VIII Ignat'jev Conference
VIII Ignat'jevskie tshtenija
Keywords: Mari
VIII Ignat'jev Conference
More...Keywords: Mari
VIII Ignat'jev Conference
More...Keywords: masochism; sadism; woman; proper name; pseudonym; confession; Wanda and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch; Krat-Ebing; Marko Ristić
This paper deals with the autobiography of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch, notorious masochistic heroine, who spent ten years in a marriage with Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the “father of literary masochism”. The necessary context for this research is provided by Krat -Ebing’s medico-forensic study Psychopathia sexualis, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s masochistic novel Venus in Furs, Deleuze’s “gynocentric” (re)vision of masochism and Foucault’s analyses of the discursive history of sexuality in western “confessing” societies. h e specii c issues of proper name, truth, privacy and identity involved, in the case of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch’s Confessions are related to the characteristic features of the specii cally women’s experience of writing. Thus, I analyse her “confessional pseudonym” as a double i ction that suggests the ambivalence of establishing female identity at the crossroads of literary i ction and i ction of the social institution of marriage. (Inter)textual strategies of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch’s autobiography are organized as a female counterpoint to Sacher-Masoch’s masochistic lifestyle and narrative, but also as a counterpoint to her own previous “masochistic authorship” under the pseudonym of the heroine of Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs - Wanda von Dunajew. In her late autobiographical Confessions Wanda von Sacher-Masoch tells the masochistic story not as a i ction but as a pressure of i ction on the real life and demystifies male masochistic fantasy as oppressive and restrictive. Different status and value of authorship and statements in the autobiography as a documentary genre allows Wanda von Sacher-Masoch to strengthen privacy and daily life as political spheres, which sets her text in a dynamic relationship with the social environment and feminist movement of the time. Yet, for the same reasons her anti-masochistic autobiographical work may be perceived as still masochistic, based on the conservative, truth-seeking, mimetic genre that conforms to the relational dei nition of woman’s identity.
More...Vladimir Petrović - Novosti iz prošlosti (Vojin Dimitrijević (prir.), Novosti iz prošlosti: znanje, neznanje, upotreba i zloupotreba istorije, Beogradski centar za ljudska prava, Beograd, 2010) Adriana Zaharijević - Drug-ce partizani, građanke Jugoslavije (Ivana Pantelić, Partizanke kao građanke: društvena emancipacija partizanki u Srbiji 1945–1953, Institut za savremenu istoriju i Evoluta, Beograd, 2011) Lada Čale Feldman - Kritička kaligrafija (Biljana Dojčinović, Susreti u tami – uvod u čitanje Virdžinije Vulf, Službeni glasnik, Beograd, 2011) Dragana Popović - Porodica u sistemskom okruženju (Nada Polovina, Porodica u sistemskom okruženju, Institut za pedagoška istraživanja, Beograd, 2011) Prevod - Vendi Braun: Ranjeni identiteti
More...Keywords: Remix; Refacement; Postfuture
Reading Jef Noon’s and Stewart Home’s novels as manifestations of postfuturist writing is here presented in the form of a critique of the world of commoditized emotionality, vulgarized sexuality, afflicted playfulness, and bewildering spirituality. The analysis outlines a vision of writing and activism of singularized humans, galvanized by and fertilizing solidarity and creation. h e term postfuture symbolizes oscillations between melancholy and hope at the intersection of time axes. jan jagodzinski’s ideas from Youth Fantasies: The Perverse Landscape of the Media (2004) are deployed to elucidate cultural and emotional dynamism in the novels, questioning the levels/kinds of reality and the notion of alterity. Additionally, the analysis is contextualized within McKenzie Wark’s Gamer h eory (2007), problematizing living under the spectacle and questioning boundaries of freedom. Depersonalization and dehumanization in a proi t-based, media-saturated mass culture is thematized through the lenses of Jean Baudrillard’s America (1988), while Felix Guattari’s h e h ree Ecologies (1999) provides the context for rethinking individuality and communality. Svetlana Boym’s thought provides guidelines for a vision of rethinking subjectivity. The work focuses on the potential of cultural constructivness as a basis for remixing reading-writing tactics and cultural reality.
