature of disaster studies and Western media also call upon this domain. The imagination of disaster recovery has come to partly resemble a set of problems organised around the needs of traumatised communities. These serve as an object of urban governance, planning, and design conceived in different ways, but largely envisioned as an organic unity that connects urban populations, their pasts, and settings in a meaningful, psychologically significant manner (Furedi; Hutchison and Bleiker; Boano). Terms like “place” or concepts like Boano’s “place-attachment" (38) feature in this discourse to describe this unity and its subjective dimensions. Consider one example. In August 2006, one year after Katrina, the highly respected Journal of Architectural Education dedicated a special issue to New Orleans and its reconstruction. Opening comments by editorialist Barbara Allen include claims presupposing enduring links between the New Orleans community conceived as an organic whole, its architectural heritage imagined as a mnemonic vehicle, and the city’s unique setting. Though largely unsupported (and arguably unsupportable) the following proposition would find agreement across a number of disaster studies and resonates in commonplace reasoning:The culture of New Orleans is unique. It is a mix of ancient heritage with layers and adaptations added by successive generations, resulting in a singularly beautiful cultural mosaic of elements. Hurricane Katrina destroyed buildings—though not in the city’s historic core—and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, but it cannot wipe out the memories and spirit of the citizens. (4) What is intriguing about the claim is an underlying intellectual project that subsumes psychological and sociological domains of reasoning within a distinctive experience of community, place, and memory. In other words, the common belief that memory is an intrinsic part of the human condition of shock and loss gives form to a theory of how urban communities experience disaster and how they might re-build—and justify rebuilding—themselves. This is problematic and invites anachronistic thinking. While communities are believed to be formed partly by memories of a place, “memory” is neither a collective faculty nor is it geographically bounded. Whose memories are included and which ones are not? Are these truly memories of one place or do they also draw on other real or imagined places? Moreover—and this is where additional circumspection is inspired by our reading of Sontag’s essay—does Allen’s editorial contribute to an aestheticised image of place, rather than criticism of the social and political conditions required for reconstruction to proceed with justice, compassionately and affectively? Allowing for civil liberties to enter the picture, Allen adds “it is necessary to enable every citizen to come back to this exceptional city if they so desire” (4). However, given that memories of places and desires for their recovery are not univocal, and often contain competing visions of what was and should be, it is not surprising they should result in competing expectations for reconstruction efforts. This has clearly proven the case for New Orleans (Vederber; Taylor, “Typologies”)ConclusionThe comparison of films invites an extension of Sontag’s analysis of the imagination of disaster to include the psychology, politics, and morality of rebuilding. Can a “psychological point of view” help us to understand not only the motives behind capturing so many scenes of destruction on screen and television, but also something of the creative impulses driving reconstruction? This invites a second question. How do some impulses, particularly those caricatured as the essence of an “enterprise culture” (Heap and Ross) associated with America’s “can-do” or others valorised as positive outcomes of catastrophe in The Upside of Down (Homer-Dixon), highlight or possibly obscure criticism of the conditions which made cities like New Orleans vulnerable in the first place? The broad outline of an answer to the second question begins to appear only when consideration of the ethics of disaster and rebuilding are taken on board. If “the upside” of “the down” wrought by Hurricane Katrina, for example, is rebuilding of any kind, at any price, and for any person, then the equation works (i.e., there is a silver lining for every cloud). If, however, the range of positives is broadened to include issues of social justice, then the figures require more complex arithmetic.ReferencesAllen, Barbara. “New Orleans and Katrina: One Year Later.” Journal of Architectural Education 60.1 (2006): 4.Annan, David. Catastrophe: The End of the Cinema? London: Lorrimer, 1975.Boano, Camillo. “‘Violent Space’: Production and Reproduction of Security and Vulnerabilities.” The Journal of Architecture 16 (2011): 37–55.Broderick, Mick, ed. Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film. London: Kegan Paul, 1996.Cox, David. “Get This, Aliens: We Just Don’t Care!” The Guardian 15 Dec. 2008 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2008/dec/15/the-day-the-earth-stood-still›. Furedi, Frank. “The Changing Meaning of Disaster.” Area 39.4 (2007): 482–89.Heap, Shaun H., and Angus Ross, eds. Understanding the Enterprise Culture: Themes in the Work of Mary Douglas. