scholarly journals Las Vegas Is a Faithful Mormon City: Phyllis Barber’s Search for Identity through Fiction and Place

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angel Chaparro
Keyword(s):  
Las Vegas ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
The West ◽  
Perfect Stage ◽  
Cultura Popular ◽  
Phyllis Barber ◽  
Good And Evil

Abstract: In Phyllis Barber’s memoir How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir, Las Vegas exercises a pivotal role. The Mormon ideals of purity, modesty and chastity do not come to mind when thinking of Las Vegas. Barber’s literature is a literary search for identity, and identity that allows good and evil in a wide array of possibilities. Las Vegas is in that sense the perfect stage to perform her search. Furthermore, Barber’s autobiography contributes with a new different approach to Las Vegas as an iconic city and to the West as a paradigm in which American identity was formed.Resumen: En How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir, Phyllis Barber utiliza Las Vegas como un complejo escenario donde los valores fomentados por la cultura Mormona chocan con aquellos de la cultura popular y secular. Barber, cuya literatura se caracteriza por ser un instrumento de confección de su identidad individual, abraza la paradoja como elemento enriquecedor de esa construcción. Al mismo tiempo, las conclusiones que se extraen del análisis de su obra son aplicables, en un enfoque más general, al papel de la cultura Mormona dentro del marco de la historia y la literatura del Oeste de los Estados Unidos.

Consuming Passions, Wasted Efforts

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Hamera
Keyword(s):  
Las Vegas ◽  
Consumer Credit ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Child Molestation ◽  
Subprime Mortgage ◽  
Mortgage Crisis ◽  
Subprime Mortgage Crisis ◽  
Michael Jackson

This chapter examines Michael Jackson’s fiscal travails from 2002 to the release of This Is It in 2010, reading coverage of his consumption, debt, and attempts at recovery as racialized public melodrama. It begins with a scene of Jackson shopping in Las Vegas taken from Living with Michael Jackson, viewed through both the emerging consumer credit bubble and the temperance melodrama The Drunkard. It then turns to the ways testimony about Jackson’s finances, particularly his debts, played a pivotal role in his child molestation trial, reproducing a financialized melodramatic racial dialectic that emerged again in the subprime mortgage crisis. It concludes by reading parallels between accounts of Jackson’s physical wasting on the set of This Is It and that of the compulsively dancing child in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale “The Red Shoes.” Both represent the process of disciplining past excesses through redemptive contraction as US austerity rhetoric reached a crescendo.

scholarly journals Heresy and Orthodoxy Now: The Zigzagging Paths of the Lawful

Text Matters ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 213-222
Author(s):  
Marta Zając
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Structure ◽  
The State ◽  
The West ◽  
Wrong Thing ◽  
Secular Age ◽  
Concept Of Truth ◽  
Good And Evil

In this article I consider a certain characteristic of our times as a “secular age,” namely, a series of complications in our understanding of transgression. Transgression implies the presence of some rules and laws which can be violated. As long as the rules and laws are perceived as right, as a way of protecting the values which would otherwise perish, transgression appears to be a wrong thing to do, a misdeed, a criminal act. Needless to say, the very conceptual structure makes sense only provided that the distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil, lawful and lawless are not arbitrary, which, in turn, depends on the presence of the concept of truth. In the secular age, though, the concept of truth becomes not only difficult to handle, since it is incompatible with the modern frame of mind, but also assumes some derogatory connotations, up to the point when to insist on the distinction between (truly) right and (truly) wrong is in itself a wrong thing to do. That is the state of contemporary societies which G. K. Chesterton examines in his work Heretics. The effect of Chesterton’s reflections is a new map of right/wrong, good/evil, lawless/lawful permutations. After Chesterton, I comment on the character of a new heretic, one for whom transgression, understood as the attack on buried-for-long orthodoxy, is too easy a thing to do. To illustrate the mentioned changes of perspective, I refer to an exemplary criminal figure of the West, that is, the biblical serpent, and its criticism.

When Western History Tried to Reinvent Itself: Revisionism, Controversy, and the Reception of the New Western History

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathalie Massip
Keyword(s):  
Central Place ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
The West ◽  
Western History ◽  
Creation Myth ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Abstract This article reviews the reception of the New Western History, whose emergence coincided with the history and culture wars of the late twentieth century. I analyze debates and arguments created by revisionists’ writings, both within the walls of academia and beyond. The discussions which the movement triggered within the historical profession led to exceptional press coverage that attested to the central place the West occupies in the American imagination. Similarly, the uproar generated by the 1991 Smithsonian’s West as America exhibition further demonstrated Americans’ singular attachment to the story of the West as the creation myth of the nation. Just as the culture wars of the period hinged on a definition of an American identity, the reappraisal of the western past was perceived, by some, as questioning what it meant to be a westerner and, ultimately, an American.

