Papers in Arts and Humanities (PArtsHum) is an open access, peer-reviewed journal for research in arts, literature, philosophy, theology and social sciences published by the Partium Christian University. The published papers are thematically gathered, in order to provide a multidisciplinary approach, seeking to generate discussion and trigger fresh insights.
“Innovation” or “Kidnapping”: Elaine Sturtevant in Seville
As of Summer 2025, a major exhibition of the American-born, Paris-based artist Elaine Sturtevant (1924–2014) is currently on view at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (CAAC) in Seville, Spain. Known for her decades-long practice of repeating the works of other contemporary artists while simultaneously declaring her own work as original, Sturtevant remains a paradoxical figure in art history. Art critic Ángela Molina has argued that the exhibition risks 'kidnapping' her artistic intention by reconstructing her practice primarily through works drawn from institutional and private collections (Molina, 2025). This article examines the exhibition from Molina’s perspective as well as within the context of its heritage site, the fourteenth-century monastery that houses CAAC, in order to assess how the show engages with its title, The Echo of Innovation. It further situates Sturtevant’s sixty-year practice of repetition within the ongoing history of social violence and its mutations, tracing her shift from physical “copies” to digital interpretations and juxtapositions after the 1990s.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ruohong Wu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Changes in Children’s Spaces: The History of Playgrounds and Fairytale Connections in Hungary during the Socialist Period
My study outlines the history of the development of the typical settings of socialist architecture—the housing estates, panel blocks, and socialist modernist playgrounds—in parallel with the evolution of the status of the fairytale in socialism. The run-down spaces and abandoned milieus of the socialist period, born as spaces shaped by an ideal system and as visions of the new city and society, seem even sadder today. Through metaphorical architectural spaces, the utopia that once shone like a bright star is contrasted with what is sometimes nostalgia and sometimes a new beginning, a tabula rasa. My writing traces the history of the development and perception of socialist housing estates and the associated playgrounds/communal spaces, and explores how children’s needs, fairytales, and fantasies increasingly shape these spaces as the regime changes.
Copyright (c) 2025 Anna Váraljai https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Capitalism Delusion in Ex-colonies: A Postcolonial Analysis of How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue
Like other economic models, capitalism is a solid one that has demonstrated its resilience by overpowering political vagaries. From its inception in the 19th century to the present day, it has proven its worth as a development factor in various European societies and to competition. Over time, it has emerged as a foremost political weapon serving the cause of Western imperialism beyond its geographical borders. Development aid to Southern societies, as illustrated in Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were (2021), is a perfect example. Ex-colonized areas such as Kosawa have fragile and poor economies; the West is committed to supporting them by establishing Pexton, a mining company whose purpose is to boost the domestic economy. Enthused by promises, local inhabitants show hospitality towards their benefactors. However, later, to their surprise, their hope gave way to despair, as Pexton’s activities caused enormous trouble and diminished the quality of life for the residents. Any nationalist denunciation that demands compensation risks retaliation. As the story unfolds, the environment is polluted, changing the inhabitants’ daily lives. Pexton’s inaction in the face of this ecological crisis raises suspicions about the reliability and viability of development projects piloted by American backers. The study of those discrepancies is crucial, and it is here that the postcolonial critique proves its undeniable relevance, as it contributes to unmasking Western assistance as a form of disguised imperialism, providing the conceptual framework to decipher the ideological continuities between past colonial practices and present-day neo-colonial realities. By focusing on the experiences and voices of marginalized individuals, this method remains a powerful tool for disclosing how the so-called development factor paradoxically impoverishes formerly colonized people. However, its nuanced application is essential, as its tendency to focus on external forces can sometimes obscure the complexities of internal community dynamics and risk presenting the subaltern experience as a monolithic narrative. In terms of structure, the current inquiry is composed of two lines of research: “Seduction of capitalist promises” and “Capitalist exploitation and post-exploitative paradigm.”
