Volume 8, Issue 1

This study contributes to the emerging subdiscipline of geography, defined as vegetal geography, expanding beyond Critical Plant Studies’ focus on place-based interactions with and adaptations to human systems and ecologies. In this sense, vegetal geography covers political and cultural ecologies and psychogeography of events, highlighted by the recent pandemic, the ongoing threat of anthropogenic climate change, and the re-emergence of global diseases in recent years amid unrestrained consumerism and human niche constructions. These so-called Anthropocene proliferations tend to ramify the relation of place to organic entanglement with the non-organic, human with the nonhuman, which implicates species trade-offs, uncanny alliances, and affinities, via a series of differential synthesis, borrowing from Deleuze and Guattari, amid increasing climate anomalies. In the process, they engender emergent ecologies where vegetal life, a key Deleuzean concept, provides a critical pivot to interspecies relations in times of crisis and emergency.

This article invites readers to rethink the presence and role of soil by creating a soliumpoietics , without which terrestrial plant life itself struggles to occur. It utilizes both materialism/material agency and hyperobject lenses to analyze soil. In so doing it argues that these lenses may provide a more holistic understanding to better theorize soil as an agential and interobjective other, without which civilization would most likely rapidly collapse. It undertakes this exploration within the context of rapid climate change and global heating, which threatens the survival of many soils (and thus plants), too. These alarming scenarios have severe implications for the academy, broadly, which the article argues scholars must attend to within their teaching and researching, including new research regimes on plant-based caloric lifeways, especially where such lifeways are regenerative to soil, plants, and thus, the human.

Whereas many indigenous and non-western cultures see plants and humans as connected, western worldviews tend to disregard plants as material commodities. Plant non-thinking of this kind is increasingly being challenged in response to the environmental threats arising from human exceptionalism. This essay investigates garden narratives as a form of more-than-human life writing which depicts plant–human relations as mutually transformative and reciprocal. I argue that garden narratives pioneer such a rethinking as a win-win scenario. The positive developments garden writers document are consistent with a concept put forward in environmental psychology: transilience. Making reference to five recent western garden narratives I show how plant encounters can help us move towards an emerging environmental culture which emphasises more-than-human embeddedness and embraces symbiotic over competitive relations.

This article examines Virginia Woolf’s figurations of her writing process on the basis of her published diaries with particular attention to vegetal imagery and metaphor. Employing insights from critical plant studies, specifically the works of Michael Marder, and biosemiotics, specifically those of Wendy Wheeler, I investigate the image of fluid, open-ended, multiplicitous, and non-appropriative vegetal (non-)self as convergent with Woolf’s view of the writing subject. Further, I argue that writing, as presented by the modernist author, requires the suspension of conscious ideation and increased attention to the pre-conceptual and therefore bears the trace of what Marder terms “plant-thinking.” Referring to the biosemiotic concept of abductive logic, I propose that the image of writing emerging from Woolf’s diary possesses a necessary embodied, intuitive, and relational component, characteristic and continuous with semiosis that pervades the entirety of more-than-human biological life. Finally, drawing on Marder’s reconceptualisation of the event according to the specificity of the vegetal, I suggest that literature, for Woolf, constitutes just such a vegetal event – both rooted and proliferating, unfolding towards exteriority and predicated upon chance rather than the logic of finality.

This article explores a botanical imaginary in A Mercy (2008), the ninth narrative by African American writer and critic Toni Morrison. Arguably, A Mercy features the botanical design of the rhizome to activate a revisionary model of sustainability. In particular, the narrative’s imaginary suggests a synergy that liberates the restrictive root of Indigeneity as a precondition to reconcile a tension of rigid binaries with the customary routes that lead to closure. This reconciliation will enunciate a radical break with the limited sustainability paradigms that are still constitutive of colonial modernity. Arguably, A Mercy features a transgressive array of journeys whose rhizomatic root of biodiversity transcends what is cultivated in the colonial American soil and mobilizes symbiotic and liberatory sustainability for humans and non-humans. Deleuze and Guattari’s principles of the “rhizome” philosophy contribute a main theoretical framework for construing the narrative’s botanical composition that suspends the inequitable realization of sustainability.