Wallace Stegner's Arabian Discovery: Imperial Blind Spots in a Continental Vision

2007 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-438
Author(s):  
ROBERT VITALIS
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
American Identity ◽  
The West ◽  
Western History ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Oil Company ◽  
Blind Spots

In 1956 Wallace Stegner wrote a history of the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco), but it was only published fifteen years later——in Beirut. The book complicates the view of Stegner as a destroyer of American western myths and a forerunner of the social and environmental turn in western history. Stegner shared with those who bought his services some problematic ideas about American identity and history in the context of the Cold War. His forgotten history of oil exploration in Saudi Arabia reveals the blind spots in his ““continental vision,”” an inability or unwillingness to see the moment as part of the long, unbroken past of the U.S. West. Stegner's journey, from chronicler of the despoiling of the West by eastern oil and copper barons to defender of cultural diversity and the collective commons, stopped, as it has for many other Americanists, at the water's edge.

scholarly journals Some Boethian Themes in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Andrzej Wicher
Keyword(s):  
Medieval Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Lord Of The Rings ◽  
The Road ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Consolation Of Philosophy ◽  
Good And Evil

There appear to be quite a few parallels between Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy (Consolatio Philosophiae), and they seem to concern particularly, though not only, the character drawing in Tolkien’s book. Those parallels are preeminently connected with the fact that both Boethius and Tolkien like to think of the most extreme situations that can befall a human. And both are attached to the idea of not giving in to despair, and of finding a source of hope in seemingly desperate straits. The idea that there is some link between Boethius and Tolkien is naturally not new. T.A. Shippey talks about it in his The Road to Middle Earth, but he concentrates on the Boethian conception of good and evil, which is also of course an important matter, but surely not the only one that links Tolkien and Boethius. On the other hand, it is not my intention to claim that there is something in Tolkien’s book of which it can be said that it would have been absolutely impossible without Boethius. Still, I think it may be supposed that just like Boethian motifs are natural in the medieval literature of the West, so they can be thought of as natural in the work of such dedicated a medievalist as J.R.R. Tolkien.

scholarly journals The Pivotal Role of Guanxi for Economic Intelligence in the People’s Republic of China1

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 133-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Milliot
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
The West ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Logic Of Knowledge ◽  
International Operations ◽  
Far Eastern ◽  
Learning Logic

Economic intelligence can be defined as a system of learning (logic of knowledge) and lobbying (logic of influence), largely based on access to information and interpersonal relationships. In the West, learning and lobbying are managed simultaneously, sequentially or separately. Can these systems, however, be developed in the same ways in Far Eastern countries, where messages are generally implicit and relations are usually gregarious? In particular, does knowledge depend on influence in these countries? Using the People’s Republic of China as an example, and based upon a survey of 353 people, the work in this article illustrates the need for adapting economic intelligence to international operations, and underlines the relevance of guanxi in building such a system in this country.

God’s Country, Las Vegas and the Gunfighter: Differing Visions of the West

1975 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 273-283
Author(s):  
John Cawelti
Keyword(s):  
Las Vegas ◽  
The West

scholarly journals Western tolerance: the rule of democracy or the offensive of dehumanization?

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-246
Author(s):  
A. N. Il’in
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
The West ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Transformations ◽  
Sexual Perversion ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Tolerant Line ◽  
Social Minorities ◽  
Good And Evil

In the West, there is a total substitution of concepts, expressed in the idea of tolerance, according to which humanism manifests itself in respect for any system of values. The criteria for good and evil are neutralized, and the Weld of what is permitted is expanded. Values and life practices that were traditionally considered unacceptable and marginal in the culture receive the status of normal and even necessary. When the boundaries of tolerance are not defined, the idea itself becomes dehumanizing. But the dehumanizing meaning of the ongoing cultural transformations is hidden behind emotionally attractive names like human rights and democracy. Socially harmful ideology and the life practices it absolutizes are given a lot of emotionally euphonious names, which are simulacra that hide the true essence of the phenomena being signified. Ne protection of minority rights under the banner of democracy and human rights is usually an attack on the rights of the majority, and human rights are wrongly identified with the rights of the minority. The absolutization of the rights of social minorities (and the most radical ones in relation to traditional culture) is at the same time an infringement of the rights of the majority. The social majority becomes oppressed. Ne idea of tolerance implanted anti-democratic, without taking into account the views of the public. In the West, it is necessary to show tolerance both to different practices and points of view, and to the very fact of planting this tolerant line. That is, a mandatory tolerance for tolerance is instilled. The common idea of postmodern relativization of values is not entirely correct. The sick, the evil, and the unreasonable are given more right to exist than the healthy, the good, and the reasonable. But instead of equating the worthy and the unworthy, a “sociocultural inflection” is carried out towards the unworthy. Criticism of homosexuality is presented as reprehensible intolerant homophobia, and parents who are negative about gay propaganda risk becoming clients for juvenile services. Even schools began to reorient themselves under the apologia of sexual perversion, which is a reversal to the de-intellectualization and dehumanization of children’s minds. Trends that are referred to as ways to protect human rights, freedom, and democracy actually lead to social dehumanization.

scholarly journals Re-Mystifying the West: Hybridity and Spirituality in Jim Jarmusch’s 'Dead Man'

Linguaculture ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-68
Author(s):  
Florina Năstase
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
American West ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Spiritual Awakening ◽  
The West ◽  
American Imperialism ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Native American Identity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dead Man

The paper intends to examine the ways in which the American West has undergone a cinematic transformation with the advent of counter-cultural western movies that criticize and often dismantle American imperialism and expansionism. The paper makes the argument that the American West has arrived at a new stage in its mythology, namely that it has been re-mythologized as a locus of Eastern spiritual awakening. The western of the 1990s’ decade embraces a rebirth of spiritualism through the genre of the “acid western,” typified in this paper by Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995), a film that showcases the return of the West as a cultural frontier that must be re-assimilated instead of rejected. Given its symbolic title, Dead Man is not so much a Western as it is an Eastern romance, a rite of passage framed as a journey towards death. The paper will attempt to make its case by tackling the history of anti-establishment cinema, while also basing its argument on the assertions of director Jim Jarmusch, and various film critics who discuss the issue of the “acid western.” At the same time, the paper will offer a post-colonial perspective informed by Homi Bhabha’s theory of hybridity, with particular emphasis on Native American identity.

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