More...Keywords: cyborg; impossible identifications; identity; nature; order; norm
This paper is about the intersecting points of two theoretical models with dif erent origins: Ranciere’s model of dif erentiation of politics and police, and Donna Haraway’s conceptualization of cyborgs. Both models assume Ranciere’s concept of “impossible identification”, that is, the coupling of heterogeneous structures, or paradox. “Impossible identifications” are a threat to every existing order that relies on identity of form and content, natural and normative aspect, that is to say on the possibility of an identification corresponding to the police procedures. A cyborg is an aberration, the logic that dei nes police procedure cannot identify it with anything known or recognizable and therefore the concept of cyborg opens up the sphere of politics
More...Keywords: gender; community; nation; representation; banal nationalism
The paper briel y outlines some of the most crucial questions of representation and studies of nationalism and gender representations. Primarily, it reassesses the debate on what kind of cultural production participates in the nation-building projects. Michael Billig and Tim Edensor revisited the question of signifiers of the nation, and pointed out that studies of nationalism should not be restricted only to its most violent and most extreme manifestations. In their view, national projects operate also through, what Billig calls, banal nationalism, while being reproduced through everyday practices, entertainment and popular culture. Edensor acknowledges Billig’s concept of banal nationalism, and especially criticizes some of the most influential theoreticians of nationalism for neglecting the fact that nationalist production of culture is not connected only with elitist and “high” culture, but also with popular culture, entertainment and everyday practices. Subsequently, paper discusses the inter-reactions between the national communities and representation of women as signifiers of the nation. Gender representations, and especially representations of women, are included in nationalist projects in a controversial way, often instrumentalized as bearers of “national honour”. Very often, it is possible to observe the representations of women in popular culture and various entertaining contents as signifiers of subtle messages of banal nationalism.
More...Keywords: Hobbes; sovereign; women; custom; Pateman
The paper examines the possibility of a woman being the sovereign in Thomas Hobbes’s political theory. Particularly, it is discussed whether, in Hobbes’s view, 1) a woman can become a Hobbesian sovereign, and 2) whether she can make a good sovereign. Although Hobbes’s answer to the second question is positive, his endorsement of custom as means of establishing the heir to the throne favours male over female heirs. Therefore, this question reveals a tension between Hobbes’s “logical” argument about the natural equality of men and women and his “historical” argument about the role of a (discriminatory) custom.
More...Keywords: masculinity; uranism; femininity; homosexuality; body; identity
Delo an important essay on the issue of “men with feminine traits”. According to Sreten Adžić’s implicit explanations, the phrase “men with feminine traits” could be understood as a broad concept that includes both homosexuals and heterosexuals. Following contemporary scientific research data of Magnus Hirschfeld, Karl H. Ulrich and Jean-Marie Charcot, Sreten Adžić argues that the phenomenon of feminine or feminized men is an abnormal biological aberration that could be adequately treated at the early stage of child’s development, by employing dif erent psychological and sociological approaches. Although he believes that femininity in men represents an abnormality, Adžić offers a balanced approach to this issue, one which is not altogether discriminating but represents a liberal view on homosexuality and sexuality in general. Having in mind that this issue was not widely discussed within the Serbian pedagogical or professional journals, due to the wider patriarchal national context, the author argues that Sreten Adžić’s essay represents a very significant text that uses various narrative voices in order to subtly integrate very open-minded and potentially subversive discourse on homosexuality. On the other hand, the author recognizes that Sreten Adžić holds the traditional point of view, as well as that he praises and affirms values of masculinity and virile male identity.