This article discusses human–vegetal bonds in Kim de l’Horizon’s award-winning novel Blutbuch . With its transgender perspective informing the text’s botanical imaginary Blutbuch holds, the author maintains, an irreplaceable position in the ecological or phytographic literature. The autofictional tale develops a unique non-binary poetics by creatively working through the impact of individual, arbitrary, and, most importantly, structural violence in the blood family on the coming-of-age and growing-into-a-body of its first-person narrator. “Blood Run Beech Read” explores how de l’Horizon confronts psychic trauma and how human–vegetal bonds and attention to the material language of plants help to disengage from the transgenerational patterns of its reproduction. Suggesting that trans* realities model a different relation to the un/natural: one that dares to forge so far unseen or unintelligible connections, the analysis focuses on human–plant grafts. Specifically, it considers the symbiosis and sympoiesis of beech tree and narrator/protagonist. Through creative translations and careful close readings of the grafting scenes in the autofictional text, “Blood Run Beech Read” argues for the materiality of language as constitutive of transcorporeality.

Indian poetry in English has a deep engagement with plant imagination from its beginning. The discourse of plant imaginary, however, is never monolithic here. The early poems often use trees either as symbols or semantic entities. In other words, the representation of ontological identity of a tree is largely ignored in early Indian English poems barring a few remarkable exceptions. But contemporary Indian English poetry looks beyond the anthropomorphic vision of a tree and portrays plant subjectivity and plant agency. The depiction of a symbiotic relation between the human world and the arboreal world is also at the centre of this poetry. Some poems speak of plant personhood and even human aspiration for becoming a tree. The present paper critically reads the relevant poems of poets like Toru Dutt, Keki N. Daruwalla, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Gieve Patel, Dilip Chitre, Temsula Ao, Sumana Roy, Paresh Tiwari, Kiriti Sengupta among others, and explores all these issues from the perspectives of Critical Plant Studies. The paper also examines how Indian poetry in English is at times implicated in didacticism when it critiques the unprecedented botanical loss in the Anthropocene.

This article explores different institutional approaches to exhibiting and maintaining living, plant-based sculptures, and installation art. By studying the creation and management of artworks by Gilberto Esparza, Michael Wang, Precious Okoyomon, and Daniel Lie, this article considers how cultural institutions can incorporate ethics of more-than-human care in their conservation practices. As each of these artworks grows, decays, and dies through differing states of institutional intervention (or lack thereof), their provocative experiments through the themes and aesthetics of queer ecology, vegetal technoscience, and botanical decolonization invite museum staff and visitors alike into biodynamic, multisensory engagements with multispecies collaboration that turn the white cube into soil and green.

In the nineteenth century, flower painters in Denmark shifted from depicting arranged, cut flowers to showing plants within their ecosystems. This article explores this shift by examining four paintings by the artists Christine Løvmand and Anthonore Christensen. According to Michael Marder and Emanuele Coccia, important philosophers in critical plant studies, plants have been overlooked as world creators. Coccia highlights the nineteenth century as a particularly low point, in this regard, but seeks exceptions and points to significant nineteenth-century articulations of how plants move in, sense, and create their environment. An investigation of Danish art and botany reveals similar articulations, as several significant artists made growing rather than cut plants the theme of some of their paintings and botanists explored the wild flora and the agency of plants. This nineteenth-century shift in focus from flowers to plants disseminates notions of plants that can inspire and help us reorient our relationship with the natural world.

The intent of this article is to investigate the works of Anicka Yi, looking for the elements that make this artist a primary figure in the artistic redefinition of the category of human and the boundary that divides it from everything that is more than human. After a short introduction, the theoretical aspects expressed by philosophers, anthropologists or academics of other disciplines such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers and Donna Haraway are analyzed to define the worlding , the central theme of this paper. At that point, the artist and her practice are introduced, and then, the Metaspore exhibition of 2022, in which the four works examined in this article are present. These: Le Pain Symbiotique , When Species Meet Part 2 (Vegetable Psychology) , Releasing The Human From The Human and Biologizing The Machine (Spillover Zoonotica) , are then presented and studied, combining the artistic process with theoretical concepts by Anna L. Tsing, Rosi Braidotti, Marylin Strathern and Elizabeth Povinelli among others. The article, therefore, attempts to highlight how Yi’s works and artistic making are particularly effective examples of worlding , becoming-with of human and more than human. Works are both a new perspective of investigation on life and a new urgent posture toward the future in the era of the Anthropocene.