Copyright (c) 2025 Daniel Tia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Familial Change and Crisis in Elizabeth Strout’s Pandemic Novel Lucy by the Sea
Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy by the Sea (2022) captures the unsettling experience of forced change during the COVID-19 pandemic, exploring both personal and societal transformation through the lens of its introspective protagonist, Lucy Barton. This paper examines how the novel portrays intergenerational shifts and psychological adaptation in response to crisis, situating it within broader discussions of pandemic literature. The novel foregrounds the ways in which different generations experience and process global upheaval. Lucy and William, as aging individuals, are confronted with their own vulnerabilities and shifting priorities, while their daughters navigate the uncertainty of young adulthood. At the same time, Lucy by the Sea reflects on crisis as a catalyst for change, showing how external instability forces a reconsideration of relationships, emotional resilience, and the self. Through Lucy’s deeply personal yet universally resonant narrative, Strout engages with themes of isolation, loss, and adaptation, raising questions about how individuals and families reconfigure their identities in the wake of collective trauma. By analyzing Strout’s exploration of intergenerational change and psychological resilience, this paper considers how Lucy by the Sea contributes to contemporary literary responses to crisis and the evolving cultural memory of the pandemic.
Copyright (c) 2025 Nóra Máthé https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Empowering Human Capacity for Change: The Animal from Object to Subject
The perception of animals in society remains highly biased: their place differs according to their “usefulness” or their aesthetic appearance. Above all, in Western society, the animal has been regarded as an object for centuries. With the recent development of science, including biology and ethology, social justice movements, the concept of antispeciesism, and theories based on extensionist ethics, such as animal rights theory and multi-species justice, animals are beginning to emerge from the shadows of the anthropocentric world, especially through the medium of the arts. This article will consider two works of contemporary art that focus on human–animal relations, namely Ever Dundas’s novel Goblin (2017) and the photojournalism project by the non-governmental organization We Animals (founded in 2019). These works depict the animal playing its role as an animal, not as an object or symbol, while at the same time questioning our relationship with non-human animals and highlighting the shift in our perception of the animal. The aim of the article is to analyze how art can bring animals out of invisibility and contribute to changing the place of the animal from object to subject.
Copyright (c) 2025 Alexandra Hamrouni https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Digital Theseus: The Ship, the Self, and Cybernetic Transformations in Neuromancer
It is inconceivable to fantasize about a world where everything is stationary. This paper will utilize Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of becoming as a foundational framework to analyze the themes of identity and transformation in William Gibson’s Neuromancer. The novel, written in 1984, explores the philosophical contradictions surrounding change and can be linked to the paradox of Theseus’ Ship. It explores how technological advancements challenge and redefine personal identity through specific examples such as cybernetic augmentation, mind uploading into the virtual, and body enhancements. These themes reflect Rosi Braidotti’s Posthumanist discourse and align with the perpetual change in human ontology. The novel highlights the disruptive forces that push the conventional borders between organic and artificial to their limits. Neuromancer interrogates the idea of continuous change in the context of technological enhancements. It replaces and redefines physical and cognitive capabilities by focusing on the fluidity and fragmentation of the self. Gibson challenges Cartesian dualism by portraying characters whose identities are merged with technology, thereby testing the capabilities of the human-machine individual. His work foreshadows contemporary debates on artificial intelligence and regulations governing body enhancement. Gibson extends the paradox of the Ship of Theseus beyond materiality, questioning identity as an ever-changing construct within the age of advanced cybernetics.
