Origin Stories

2021 ◽  
pp. 520-540
Author(s):  
Jennifer Lynn Stoever
Keyword(s):  
Sound Art ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
Origin Story

This chapter examines auditory racism via the concepts of the sonic colour line and the listening ear and details its fundamental, deeply-rooted impact on what is called ‘sound art’. As the sonic colour line sorts ‘good’ listeners from ‘bad’, the curatorial listening ear—the disciplinary mode of white listening operating as the sonic colour line’s ready attendant—thoroughly permeates the exhibition, review, and scholarship of sound art, particularly in three areas: the field’s origin story, the pointed rejection of self-identified black diasporic aesthetics, and a refusal to hear critique on these grounds. In addition to auditing prior scholarship, I challenge previous renderings of ‘sound art’ via close and historically-contextualized analysis of artworks by Camille Norment, Betye Saar, Mendi + Keith Obadike, and Jennie C. Jones.

scholarly journals Amazonian worlds of other-than-human beings and the Apurinã through the materiality of oral stories

Multilingua ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen ◽  
Francisco Apurinã ◽  
Sidney Facundes
Keyword(s):  
Language Documentation ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
The People ◽  
Communicative Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Origin Story ◽  
Community Meeting ◽  
Southwestern Amazonia

Abstract This article looks at what origin stories teach about the world and what kind of material presence they have in Southwestern Amazonia. We examine the ways the Apurinã relate to certain nonhuman entities through their origin story, and our theoretical approach is language materiality, as we are interested in material means of mediating traditional stories. Analogous to the ways that speakers of many other languages who distinguish the entities that they talk to or about, the Apurinã make use of linguistic resources to establish the ways they interact with different entities. Besides these resources, the material means of mediating stories is a crucial tool to narrate the worlds of humans and nonhumans. Storytelling requires material mediation, and a specific context of plant substances. It also involves community meeting as a space of trust in order to become a communicative practice and effectively introduce the history of the people. Our sources are ethnography, language documentation, and autoethnography.

Beyond Class, Only Commentary: Rereading the Licchavis’ Origin Story in Buddhist Contexts

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-204
Author(s):  
Charles S. Preston
Keyword(s):  
Class Structure ◽  
Structural Studies ◽  
Class Hierarchy ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
Origin Story ◽  
New Interpretation

The origin story of the Licchavis, retold in two commentaries on Nik?ya texts, has received some scant attention in the modern scholastic record, yet has usually been either cast aside as so much myth or has been recast in thematic or structural studies that align it with other tales of incest, foundling narratives, or origin stories of ga?a-sa?ghas. This article argues against those interpretations and offers a thorough rereading of the story as not only encoding a class hierarchy but also, in so doing, critiquing the Brahmanical class structure and the concept of svabh?va by birth. In this new interpretation of the story, and by reading it alongside other narratives, it becomes apparent that the origin story of the Licchavis makes sense within the context of the Buddhist commentaries where it is found. The account of their origins is not merely retelling an old story but furthering a Buddhist message.

American origins: Political and religious divides in US collective memory

2019 ◽  
pp. 175069801985606 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy K Yamashiro ◽  
Abram Van Engen ◽  
Henry L Roediger
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Positivity Bias ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
Origin Story ◽  
Religious Differences

Origin stories are particularly influential collective memories, establishing a society in the minds of its members. National collective memories are frequently conceived as being shared by all members of the country, but subnational groups may differ in their images of the group’s past. Surveying 2000 Americans, we examined political and religious differences in foundational events selected for America’s origins. While there was considerable agreement across religious and political affiliations for the most important events, there were also critical differences. While all participants demonstrated a marked positivity bias in their origin stories, conservative participants more frequently omitted foundational atrocities from America’s origin story, and thus had the most positive stories. Secular participants were most likely to begin America with the independent state, whereas religious participants frequently began America with earlier colonization events. Origin stories accord with varying images of America and American identity.

scholarly journals Touchstones for Sustainable Development: Indigenous Peoples and the Anthropology of Sustainability in Our Common Future

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 369-393
Author(s):  
John Ødemark
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Sustainable Living ◽  
Indigenous Cultures ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
History Of ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Origin Story ◽  
Common Future

The Anthropocene is regularly invoked as an occasion for the rethinking of the Anthropos, for instance through a reexamination of human origin stories. This article examines one such anthropological origin story; the construction of an exemplary and sustainable humanity based upon notions of “indigenous cultures” in Our Common Future in the context of D. Chakrabarty’s call for a history of the human that merges the biological and cultural archives of humanity. The UN report, Our Common Future, first formulated “sustainable development” as a global policy. Through a close reading of the report, the article demonstrates that a combined ecological and anthropological exemplarity is associated with “indigenous and tribal peoples”, who are also construed as living examples of sustainable living for the global society, and links to humanity’s past. Furthermore, the article aims to show that particular conceptions of “culture” and “ecological” wholes enables a translation between different scales, between local and “bounded” indigenous cultures and earth as the bounded habitat of humanity. The fusion of the concepts of “development” and “sustainability” in Our Common Future lies behind present UN concerns with sustainable development goals in current international policy. Hence, an inquiry into the anthropological and cultural historical assumptions of the report is vital. Questions of natural and cultural time have come to dominate discussions of the Anthropocene. The article also reconnects the global scale with a very literal struggle over space inside the Brazilian nation state, through reading the comment on the report from Ailton Krenak. Applying what we could call a language of survival, Krenak relates the global eco-political scale of OCF with a very concrete struggle over territory inside the political space of the Brazilian nation state.

