Pub Date : 2020-08-22DOI: 10.5325/soundings.103.3.0367
Vanheste
Abstract:This article proposes a new interpretation of The Singing Detective, the renowned TV-series that is the major work of the British screenwriter Dennis Potter (1935–1994). It suggests reading Potter's screenplay as one about the understanding and shaping of identity by means of narrative. Philip Marlow, the series' protagonist, overcomes a major personal crisis by reconstructing and subsequently rewriting the story of his life. The Singing Detective thus illustrates the hermeneutical anthropology of philosophers such as Charles Taylor and Paul Ricoeur, who consider humans to be self-interpreting, story-telling beings. Interpreted this way, Potter's work is an evocation of the humanist belief in human agency and the expression of a profound existential optimism.
{"title":"Interpreting Clues: Human Life and Narrative Identity in Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective","authors":"Vanheste","doi":"10.5325/soundings.103.3.0367","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/soundings.103.3.0367","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article proposes a new interpretation of The Singing Detective, the renowned TV-series that is the major work of the British screenwriter Dennis Potter (1935–1994). It suggests reading Potter's screenplay as one about the understanding and shaping of identity by means of narrative. Philip Marlow, the series' protagonist, overcomes a major personal crisis by reconstructing and subsequently rewriting the story of his life. The Singing Detective thus illustrates the hermeneutical anthropology of philosophers such as Charles Taylor and Paul Ricoeur, who consider humans to be self-interpreting, story-telling beings. Interpreted this way, Potter's work is an evocation of the humanist belief in human agency and the expression of a profound existential optimism.","PeriodicalId":231294,"journal":{"name":"Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"570 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116279619","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-05-05DOI: 10.5325/soundings.103.2.0184
G. Lundskow
Abstract :Sociocultural attitudes have fundamentally changed between the Baby Boomer era of the long 1950s (1945–1965) and the present rise of Millennial and GenZ. Whereas the Boomer mainstream sought social change and opportunity within the established socioeconomic system, Millennial–GenZ seeks essential structural change in the form of cultural equality for all orientations and identities that accept inclusiveness, and radical redistribution of wealth and even mainstream challenges to the legitimacy of the capitalist system as wealth concentrates at the top and the quality of life declines for the vast majority worldwide. Socially critical and forward-looking media, namely popular film noir and science fiction, exemplify the socially dominant attitudes of their respective eras, and illustrate actual social attitudes as demonstrated in empirical research of each respective era.
{"title":"Resistance and Revolution in Society Exemplified in Film Noir and Science Fiction in the Baby Boomer and Millennial–GenZ Age","authors":"G. Lundskow","doi":"10.5325/soundings.103.2.0184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/soundings.103.2.0184","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract :Sociocultural attitudes have fundamentally changed between the Baby Boomer era of the long 1950s (1945–1965) and the present rise of Millennial and GenZ. Whereas the Boomer mainstream sought social change and opportunity within the established socioeconomic system, Millennial–GenZ seeks essential structural change in the form of cultural equality for all orientations and identities that accept inclusiveness, and radical redistribution of wealth and even mainstream challenges to the legitimacy of the capitalist system as wealth concentrates at the top and the quality of life declines for the vast majority worldwide. Socially critical and forward-looking media, namely popular film noir and science fiction, exemplify the socially dominant attitudes of their respective eras, and illustrate actual social attitudes as demonstrated in empirical research of each respective era.","PeriodicalId":231294,"journal":{"name":"Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128214680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-05-05DOI: 10.5325/soundings.103.2.0216
C. Thorpe
Abstract:Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy addresses the end of history in three senses: the global triumph of capitalism, the end of historicity, and the end of the world. Atwood weaves together these meanings of the end of history, showing how the eternal present of consumerist simulacra is also a trajectory toward ecological and social disaster. However, Atwood's trilogy is itself symptomatic of this postmodern capitalist condition. Atwood accepts the social and political parameters of the capitalist present, while escaping into a neo-romantic fantasy of post-human primitivism.
