‘They Carried the Land Itself:’ Eco-Being, Eco-Trauma, and Eco-Recovery in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried

Author(s): James M. Cochran / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

This essay calls for a wider use of Tina Amorok’s (2007) concepts of eco-Being, eco-trauma of Being, and eco-recovery of Being in ecocritical literary studies. I propose the adoption of Amorok’s concepts as a literary hermeneutic because it provides a theoretical model that positions ecological damage as central to wartime trauma. To demonstrate the effectiveness of Amorok’s framework, the following essay reads Tim O’Brien’s 1990 novel The Things They Carried alongside Amorok’s eco-Being, eco-trauma, and eco-recovery. Reading O’Brien’s text through Amorok’s model is particularly intriguing and noteworthy because almost no critics investigate the ecocritical dimensions of O’Brien’s novel. Yet, despite the absence of green scholarship surrounding O’Brien’s novel, Amorok’s framework, as I will show, draws attention to the environmental costs of war as depicted in O’Brien’s novel. Applying Amorok’s model as an ecocritical lens to The Things They Carried demonstrates how we can use Amorok’s tripartite structure to further unpack the ecological dimensions of fiction that seemingly have little to do with the environment.

„Byliśmy młode chłopaki, razem w tej kupie gnoju” – odpolitycznienie pamięci narodowej i rewizjonizm historyczny w pierwszowojennych powieściach Toma Phelana i Sebastiana Barry’ego

Author(s): Beata Piątek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2018

Piątek explores the fiction of two contemporary Irish writers – Tom Phelan and Sebastian Barry. Both try to depoliticize national memory and work through the collective trauma of the war. Phelan’s The Canal Bridge (2005) and Barry’s A Long Long Way (2005) recall the traumatic experience of thousands of Irishmen who fought in the British army in World War I. By returning the marginalized events to the national memory, the two writers come to terms with the past and prepare the ground for a better future.

„Droga Jahwe” w Księdze Jeremiasza

Author(s): Paweł Chojnacki / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/1996

The article presents one of the main biblical themes, which is that of the "path". In the same way it is the "way of God" - that is, the work of God, the way of his behavior, especially of the one facing man, as well as the "path of God" of man "- his way of life, which bears the imprint of belonging to God, which is also the way of living with God according to the measure of the Covenant; this mode can also prove the aspiration of man to life without God. Jeremiah is one of the prophets who in a decisive and consistent way proclaims the "way" indicated by God to Israel; It is also a sign of the renewal that will take place in God's planned time.

„Droga wiary” w Listach św. Pawła

Author(s): Paweł Chojnacki / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/1999

Święty Paweł, wytyczając w swoich listach „drogę wiary”, wskazuje na nieużyteczność samego Prawa ST do osiągnięcia zbawienia. Dlatego chrześcijanie nie otrzymują zewnętrznego Prawa, a więc żądań, którym nie byliby w stanie sprostać. Już bowiem Izraelici, powołani do chodzenia „drogą Jahwe”, starali się o przestrzeganie Prawa, które miało im zapewnić życie. Lecz zamiast niego doświadczali duchowej śmierci. Apostoł Paweł w swoich pismach przedstawia nową drogę zbawienia, którą zapoczątkowała zbawcza śmierć Jezusa Chrystusa. Na tej nowej drodze – „drodze wiary” – dokonuje się dzieło przemiany i uświęcenia człowieka. Bóg, który jest jedynym sprawcą usprawiedliwienia, w swoim miłosierdziu obdarza ludzi sprawiedliwością Bożą, a więc łaską dającą uczestnictwo w życiu Bożym w Jezusie Chrystusie.

„Głos jak szum wielu wód” w Apokalipsie św. Jana na tle semantyki starotestamentalnej. Przesłanie grozy czy piękna?

Author(s): Joanna Nowińska SM / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2017

The sentence ἡ φωνὴ αὐτοῦ ὡς φωνὴ ὑδάτων πολλῶν isn’t very commonly found in the Bible, despite the fact that the subject of God’s voice is one of the main motifs not only in the Old Testament. It’s used twice in Ezekiel and three times in the Book of Revelation. Both connect this motive with God to describe His Identity and deeds. The “many waters” do not only mean force, danger and terrible rule in the Bible. They are also a metaphor for abun-dance, which a good condition for progress, because water gives life. So “the voice as the sound of many waters” is the message of power, liveliness, beauty, and care. It’s so strong a voice that nobody and nothing is capable of overcoming it. Everybody who wants can hear it. It’s like the voice embraced from all sides. The Book of Revelation describes Jesus’ voice (Rev 1 : 15) and the voice from heaven (Rev 14 : 2) in such a way. Also for John, the mystery of internal experience (Rev 19 : 6) avoids any categorization. But for God, it’s the preferred way to communicate with human beings.

