230 research outputs found
Logotherapy
Written as a tribute to family, place, and bodily awareness, Mukoma Wa Ngugiâs poems speak of love, war, violence, language, immigration, and exile. From a baby girlâs penchant for her parentsâ keys to a warriorâs hunt for words, Wa Ngugiâs poems move back and forth between the personal and the political. In the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, the biting winds of Boston, and the heat of Nairobi, Wa Ngugi is always mindful of his physical experience of the environment. Ultimately it is among multiple homes, nations, and identities that he finds an uneasy peace
Logotherapy
Written as a tribute to family, place, and bodily awareness, Mukoma Wa Ngugiâs poems speak of love, war, violence, language, immigration, and exile. From a baby girlâs penchant for her parentsâ keys to a warriorâs hunt for words, Wa Ngugiâs poems move back and forth between the personal and the political. In the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, the biting winds of Boston, and the heat of Nairobi, Wa Ngugi is always mindful of his physical experience of the environment. Ultimately it is among multiple homes, nations, and identities that he finds an uneasy peace
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The Writers\u27 Forum: Ngugi wa Thiong\u27o
A brief statement by Ngugi wa Thiong\u27o for the Writers\u27 Forum
The aesthetics and politics of âreading togetherâ Moroccan novels in Arabic and French
This paper attempts to break down the common practices of reading multilingual Moroccan novels, particularly Moroccan postcolonial novels in Arabic and French. I argue that dominant reading practices are based on binary oppositions marked by a reductionist understanding of language and cultural politics in Morocco. They place the Moroccan novel in Arabic and French in independent traditions with the presupposition that they have no impact on each other, thereby reifying each tradition. They also ignore the similar historical, social and cultural context from which these novels emerge, and tend to reinforce the marginalisation of the Moroccan novel within hegemonic single-language literary systems such as the Francophone or Arabic literary traditions. I advocate âreading togetherâ â or an entangled comparative reading of â postcolonial Moroccan novels in Arabic and French, a reading that privileges the specificity of the literary traditions in Morocco rather than language categorisation, and that considers their mutual historical, cultural, geographical, political, and aesthetic interweaving and implications
Post-imperialism, postcolonialism and beyond: towards a periodisation of cultural discourse about colonial legacies
Taking German history and culture as a starting point, this essay suggests a historical approach to reconceptualising different forms of literary engagement with colonial discourse, colonial legacies and (post-) colonial memory in the context of Comparative Postcolonial Studies. The deliberate blending of a historical, a conceptual and a political understanding of the âpostcolonialâ in postcolonial scholarship raises problems of periodisation and historical terminology when, for example, anti-colonial discourse from the colonial period or colonialist discourse in Weimar Germany are labelled âpostcolonialâ. The colonial revisionism of Germanyâs interwar period is more usefully classed as post-imperial, as are particular strands of retrospective engagement with colonial history and legacy in British, French and other European literatures and cultures after 1945. At the same time, some recent developments in Francophone, Anglophone and German literature, e.g. Afropolitan writing, move beyond defining features of postcolonial discourse and raise the question of the post-postcolonial
Postcolonial untranslatability: reading Achille Mbembe with Barbara Cassin
Barbara Cassinâs monumental Dictionary of Untranslatables, first published in French in 2004, is an encyclopaedic dictionary of nearly 400 philosophical, literary, aesthetic and political terms which have had a long-lasting impact on thinking across the humanities. Translation is central to any consideration of diasporic linguistic border crossing, and the âUntranslatableâ (those words or terms which locate problems of translatability at the heart of contemporary critical theory) has opened up new approaches to philosophically informed translation studies. This article argues that there is a far-reaching resonance between Barbara Cassinâs Dictionary of Untranslatables project and Achille Mbembeâs theorization of the postcolonial, precisely insofar as they meet at the crossroads of (un)translatability. Both texts are read performatively, in terms of their respective writing practices and theoretical âentanglementsâ, one of Mbembeâs key terms
Predicting species dominance shifts across elevation gradients in mountain forests in Greece under a warmer and drier climate
The Mediterranean Basin is expected to face warmer and drier conditions in the future, following projected increases in temperature and declines in precipitation. The aim of this study is to explore how forests dominated by Abies borisii-regis, Abies cephalonica, Fagus sylvatica, Pinus nigra and Quercus frainetto will respond under such conditions. We combined an individual-based model (GREFOS), with a novel tree ring data set in order to constrain tree diameter growth and to account for inter- and intraspecific growth variability. We used wood density data to infer tree longevity, taking into account inter- and intraspecific variability. The model was applied at three 500-m-wide elevation gradients at Taygetos in Peloponnese, at Agrafa on Southern Pindos and at Valia Kalda on Northern Pindos in Greece. Simulations adequately represented species distribution and abundance across the elevation gradients under current climate. We subsequently used the model to estimate species and functional trait shifts under warmer and drier future conditions based on the IPCC A1B scenario. In all three sites, a retreat of less drought-tolerant species and an upward shift of more drought-tolerant species were simulated. These shifts were also associated with changes in two key functional traits, in particular maximum radial growth rate and wood density. Drought-tolerant species presented an increase in their average maximal growth and decrease in their average wood density, in contrast to less drought-tolerant species
Packages of Care for Epilepsy in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
In the second in a series of six articles on packages of care for mental health disorders in low- and middle-income countries, Caroline Mbuba and Charles Newton discuss treatment for epilepsy
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