scholarly journals The archetypal mandala: Visions of the self in the poetry of Coleridge, Eliot and Breytenbach

Literator ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Deudney

This paper is a preliminary survey of the visions of the s e lf in poetry. It is concerned with the transformation of consciousness as depicted by each of the three poets a Romantic, a Modernist and a Postmodernist poet respectively and expressed in specific poems with a cyclical nature. The romantic poet Coleridge's “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is taken as the first example. It is found to be an allegory of the metamorphosis of the poet’s temporal subjective consciousness into an ‘eternal ’ subject position in the narrated text. Eliot’s "Four Quartets" exemplifies the Modernist mode of consciousness as an 'anironic vision of unity' achieved by adhering to a religio-aesthetic meta-narrative. Breytenbach (1988:115) calls his volumes of prison poetry "The Undanced Dance". Taken as a whole "The Undanced Dance" has a structure which concurs with what Brodey (1971:4) calls "an Einsteinian time-space form of relations” and lures its readers into the trap of falling into postmodern quantum consciousness.

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aliette Lambert

Extending the critical project of interrogating the consumer subject form, in this study, the consumer subject is read as potentially acritical, precarious and psychotic through Dufour’s Lacanian-inspired analysis of neoliberal subjectivity. Reflecting on two case studies from an ethnographic-type study of young women, identity and consumer culture, I demonstrate how participants attempt to fulfil neoliberal ideals related to agency, productivity and creativity. Relying on commodities for symbolic anchoring in doing so, a ‘psychotic’ and precarious subject position is evidenced. While the findings could certainly be interpreted as productive, tendencies toward materialism, uncertainty and anxiety, along with pervasive mental health issues, provided the impetus to further problematise dominant understandings of the consumer. Neoliberal consumer culture is evidenced as a harmful, dehumanising ideology that fosters competitiveness, individuality and meritocratic tendencies, encouraging a reliance on ever-changing, transient commodities to (in)form the self. This occurs at the expense of compromise, communality and social welfare, through which subjects may find more stable and emancipatory symbolic anchors. Only by recognising critical theorisations of the consumer as dominant subject positions of neoliberalism can cultural consumer researchers begin to imagine opportunities for resistance and emancipatory change.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lachlan Kent

Duration perception is not the same as perception duration. Time is an object of perception in its own right and is qualitatively different to exteroceptive or interoceptive perception of concrete objects or sensations originating within the self. In reviewing evidence for and against the experienced moment, White (2017, Psychol. Bull., 143, 735–756) proposed a model of global integration of information dense envelopes of integration. This is a valuable addition to the literature because it supposes that, like Tononi’s (2004, BMC Neurosci., 5, 42) Integrated Information Theory, consciousness is an integral step above perception of objects or the self. Consciousness includes the perception of abstract contents such as time, space, and magnitude, as well as post-perceptual contents drawn from memory. The present review takes this logic a step further and sketches a potential neurobiological pathway through the salience, default mode, and central executive networks that culminates in a candidate model of how duration perception and consciousness arises. Global integration is viewed as a process of Bayesian Prediction Error Minimisation according to a model put forward by Hohwy, Paton and Palmer (2016, Phenomenol. Cogn. Sci., 15, 315–335) called ‘distrusting the present’. The proposed model also expresses global integration as an intermediate stage between perception and memory that spans an approximate one second duration, an analogue of Wittmann’s (2011, Front. Integr. Neurosci., 5, 66) experienced moment.


10.2196/17906 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (9) ◽  
pp. e17906
Author(s):  
Catharina Zehetmair ◽  
Ede Nagy ◽  
Carla Leetz ◽  
Anna Cranz ◽  
David Kindermann ◽  
...  

