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Early Modern Criticism of the Zohar

Yaacob Dweck

in The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice

This chapter argues that Modena's criticism of the Zohar's origins had little to do with its theological contents. It emerged as a reaction to the elevated status of the work among his Jewish ... More

This chapter argues that Modena's criticism of the Zohar's origins had little to do with its theological contents. It emerged as a reaction to the elevated status of the work among his Jewish contemporaries and immediate predecessors; Jews had begun to treat the Zohar as a source of legal authority rather than a collection of stories and biblical glosses. Modena's critique constituted a denunciation of these larger trends in contemporary Jewish life rather than a rejection of the Zohar as a work of exegesis. As such, Ari Nohem offers a case study of how an early modern intellectual worked to prove that a text was pseudepigraphic. It also presents a wealth of information on attitudes toward the Zohar among Jews in Italy, Poland, and elsewhere. Ultimately, Modena rejected the status ascribed to the Zohar in contemporary Jewish life, denied the work's ostensible antiquity, and reflected on the deleterious impact of its packaging as a printed book.Less

The Photographic City: A City Heading in the Opposite Direction

MAGALI TERCERO

in Mexico City through History and Culture

This chapter presents powerful images and accounts that chronicle contemporary urban life in Mexico. The images discussed were captured by the photographer Maya Goded. These photographs and ... More

This chapter presents powerful images and accounts that chronicle contemporary urban life in Mexico. The images discussed were captured by the photographer Maya Goded. These photographs and narratives chronicle the desolation of death, the world of the child and the bleak world of prostitution. In addition to these, the woman’s prison, the attractions of lucha libre (masked wrestling), the national lottery and games of chance, and the mass rallies of the Zapatistas, are painted vibrantly through chronicles and accounts. In these chronicles and photographs, the theme of poverty and the failure of the government to address the needs of the marginalized people form the unifying voice of these accounts. Prostitution, wrestling and the lottery became means for the people to escape poverty and the humdrum of everyday lives marked with difficulties. And the mistreatment of children, the trafficking of the rights of women in prisons and the lack of systematic identification of the victims of death reflect the failure of the government to produce laws and services that protect its people. However, despite the bleakness of the photographs and the chronicles presented herein, they nevertheless reflect the resilience of the Mexicans in surviving the challenges of life despite the feeling of being marginalized.Less

On the Political Corruptions of a Moral Universal

Robert Manne

in Remembering the Holocaust: A Debate

In this response to Jeffrey Alexander's chapter, “The Social Construction of Moral Universals,” this chapter offers a somewhat skeptical critique after outlining a political reading of what he has to ... More

In this response to Jeffrey Alexander's chapter, “The Social Construction of Moral Universals,” this chapter offers a somewhat skeptical critique after outlining a political reading of what he has to say. It agrees a great deal with Alexander's account, accepting the basic periodization that the Jewish killings by the Nazis only became the Holocaust sometime in the 1960s. Despite such agreements, the chapter concentrates on some basic misgivings about the case presented by Alexander. Alexander believes no historical event is self-interpreting. There are some difficulties with this kind of popular-cultural explanation of the emergence of the Holocaust as the central moral-political myth of the modern Western world. The chapter argues that the most fundamental misgiving about Alexander's argument is his reading of the place of the Holocaust in contemporary political life.Less

A Traditional American Christmas

Penne L. Restad

in Christmas in America: A History

Christmas, if seen in terms of a celebration propagated by the Europeans on American soil as a hand-me-down tradition, went through a massive change and adaptation as Americans looked towards the ... More

Christmas, if seen in terms of a celebration propagated by the Europeans on American soil as a hand-me-down tradition, went through a massive change and adaptation as Americans looked towards the reinvention of the holiday as their own. This chapter tackles the adaptation and changes Americans inculcated in their version of Christmas in terms of the customs and rituals of the past that were mixed with the modernization, mechanization, and urbanization of the land and society via the transformation of commerce and industry. This created a holiday meaning that now can be said to fit the call of the present times. Through the celebration of Christmas, Americans have found a way to retreat from the usual routines of contemporary life.Less

What?

in Navigators of the Contemporary: Why Ethnography Matters

What might refunctioned ethnography, an ethnography appropriate for thinking through present situations, be? This entire book is an effort to describe, and hence loosely define, at least one ... More

What might refunctioned ethnography, an ethnography appropriate for thinking through present situations, be? This entire book is an effort to describe, and hence loosely define, at least one ethnography for present situations. This chapter sets the stage, providing some access to the thicket of the author's conversations with his anthropologist friends. Any number of paths are conceivable, but it takes the troublingly self-contradictory notion of “culture.” On the one hand, contemporary conditions would seem to be deeply hostile to general conceptions of culture. On the other, some idea of “culture” seems necessary if we are to make any sense out of life, even contemporary life.Less