Copyright (c) 2025 Decebal-Narcis Apostu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Reactions to Change in Graham Swift’s Works
The purpose of this paper is to analyze how, for Swift’s characters, personal crises serve as turning points, prompting them to reexamine their identities by revisiting and reinterpreting their life narratives. The story consists of their self-analysis. There is always a change in the characters’ lives that leads to a crisis, which in turn prompts the characters to explore themselves further. Psychological theories about crises and personal change will help us examine the situations of Swift’s characters and the ways they transform. Erik Erikson’s stages of psychological development outline the development of identity across life stages, which are characterized by crises that must be resolved. Resolving relationship issues leads to a stronger sense of self. J. William Worden’s crisis theory suggests that individuals go through a process of adaptation and reevaluate their personal worldviews. Prochaska and DiClemente’s stages of change model includes precontemplation, contemplation, action, and maintenance. In contrast, William Bridges’ transitional model claims that personal change happens in three phases: acceptance of issues (ending, losing, letting go), uncertainty (the neutral zone), personal reinvention, and a new beginning. These theories can bring more profound insight into understanding Swift’s traumatized narrators. The novels Shuttlecock, Ever After, Out of This World, and The Light of Day will be analyzed.
Copyright (c) 2025 Irina-Ana Drobot https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Fukuyama posits that the greatest risk associated with contemporary biotechnology lies in its potential to fundamentally alter human nature, ushering in a “post-human” era that will raise new questions concerning human identity. The biotechnological revolution is currently advancing in three primary directions, with a central focus on genetic manipulation that enables the selection and modification of embryos to enhance physical performance and disease resistance. Popular films such as Patient Zero and V-Wars depict the emergence of new, mutated species and the downfall of the old world order. These new entities, while physically superior and more intelligent, are often detached from human values and treat humans as subordinate beings, reflecting and avenging humanity’s own tendencies toward racism and speciesism. In other works, such as the Helix series and The Titan, mutations are portrayed as responses to climate change, where genetic modifications are employed to help humanity adapt to an evolving environment, leading not only to biological transformations but also to significant social and ecological shifts. In Annihilation, mutation triggers an accelerated form of evolution, in which the creation of new species seems to herald the emergence of a new order within ‘natureculture,’ resonating with Haraway’s notion of the ‘Chthulucene.’ Through these biological transformations, the films explore questions of responsibility, (bio)ethics and politics, highlighting the shifting power dynamics in a world where humans are no longer the dominant species.
Copyright (c) 2025 Annamária Hódosy https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Insights from the Kajántó Mária Home for Children and Youth in the View of the Romanian Child Protection System
This article highlights the support and care provided to disadvantaged children by the Reformed Church in Romania and by other religious institutions abroad, including the Dutch Church. Simultaneously, it highlights the Romanian child protection system and its transformation after 1989, drawing a perspective on the Kajántó Mária Home for Children and Youth, a childcare home in Aleșd, Romania. Most studies and research focus predominantly on the Romanian child protection system and legislation. These studies provide an account of the change in attitude, opportunities for improvement, good and bad practices, highlighting the outline for children’s care that has developed over the past 30 years. However, child protection homes and the voices of the institutions have received significantly less attention to show what a disadvantaged child truly needs. The article illustrates the challenges of adapting to changing legislation and highlights community resilience through the example of Kajántó Mária Home, which provides comprehensive care programs for vulnerable children. It provides a critical examination of how social and cultural circumstances have shaped the development of the Romanian state’s child protection framework. By aligning the case study, this paper underscores the importance of collective action and constitutional measures in shaping societal structures and protecting vulnerable populations.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ingrid Sfet https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Book Review. The Broadcasted Future of Sport Management. Branden Buehler’s Front Office Fantasies. The Rise of Managerial Sports Media
Branden Buehler's book deals with sports management and media and the relation between these notions. Its bibliography is large, as a result of extensive research that started, according to the author, while he was in graduate school. The research was developed into the current volume due to the help and influence of a series of people. Highly enjoyable to read, this book adopts a unique focus on certain issues related to the social character of the phenomenon mentioned above.
