Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2021.1969098
Yanbin Kang
Abstract China’s campaign against the COVID-19 epidemic has triggered an upsurge in literary creation and animated discussions on writing about disaster. This essay explores the emergence of a disaster poetics in the COVID-19 war which considers poetry as revelatory, ameliorative and cathartic in both personal and national terms. This strand of poetry, which blends humanism, philosophical exploration, and a skeptical impulse, reexamines the isolated state of being, resists glorification, concerns individual lives and redefines heroism as quiet courage, love and compassion in despair among ordinary people, displaying a Chinese forbearance, wisdom and wry humor in facing grim reality. These poetic voices register admirable artistic courage, spiritual depth, self-critical reflection and stylistic ingenuity.
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Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2021.1969128
Josiah Nyanda
Future communities have been imagined. When such communities confront us, we respond not by imagining but re-imagining the emerging communities so that we can cope with the new reality. But are there new realities, or is what we imagine as new a case and curse of historical recurrence? The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted communities as we have known them. Disruptions enable transformation through creativity. Disruptions introduce a semblance of newness that requires new ways of doing, seeing, reading and telling reality. This paper discusses how, in the face of global lockdown, quarantine and social distancing rules – the new normal ‒ the creative impulse of humans has responded and adapted to COVID-19 pandemic-induced change.
{"title":"Re-imagining a New Normal: COVID-19 Pandemic and the Changing Face of Social Interaction","authors":"Josiah Nyanda","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2021.1969128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2021.1969128","url":null,"abstract":"Future communities have been imagined. When such communities confront us, we respond not by imagining but re-imagining the emerging communities so that we can cope with the new reality. But are there new realities, or is what we imagine as new a case and curse of historical recurrence? The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted communities as we have known them. Disruptions enable transformation through creativity. Disruptions introduce a semblance of newness that requires new ways of doing, seeing, reading and telling reality. This paper discusses how, in the face of global lockdown, quarantine and social distancing rules – the new normal ‒ the creative impulse of humans has responded and adapted to COVID-19 pandemic-induced change.","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":"64 1","pages":"256 - 267"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46982916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2021.1969096
L. Wright
Abstract Poe’s ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ turns on the paradox of a privileged elite succumbing to a plague that is ravaging society at large, and from which they believe themselves completely protected. The horror of the story consists not in the devastation of external society – that is taken for granted – but in the abject failure of the elite’s supposedly impregnable defences, their faith in which is exposed by the ‘Red Death’ as utterly delusory. ‘Put not your trust in Princes’ (Ps. 146.3) takes on an entirely new meaning.
{"title":"Plague and Cultural Panic: Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Masque of the Red Death’","authors":"L. Wright","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2021.1969096","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2021.1969096","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract\u0000 Poe’s ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ turns on the paradox of a privileged elite succumbing to a plague that is ravaging society at large, and from which they believe themselves completely protected. The horror of the story consists not in the devastation of external society – that is taken for granted – but in the abject failure of the elite’s supposedly impregnable defences, their faith in which is exposed by the ‘Red Death’ as utterly delusory. ‘Put not your trust in Princes’ (Ps. 146.3) takes on an entirely new meaning.","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":"64 1","pages":"47 - 58"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41927884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2021.1969093
Sally‐Ann Murray
This paper creatively re-thinks Masked Masterpieces, a COVID-19 public art fundraising initiative for financially at-risk students, organized by Stellenbosch University (SU) and underwritten by donors. The project features five portraits by famous South African artists, re-purposed with protective masks, and installed in large-scale reproductions around Stellenbosch town. In the paper, Masked Masterpieces serves as a generative critical prompt: not for a simplistic ‘unmasking,’ but for a female scholar’s process of thinking through ‘the fold,’ an ‘en/folding’ engagement that turns and returns, erratically reviewing difficult, overlapping subjects linked to masking and mastery. In exploring both the substance and the shape of my thought process, I draw loose inspiration from innovations in mixed-materials structural design, where ‘folded surfaces … respond to spatial inquiries by transforming not into aggregates of fragments but into catalytically interconnected elements’ (Vyzoviti and Sotiriou 524).