Based on the “vegetal turn” in film studies and posthuman philosophy, the article explores how experimental cinema can be a cultural mediator of vegetal forms of life. Posthumanist philosophy draws inspiration from cinema’s portrayal of both imaginary and real non-human entities as subjects and cohabitants on Earth. As subjects, these non-human entities are challenging generally accepted ideas about the principles of cognition, as well as our understanding of the causes and consequences of problems such as climate warming, Holocene extinction, and depletion of natural resources. The experimental film reveals connections between human and non-human agents through its unique film language and cinema ontology. The study examines how the film Enys Men (2022), directed by M. Jenkin, employs critical anthropomorphism to depict closely intertwined symbiotic relationships between all human and non-human agents, where memory as an embodied property connects various types of experience. In the film, access to awareness of the boundaries of life and death is challenged by non-human subjects such as lichens and Earth.

This essay explores how artifice and queer form in Bertrand Mandico’s film The Wild Boys (2017. Dir. Bertrand Mandico . Ecce Films) interrogate more-than-human entanglements to orient viewers toward a trans ecology. In Mandico’s botanical imaginary, he crafts a world of excessive artifice where both the characters and the land in which they inhabit are entirely mutable. By creating a polymorphously perverse world where there is no such thing as a hermetically sealed body, Mandico uses plants to explore the possibilities of transness and how it may provide a focus for epistemological positions, knowledge, and orientations toward a post-anthropocentric future.

This article employs Peircean semiotics to delve into the nuanced realm of “noticing” more-than-human forms of communication. It posits a fundamental challenge to the anthropocentric perspective, asserting that life itself constitutes a distinct form of agency and that voices extend beyond the human domain. Peircean semiotics disrupts the traditional superiority of human cognition and language, emphasizing the continual interplay of diverse signs rooted in various material modalities. Amidst the intricate fabric of more-than-human interactions, the article examines the roles of noise and sound within natural environments. In its exploration, the article turns its focus to the dynamic interplay of very simple organisms, like fungi and lichen, using them as exemplars to enrich comprehension of symbiosis and interconnectedness within communication systems spanning the entire spectrum of living organisms. By accentuating the significance of “noticing” within ecopoetics, the article underscores the latent communicative potential inherent in all life forms, beckoning for a heightened awareness of the voices that echo across the vast tapestry of existence.

In the speculative research of plant bioacoustics, one enters into a sonic intra-active relation, by humans with non-human beings (plant life), activated through acoustic wave signals emitted by plants to create electronic patterns of sounds composed by humans and emitted by machines. Plants emit sound waves at relatively low frequencies of 50–120 Hz. Experimenting with patching and modulation by tracking these sonic lines of data can indeed lead to unique sonic experiences that tap into the universe’s musicology. It is fascinating how we can interact with sounds on such a deep level to create acoustic energy. We are and have always been attached to the universe in a relational processual way. We are all interconnected with plant life vibrating at different internal frequencies. This article focuses on a symbiotic relation between humans and plant life as an acoustic shimmering ecology – to communicate a posthuman, symbiotic understanding of vegetal matter as a morphological force that (re)shapes, (re)affirms our sonic intra-relations to the natural world. This proposition is molecular and metaphysical, as sound matter is of a qualitative multiplicity in the quantum field of listening. By acknowledging ontologically that cosmopolitics brings into relation different practices, practitioners, and the non-human (they assemble in a field of forces and intensities), I argue that there is no sovereign power under which all modes of existence can be organized, and there is no meta-language through which one can master the diversity of all discursive or material practices; but there are intra-relations in which one can get lost in a quantum field of sonic matter by moving into the cracks of the sensorium and the plant biosphere, which includes Indigenous voices. The alterity of plant life is daunting from an eco-feminist materialist position in that relationships are the default state of existence and sonic experiences uncover alternative or additional explanations in a (post)phenomenological world – which is embedded in the stuff of acoustics in the many ways humans hear the world. Thus, to communicate a posthuman, symbiotic understanding of vegetal matter necessitates understanding how sound matter intra-performs through a sonic language – where intra-relations with plant life have complex boundaries for humans. As a creative practitioner, how does one define the mutually beneficial engagement in plant communication with creative musical encounters? Entanglement is messy and a becoming with the universe as a philosophical sonic meditation and worlding. This entails expanding on plants as cosmogonic beings, world builders, and we, perhaps, are the by-products of the lives of our vegetal others.