{"title":"Postmodern Neo-Romanticism and The End of History in Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam Trilogy","authors":"C. Thorpe","doi":"10.5325/soundings.103.2.0216","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/soundings.103.2.0216","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy addresses the end of history in three senses: the global triumph of capitalism, the end of historicity, and the end of the world. Atwood weaves together these meanings of the end of history, showing how the eternal present of consumerist simulacra is also a trajectory toward ecological and social disaster. However, Atwood's trilogy is itself symptomatic of this postmodern capitalist condition. Atwood accepts the social and political parameters of the capitalist present, while escaping into a neo-romantic fantasy of post-human primitivism.","PeriodicalId":231294,"journal":{"name":"Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127755369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-05-05DOI: 10.5325/soundings.103.2.0243
S. MacMillen
Abstract:Some of the impetus of the #MeToo movement may derive from feminist imaginings of utopia—popularized recently in films like Wonder Woman (2017). One hundred years before the #MeToo movement, a feminist utopia was envisioned in the novel Herland (published serially between 1910–1916) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a first-wave American feminist novelist and sociologist. This article explores the tropes of #MeToo's parallel mythological construction of shaming and exclusion of male characteristics in a literary scope. It suggests that Gilman's Herland reflects archetypal blueprints for the feminist impulse driving #MeToo. The conclusion of the article argues that there are some weaknesses to this scope, in light of examples of heterosexual encounters in other artistic forms, through the lenses of social theory and theology's views of sexuality.
{"title":"From Herland to #MeToo: Utopia or Dystopia?","authors":"S. MacMillen","doi":"10.5325/soundings.103.2.0243","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/soundings.103.2.0243","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Some of the impetus of the #MeToo movement may derive from feminist imaginings of utopia—popularized recently in films like Wonder Woman (2017). One hundred years before the #MeToo movement, a feminist utopia was envisioned in the novel Herland (published serially between 1910–1916) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a first-wave American feminist novelist and sociologist. This article explores the tropes of #MeToo's parallel mythological construction of shaming and exclusion of male characteristics in a literary scope. It suggests that Gilman's Herland reflects archetypal blueprints for the feminist impulse driving #MeToo. The conclusion of the article argues that there are some weaknesses to this scope, in light of examples of heterosexual encounters in other artistic forms, through the lenses of social theory and theology's views of sexuality.","PeriodicalId":231294,"journal":{"name":"Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"103 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130011572","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-05-05DOI: 10.5325/soundings.103.2.0121
Harry F. Dahms
Abstract:In the narrative structure of many science fiction films, "love" is an element whose importance frequently goes unrecognized, especially as far as the intended "message" of particular films as a form of social commentary is concerned. Typically, such messages pertain to troublesome trends in modern societies that have been shaping constellations of business, labor, and government, and which have resulted in the formation of peculiar systems of social relations. While the stability of any society depends on the existence of a specific system of social relations, in modern societies, such systems often are in conflict with the norms and values according to which individuals are expected to live their lives, and are thus, inherently regressive. Christopher Nolan's Interstellar (2014) and Denis Villeneuve's Arrival (2016) provide excellent foils for highlighting the workings of regressive social relations, and for the kind of price humans and humankind pay in the process.
{"title":"Science-Fiction Films and \"Love\": Toward a Critique of Regressive Social Relations","authors":"Harry F. Dahms","doi":"10.5325/soundings.103.2.0121","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/soundings.103.2.0121","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In the narrative structure of many science fiction films, \"love\" is an element whose importance frequently goes unrecognized, especially as far as the intended \"message\" of particular films as a form of social commentary is concerned. Typically, such messages pertain to troublesome trends in modern societies that have been shaping constellations of business, labor, and government, and which have resulted in the formation of peculiar systems of social relations. While the stability of any society depends on the existence of a specific system of social relations, in modern societies, such systems often are in conflict with the norms and values according to which individuals are expected to live their lives, and are thus, inherently regressive. Christopher Nolan's Interstellar (2014) and Denis Villeneuve's Arrival (2016) provide excellent foils for highlighting the workings of regressive social relations, and for the kind of price humans and humankind pay in the process.","PeriodicalId":231294,"journal":{"name":"Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126310816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-05-05DOI: 10.5325/soundings.103.2.0158
Lawrence E. Hazelrigg
Abstract:The film Brazil, directed by Terry Gilliam (1985), is usually described as something of absurdist theater. It is also, more implicitly, a conversation about bureaucracy, administrative regulation, and dynamic relations of art vis-à-vis everyday life. This article explores that conversation, drawing in part on Hegel and Max Weber, along with the screenplay of this and other films by Gilliam, guided by the question, "How would one know whether 'life imitates art' rather than the reverse?"