„Gniew człowieka przyniesie Ci chwałę” (Ps 76,11)

Author(s): Wojciech Węgrzyniak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 34/2018

The aim of this article is to analyze Ps 76:11, one of the most difficult verses in the Bible. First, the author analyzes (1) the Hebrew manuscripts and (2) the various ancient versions of this text. He then presents (3) the opinions of different biblical scholars and also (4) the rendering of the verse in selected modern Bible translations. In the conclusion, (5) the author offers three possible interpretations without resorting to emendation of the Masoretic Text.

„Kehrt um und Glaubt an das Evangelium“ (Mk 1,15). Der Neubeginn der Gottesherrschaft mit Jesus

Author(s): Karl-Wilhelm NIEBUHR / Language(s): German Issue: 1-2/2017

The article explores the biblical background of the first of Luther's 95 Theses on indulgence. When Luther quotes there Matthew 4,17, he points to the biblical testimony on Jesus Christ as a whole, not to a single proverb of the 'historical Jesus'. In Mark, Jesus' word on repentence is part of his proclamation of the gospel of God's kingdom. As in Matthew and Luke, Jesus appears on stage first conjoined with John the Baptist. According to a biblical-theological hermeneutic of the New Testament, this points to the close connection between the old and the new covenant. Following the impulses of Luther's Reformation and its biblical background, the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the testimony of the Holy Spirit and the care for those in need are most important components of the theological message of the church even today.

„Mcluhan Inc.“: Kaip Jam Tai Pavyko?

Author(s): Saulius Keturakis / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 90/2017

The changes of Marshall McLuhan’s poetics after publishing „The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man“ are discussed in the paper. The famous media theorist understood from reactions that the reader of the electric age reads in a way completely different from the habits of the classical one. He partially described the new practices of reading by talking about himself: „I read only the right-hand page of serious books. If it is a frivolous, relaxing book I read every word. But serious books I read right-hand only because I’ve discovered enormous redundancy in any well written book. And I find only by reading the right-hand page that this keeps me very wide awake filling in the other page with my own noodle.“ His less known texts, and especially the letters, support this conclusion that could be the definition of reading practices of the electric-age reader, who not only understands but also reacts to readings by his senses. The paper tries to track the trajectories of the new McLuhan, especially those related to the reuse of some genres of antiquity for seeking the same experience by watching TV. The consequences of the new McLuhan poetics are ambiguous. First, he became one of the most cited authors of the 20 century. However, second, as Northrop Frye has stated, McLuhan disappeared as an author. McLuhan sought to make an effective influence on the reader. In that way McLuhan transformed himself into a sort of Mass Media Company.

„Mężczyzną i niewiastą stworzył ich...” (Rdz 1, 27)

Author(s): Jan Jachym / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/1999

Rację ma religijny myśliciel rosyjski Mikołaj Bierdiajew, zmarły w 1948 r. we Francji, który napisał: „Epoka dzisiejsza jest epoką odczłowieczenia. W tym procesie obserwujemy dwie tendencje: ku naturalizmowi i ku cywilizacji technicznej. W obydwu tendencjach człowiek przestaje być istotą, w której duchowość stanowi centrum, i tak człowiek traci swą jedność (całościowość) i swą ciągłość. Zamienia się tylko w zbiór elementów i funkcji.

„My, naród polski”. Literatura narodowa i globalizacja w perspektywie hermeneutycznej

Author(s): Paweł Krzysztof Rutkiewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 5/2017

This article reflects on the notion of ‘national literature’ and the symbolic realm of the ‘nation’ in the context of globalization. The main goal is to redefine ‘national literature’ in such a way as to render this concept functional – in terms of both theory and interpretation – with regard to the problems of globalization and ‘world literature’. Rutkiewicz proposes that ‘Polish literature’ ought to be understood as ‘literature in Poland’ (with reference to Kinga Dunin’s well-known distinction), whereby the former is expanded to signify the latter. He also reflects on the ostensibility of linguistic and cultural transfer and what that might imply in terms of hermeneutics. Examining the hermeneutic aspects of ‘postmodernity’ and ‘the imaginary community,’ Rutkiewicz draws on concepts such as Malraux’s ‘imaginary museum’ or Themerson and Walcott’s notion of identity being either a verb or a noun.