Friendship in Contemporary Life

in Philosophy and Friendship

This chapter describes the nature of some of the modifications contemporary friendship demands, given the differentiation and fragmentation of contemporary life by comparison with the life of ... More

This chapter describes the nature of some of the modifications contemporary friendship demands, given the differentiation and fragmentation of contemporary life by comparison with the life of Aristotelian friends. It re-examines psychoanalytic perspectives on the formation of identity and the constitution of the self, focusing on the role of language, discourse, and imagination in these processes. The chapter suggests that friendship emerges as a creative and uncertain synthesis of the play of forces which create identity and difference between friends, and that creativity is illustrated by the use of an analogy between narrative discourse and friendship.Less

Introduction

Miriam Feldmann Kaye

in Jewish Theology for a Postmodern Age

This chapter provides a compelling theology for the postmodern, relativist age. It confronts the crisis of Jewish theology that is premised on a growing ambivalence towards the idea of absolute truth ... More

This chapter provides a compelling theology for the postmodern, relativist age. It confronts the crisis of Jewish theology that is premised on a growing ambivalence towards the idea of absolute truth and perpetuated by postmodern cultural and philosophical critiques. It also analyses the central principle of postmodernism, such as culture and its linguistic parameters that determine what is true and that therefore there can no longer be any objective truth. The chapter examines how particular religious culture demonstrate its greater 'truthfulness' and outlines multiple aspects of contemporary Jewish life that are plagued with questions. It investigates the use of the term 'theological', which refer to discussions and explanations dealing with conceptions of God.Less

Introduction: Mortal Self, Infinite Longings

Sara Crangle

in Prosaic Desires: Modernist Knowledge, Boredom, Laughter, and Anticipation

This introductory chapter discusses the most popular desires of Victorian fiction, which are love and social mobility, first studying Thomas Hardy's The Hand of Ethelberta and The Well-Beloved. It ... More

This introductory chapter discusses the most popular desires of Victorian fiction, which are love and social mobility, first studying Thomas Hardy's The Hand of Ethelberta and The Well-Beloved. It determines that Hardy's protagonists are not satiated by ambition or sexual love, and that the self is torn apart due to an obsessive focus on a single desire. From here, the discussion moves on to examine the rethinking of desire and Emmanuel Levinas's work, explaining how Hardy's writing presents a good representation of the modernist desire-driven shift in focus from self to other. It also considers the relationship between everyday longing, the self and contemporary life.Less

Fight Club’s Critical Reactions and Cultural Contexts

Mark Ramey and Mark Ramey

in Studying Fight Club

This chapter explores the critical reactions to Fight Club (1999). Fight Club has a complex, postmodern approach to genre and narrative; it is a generic hybrid that resists categorisation and a ... More

This chapter explores the critical reactions to Fight Club (1999). Fight Club has a complex, postmodern approach to genre and narrative; it is a generic hybrid that resists categorisation and a narrative that avoids precise resolution. Critical responses were wide ranging but the most vociferous and aggressive were from renowned critics like Roger Ebert and Alexander Walker who found the film repellent and nihilistic. Many critics linked the film to an infantile reading of Nietzsche, which further raised the spectre of the Nazis and helped endorse the view that Fight Club was politically dangerous and morally repugnant. However, critical opinion was split, with some reviewers seeing Fight Club as a brilliantly effective critique and biting satire of contemporary life. The film also created censorship issues for the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) who insisted on minor cuts to two scenes of fighting. The chapter then considers the cultural contexts of Fight Club. In 1999, the fear of the ‘Millennium Bug’ was indicative of a general anxiety over many aspects of Western culture. These were focused on notions of gender and in particular male anxiety of emasculation and feminisation, as well as generational mistrust and unease.Less

Contemporary Resistance to the Maimonidean Reform

Menachem Kellner

in Maimonides' Confrontation with Mysticism

This afterword looks at the contemporary resistance to the Maimonidean reform. Anyone familiar with contemporary Jewish life, especially within Orthodoxy, will see immediately that the Maimonidean ... More

This afterword looks at the contemporary resistance to the Maimonidean reform. Anyone familiar with contemporary Jewish life, especially within Orthodoxy, will see immediately that the Maimonidean reform described in this book has failed to take hold. In addition to the seven specific issues addressed here — the nature of halakhah; distinctions between holy and profane and ritually pure and ritually impure; the character of the Hebrew language; the notion of kavod/shekhinah/created light; the distinction between Jew and non-Jew; and the existence of angels as popularly understood — Maimonides also sought to reform the curriculum of Jewish learning. In each of these areas, he sought to transform the Judaism of his day, and in each of these areas, Judaism continued to develop as if Maimonides had never existed and never written. However, in contrast to the items in this list, there are areas in which Maimonides' influence has been decisive. He succeeded in convincing almost all Jews that the God of Judaism is entirely incorporeal. He also convinced subsequent generations of Jews that the Jewish religion has a firm dogmatic base.Less