{"title":"Masked Masterpieces: in R≡lational Folds","authors":"Sally‐Ann Murray","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2021.1969093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2021.1969093","url":null,"abstract":"This paper creatively re-thinks Masked Masterpieces, a COVID-19 public art fundraising initiative for financially at-risk students, organized by Stellenbosch University (SU) and underwritten by donors. The project features five portraits by famous South African artists, re-purposed with protective masks, and installed in large-scale reproductions around Stellenbosch town. In the paper, Masked Masterpieces serves as a generative critical prompt: not for a simplistic ‘unmasking,’ but for a female scholar’s process of thinking through ‘the fold,’ an ‘en/folding’ engagement that turns and returns, erratically reviewing difficult, overlapping subjects linked to masking and mastery. In exploring both the substance and the shape of my thought process, I draw loose inspiration from innovations in mixed-materials structural design, where ‘folded surfaces … respond to spatial inquiries by transforming not into aggregates of fragments but into catalytically interconnected elements’ (Vyzoviti and Sotiriou 524).","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":"64 1","pages":"4 - 23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43392098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2021.1969120
C. Devroop, M. Titlestad
The opposites, science and the arts, have always enjoyed a relationship. Recently, this relationship has been expressed in sonification, a branch of science seeking to add sound to data, giving data music-like intelligibility. Scientists believe that our aural capabilities are a potentially rich source of data that could assist in problem solving. In 2020, a sonic realization of the coronavirus was generated using its spike protein data. This sonification endeavoured to probe the coronavirus aurally. However, the creators of this sonified scientific probe are now claiming that their experiment is also a music composition. We examine this claim. This paper is underpinned by the conviction that not all sound is music. Music cannot represent anything other than itself because our understanding of music is always via allegory. Therefore, the efforts of Buehler, it is argued, are misdirected and trivial when placed in the stressed socio-political context of COVID-19.
{"title":"Sonification and Music: Science meets Art","authors":"C. Devroop, M. Titlestad","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2021.1969120","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2021.1969120","url":null,"abstract":"The opposites, science and the arts, have always enjoyed a relationship. Recently, this relationship has been expressed in sonification, a branch of science seeking to add sound to data, giving data music-like intelligibility. Scientists believe that our aural capabilities are a potentially rich source of data that could assist in problem solving. In 2020, a sonic realization of the coronavirus was generated using its spike protein data. This sonification endeavoured to probe the coronavirus aurally. However, the creators of this sonified scientific probe are now claiming that their experiment is also a music composition. We examine this claim. This paper is underpinned by the conviction that not all sound is music. Music cannot represent anything other than itself because our understanding of music is always via allegory. Therefore, the efforts of Buehler, it is argued, are misdirected and trivial when placed in the stressed socio-political context of COVID-19.","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":"64 1","pages":"181 - 191"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46370334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2021.1969107
Beth Wyrill
This article takes as premise that the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has left South Africans, along with the rest of the world, feeling acutely aware of their own historicity. The idea of historical self-awareness coalescing around major social and historical shifts has been expertly theorized already, but I hope to offer a reading of this phenomenon through three post-2000 South African novels that deal with the theme of plague. A reading of Ricoeur’s work on time and narrative, combined with Bakhtin’s theorization of polyvocality in the novel leads me to suggest, following Gérard Genette, Ken Barris and Ronit Frenkel, that the idea of the palimpsest in South African writings has particular potency for thinking about historical change. I propose that these ideas are skilfully fictionalized and rendered imaginatively accessible in Diane Awerbuck’s Home Remedies (2012), Marcus Low’s Asylum (2017) and Russel Brownlee’s Garden of the Plagues (2005).
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Pub Date : 2020-10-09DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2020.1780759
Phyllis van Slyck
This essay explores ways faculty in the humanities may guide students through current manifestations of populism, specifically, this movement’s encouragement of xenophobia. As a member of an Englis...
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