„Oneself as Another“ and „Narrative Identity“ in Shakespeare and Montaigne

Author(s): Zorica Bečanović-Nikolić / Language(s): English Issue: 157/2015

Philosophical insights of several Renaissance thinkers have recognizable resonances in Shakespeare’s works. The echoes of Florentine Neo-Platonism, Erasmus and Machiavelli have been written about, but can hardly be traced by direct textual references. On the other hand, Montaigne’s presence in Shakespeare’s text is a different case. It can be proved that Shakespeare read Montaigne, not only by the assumption of his likely acquaintance with John Florio, the Elizabethan translator of Montaigne, but because of the obvious textual parallels in the works of the two Renaissance authors. This article, firstly, presents a short survey of the comparative investigation of Shakespeare and Montaigne. Secondly, it brings into focus the problems of selfhood and self-understanding, identity and time in Shakespeare and Montaigne, as analyzed by Robert Ellrodt and Hugh Grady. Finally, it introduces a possibility of a new approach to Montaigne’s and Shakespeare’s representations of selfhood and subjectivity by pointing to the hermeneutical potential of Paul Ricoeur’s concepts “oneself as another” and “narrative identity” as developed in his studies Time and Narrative 3 (Temps et Récit 3, 1985) and Oneself as Another (Soi-même comme un autre, 1990).

„Podróż ku sobie w podróże od siebie”. O poezji i sztuce Ewy Kuryluk

Author(s): Agata Stankowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 32/2018

The paper is devoted to Ewa Kuryluk’s poetry and art. The author describes intermingling dimensions of the poet’s artistic identity – existential, hermeneutical and aesthetical – presenting three major tensions present in her work. The first one is between the apocalypse and utopia. The second one may be described by the phrase from one of her poems, establishing the first rule of hermeneutics, according to which she tries to understand herself and the world. The poet defines existence and understanding as a “journey towards oneself and from oneself ”. The idea of the third tension may be defined as a spread between the shade/contour and the reflection/ picture. The author focuses on presenting the parallels between Kuryluk’s artistic work and her early poems.

„Prawda was wyzwoli” (J 8,32) Czy istnieją wyjątki od reguły prawdy?

Author(s): Stanisław Skobel / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2000

W zasadzie nikt dzisiaj albo przynajmniej bardzo niewielu ludzi podważa w sensie teoretycznym normę dotyczącą konieczności mówienia prawdy. Jednocześnie jednak podkreśla się powszechnie zjawisko spiętrzenia kłamstwa zarówno w życiu jednostek, jak i całych społeczeństw, także w skali społeczności międzynarodowej. Taki stan rzeczy musi zatem budzić przekonanie o konieczności refleksji na ten temat. Można jednak mówić także o prawdziwym niepokoju wielu ludzi zatroskanych o kształt życia społecznego.

„Upojenie jako triumfalne wtargnięcie w nas rośliny”: obietnice i niebezpieczeństwa roślinnej seksualności

Author(s): Joanna Bednarek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2018

Bednarek reconstructs the concept of ‘plant sexuality’ in Deleuze and Guattari’s Capitalism and Schizophrenia. This concept was initially seen in relation to the alternative that the two theorists proposed to the oedipal organization of desire and subjectivity. With the humanities’ turn towards plants, however, it takes on a new significance and challenges us to ask questions about the definition of nature and the role of human and non-human agency in the anthropocene. Examining representations of the desire for plants or the desire for becoming-a-plant in the works of Han Kang, Ursula K. Le Guin and Jeff VanderMeer, Bednarek identifies both the criteria for speaking of plant sexuality and the consequences this has for our notion of humanity.

„Zmiana sposobu życia” jako efekt filozofowania – w nawiązaniu do hermeneutycznych ideii filozofii

Author(s): Bartosz Rozbicki / Language(s): Polish Issue: XXIII/2011

In the article “The change a way of life” – with reference to hermeneutic ideas of philosophy I present a hermeneutic conceptions of Gadamer’s, Ricoeur’s and the late Wittgenstein’s from a therapeutic perspective. I point out that terms such as: the understanding conditions, changing a way of life and being in the world, plays the fundamental role in the hermeneutic conceptions. Ricoeur as well as Wittgenstein, analising these terms from language perspective, schow us, that the philosophical thinking suppouse to lead to expansion of man’s self-consciousness and to understending the different forms of life. From that angle that idea of philosophy could be understanded as a kind of efford tend towards to change our looking at things, providing the subject to a kind of transformation. This process can be recognized as therapeutical because it force us to schake a many of our opinions, hidden prejudices, beliefs about ourselfs and about the world, wchich are treated as a background of our daily life. In connection with that I analyze the similarities between Ricoeur’s and Wittgenstein’s projects on one hand, and the Freud’s psychoanalysis on the other.