More...Keywords: French literature; Judaic studies; Jews culture
La littérature française est prodigue en figures de femmes juives. Au fil du temps, l’image de « la Juive » se fixe dans la mentalité occidentale, mythe reflétant de grandes tendances politiques, historiques, sociales et intellectuelles et évoluant avec elles. Elle émerge au Moyen Âge et au XIXe siècle et connaît l’épanouissement comme la « belle Juive ». Ce personnage fictif et polymorphe porte certains traits constants qui constituent l’essence même de sa figure exemplaire et traduisent le rapport ambivalent de l’Occident à l’Autre. Car « chaque époque et chaque société recréent ses propres “autres” » (Said 2005: 358) et le Juif est l’Autre par excellence. Sa marginalisation s’opère par l’exclusion religieuse, par la juridiction antijuive, par une certaine imperméabilité culturelle, qui obère les échanges. Dans ce contexte, la « belle Juive » révèle le degré d’interdépendances et d’interactions entre les sociétés non juive et juive. Parallèlement, cet archétype traduit aussi, dans une sphère plus individuelle, le fantasme de l’Autre comme objet du désir et de l’interdit, d’autant plus troublant que le Juif, bien que socialement identifié, se (con)fond physiquement
More...Keywords: Jews; History; Persians,m Syria; ancien Near East
The city of Dura-Europos1 in modern day Syria provides a microcosm of multi-ethnic and multi-religious life in the late ancient Near East. Although there are debates as to the exact date of the conquest of the city, the year 256 CE appears to be the most plausible date in which the King of Kings, Šāpur I took Dura.2 In the third century, the city was abandoned and so the life of Dura came to an end after more than half a millennium of existence.3 Its apparent sudden abandonment has made it a wonderful archaeological playground for studying life in the third century CE on the border of the Irano-Hellenic world of antiquity. The city had changed hands several times since its creation in the fourth century BCE by the Seleucids to when Mithradates II (113 BCE) conquered it and brought it into the Arsacid imperial orbit, where it emained for three centuries. The Arsacid control of a trading town or as it was once called a caravan town, works well with the story that Mithradates II, several years before the takeover of Dura-Europos, had concluded an agreement with the Chinese Emperor Wudi for trade cooperation. In the larger scheme of things, these activities, no matter how accurate the dating is, suggest the idea that the Arsacids may have been thinking of the creation of a large trade network as part of what modern historians have called the “Silk Road.” Dura was subsequently conquered in the second century CE by Emperor Trajan (115–117 CE) and later, in 165 CE, by Avidius Cassius, after which it stayed in Roman hands for almost a century. The Sasanians in turn conquered the city in 256 CE.
More...Keywords: Free City of Kraków; Kingdom of Poland; religious structure; Jewish communities
The year 1815 saw the emergence of a new State on the map of Europe – the Free City of Kraków, which, because of its affiliation to the small group of European Republics, was also referred to as the Republic of Kraków. The Free City of Kraków stretched along the left bank of the River Vistula, bordering to the west with the Kingdom of Prussia, to the north and east with the Kingdom of Poland and to the south with the Austrian Empire. Its total surface area was 1150 km², which – apart from Kraków which became the capital – also contained three small private towns, Chrzanów, Nowa Góra and Trzebinia, as well as 244 villages
More...Keywords: Jews; History; Jewish Legends; Relations between Jews and Christians
The conquest of the Near East by Alexander of Macedon began a new era in the history of this region. This pregnant event was quite differently perceived and judged by contemporaries in conquered lands, Palestine among them. To those, the Macedonian’s victory over the Persians meant little more than one hegemonist replacing another. It must have been with concern, or perhaps with hope, that they awaited possible changes under the new political arrangement. We know little about Alexander’s direct rule over Palestine, but the historical evidence we have suggests that the behavior of local populations in the area did not always meet the expectations of Macedonian conquerors. One example may be seen in the attitude of the Jerusalem Temple’s high priest, who, despite Alexander’s superiority at arms, firmly declared his loyalty to the Persian king (Jos. AJ 11, 317–319), while some in Samaria’s elites chose to follow their self-interest and did not hesitate to join the conqueror (Jos. AJ 11, 321–324; 340–345). Although local elites and communities declared their willingness to cooperate with the Macedonian monarch, there were no avoiding tensions and conflicts between locals and newcomers. One such instance was a mutiny in Samaria city against the Macedonians, during which the Syrian governor Andromachus was killed. In retaliation, the rebellion was quenched in blood and Macedonian settlers were brought into Samaria. Stability in the new political arrangement was helped by the religious tolerance the Macedonian conquerors showed to the local population. Interested mainly in exploiting the conquered territory, they did not intend to interfere with the inhabitants’ life or impose their own practices. Such a state of affairs was in effect during the life of Alexander of Macedon and throughout the rule of the Ptolemies, who overran southern Palestine in the late 4th century BCE. Great changes in Palestine, and especially in Judea, did not occur until the Seleucid rule, which came about following Antiochus III’s victory over Egyptian forces in the battle of Panion (198 BCE).
More...Keywords: nineteenth-century European literary; stereotypical description of the Jew; the image of non-Jews; Abramovitch
In the nineteenth-century European literary tradition the Jew is represented as “the Other”. The general image is a stereotypical description of the Jew as a parasite, a sorcerer or a villain. Even when one can specify and set down the linguistic, geographical and historical circumstances in which particular novels and stories were written, many of them incorporate the figure of “the Jew” as a construct that plays a particular role in the narrative.1 Alongside the development of the European fiction, within the Jewish literary context, the new-Hebrew and Yiddish literatures are born and mature. The writers simultaneously bring in distinct features characteristic of the Jewish background, languages and context, while they also look towards European literary models and pattern their prose, to some extent, on the European style.