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992. Homer-Dixon, Thomas. The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006.Hutchison, Emma, and Roland Bleiker. “Emotional Reconciliation: Reconstituting Identity and Community after Trauma.” European Journal of Social Theory 11 (2008): 385–403.Lim, Dennis. “Same Old Aliens, But New Neuroses.” New York Times 12 Aug. 2007: A17.Monbiot, George. “A Hard Rain's A-gonna Fall.” The Guardian 14 May 2004.Sontag, Susan. “The Imagination of Disaster” (1965). Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Dell, 1979. 209–25.Taylor, William M. “Typologies of Katrina: Mnemotechnics in Post-Disaster New Orleans.” Interstices 13 (2012): 71–84.———. “Urban Disasters: Visualising the Fall of Cities and the Forming of Human Values.” Journal of Architecture 11.5 (2006): 603–12.Verderber, Stephen. “Five Years After – Three New Orleans Neighborhoods.” Journal of Architectural Education 64.1 (2010): 107–20.Zack, Naomi. Ethics for Disaster. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009.———. “Philosophy and Disaster.” Homeland Security Affairs 2, article 5 (April 2006): ‹http://www.hsaj.org/?article=2.1.5›.FilmographyAlien. Dir. Ridley Scott. Brandywine Productions, 1979.Aliens. Dir. James Cameron. Brandywine Productions, 1986.Avatar. Dir. James Cameron. Lightstorm Entertainment et al., 2009.The Core. Dir. Jon Amiel. Paramount Pictures, 2003.The Day after Tomorrow. Dir. Roland Emmerich. 20th Century Fox, 2004.The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Dir. Don Siegel. Allied Artists, 1956; also 1978 and 1993.The Invasion. Dirs. Oliver Hirschbiegel and Jame McTeigue. Village Roadshow et al, 2007.Prometheus. Dir. Ridley Scott. Scott Free and Brandywine Productions, 2012Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Dir. George Lucas. Lucasfilm, 1977.Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. Dir. George Lucas. Lucasfilm, 1983.Volcano. Dir. Mick Jackson. 20th Century Fox, 1997.War of the Worlds. Dir. George Pal. Paramount, 1953; also Steven Spielberg. Paramount, 2005.Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to Oenone Rooksby and Joely-Kym Sobott for their assistance and advice when preparing this article. It was also made possible in part by a grant from the Australian Research Council.

Each society possesses its unique history, which is not only a puzzle of happenings, but it circumscribes the changes occurring in its political, cultural, civilizational environment and absorb variations in traditions, behaviors, and revolutions. Literature reflects the society, so it has a better interpretation of those changes and elements which affect the society positively or vice versa. Literature encompasses the views and thoughts flourishing in a society. When Indian society turned into an industrial society after being a feudal society and as a result changes occurred in cultural and traditional norms, a mental restlessness took place not only in minds of individuals but also in Urdu literature. These cultural, traditional, and political alterations made notable impressions on the vast canvas of Urdu Novel. Urdu novel, which was introduced in the colonial era, from its very beginning, reflected the western imitation and regulations under the colonialism, with a mindset that Indians are inferior, and they should be a replica of their western masters. An elite class was flourished in British India under colonialism. This elite class was imitated the western masters and their lifestyle. This article reflects these imitations and its effects on Urdu novel and the Indian society through this medium.

The novel The New Story of the Stone (新石头记, Xinshitouji [1908] 2016), by Wu Jianren, is one of the most representative Chinese utopian works of the late Qing dynasty, or the early 20th-century. The novel is evenly divided into two parts. The first 20 chapters probe into the political and social conditions of late Qing China through the depictions of the protagonist’s travels to cities such as Shanghai, Wuhan and Beijing where the relations with the West had been established. The last 20 chapters, which are antithetical to the first part, depict a utopia – the Civilized World. There is a twisted mirror-image relationship between Shanghai and the Civilized World. The Civilized World alludes to civilized Shanghai with advanced hospitals, factories, museums, schools for women, trading markets and so on. Based on the image of Shanghai, the highly westernized and modernized Chinese metropolis, the author works out this “genuine civilized country” in the hope of competing with the “false civilized Western country”. Therefore, by making the geographic location of “the Civilized World” both fictional and real, the author finds his way to imagining a unique Chinese utopia which might surpass the Western civilization in the late Qing China.