„Дон Kихот“ като трактат за реалността

(въз основа на „Размишления върху „Дон Кихот“)

Author(s): Javier San Martín / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2016

Referring to some of the basic ideas of “Reflections on Don Quixote”, Javier San Martin analyzes the philosophical approach of Ortega to the book “Don Quixote” by Cervantes. The article presents the intertextuality of the “Reflections” and explicates three different notions of reality deriving from various cultural and historical periods. According to the article’s author Ortega appreciates “Don Quixote" as metanarrative of Modernity, because the mind is presented in the novel as a problem in itself.

„Избачен из календара“: искуство и приповедање

Author(s): Violeta V. Stojmenović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 2/2018

The topic of the paper is Walter Benjamin’s theory of storytelling. Understanding stories, storyteller and storytelling in terms of the historically changeable structure of experience, W. Benjamin made several hypotheses about modern crises of storytelling as a symptom of the crises of experience, caused by industrialisation, rapid urbanisation and new technologies of communication and information. In his essays, sketches and fragments, both published and posthumously discovered, he argued that the storytelling, as he understood it, is the most pertinent and complete way of expressing experiences, endangered by prevailing characteristics of modern life, such as the constant exposure to psychologically unmanageable sensations and stimulus, which could not be “translated” into experiences. As modern consciousness struggles to block shocking sensation, preventing them to leave deep and long-lasting impressions and traces in one’s memory, the ability of gaining valuable, memorable and communicable experiences decrees and gradually vanishes, so as the art of authentic storytelling as a means of community-making. Instead of stories, based on communal, transmissible, and common experiences, the subjective, individualistic, detached novel and the fragmented, decontextualized, meaningless information (in the form of the news) have occupied all the attention and awareness. In order to further clarify these and other Benjamin’s theses connected with the sociopsychological and cultural functions and significance of the lost art of storytelling, some points of Giorgio Agamben’s philosophy of language are introduced in the last part of the paper. As experience has become unavailable and inaccessible, the silence, as a means of temporal getting back in the pre-subjective, and pre-linguistic state of existence, is becoming new utopian horizon and ideal.

„Рекламно“ измештање реалности

Author(s): Bojana Radenković Šošić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 1/2017

Postmodern advertising is based on the usage of postmodern conditions in communication with consumers. Every condition has its several manifestations which could be identified on verbal, audio or iconic level of interpretation. In this paper, lexical, syntactic and rhetoric features of Italian advertising slogans were analysed in the context of decentring, a postmodern condition constructed on Derrida's idea of decentralization, method of deconstruction and intertextuality.

აგიოგრაფიის მკითხველი

Author(s): Ivane Amirkhanashvili / Language(s): Georgian Issue: 20/2/2019

A text does not exist without a reader. The life of a text is conditioned by communication with the reader. Communication starts before the encounter. Prior to encountering a text, the reader recognizes the authority of the text. If you do not recognize the dictatorship of the text, you fail to become a reader. Self-belief that you choose the text by yourself is wrong. The text chooses you. Hence, you do not choose, you are chosen. You are a means of reading the text, a tool to enliven the text. This means that the text imposes conditions on you. If you do not take into consideration these conditions or break the rules of communication, a literary work won’t let you come closer to it; it won’t open up, trust you. The rules of communication include the recognition of the primacy of the text – its aesthetic, ethical and poetic principles; its destination, purpose, importance. Not as you understand, but as it should be. The reader unconditionally acknowledges the authority of a text which implies the influence, effect and dictate. The reader is not permitted to go beyond the limits of the law of genre but he is allowed to enter the narrative, to become a participant in narrative events, to put oneself in the place of a character. The reader should enter the text as a hotel room, where everything belongs to you, but not your property. While you are in the text, the nuances are all yours, exist for you, serve you, but you know that you don’t have to change anything, alter, remove or throw away. The reader feels that his will and perception are secondary. The author’s will is not primary either. The primacy belongs to the law, the law of the genre. A good reader is the one who follows the author and knows what the law is. A literary work is not created just only by the author and the law. It is also created by the time, history and culture.