Plantcare is having a moment. Recent years have seen an outpouring of audiovisual content across several social media platforms, wherein humans film and photograph themselves taking care of houseplants. These self-proclaimed “plant moms” build community through their shared passion for caring for houseplants and showing this form of tree-hugging to a wider community. In this contribution, I theorize this plant-filled digital terrain as a virtual greenhouse, a space where humans can perform with and show off their collections of houseplants. This virtual greenhouse points to how plantcare becomes a space to play with expectations of humanness apart from human–animal boundaries. Furthermore, contrary to notions of plants as being silent or inaudible lifeforms, this virtual greenhouse is rich with music and sound. Following an exploration of the overarching features of plantcare content and other kinds of digital human–nonhuman representations, I describe how creators in the virtual greenhouse use ASMR-like techniques, acousmatic narration, and reinterpretations of popular music to make their intimate relationships with nonhuman life audible. This contribution demonstrates how these human–plant assemblages engage with a “back-to-nature” environmentalism and present opportunities to reframe human–nonhuman relationships through creative practice.

The promotion and preservation of cultural legacies, including botanical traditions, are integral components of national identity and development strategies in many countries, particularly in the Global South. However, the manner in which cultural policies address plant-based heritage is not only influenced by contemporary priorities but also deeply rooted in historical contexts, shaped by colonial legacies. A comparative reading of the cultural policies of India and Nigeria, this research investigates the impact of colonial history on plant-based cultural heritage policies in the Global South. The study pulls from the Postcolonial and Critical Heritage Studies frameworks, to argue that the formulation and implementation of cultural policies on botanical plant heritage have been greatly impacted by colonial legacies. The result is the disparities in conservation endeavours and relegation of autochthonous knowledge. By shedding light on the on-going effects of colonialism on cultural practices and environmental conservation in the Global South, this research offers insights for policymakers, culture and heritage practitioners, and scholars seeking to address the issues around colonial legacies in cultural heritage management. It also seeks to provoke discourses on equitable and sustainable approaches to plant-based heritage preservation.

The present article explores the way translated literature informs on (i) how exile shapes the cities’ landscapes (both the starting city and the arrival), as well as (ii) the emotional hardship of the exilic condition, which entails a feeling of estrangement and the longing for imaginary homelands. To attain this twofold aim, it focuses on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Portuguese migrant movements to Paris. It searches, on the one hand, to retrace exilience in descriptions of Lisbon and Paris in biographical accounts of Portuguese exiles. On the other hand, it analyses an 1848 rewriting of Rabelais’ Gargantua in Portuguese. It is contented that Gargantua Portuguez [Portuguese Gargantua] bears testimony of the presence of anonymous Portuguese-language exiles in mid-nineteenth-century Paris, while creating a “safe house” for them, by seeking historical justice which would, in turn, assist in coping with the exilic condition.

The article works with (Re)Searching Needs and Hope through Visual Storytelling which is the author’s audiovisual research project containing interviews with migrants of Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. The same set of questions was asked of people with different nationalities to identify the similarities and differences within their integration process; the questions focused on the socio-cultural aspects of integration. The article compares the participants’ answers regarding what helped or hindered their integration experience. The article relates these outcomes to what contributes to a migrant’s feeling of safety in a new home country. The main concepts used are “integration,” applying differentiating levels of integration experience, and “safe place,” which originated from Yi-Fu Tan, but have been interpreted through a wide socio-cultural lens in the conclusion.

Mimouna is a North-African Jewish festival, which in the past symbolized good neighborly relationships between Jews and Muslims. Today, however, this festival has transformed into a neutralized interfaith encounter, resembling a culinary-focused musical show. The particular event explored in this case study was organized by an Israeli Reform Jewish congregation, which is a non-Orthodox liberal Jewish denomination. In this event, the congregation strived to reconceptualize the diasporic concept of this festival. In effect, the performance is a cultural appropriation that reveals the failures to turn this tolerant vision into a current local political reality. The performance is constructed as a marketing script to brand Reform Judaism’s liberal ideology agenda and its sociopolitical position in Israeli society. The endeavor to establish the Mimouna as a safe space for fostering interreligious discourse and dialogue exposed its ideological vulnerability, thus bringing to the forefront the conflictual relationship between the Jewish and Muslim Arabs in Israel.