Copyright (c) 2025 Artur Lóránd Lakatos https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Book Review. “Aesthetically Sovereign”—Barker Debra K. S. and Conie A. Jacobs, Eds. Postindian Aesthetics: Affirming Indigenous Literary Sovereignty
Copyright (c) 2025 Hend Ayari https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Spice Melange as a Catalyst to the Discovery of the Mind
Melange, or spice as it is also known, is an ingredient in Frank Herbert's novel Dune. It symbolizes the infinite possibilities of the human mind, as it is a source of knowledge and power. Both addictive and mind-altering, for the people of Arrakis, its source place, the spice is the basis of their lives and the cornerstone of their daily rituals. Due to its effect, the traditional lifespan is extended three times, but at the same time, its consumption causes a strong addiction. It is the basis of the rites of passage. The spice is a consciousness-expanding narcotic produced during the natural life cycle of sandworms, which has been the core of technological development and commerce since its discovery. Moreover, the formation of the cultural memory of the Fremen is made possible by the Water of Life, a substance transformed from poison and heavily saturated with spice. In tribal society, constant contact with the spice also manifests in physical changes, as the natural layer of their eyes turns otherworldly blue due to consumption. In my study, I address the following questions: can spice as a drug fully enhance the capabilities of the human mind? What is its role in the rites, and how does it enable the cultural memory of the tribe? What do various interest groups in the galaxy use it for? The core of my topic is the relationship between the spice and the individual through different social strata, ritual ceremonies, and the question of foresight.
Copyright (c) 2025 Anna Rozsályi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Tricksters, Travelers, and Other Places in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day and Paule Marshall’s The Chosen Place, The Timeless People
This article explores the narrative representations of traveling, crossing, and identity formation in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day and Paule Marshall’s The Chosen Place, The Timeless People. Informed by Henry Louis Gates’ analysis of the trickster archetype, the article casts a closer look at the role played by this symbolic figure in the two novels. Significant rites of passage require significant places, such as the “other place” in Mama Day or the “chosen place” in The Chosen Place, The Timeless People, which are the realm of the trickster. Deeply anchored in their island communities, these characters easily move between the supernatural and the mundane and facilitate access to cultural memory and personal identity. By juxtaposing these two works, the article argues that rites of passage, performed by bridge-like characters in culturally significant places, are essential for validating the characters’ inner and spatial journeys, ultimately assisting them in finding a sense of collective belonging and personal identity.
Copyright (c) 2025 Florentina Rosca https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Correctional Educators’ Metaphorical Perceptions of Their Professional Selves
Metaphor is a widely studied phenomenon, valued not only for its aesthetic appeal and variety but also for its significant role in shaping thinking and cognition. In qualitative educational research, metaphors serve as valuable instruments for depicting existing educational states, revealing new insights into educational practice and theory, as well as for gaining a deeper understanding of educators’ world. Metaphors allow for linking information about one familiar concept to another, creating a new understanding through the comparison process that generates new meaning. Educators working in juvenile correctional institutions or reformatories form a rather under-researched community. As they carry out their educational activities in a closed world, there is limited information available about them. This study adopted a qualitative research design. Within the frame-work of semi-structured individual interviews conducted with fifteen correctional educators, I used the method of metaphor collection based on analogy, using the target concept of juvenile correctional educator. The resulting twenty-seven metaphors were organised into source concepts and subjected to content analysis. While the majority of the metaphors pertain to care and nurturing, others point to the closed nature of the institution, suggesting that the focus here is more on the role of the caregiver rather than that of the knowledge transmitter. With this method, my aim was to explore juvenile correctional educators’ most complex image of their own professional selves.