Background Refugees have an increased risk of developing mental health problems. There are insufficient psychosocial care structures to meet the resulting need for support. Stabilizing and guided imagery techniques have shown promising results in increasing traumatized refugees’ emotional stabilization. If delivered via audio files, the techniques can be practiced autonomously and independent of time, space, and human resources or stable treatment settings. Objective This study aimed to evaluate the self-practice of stabilizing and guided imagery techniques via digital audio files for traumatized refugees living in a reception and registration center in Germany. Methods From May 2018 to February 2019, 42 traumatized refugees participated in our study. At T1, patients received digital audio files in English, French, Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, or Serbian for self-practice. Nine days later, at T2, a face-to-face interview was conducted. Two months after T2, a follow-up interview took place via telephone. Results At T2, about half of the patients reported the daily practice of stabilizing and guided imagery techniques. At follow-up, the average frequency of practice was once weekly or more for those experiencing worse symptoms. No technical difficulties were reported. According to T2 and follow-up statements, the techniques helped the patients dealing with arousal, concentration, sleep, mood, thoughts, empowerment, and tension. The guided imagery technique “The Inner Safe Place” was the most popular. Self-practice was impeded by postmigratory distress factors, like overcrowded accommodations. Conclusions The results show that self-practice of stabilizing and guided imagery techniques via digital audio files was helpful to and well accepted by the assessed refugees. Even though postmigratory distress factors hampered self-practice, “The Inner Safe Place” technique was particularly well received. Overall, the self-practiced audio-based stabilizing and guided imagery techniques showed promising results among the highly vulnerable group of newly arrived traumatized refugees.


2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-48
Author(s):  
Arti Minocha

Abstract This paper looks at the formation of colonial print publics in Punjab, the gendered subjectivities that emerged in this new discursive space, and middle-class women’s deployment of print to articulate the self. This will be done through a close reading of one of the first novels in English, Cosmopolitan Hinduani, which was published in Lahore, Punjab, by a woman in 1902. The essay examines the narrator’s notion of a gendered cosmopolitanism and the subject position that it affords, her attempt at going beyond the fault lines of religion to articulate a liberal and modern political subject, while reworking the cosmopolitan/local binary. How does her insertion of herself as a gendered subject in the provincial, national, cosmopolitan imaginary reflect in the author’s choice of language and genre? My attempt will be to see the novel and its author as part of a literary culture in which she made certain choices about the form, language, content, and audience.


2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-74
Author(s):  
Damauru Chandra Bhatta

This paper makes an attempt to explore the echoes of the vision of Hindu philosophy in the selected works of T. S. Eliot. The works of Eliot such as his primary essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” and his primary poems such as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Gerontion,” The Waste Land, “Ash Wednesday,” “A Song for Simeon” and Four Quartets are under scrutiny in this paper. Eliot’s primary texts echo the vision of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita and the Patanjali Yoga Sutras of the Hindu (Vedic) philosophy. The vision is that rebirth is conditioned by one’s karma (actions). No one can escape from the fruits of his karma. One needs to undergo the self-realization to know the Essence (Brahman). When one knows the Essence, he is liberated from the wheel of life and death. Man himself is Brahman. The soul is immortal. The basic essence of Hindu philosophy is non-dual, which says that all the living beings and non-living objects are the manifestations of the same Ultimate Reality (Brahman). Eliot suggests that the knowledge of this essence can help humanity to promote equality and justice by ignoring discrimination and duality, to end human sorrows and to achieve real peace and happiness. This finding can assist humanity in the quest for understanding the meaning of human existence and the true spiritual nature of life to address the human sorrows resulted from the gross materialistic thinking.