Culture Everywhere and Nowhere

in Navigators of the Contemporary: Why Ethnography Matters

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the challenges faced by cultural anthropology today. It describes how cultural anthropology went through a period of rupture in the 1980s, a substantial ... More

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the challenges faced by cultural anthropology today. It describes how cultural anthropology went through a period of rupture in the 1980s, a substantial break with the discipline's traditions. Just exactly what changed for cultural anthropologists in the 1980s remains unclear, but the university practices that constitute cultural anthropology carried on both much as before, but also differently—and what was the same, or thought to be different, remains contested long after the fact. This book proceeds on the assumption that the rupture of the 1980s was not enough to constitute an ethnography fully prepared to inquire into many of the cultural questions which seem so unavoidable today, that is, questions raised by “cultures” of contemporary life in developed places.Less

Prologue: The Power of the Between

in The Power of the Between: An Anthropological Odyssey

Anthropologists are always “between” things—between “being there,” as the late Clifford Geertz put it and “being-here,” between two or more languages, between two or more cultural traditions, between ... More

Anthropologists are always “between” things—between “being there,” as the late Clifford Geertz put it and “being-here,” between two or more languages, between two or more cultural traditions, between two or more apprehensions of reality. Anthropologists are the sojourners of “the between.” They go there and absorb a different language, culture, and way of being and return here, where they can never fully resume the lives they had previously led. This book attempts to write about how living anthropology can transform its practitioners, changing their conception of who they are, what they know, and how they apprehend the world. It is the story of the author's life in anthropology, of his attempt to understand the social and cultural complexities of contemporary life, of his struggle to write about life in the world. This book suggests that acknowledging the power of the anthropological between is an insightful way to make better sense of the quandaries of human being.Less

Constructing evidence: the development of knowledge which is to be applied

David Byrne

in Applying social science: The role of social research in politics, policy and practice

This chapter deals with the development of knowledge which is to be applied in order both to understand what works and to show what has worked — with the improvement of practice and policy and with ... More

This chapter deals with the development of knowledge which is to be applied in order both to understand what works and to show what has worked — with the improvement of practice and policy and with claims for competence in the development of solutions to the problems of contemporary life — the policy domain, and in the implementation and execution of those policies, the practice domain. It refutes the arguments presented in particular by the Cochrane Collaboration for health, but also with some qualifications endorsed by the Campbell Collaboration in relation to general policy, that is meaningful to construct a hierarchy of modes of production of evidence with the meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials occupying the highest position in that hierarchy. It then considers the issue of variables versus cases by taking forward the complex realist methodological arguments developed in Chapter One.Less

Missing and Missing Out: Social Exclusion in Children with an Incarcerated Parent

Susan M. Dennison and Kirsten L. Besemer

in Prisons, Punishment, and the Family: Towards a New Sociology of Punishment?

This chapter explores the concept of social exclusion and the ways that it can be used to frame discussions about the consequences of parental imprisonment for children. It reviews emerging findings ... More

This chapter explores the concept of social exclusion and the ways that it can be used to frame discussions about the consequences of parental imprisonment for children. It reviews emerging findings that show that parental imprisonment may have fundamental impacts on intergenerational social exclusion. Next, the chapter draws on narratives of children with imprisoned fathers and their caregivers to illustrate how paternal imprisonment interrupts customary practices — living patterns and roles that a father might be expected to fulfil in contemporary family life. This chapter thus extends the discussion beyond the typical focus on economic and health indicators of social exclusion to consider children’s exclusion from daily social activities, proposing that these are essential for children’s identity formation and sense of inclusion and belonging. It argues that such direct experiences of social exclusion are fundamentally harmful to children’s long-term wellbeing and may mediate the lifelong disadvantage known to affect prisoners’ children.Less

Epilogue

A. David Napier

in Making Things Better: A Workbook on Ritual, Cultural Values, and Environmental Behavior

This Epilogue concludes the book with some reflections on the difficulties presented for a contemporary reader in taking seriously the arguments and recommendations made in this text. This final ... More

This Epilogue concludes the book with some reflections on the difficulties presented for a contemporary reader in taking seriously the arguments and recommendations made in this text. This final section does not provide ready answers but it describes some personal struggles with the tasks described in the book. This is done in order to show how looking for what cannon be known fully is often arduous yet also very fulfilling.Less