Copyright (c) 2025 Hajnalka Izsák https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Romanian Pandemic-Themed Memes on Facebook and Their Contribution to the Climate of Fear
This paper examines the role of pandemic-themed memes (PTMs) on Facebook in shaping public perception and contributing to a climate of fear during the COVID-19 pandemic in Romania. Focusing on a selection of popular Romanian meme pages (MPs), such as Junimea, Omu Paiangăn, Ion Creangă, and 2Meme, this research employs a systematic quantitative and qualitative analysis of the content shared between early March and mid-May 2020 (covering the local onset and peak of pandemic-related restrictions). The findings reveal that PTMs accounted for up to 65.79% of the total content on these pages, which highlights the dual role of memes as both coping mechanisms and amplifiers of fear during crises and provides insights into how digital humor influences public discourse and how social media platforms contribute to shaping collective experiences during global events.
Copyright (c) 2025 Daniel Ungureanu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Inspirers of a Modernist Artist Identity: Le Corbusier’s Relationship with Naive and African Art
This study takes as its starting point a painting by André Bauchant, a naïve painter who inspired the modernists, most notably architect Le Corbusier. Bauchant’s Bouquet Le Corbusier (1927), which features a large vase and the figures of Le Corbusier and his wife shrunk to the size of ants, was given to Le Corbusier as a gift. Bauchant was a gardener who served on the front lines during the First World War, and he did not start painting until reaching old age. In addition to André Bauchant Le Corbusier’s other favorite painter was the indigenous, self-taught African artist Kalifala Sidibé. Le Corbusier bought many of his paintings and even wrote a book about him. We know from contemporary photographs that Le Corbusier was attracted not only to naïve paintings but also to artists who lived natural lifestyles. Indeed, Le Corbusier regularly painted and drew nude in his home. Le Corbusier was searching for a way to return to a more natural and ecological orientation that diverged from the path that European civilization seemed to be taking. In this quest, he drew inspiration from many sources, and his home was very much like a Kunst- und Wunderkammer room that gathered together the works of naïve and indigenous painters, as well as seashells, snail shells, and prehistoric sculptures. In this paper, I examine one of the sources of Le Corbusier’s inspiration: his relationship with naïve artists. I explore the modern European artist and star architect’s relationship to autodidactic and African art, as well as his socio– and mental–historical background.
Rhetorical Error: Combating Post-Truth and AI Nihilism Through Active Discourse Production
Using the classical pedagogical strategies of Isocrates as a framework, this paper investigates how a renewed focus on civic rhetoric in the classroom will allow for increased dialogue and active discourse production between those inside and outside the Academy. Although Isocrates did not use the word “rhetoric” himself, reading his translated texts through a current lens allows the application of rhetoric through renewed frameworks. As we find ourselves mainly existing in a post-truth world, there is a proclivity among many to replace facts with pathos. As Lee McIntyre (2018) explores in his work Post Truth, heightened reliance on emotion, social media, and fake news represents a dangerous form of nihilism. Connected to this is the abandonment of traditional media, the dismissal of evidence, and a blatant disregard for the truth—all of which can be considered “rhetorical error.” As individuals become more and more distanced from others through a reliance on the digital, they retreat into what McIntyre calls “information silos” (2018). Active discourse production, building on Isocrates’ notion of classical pedagogy, can directly challenge these information silos. Hart (2006) argues for returning to classical pedagogy in the writing classroom. This paper builds on this work, suggesting that pedagogy grounded in ideals put forth by Isocrates can directly challenge both post-truth nihilism and rhetorical error.
Copyright (c) 2025 Whitney Jordan Adams https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Relationship Between Reader and Writer in Contemporary Haiku Poems
The purpose of this paper is to look at the relationship of communication and readers’ participation in contemporary haiku poems. The poems selected for exemplification in this paper will be from Haiku Canada Members’ Anthology 2024. No Two Alike. The way in which readers work their way through meaning will be underlined, through free associations and use of universal symbols, and also based on common life experiences. A reader response approach will be adopted, since it has in view the way readers react to any text. Textual analysis will be combined with the readers’ emotional reactions and interpretations based on personal life experiences and cultural background. We can speak of communities of readers, in this case made up by the Western culture writers of an originally Japanese poem, the haiku. It is adapted and also compatible with other cultural mindsets. The way readers are engaged in the haiku poetry experience further leads to haiku being used in therapy, to encourage patients to express themselves, and become aware of their emotions, without thinking about the rules of this type of poem.