{"title":"Efficacy and Efficiency in the World of Terry Gilliam's Brazil","authors":"Lawrence E. Hazelrigg","doi":"10.5325/soundings.103.2.0158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/soundings.103.2.0158","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The film Brazil, directed by Terry Gilliam (1985), is usually described as something of absurdist theater. It is also, more implicitly, a conversation about bureaucracy, administrative regulation, and dynamic relations of art vis-à-vis everyday life. This article explores that conversation, drawing in part on Hegel and Max Weber, along with the screenplay of this and other films by Gilliam, guided by the question, \"How would one know whether 'life imitates art' rather than the reverse?\"","PeriodicalId":231294,"journal":{"name":"Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130778573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-05-05DOI: 10.5325/soundings.103.2.0264
Ortiz
Abstract:This article takes Kim Stanley Robinson's science fiction as a point of departure for a series of reflections on the trajectory of the capitalist world-ecology. It argues that his novel New York 2140 provides an interesting description of financialized accumulation in the age of climate change. The novel provides a representation of what is arguably the most insurmountable contradiction of late capitalism: while climate change continues to cement the dominance of finance over the capitalist system as a whole, finance's dominance, nonetheless, coincides with the exacerbation of the climate crisis and the decline of long-run accumulation, not with its enhancement.
{"title":"Financialization, Climate Change, and the Future of the Capitalist World-Ecology: On Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140","authors":"Ortiz","doi":"10.5325/soundings.103.2.0264","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/soundings.103.2.0264","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article takes Kim Stanley Robinson's science fiction as a point of departure for a series of reflections on the trajectory of the capitalist world-ecology. It argues that his novel New York 2140 provides an interesting description of financialized accumulation in the age of climate change. The novel provides a representation of what is arguably the most insurmountable contradiction of late capitalism: while climate change continues to cement the dominance of finance over the capitalist system as a whole, finance's dominance, nonetheless, coincides with the exacerbation of the climate crisis and the decline of long-run accumulation, not with its enhancement.","PeriodicalId":231294,"journal":{"name":"Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115947636","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-04DOI: 10.5325/soundings.103.1.0071
Christopher White
Abstract:This article points to the surprising role of secular scientific ideas in stimulating new metaphors and ways of thinking about religious concepts. It examines three cases during the last century in Europe and America—how religious people selectively used ideas about electricity, how they re-purposed ideas related to higher-dimensional space, and how they deployed uncanny ideas in quantum mechanics. It shows that many have used these scientific ideas to work themselves out of religious systems they no longer understood, get leverage against dominant ideologies that they found vexing, or develop new, enchanted views of the universe around them.
{"title":"Science, Technology, and the Religious Imagination in Modern Europe and America: An Inquiry","authors":"Christopher White","doi":"10.5325/soundings.103.1.0071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/soundings.103.1.0071","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article points to the surprising role of secular scientific ideas in stimulating new metaphors and ways of thinking about religious concepts. It examines three cases during the last century in Europe and America—how religious people selectively used ideas about electricity, how they re-purposed ideas related to higher-dimensional space, and how they deployed uncanny ideas in quantum mechanics. It shows that many have used these scientific ideas to work themselves out of religious systems they no longer understood, get leverage against dominant ideologies that they found vexing, or develop new, enchanted views of the universe around them.","PeriodicalId":231294,"journal":{"name":"Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"205 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116380924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Literature, American Style: The Originality of Imitation in the Early Republic by Ezra Tawil (review)","authors":"Lindsay Dicuirci","doi":"10.13016/M2PADK-0J6H","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13016/M2PADK-0J6H","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":231294,"journal":{"name":"Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127736050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-04DOI: 10.5325/soundings.103.1.0035
James K. A. Smith
Abstract:A contrast between two north African accounts of the hope of pilgrims and exiles: Camus’s “Sisyphean” piety and Augustine’s “émigré” spirituality.
摘要:对比两种北非对朝圣者和流亡者希望的描述:加缪的“西西弗”虔诚和奥古斯丁的“移民”灵性。
{"title":"An Emigré Spirituality: Camus, Augustine, and the Hope for Home in an Age of Mass Migration","authors":"James K. A. Smith","doi":"10.5325/soundings.103.1.0035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/soundings.103.1.0035","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:A contrast between two north African accounts of the hope of pilgrims and exiles: Camus’s “Sisyphean” piety and Augustine’s “émigré” spirituality.","PeriodicalId":231294,"journal":{"name":"Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127054365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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