Lament as Transitional Justice

Works of human rights literature help to ground the formal rights system in an informal rights ethos. Writers have developed four major modes of human rights literature: protest, testimony, lament, and laughter. Through interpretations of poetry in Carolyn Forché’s anthology, Against Forgetting, and novels from Rwanda, the United States, and Bosnia, I focus on the mode of lament, the literature of mourning. Lament is a social and ritualized form, the purposes of which are congruent with the aims of transitional justice institutions. Both laments and truth commissions employ grieving narratives to help survivors of human rights trauma bequeath to the ghosts of the past the justice of a monument while renewing the survivors’ capacity for rebuilding civil society in the future. Human rights scholars need a broader, extra-juridical meaning for “transitional justice” if we hope to capture its power

DNA insecticides: The effect of concentration on non-target plant organisms such as wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

The excessive use of pesticides is a problem in most parts of the world today because of their broad and unspecific target range that is considerably harmful. The accumulation of several chemical insecticide residues based on chlorpyrifos-methyl, organochlorine, different isomers of HCH, DDT etc., in Triticum aestivum L. plants can be dangerous. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop potential and safer alternative measures. Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is a major cereal crop grown and used for food, animal feed, beverages and furniture accessories in most parts of the world. It also serves as a host to various insect pests. Our previous studies showed the insecticidal potency and specificity of short ssDNA oligonucleotides from the inhibitor of apoptosis (IAP-2 and IAP-3) genes of Lymantria dispar multicapsid nuclear polyhedrosis virus (LdMNPV) against gypsy moth (L. dispar) larvae, a possible insect pest of non-host plants like wheat. Consequently, the present study analyzes the effects of ssDNA oligonucleotides used as DNA insecticides on wheat (T. aestivum) plant biomass, plant organs and some biochemical parameters as a marker of the safety margin on non-target organisms. The results obtained on plant biomass showed that groups treated with ssDNA oligonucleotides at concentrations of 0.01 pmol · μl-1, 0.1 pmol · μl-1 and 1 pmol · μl-1 varied in comparison with the control group, but remained harmless to plant growth and development, while the treatment concentration of 0.001 pmol · μl-1 did not affect the plant biomass. The glucose, protein and phosphorous biochemical parameters, analyzed after 21 days, showed that the ssDNA oligonucleotides used were equally safe. The data obtained for the plant organs (leaves and root lengths) indicate that the phenomenon of DNA insecticides can be further studied and developed for plant protection while improving the growth of plant organs even for a non-target organism such as wheat T. aestivum plants. © 2019 Polish Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved

‘Measure to yourself a prophet’s place’: Biblical Heroines, Jewish Difference, and Victorian Women’s Poetry

In Book II of Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning has her male protagonist, Romney Leigh, voice a number of Victorian stereotypes about women poets. Because it was assumed that women could not ‘understand’ philosophical, theoretical or abstract ideas, and because women were seen as creatures of their own emotional responses, women were rarely granted the cultural authority to speak prophetically, to voice their own experience as an authoritative mode ‘to teach the living’. Defined as essentially non-prophetic in their very existence, women were thus excluded from being the dominant figure for the poet in the period. For in order to be a poet/prophet, a speaker must be understood as moving between two realms, the earthly, individual realm and the universal, divine realm; likewise, he must be able to move between two rhetorical realms, private devotional utterance and public persuasive utterance. In Victorian England, those realms tended to be gender specific, coded female and male respectively. And while many male poets constructed their lyric identities by balancing those two rhetorical modes, Romney’s speech in Book II of Aurora Leigh re-creates the scorn and censure women poets faced when they dared to ‘measure [themselves] to a prophet’s place’ in Victorian England

Interpreting rights and duties after mass violence

In our age of human rights, there has been an increased focus not only on the rights of people and collectives harmed through mass atrocities and other injustices, but also on the duty to redress this harm. Building on Passini\u27s (2011) call for an integration of rights and duties through responsibility, I argue that movements in this direction are already underway. This integration follows, for example, from growing recognition of the complexity in victim and perpetrator roles. Another way in which integration of rights and duties in the aftermath of mass violence has occurred is through alternative meanings of ingroup victimization drawn by victim groups throughout the world. Specifically, based on a sense of inclusive victim consciousness, some have expressed and advocated perceived responsibility to ensure rights for other victim groups as well. This phenomenon is an example of the moral inclusion and focus on responsibility that Passini (2011) argues is necessary in our age of human rights. Examples of moral inclusion among victim groups are reviewed and limitations are discussed, as well as conditions that might inhibit or facilitate a sense of moral responsibility to go beyond individual and ingroup rights and protect others from harm and injustice. © The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

Jewishness and Judaism

Jewish and Christian women writers expressed a dazzling variety of approaches to issues of Judaism, Jewishness, and Jewish identity in nineteenth-century England. Their work demonstrates the complexity of the issue itself, highlighting how Jewishness is always an intersectional identity in its religious, ethnic, and cultural manifestations