Copyright (c) 2024 Dan Horațiu Popescu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Populism: Focusing on the People's Interest
Ever since the times of ancient philosophy, the focus of politics has been the well-being of the people, which has been ensured, throughout history, through various approaches. The search for a leader that is honest and also able to do justice can be seen as one of the constant wishes of the people. The way politicians build their public image struggles to achieve this sentiment of trust. Currently, Populism has risen in popularity since it claims to promote the interests of the masses, of the “pure” people, and not those of the corrupted political elite. Populism gives citizens the feeling that they are in control and free to make the right choice of leader to ensure their well-being. The present paper will rely on the fact that the increasing individualism across the world is being exploited here with respect to the citizens, who want to feel that they have the freedom of choice. The question is to what extent they truly have this freedom and to what extent they change one ideology with another. Is this alternative ideology, being tolerated next to the so-called mainstream one, an illusion or not? The paper will include the case study of a Post-Communist country, Romania.
Copyright (c) 2024 Irina-Ana Drobot https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Between Sanity and Damnation: Unraveling Player Choices and Ethical Dilemmas in Lovecraftian-Inspired Role-Playing Games
This study examines player agency and ethical decision-making in Lovecraftian-inspired role-playing games (RPGs) as a means of engaging with H.P. Lovecraft’s themes and introducing players to occultism. While Lovecraft’s works often center on cosmic horror and existential dread rather than explicit ethical dilemmas, these games expand on his ideas by incorporating moral complexities into their narratives. By granting players agency, these games enable users to make challenging decisions and form personal bonds with characters, enriching their appreciation of the mystical and psychological themes drawn from Lovecraft’s mythos. Games like Bloodborne and Sunless Sea not only provide established fans with interactive ways to explore Lovecraftian concepts but also introduce new audiences to these themes, fostering a richer appreciation of the genre. This study examines how Lovecraftian RPGs build upon and reinterpret his ideas, offering players a dynamic medium to engage with cosmic horror, moral ambiguity, and occult motifs.
Copyright (c) 2025 Taha AlSarhan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Bonding People Through Storytelling: Community, Humor and the Porch in Gloria Naylor’s "Mama Day"
The present article will examine the African American porch as the nexus of the community and the stage upon which the Black oral tradition becomes art and people, active participants in the recreation of communal ties. We will cast an in-depth look at the porch actors and their performance as depicted in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day. The analysis of the porch as an intermediary site opens with a discussion of the origins of this piece of Americana and its crucial cultural function, especially for the African American communities located in the southeastern part of the United States. Several other distinctive attributes of the porch will be identified, all linked to and representative of the community. Ultimately, this article highlights the paramount role of storytelling as a unifying force for a community, through the prism of Naylor’s novel, deemed as a faithful rendition of the Black Southern cultural expression.
Copyright (c) 2024 Florentina Rosca https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Shadow and limelight constantly, often imperceptibly change places in Zadie Smith’s 2016 novel Swing Time. This is a fictional world where the narrator/main character can never become a true protagonist, and her namelessness gives her both universality and invisibility. Appearances deceive, success and failure are not separated, and binaries are questioned, even erased. Zadie Smith is a young English novelist born to a Jamaican mother and an English father; she spent her childhood and early adulthood in Northwest London—a place defined by hybridity and poverty—and recently moved to New York. Her oeuvre to date is a complex insight into questions of race, friendship, personal identity, belonging, and other issues, all connected to life in a globalized world. Her Swing Time presents a mature, objective outlook on various lives connected through race, dance, and fates. Zadie Smith’s latest novel is a representative work of literature for tracing the manifestations of (in)visibility in a globalized world. This novel builds on visuality: movies, songs, and dances from the swing era come to life, it features a Madonna-like international pop star and two young protagonists who attempt to define themselves through dance. Here the visible and the invisible are interlinked, and superior and inferior are interchangeable. The novel actively challenges readers’ preconceived notions of character, good and bad, progression and degression, and it prompts an unbiased look at the fates of its various characters. The investigation of the ways the visibility–invisibility binary is redefined through the novel leads us to a view into current social phenomena, such as race in a global world, (post-) diaspora, minorities, class hierarchy, political agency, mobility, and identity.
