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The Development of Individual Purposes: Creating Actuality Through Novelty

Jaan Valsiner

in Bridging Cultural and Developmental Approaches to Psychology: New Syntheses in Theory, Research, and Policy

This chapter proposes a theoretical model to make sense of how any human being can face future challenges at the present through cultural signs: which particular forms the sign-construction takes, ... More

This chapter proposes a theoretical model to make sense of how any human being can face future challenges at the present through cultural signs: which particular forms the sign-construction takes, how deep (or shallow) the hierarchical structure of semiotic mediation is, and how temporary or quasi-permanent it might be. The model is rooted in Vygotsky's focus on the dialectical nature of human development, and elaborated in life-course psychology by TEM (Trajectory Equifinality Model of Tatsuya Sato). The making of individual purposes is a process of anticipating the future relations with the changing context. Novelty is the ever-present—transitory—link between what these future relations are, and how they relate with the already known. Human development takes place on the borderline of the past and the future—creating the notion of the present as if it were a solid state of being, rather than an ephemeral state of eternal becoming.Less

Conclusion

Eddie Tay

in Colony, Nation, and Globalisation: Not at Home in Singaporean and Malaysian Literature

This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on identity anxiety, intellectual heritage and the post-colonial experience of Singapore and Malaysia as reflected in their local ... More

This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on identity anxiety, intellectual heritage and the post-colonial experience of Singapore and Malaysia as reflected in their local literature. This study has traced through a range of Anglophone literary texts of Malaya and those of post-independence Singapore and Malaysia a history of anxiety that attends the condition of being not-at-home. The findings also indicate that most colonialist writings and those literatures written after colonialism depict a situation in which cultural signs are continuously formulated, investigated, and reformulated.Less

Reconstructing American Studies: Transnational Paradoxes, Comparative Perspectives

Paul Giles

in Transnationalism in Practice: Essays on American Studies, Literature and Religion

This chapter examines the reconstruction of American studies in the context of transnational paradoxes and comparative perspectives. It mentions the views of several influential critics that while ... More

This chapter examines the reconstruction of American studies in the context of transnational paradoxes and comparative perspectives. It mentions the views of several influential critics that while American Studies continues to be a popular subject in universities and colleges on both sides of the Atlantic, its methodological direction appears increasingly uncertain. The chapter suggests that comparativist scholars should dissociate rhetoric from ethos and the cultural sign from the freight of moral values lodged within it in order to make manifest textual qualities of the foreign landscape, and therefore the constructed and radically provisional nature of the American experience.Less

Carnival and Afro-Cuban Ritual in Nicolás Guillén's “Sensemayá: canto para matar una culebra”

Thomas F. Anderson

in Carnival and National Identity in the Poetry of Afrocubanismo

This chapter aims at demonstrating that “Sensemayá: para matar una culebra” can be viewed as an evocation of the controversies surrounding Afro-Cuban comparsas during the early decades of the Cuban ... More

This chapter aims at demonstrating that “Sensemayá: para matar una culebra” can be viewed as an evocation of the controversies surrounding Afro-Cuban comparsas during the early decades of the Cuban Republic. The chapter argues that this particular poem can be easily read as Guillén's reaction to the bans imposed on Afro-Cuban comparsas in the twentieth century. The chapter also analyses while reading the poem that the act of the killing of the snake in the poem cannot only be understood as a symbolic annihilation of traditional carnival comparsas but also as a metaphor for symbolizing the attempts made to abolish other Afro-Cuban cultural signs.Less

“Comparsa habanera,” Emilio Ballagas's Emblematic Contribution to Afrocubanismo

Thomas F. Anderson

in Carnival and National Identity in the Poetry of Afrocubanismo

This chapter focuses on Emilio Ballagas's lively carnival poem “Comparsa habanera.” It reveals that the poem is symbolic in different ways of the ambivalence felt by middle-class Cubans toward ... More

This chapter focuses on Emilio Ballagas's lively carnival poem “Comparsa habanera.” It reveals that the poem is symbolic in different ways of the ambivalence felt by middle-class Cubans toward Afro-Cubans and their culture. The chapter argues that the poem echoes the sentiment prevalent in Havana in the mid-1930s that African-influenced cultural signs would be accepted as important parts of Cuba's national identity only if they were customized to fit the standards of the middle-class majority. The poem is adorned with vivacious rhythm and colorful imagery.Less

Realizing Information Building

in Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium

Building includes reality so vigorously that it requires and is dependent on contingency and reveals something about it. All cultural signs or symbols underdetermine their realization and are in this ... More

Building includes reality so vigorously that it requires and is dependent on contingency and reveals something about it. All cultural signs or symbols underdetermine their realization and are in this sense necessarily ambiguous. This kind of symbolic ambiguity makes for the creativity of realization and contingency. Real ambiguity has a difficult and distressing aspect yet than that which appears in the misguided ruminations of art historians. Gothic builders showed a sublime indifference and grand superiority to the kind of counting and calculating that the romantics deplored in the rational and industrial temper of their times. The shift of cultural energy from the presence of things to the reference of signs, from meaning to information, was part of the large contingency of historical change.Less