Origin Stories, Surveillance, and Digital Alter Egos

Screen Bodies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-110
Author(s):  
Sarah Young
Keyword(s):  
Digital Information ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
Origin Story

The origin story is an important element for any superhero/villain, as it provides context for a character’s seemingly out-of-this-world abilities. A radioactive spider bit Spiderman, and the Penguin was bullied in his youth. It can also be beneficial for surveillance scholars, inasmuch as it provides context for a once invisible but superhuman body of digital information that circulates as a proxy for us in digital milieus. This body is best understood through contemporary surveillance practices, yet metaphors of the panopticon and George Orwell’s 1984 proliferate in the surveillant imagination. I argue here that mapping an origin story onto a view of our data as a superhuman body not only creates a tangible representation of surveillance, but it also emphasizes and animates alternative surveillance theories useful for circulation in the surveillant imagination.

Hula

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angeline Shaka
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Native Hawaiian ◽  
Tourist Industry ◽  
Multiple Origin ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Origin Story ◽  
Traditional Performance ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Hula, as the Native Hawaiian scholar Mary Kawena Pukui (1895–1986) noted, is a general name for Hawaii’s folk dances. While it is impossible to point to one origin story for hula, multiple origin stories for the dances are included in various Hawaiian myths. In addition to hula’s beginnings, these myths also explain the creation of the island chain and its indigenous inhabitants, revealing an interconnected relationship between hula, the land and Hawaii’s people. With the establishment of the tourist industry in Hawaii at the turn of the twentieth century, hula became commodified and gendered as female for vacationing tourists. New performance contexts established in the late twentieth century, however, challenged this commodification of hula, as Native Hawaiian practitioners sought to reclaim the ancient hula traditions that seemed to be erased through the ‘hula girl’s’ acculturated dance. Hula competitions and concert hula productions set alternative parameters for defining and performing traditional hula styles. Both draw on hula’s established history of incorporating hybrid musical, compositional, bodily, choreographic and narrative influences into its traditional performance. Such hybridization encapsulates hula’s various encounters with modernity and its influences, becoming a flash point for producing cosmopolitan Native identities and for capitalizing on tradition.

Ownership and Origin Stories

2021 ◽  
pp. 41-60
Author(s):  
Laura J. Shepherd
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Critical Importance ◽  
The Past ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
History Of ◽  
Origin Story

One of the most prominent motifs in the narration of the WPS agenda is a repeated, and repeatedly coherent, story of the history of “the agenda,” which tells of the advocacy surrounding the adoption of UNSCR 1325 in 2000 and anchors the agenda firmly in the passage of this resolution by the UN Security Council. The narration of this “origin story” is of critical importance in shaping what the agenda could and would become in the following twenty years. The “ownership” of the agenda by the women’s civil society organizations that lobbied for the adoption of the foundational resolution is a touchstone of political activism around the agenda and has had an impact on its development over the past two decades. These ownership claims, deriving from the origin stories, thus have important constitutive effects on the future of the agenda and on the legitimacy and credibility of various WPS subjects.

Music after the Fall

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Rutherford-Johnson
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Musical Composition ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War

By the start of the 21st century many of the foundations of postwar culture had disappeared: Europe had been rebuilt and, as the EU, had become one of the world’s largest economies; the United States’ claim to global dominance was threatened; and the postwar social democratic consensus was being replaced by market-led neoliberalism. Most importantly of all, the Cold War was over, and the World Wide Web had been born. Music After The Fall considers contemporary musical composition against this changed backdrop, placing it in the context of globalization, digitization, and new media. Drawing on theories from the other arts, in particular art and architecture, it expands the definition of Western art music to include forms of composition, experimental music, sound art, and crossover work from across the spectrum, inside and beyond the concert hall. Each chapter considers a wide range of composers, performers, works, and institutions are considered critically to build up a broad and rich picture of the new music ecosystem, from North American string quartets to Lebanese improvisers, from South American electroacoustic studios to pianos in the Australian outback. A new approach to the study of contemporary music is developed that relies less on taxonomies of style and technique, and more on the comparison of different responses to common themes, among them permission, fluidity, excess, and loss.

BERTA’ARUF DENGAN TILAWAH LANGGAM JAWA

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-84
Author(s):  
Muhammad Yaser Arafat
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Reading Practice ◽  
The Real ◽  
Musical Genres

This paper seeks to study the recitation of the Qur'an with the recitation of Javanese style as an interpretation in the reading. The recitation of the Javanese style is done by reciting the Qur'an by using the rhythm of the spiritual sound art treasury of Sekar Macapat. The recitation of Javanese style is not an insult to the Qur'an. Reading practice is not the same as chanting the Qur'an with the rhythm of Arabic songs, dangdut, punk, hip-hop, and other types of musical genres. the recitation of the Qur'an with the Javanese rhythm derived from Sekar Macapat is a good, beautiful, and more important, suluki. it means that the recitation of Javanese style is an act of reciting the Qur'an as well as a cultured act, which aims to draw closer to Allah Almighty, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), and to connect himself to the spiritual genealogy of the saints in Java. therefore, I call it "Jawi's recitation," which in Javanese spiritual treasury means one who has understood the real reality (al-Haq).

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