Copyright (c) 2024 Noémi Albert https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Exile is the unique reliable way out for the world’s citizens when they feel unsafe in their home countries. As such, it is neither confined to any particular era nor to any specific society. This is a pure human phenomenon, which can occur at any time in an individual’s life. Its degree of occurrence might vary, up or down, depending on the political, economic, educational, cultural and legal conditions that a given society offers to its citizens. The more those values are promoted and put into practice, the less the spectrum of exile diminishes. A careful, up-to-date look at the global society helps to remove ambiguities about the exilic people’s conditions. No human society is immune from the exilic phenomenon. Citizens are compelled to leave their native homes to avoid arbitrariness, injustice, and death. As a social fact, exile is considered as a necessary evil. Necessary, because by exiling, the exilic being survives, learns to recreate and reinvent him/herself, overcome social obstacles and negotiate a new way of life. Evil, because the exilic subject, regardless of his/her know-how, intelligence or culture, is perceived as an intruder, a threat to the host community. Thus, the hospitality, which is offered to him/her, is always fraught with difficulties; a dose of adaptation is always required for his/her survival. The issue of exile is recurrent in the 21st century societies and is dealt with in various news media. Literature subjectivizes it by creating fictional, imaginary characters with complex, uncertain exilic destinies. Interrogating the exilic individuals’ conditions through the prism of literary works is therefore an ambitious exercise. For that purpose, Crosian sociocritical perspective will serve as a methodological framework. Its purpose will consist in digging into two major points of interest (exilic evil and integrating modes) in a series of novels by authors of varied nationalities.
Copyright (c) 2024 Daniel Tia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Space is neither a “passive, three-dimensional container” nor a “backdrop for something more dynamic” (McCormack, 2013, p. 2). Space is a process, and so is the body; especially, since the body itself—or the soma, the living body—contains inner spaces, which can and do relate to the spaces outside the body. How do we perceive space and embody space on this multiple scale? How do we feel space, objects, and other bodies while we co-exist? What do those inside spaces transmit while the performers move or stand still through their presence? How can the director envelope and contain these dimensions and be “holding the space” in and around the process? Using Body-Mind Centering® vocabulary, how to be the membrane around the fluid space? The BMC® embryological development studies open a new and even closer perspective to this space within “because it is the embodiment of space versus the embodiment of structure” (Bainbridge Cohen, 2012, p. 163). How to move from this multilayered/multiscale space utilizing diverse viewpoints of embodiment: taking actions from embodied spaces while holding the space and letting intuition enter the creative process because “space holds the information.” This article seeks to answer these questions and explore the relationship with space, particularly from the perspective of performing art and sculpture.
Copyright (c) 2024 Bernadett Jobbágy https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Hydronyms of Ethnic Origin in the Körös River Area
The subject of my study is the presentation of hydronyms of ethnic origin from a morphological approach. By processing the river hydronyms of the Körös region, which covers an area of more than 27,000 square kilometers, we can get an overview of the name-creating activities of the population of the studied area. From the history of Hungarian hydronym research, I mention the main registers, databases, and processings that contain ethnonyms, presenting the chronological and sociological diversity and variety of the region.In the lexical–morphological structure of two-part hydronyms, the most common are the extensional name parts that express the peculiarity (e.g., size, shape, color, temperature, age, condition, smell, taste, speed, sound, ethnic name). The role of ethnic names in hydronyms is determinative in inferring the occurrence of certain ethnic elements. Since the name itself identifies, the function of a place name is then the distinction from the environment, the separation from it. This method is also valid in hydronymy. As a result of this, we find such place names as Csehi, Oroszi, Tóti, Olaszi, and hydronyms such as Beseny-ér, Bosnyák-patak, Cseh-ér, Czigányi csermely, Kun-ér, Orosz-ér, Rác-patak, etc.