More...Keywords: Polish-Jewish relations; Second World War; Mordechaj; yiddish songs
I just want to make an introductory note: I – like Marcin Kula in his book on the “Stubborn question. Jewish? Polish? Humane?” – am very well aware of the fact that the definitions “Jew” and “Christian” are not satisfactory. But as Gebirtig was a Pole and at the same time a traditionally raised and educated religious Jew, I decided to use this terminology in this article, which deals with Polish-Jewish relations before the Second World War and includes the relations with the Germans after the invasion of Poland in September 1939. As far as I can see, the topic of the relations between Jews and Christians has now shifted into the centre of academic interest in Poland, judging by the significant number of books and articles published on the subject. These relations, having, as I mentioned, also included the Germans, thus created a triangle full of tensions which are also a topic of research and discussion within the Polish literature of the last twenty years.
More...Keywords: review
REVIEW - David M. Jacobson & Nikos Kokkinos (eds.), Herod and Augustus. Papers Presented at the IJS Conference, 21st–23rd June 2005 (IJS Studies in Judaica – 6), Brill, Leiden–Boston 2009, pp. 502, b/w ill. ISSN 1570-1581, ISBN 978-90-04-16546-5
More...Keywords: Jews; ancient history; chronography; Hellenistic period
Eusebius’ Chronika was a remarkable achievement in the field of ancient chronography, not least as the conclusion of extensive research running since the beginning of the Hellenistic period. It was a double work, composed some time before AD 311 and expanded shortly after AD 325. The first part, now usually called Chronographia, was a detailed introduction, aiming at collecting the raw material from all sources then available, and setting out the plan of the project. The second part, known as Kanones (Chronikoi Kanones), which carried its own preface, was a grand exposition (utilising the data of the first part) in the form of a table consisting of up to nine parallel columns to be read across, thus presenting a synchronistic universal history at a glance.1 Only fragments survive of the Greek original, primarily in George the Syncellus (ca. AD 800) and an anonymous excerptor (known as ‘Excerpta Eusebiana’ from a MS of the 15th century AD). But we have a nearly complete Armenian translation (earliest copy ca. 13th century AD), a Latin translation of the second part by Jerome (with his own preface and extended to AD 380/1), as well as two Syriac epitomes, one of which is believed to have been compiled by Joshua the Stylite (8th century AD), and other witnesses including two very early Arab chroniclers, one being Agapius of Hierapolis, ca. AD 942.
More...Keywords: Jewish Diaspora; legends; myths; Jewish legends
There is no need to prove the significant role played by legends, myths and stereotypes in the history of the world. Also in the Polish lands, we can find many stories connected with the history of the Jews. There is still no comprehensive study on legends concerning Jews in mediaeval Poland, but we already have the book by Haya Bar-Itzhak, a professor of Comparative Hebrew Literature at the Haifa University. An exception here may be the well-known legend about the love affair between King Kazimierz Wielki (Casimir the Great) and the Jewish girl Esther, which has been widely described in many works. Of special importance is the book written by the eminent literary historian and linguist, Chone Shmeruk, entitled “Legenda o Esterce w literaturze jidysz i polskiej” (The Legend of Esther in Yiddish and Polish Literature)
More...Keywords: Kraków; Jewish legends; local tales; Jewish community
When I came to Kraków for the first time several years ago and tried to get some information about the Jewish Kraków, among the first-hand information I was offered in the bookshops were a few small booklets with legends about the Jews in this town. This is nothing special, for wherever one goes as a tourist one gets the same genre of literature: local legends and tales. It seems, therefore, that the popular legends indeed offer the first-hand information about the specific climate and the self-estimation of the inhabitants at a specific place. It is obviously the tales of a city that infuse life to its stones and places more than all exact historical data one can gather. The legend gives, so to speak, a short-hand résumé of the most typical and central features as well as the spirit of a place.
More...Keywords: review
REVIEW - Anna Jakimyszyn, Żydzi krakowscy w dobie Rzeczypospolitej Krakowskiej. Status prawny – przeobrażenia gminy – system edukacyjny [The Jews of Kraków in the Times of the Republic of Kraków], Austeria Publishing House, Kraków–Budapest 2008, pp. 368; ISBN 978-83-89129-67-3
More...Keywords: Rules of writing articles; Straipsnių rengimo taisyklės
More...