The Placement of Lucian’s Novel True History in the Genre of Science Fiction

Among the works of the ancient Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata, well-known for his scathing and obscene irony, there is the novel True History. In this work Lucian, being in an intense satirical mood, intended to undermine the values of the classical world. Through a continuous parade of wonderful events, beings and situations as a substitute for the realistic approach to reality, he parodies the scientific knowledge, creating a literary model for the subsequent writers. Without doubt, nowadays, Lucian’s large influence on the history of literature has been highlighted. What is missing is pointing out the specific characteristics that would lead to the placement of True History at the starting point of Science Fiction. We are going to highlight two of these features: first, the operation of “cognitive estrangement”, which aims at providing the reader with the perception of the difference between the convention and the truth, and second, the use of strange innovations (“novum”) that verify the value of Lucian’s work by connecting it to historicity

heidegger and asian thought

Heidegger  mentionne  la  philosophie  indienne  et  chinoise \ud plusieurs  fois  dans  ses  écritures  et  il  a  montré  lʹaffinité  de  sa \ud propre pensée avec la tradition Taôiste et le Bouddhisme de Zen \ud à  ses  visiteurs.    La  relation  entre  la  pensée  d’Heidegger  et  la \ud philosophie  des  Upanisads  et  de  Vedanta  peut  être  dévoilée  par \ud une  analyse  attentive  des  aspects  suivants:    la  structure \ud littéraire et le style; la poésie, non seulement la prose des textes \ud en  question;  la  rhétorique,  les  éléments  mythiques  et  magiques, \ud les vers dʹhumilité et de prière au commencement et à la fin de \ud plusieurs textes de Vedanta. Comme elles, la pensée d’Heidegger \ud est  une  attente  et  une  préparation    pour  lʹarrivée  du  sacré,  du \ud divin, le Dieu, sans le masque métaphysique.  Elle souligne que \ud sans une connexion avec lʹéternel, lʹhomme est devenu incapable \ud de se connaître comme un mortel et la quête de lʹimmortalité est \ud devenue  dénuée  de  sens.    Pour  nous  aujourdʹhui,  la  pensée \ud d’Heidegger a peu pour faire avec une synthèse culturelle ou la \ud notion  dʹune  culture  planétaire  ou  dʹune  philosophie \ud universelle.  Sa pensée est post philosophique dans le sens que ce \ud n’est plus métaphysique et n’opère plus avec les présuppositions \ud implicitement communes à l’entière philosophie

From the Poetry of Late Socialism to the Dogmatism of Democracy: The Cinema of the Former Eastern Bloc before and after the Collapse of Communism

Using the examples of two films from the late socialist era, Roman Balayan’s Flights in Dream and Reality (1982) and Mircea Daneliuc’s Glissando (1982) and following Alexei Yurchak’s description of vnye as “deterritorialized milieus,” I plan to show how the entirety of the cultural space of late socialism amounted to what Foucault would term a heterotopic place featuring both simultaneity and juxtaposition. Finally, by further comparing this space to that created in the nonlinear postmodern era by Sergey Loznitsa in his documentary film Donbass, I will attempt to show that this cultural space, and by extension, the affective space of socialism right down to the everyday lives of the “masses,” unlike the totalitarian universe it is nowadays made out to appear, presented the early features of the very intermediality, non-linearity, and non-topicality we are celebrating in post-meta-narrative art cinema of the early 2000s. A home-bred version of magic realism, this Eastern European postmodern space should serve, due to its cohesive yet disparate nature, as a model of sorts for reconceptualizing contemporary views of post-narrative, transnational and, to employ Foucault’s powerful term, heterotopic media

Lucien, les philosophes et les philosophies

Lucian of Samosata is one of the best Greek writers of the Roman Empire; his main field is, then, literature; however, it has been often noticed that his watchful, lucid and mocking gaze over the surrounding world might have something to do with philosophy. My aim in this article is to explore Lucian’s relationship with what at his time — and at any time— is called philosophy and with those of his contemporaries who were known as philosophers, emphazising how both notions — philosophy and contemporary philosopher— are remote from each other. To undertake this analysis, I will address the issue from three angles: first of all, the presence of Greek philosophical tradition in Lucian’s works; secondly, lucianic satire applied to philosophy and philosophers; and finally I will try to point out which kind of philosophy — if there is one— conveys Lucian’s thought

Load flow studies on stand alone microgrid system in Ranau, Sabah

This paper presents the power flow or load flow analysis of Ranau microgrid, a standalone microgrid in the district of Ranau,West Coast Division of Sabah. Power flow for IEEE 9 bus also performed and analyzed. Power flow is define as an important tool involving numerical analysis applied to power system. Power flow uses simplified notation such as one line diagram and per-unit system focusing on voltages, voltage angles, real power and reactive power. To achieved that purpose, this research is done by analyzing the power flow analysis and calculation of all the elements in the microgrid such as generators, buses, loads, transformers, transmission lines using the Power Factory DIGSilent 14 software to calculate the power flow. After the analysis and calculations, the results were analysed and compared