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beings across geography and history. Or, let us imagine that, as something dies – literally or figuratively – it is preserved and continues, as if transfigured, travelling across time and place. In such sacrifice, the very marking of a mortal limit – the end point of a being in history and geography – becomes, in apparent paradox, the means by which to escape the bounds of context, to join with what lies beyond it. In such experiences, there lies the temptation of a ‘negative utopia’, to borrow a phrase from Michael Roth ( 2012 : 87). Griselda Pollock speaks of a
, that indeed was a manifest trial. And We ransomed him with a great sacrifice; And We left for him (a goodly remembrance) among generations in later times. ‘Peace be upon Abraham!’ Thus indeed do We reward the good-doers. Verily, he was one of Our believing slaves. Quran, Surat al-Saffat (102–11) Making sacred I N a seminal article from 1987, Thomas Csordas takes issue with the ways in which medical anthropologists have often analysed religious or spiritual
the critical analysis of ‘modernity’ and ‘development’ in Asia gains new traction through active engagement with political theology. We argue that a political theology of development will especially benefit from careful examination of themes of transcendence, sacrifice and victimhood, and aspiration and salvation. The theological foundations of the political Scholarship on political theology has not only revealed the elusive character of the separation between religion and politics as has been thought to be characteristic of Western modernity, but it also
poets’ imagery, prosody, and tone. One critic even noted Donne’s ‘Spenserian sweetness’, and his grasp of Spenser’s ‘more literary style’. 2 What is altogether missing from the many comparisons between Spenser’s poem to his bride and Donne’s ‘Epithalamion Made at Lincoln’s Inn’ – and the commentary in the Donne Variorum is a virtual list of examples – is any attention to the poets’ shared invocations of sexual violence, and, specifically, the idea of the bride as fulfilling the role of sacrificial offering. The presence of sacrifice as a
sacrifice of the feminine body where the death of a beautiful woman emerges as the requirement for a preservation of existing cultural norms and values or their regenerative modification. 1 Here feminine death serves as the site at which cultural norms can be debated. While western cultural discourses construct the self as masculine, they ascribe to
v 11 v Sacrifice defeated: The Armistice and depictions of victimhood in German women’s art, 1918–24 Claudia Siebrecht In October 1918 the German National Women’s Association published a testimony on peace, ‘Der Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine zum Frieden’, that claimed to express the silent emotions of millions of German women. Contributing to the public debate on whether Germany should settle for peace or continue hostilities, the authors declared that: German women believe that it is a question of national integrity and duty to the dead who died for the honour
7 Blood sacrifice One of the terrorists had a bit of soul. He let us drink some water. Others didn’t. (words of a child survivor in the BBC2 documentary, Children of Beslan) harm hatches harm after harm (Hecuba, translated by Frank McGuinness) The stories of murdered children in this chapter have a topical significance that links them with Rhona’s story in Chapter 5, though the contemporary relevance in this case is not to paedophilic killers but to the Iraq war and global terrorism. Anxiety about the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq by American and British
to redeem the court through her ‘beauty’s sacrifice’ locates the source of social disarray in her own attractiveness. 81 Although her self-mutilation brings the Duke to his senses, it does not ultimately grant the heroine the means of shaping her identity outside of dominant gender discourses. The contradictions surrounding female self-disfigurement on the early
auteurist principles were sacrificed to pragmatic decisions. One thing is certain: the principles became fluid and sometimes ambivalent, and the critical writings of Truffaut and Rohmer in the 1950s are often contradicted by their later practice as auteurs. One principle, however, that was maintained was to challenge the opposition between telling and showing, in a subtle merging of the two elements that
With the GAL, Spanish authorities were deeply concerned by the possibility of being caught red-handed. The overall rule, therefore, was to operate under a strict policy of silence and official denial. Until the mid-1990s, GAL remained a mysterious organisation until it became the biggest political scandal of the post-transition years and by far the darkest page in the contemporary history of the Spanish Socialist Party. This led to the arrest and condemnation of no fewer than 14 high-ranking Spanish police and Guardia Civil officers and senior government officials, including the then Minister of the Interior. When denial was not possible any more, justifications took over. This chapter examines the strategies of duplicity, maximum plausible deniability and evasion of responsibility that were employed and mobilised. It reflects further on the controversial yet somehow successful efforts deployed by Spain up to and including the present day to gloss over and rewrite the brutal history of the GAL.