There is a conceptual discrepancy between the expression “space of memory” and “place of memory.” In a different realm, the same seems to happen with the terms “safe space” and “safe place.” Coexisting but distinct worlds are explored in this article through the lens of the safe mnemotope : a place where memories have a fertile ground to settle and condense, where people find a safe dimension to externalize their inner emotions connected to the past. Based on a personal encounter with the Wind Phone in Japan, the article identifies some of the attributes that can make a place of memory a safe place, proposing them as initial guidelines to inspire the recognition and enhancement of realities that support the expression of complex feelings, providing a refuge where individuals can confront with their grief.

I compare a photo album of the war in former Portuguese Guinea that I found in my home when I was a child with a collection of writings by Victor Bor, a healer and diviner whom I met in southern Guinea-Bissau who was a guerrilla during that country’s war of liberation and who was possessed by a vision that the Balanta people call Kyangyang [The Shadow]. I discuss the visuality and tactility of these two complex assemblages of images as tangible negative spaces that capture and shape the gaze. How do certain images have the power to enthrall, to trap the viewer? How can they intoxicate and mobilize into gang murder in a wartime setting? At the same time, I discuss the layers and characters that the gaze assumes in order for someone to create these images, and how they materialize a kind of exchange between generations. What is it that crosses the gaze of a previous generation through its images of violence? Yet, in parallel, there is the stunning effect of looking at shocking images of war, as opposed to being stunned by visions of lights and explosions that compel shocking actions in a post-war environment.

This article puts Werner Herzog’s films in dialogue with Martin Heidegger’s philosophy to answer the question of how to dwell, to be at home with nature. I argue that an apathy–empathy aporia blockades the discussion of the nature–human relationship in Herzog’s cinema, which tends to view his representation of nature as either entirely apathetic to human flourishing or totally identifiable with being human. Both versions of nature fail to do full justice to the nuanced vision of nature in Herzog, especially its dynamics and problematics as a safe place. To address this problem, I will closely read and compare three of his films across his career: Aguirre, The Wrath Of God (1972), Grizzly Man (2005), and Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2010) in the light of Heidegger’s philosophy. Drawing on Heidegger’s thought on dwelling, technology, being-in-the-world, temporality, Gelassenheit, and Care, I move away from the standard paradigm and reinterpret the nature–human relationship in Herzog as a negotiation between the homely and the unhomely in search of an equilibrium I call “active serenity.” Thus, this article is both a film-philosophy experiment with Herzog and Heidegger and a contemplation of the antagonism between humans and nature, which underlines our modern world.

The American West is not just a geographical terrain but a mythical construct that occupies a powerful place in the popular imagination thanks to myriad literary and artistic works that have presented the region through specific archetypes emphasizing its vast ruggedness, white masculinity, and unique Americanness. In recent decades, revisionist scholarly and artistic works, however, have attempted to offer more nuanced perspectives on the region challenging its assumed homogenous history and fixed and stable identity. In particular, women filmmakers have recast the region through multifaceted representations underlining its complexity, diversity, and transnational dimensions. This article analyzes Vera Brunner-Sung’s film Bella Vista (2014) to examine how the film intervenes in previously constructed representations of the American West through its emphasis on transience, displacement, and belonging. Set and made in Montana, the film employs a “slow cinema” aesthetic to offer deep insights into the local and global dynamics of the place as well as the formation of identity and (un)belonging within a Western landscape. The film, as the article argues, provides a reconsideration of the West through diverse localities that are in constant relation with the outside and in turn have generated diverse individual experiences regarding the place.