2019 ◽  
Vol 864 ◽  
pp. 141-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abbas Ghasemi ◽  
Burak Ahmet Tuna ◽  
Xianguo Li

Rectangular air jets of aspect ratio $2$ are studied at $Re=UD_{h}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}=17\,750$ using particle image velocimetry and hot-wire anemometry as they develop naturally or under acoustic forcing. The velocity spectra and the spatial theory of linear stability characterize the fundamental ($f_{n}$) and subharmonic ($f_{n}/2$) modes corresponding to the Kelvin–Helmholtz roll-up and vortex pairing, respectively. The rectangular cross-section of the jet deforms into elliptic/circular shapes downstream due to axis switching. Despite the apparent rotation of the vortex rings or the jet cross-section, the axis-switching phenomenon occurs due to reshaping into rounder geometries. By enhancing the vortex pairing, excitation at $f_{n}/2$ shortens the potential core, increases the jet spread rate and eliminates the overshoot typically observed in the centreline velocity fluctuations. Unlike circular jets, the skewness and kurtosis of the rectangular jets demonstrate elevated anisotropy/intermittency levels before the end of the potential core. The axis-switching location is found to be variable by the acoustic control of the relative expansion/contraction rates of the shear layers in the top (longer edge), side (shorter edge) and diagonal views. The self-induced vortex deformations are demonstrated by the spatio-temporal evolution of the phase-locked three-dimensional ring structures. The curvature-induced velocities are found to reshape the vortex ring by imposing nonlinear azimuthal perturbations occurring at shorter wavelengths with time/space evolution. Eventually, the multiple high-curvature/high-velocity regions merge into a single mode distribution. In the plane of the top view, the self-induced velocity distribution evolves symmetrically while the tilted ring results in the asymmetry of the azimuthal perturbations in the side view as the side closer to the acoustic source rolls up in more upstream locations.


2012 ◽  
Vol 174-177 ◽  
pp. 2453-2456
Author(s):  
Jun Chao Li ◽  
Li Yuan

Qijiang ancient town is a famous historical and cultural town of Sichuan province with a history of over 2000 years. Most of the buildings in this ancient town were build in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties which are build by western Sichuan style. The street buildup by those buildings were very well protected. There is an 500-meter-long ancient block, containing 5 ancient stages and temples. There are 2 well-preserved stages so far. Qijiang ancient town follow the combination characteristics of contrary space sequence and contrary space behavior, its space form layout is rigorous. The outer space, inner space, inter living space, behaviour and time space are formed orderly. Today the town's space form layout is evolved in a long history and tourism economy developed. With the development of tourism economy, the traditional space pattern has already not adapt to the modern Qijiang town’s development. What make it worse is lack of a comprehensive guide, causing the ancient town’s traditional history and culture and traditional pattern face a new dilemma. From the point of the protection of traditional space pattern and traditional culture, this thesis aimed at Qijiang ancient town’s internal space form layout analysis and research as the key point, making space configuration optimize and adjust. In order to adapt to the development of modern Qijiang town. Provides an example of small towns’ residential environment construction development in China.


1989 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Budwig

ABSTRACTThe present study examines the relationship between linguistic forms and the functions they serve in children's early talk about agentivity and control. The spontaneous linguistic productions of six children ranging between 1;8 and 2;8 served as the data base. Preliminary analyses of who the children referred to and what forms were used in subject position suggest that the children could be divided into two groups. Three children primarily referred to Self and relied on multiple Self reference forms in subject position, while the other children referred to both Self and Other and primarily used the Self reference form, I. A functional analysis was carried out to examine whether the seemingly interchangeable use of Self reference forms could be related to semantic and pragmatic patterns. The findings indicate that at a time before they regularly refer to others, the children systematically employed different Self reference forms to mark distinct perspectives on agency.


2020 ◽  
pp. 185-224
Author(s):  
Christina Schachtner

Abstract This chapter explores how the concepts of time, space, the Self, the You, and the structural characteristics of the media concerned figure in the narratives. Time, for example, is fleshed out as biographical and sociocultural time whereas space takes on form in the narrative practices of managing boundaries and organizing virtual space. The analysis continues by confirming that the narrative subject is anything but isolated. The You sets foot on the narrative stage as a benchmark or a talking point. In the interplay between narrators and media, transmedia storytelling crystallizes as a new narrative form which interlinks media-based experiences from different phases of life and from different media, giving rise to a cosmos in which the narrators act as the designers of their own stories.


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