Copyright (c) 2024 Magdaléna Kiss https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
During the spring of 1939, a new and complete English translation of Mein Kampf was issued, which induced Kenneth Burke to publish his genuinely rhetorical analysis of Hitler’s writing shortly after that. The same spring also saw the publication of one of James Thurber’s fables, “The Owl Who Was God.” Coincidental as this constellation may be, the present paper ventures to critically juxtapose the Hitlerian recipe for war propaganda and the satirical Thurberian treatment of totalitarianism. The argument is organized around two notions: concentration and prosopopoeia. While Mein Kampf aims at concentrating the attention of the people on a single enemy, to be expelled by a single Führer, Thurber’s fable demonstrates, on multiple levels, the ways in which such a concentration is inscribed in the figural workings of prosopopoeia, understood here as a trope not simply of personification but of figuration in general, as well as a trope of spectrality. Since, however, the fable does not lend itself to easy instrumentalization for didactic or satirical purposes, it also showcases a certain resistance, which may, in turn, also help us think about the materiality of literature.
Copyright (c) 2024 György Fogarasi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Book Review. Elizabeth Strout's "Lucy by the Sea"
Copyright (c) 2024 Anca Peiu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Elasticity of Space in Karen Tei Yamashita’s "Tropic of Orange"
Karen Tei Yamashita’s novel Tropic of Orange is a study of space shaped by history, urbanism, globalisation, and ecology. Yamashita explores the social injustice, urban, and environmental changes happening in postmodern and futuristic Los Angeles through seven characters and their respective storylines, narrated by various narrators with different styles. Most characters experience spatial and temporal distortions in their everyday lives, allowing them to try to understand the events unfolding around them. Yamashita depicts space as an organic, changeable, and elastic unity. I argue that by viewing space more holistically, Yamashita offers solutions to some of the overarching problems California has been facing for a long time, namely racism, displacement, class differences, transformation of urban space, violence, and the threat of ecological catastrophe. The convergence of space and time in the narrative, mixed with magic realist tropes, enables Yamashita to interrogate and critique the contemporary socio-economic conditions of the Latin American community in Los Angeles.
environment; space; postmodernism; time; gentrification
Copyright (c) 2024 Milos Blahut https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Silent Sites of Memory in Paule Marshall’s "The Chosen Place, The Timeless People"
As the title of the book suggests, The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (1969) is place-focused; it is indeed a narrative of place and its people. The main fictional setting is a fictive Caribbean island, which acts as an essential locale in the protagonists’ act of (re)memory and (com)memoration. An emotionally charged place, this apparently insignificant island acquires a majestic stature in the book; it is space and place, home and exile, paradise and purgatory, past and present, remembrance and forgetfulness. This paper focuses on specific sites which are emblematic of the island community, given the complex role they play in the restoration of memory and identity. Pierre Nora’s concept of lieux de mémoire will be used here with an understanding that, in a Caribbean setting, places record the monumentality of loss caused by colonialism and its aftermath. The cane field and Sugar’s bar are places where the past lives, bearing constant proof of terrifying colonial abuse. Other locales, however, mainly dwellings and gardens, will be identified and examined as a solution to the protagonists’ exile. The paper aims to demonstrate that all these locales are the essence of the island or, to paraphrase Derek Walcott, they are the genuine fresco, map-less, history-less yet quintessential for the ‘persistence of memory.’