مغامرة رواية تحّول فيها النعل الى البغل في سياق أهمية التحقيق ونقد المتن

Author(s): Yusuf Acar / Language(s): Arabic Issue: 3/2021

Each narration or text, as it informs about an event, situation or person in history, has a history that sheds light on both its formation and how it arrived to us. The illumination of this history is at least as important as the content analysis of the information. For this reason, it is necessary both to examine whether the source in which the information is given has survived to the present day as it was created by the author without being exposed to any external intervention, and to analyze the narration in terms of reliability and indication within the integrity of the isnād-text. In that case, when the word “text criticism” is mentioned, an understanding of a specific criticism should come to mind, which includes both critical edition (scholarly editing) of the first source and the critique of the narration by making sound research in terms of isnād and literary criticism (naqd al-isnād wa-l-matn). Due to reasons such as the inability to follow a standard method, the limited number of the copies and/or the distance of the copies from the author in terms of history and commercial concerns, many classical works published with relative verification contain such errors require a re-examination. One of these works is Ibn Hibbān’s (d. 354/965) book al-Majrūhīn. In his work al-Majrūhīn, Ibn Hibbān divided the narrators into two groups according to their reliability and collected the ones that he determined as weak according to his opinion. In this work, he placed Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767) at the top of the list. First, he denounced Abū Ḥanīfa with the following expressions: Sahib al-ra’y, child of slaves, bicker, hypocrite, had little knowledge of hadith, a Murji’ī propagandist, a narrator who was blamed by imams. Then he tried to justify these claims by about thirty narrations from various salaf scholars. These narratives are completely different from the largely intellecutal discussions and criticisms of scholars such as al-Awza'i (d. 157/774), Ibn Abī Laylā (d. 148/765) and Ibn Abī Shayba (d. 235/849) on Abu Ḥanīfa and his school. The narrations compiled by Ibn Hibbān are display insulting and polemical narrations against Abu Ḥanīfa’s personality and reliability. In terms of being a source for later periods, it is important to examine and criticize these narratives in terms of the narration techniques. The al-jarḥ wa-l-taʿdīl is important part of the hadith science. al-Mejrūhīn, one of the leading works of this science is remarkable in many respects. According to this narration Abū Ḥanīfa Nuʿmān b. S̱ābit b. Zūtā b. Māh’ın (öl. 150/767) said, "If a man worships this mule to get closer to Allah, I see no harm in it." According to our analysis, there are the following determinations about the narrators in the chain of this narrative. Ibn Abī Mushir is unknown (majhūl), the narrator who is written as “Mahfūz b. Abī Savba” but his correct name is “Tawba” is matrūk. Ahmad b. al-Walīd al-Mahramī al-Karkhī is weak, and Yahyā b. Hamza, source person, is qadari who narrates from people with munkar al-hadith; but is also considered as a thiḳa narrator. As for Sa‘īd b. Abd al-Azīz, he has nothing to do with the reception and transmission of the narrative. In addition, there is also a break in the chain. First of all, what is expected from a basic work such as al-Majrūhīn, whose subject and purpose is purely a narrator analysis, is that the report in it should be acceptable, at least in terms of isnād . When the narrative in question, which is also included in earlier sources such as alFesewī (d. 277/890), is evaluated in terms of both the isnād and the text, one realizes the transformation of an expression circulating in the form of gossip against Abu Ḥanīfa in Damascus around the subject of ʾirjāʾ. ʾIrjāʾ was at the forefront of the heated debates in the second half of the second century into semā form in terms of isnād and text, besides, the word النعل/clog is transformed into البغل/mule. Apart from the weak points of the chain, Sa‘īd b. Abd al-Azīz, who has nothing to do with the reception and transmission of the narrative, has also been turned into the narrator/source of the report with the samā expression. Regardless of the purpose and the criteria of the narration technically, during the conversation with Sa‘īd, Yahyā b. Hamza’s sincere friend and teacher, a special speech in which a common report attributed to Abu Ḥanīfa was expressed, was transformed into Yahyâ’s samā‘ in the form of jazm. As a result, the word “shoe” or “clog” has evolved into mule. It would be a reductionist and over optimistic approach to assume that all this may have resulted from tashīf and tahrīf of the copyists. The narration we discussed is a typical example in terms of showing the effect of the conflict of ideas between Ahl al-Hadīth and Ahl ar-Ra’y on the narrations. Of course, this shoud be not regarded as the only example.