This article performs a close reading of HAVEN , a 2023 digital video installation by James Newitt. It analyses the way in which the work discusses issues around privacy, surveillance, and the management of digital data. Newitt’s work tells the story of how an abandoned anti-aircraft defence tower off the Suffolk coast in the North Sea was turned first into a pirate radio station and then into a data haven; a collection of servers meant to avoid early Internet regulation. Investigating the many ways in which HAVEN can be understood as noisy, a concept borrowed from Michel Serres, this article proposes that Newitt’s work is at its most generative in its suggestion of a theory of (auto-)immunity that complicates contemporary discussions of privacy centred on visibility (Derrida, Foucault). Moving away from a model of surveillance, and drawing on the work of Philip E. Agre, this text seeks to understand the dynamics of power made visible in HAVEN with reference to the notion of capture. The article proposes that HAVEN ’s poetics are of interest both aesthetically and in terms of content as they examine a contemporary territorial logic of the Internet and its connections to empire.

This article uses Stephen King’s 1990, uncut release of his famous 1978 horror novel The Stand to reveal the ways the contemporary horror genre implements the language of pandemics and contagious disease to promote ableist ideas about disability. The horror novel villainizes an antagonist as a central function of its plot. When the antagonist is an airborne disease that inflicts disability and death upon its victims, the novel can be a site of production for what I term “disability panic,” a fear and disgust at the possibility of becoming disabled, and a contempt for those who already are. This article argues that The Stand calls attention to how stereotypes and misconceptions around illness-induced disability form in times of crisis. This article merges genre studies in horror, disability language, and rhetoric of disease in literature to uncover how King reveals that the language of the horror novel can contribute to a cultural fear and hatred of disability. This novel, though written decades ago, mimics the language of corona virus disease 2019 in current popular media. This article demonstrates how fear of airborne disease in a horror novel can increase fear of real-life pandemics and contribute to ableist views of those suffering from illness-related disability.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, people across the world came to realize the significant relationship between air and human health. This pandemic, which changed the course of many lives, demonstrated how air serves as a transmitter of viruses. However, this quality of air is not new, with air acting as a significant tool in transmitting diseases, pollution, and even death. It is crucial to understand that airborne diseases include but are not limited to epidemics or pandemics such as the black death, influenza, or COVID-19. Since the Chernobyl disaster, it is perceived that the previously feared disasters were replaced by new and human-made hazards such as toxicity and radioactivity. Environmental disasters such as the Bhopal disaster, Donora Smog, and the Chernobyl disaster emphasize the impact of toxic chemicals on humans and more-than-human lives. These disasters show that toxic substances that threaten the lives of all living things imperceptibly seep into the soil, water, and air, causing harm to ecosystems, and entering into human and more-than-human bodies. Exposure to toxicity and radioactivity can happen in the blink of an eye, transmitted through the air we breathe. Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise presents a significant example of toxicity through its striking portrayal of an airborne toxic event. This event, the appearance of a cloud of the fictional chemical Nyodene D., presents an environmental crisis through which relationships between air and environments can be explored. Similar to the issues and reflections experienced after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the characters in White Noise experience chaos, uncertainty, and fear following the abrupt occurrence of an airborne toxic event.

Numerous articles predicting pandemic futures identify threats tied directly to a warming planet. One notable example is the threat of once-stable pathogens held in ice shelves being released into the world. Bacillus anthracis , or anthrax, presents as the key bacterial threat emerging from melting permafrost. Such a threat reads like a fictitious horror brought into direct proximity with the real. Exploring perceptions of microbes across time and the resonance of specific tropes in television and eco-horror in the context of anthrax reveals an unstable theoretical and ecological landscape characterized by shifting human/biological relationships. Untangling this relationship more than 20 years after the last great anthrax-related challenge – the “Amerithrax” incident – and in recognition of the impact of COVID-19 on contemporary environmental humanities, it becomes possible to think of contagion as more than an epidemiological threat. Instead, contagion, as related to anthrax, can be identified as a window across time and place, one which assists in rethinking relationships to ecologies and environments. Two theoretical frameworks, the “outbreak narrative” as proposed by Priscilla Wald and the “hijacker model” introduced by Hannah Landecker, are deployed as lenses to introduce and think differently anthrax’s contemporary condition.

How disasters (e.g., disease, war, and natural disasters) affect people is reflected in their behavior; in the face of a disaster, people are likely to act out of fear, anxiety, uncertainty, and panic in terms of self-preservation. Following more than 2 years of living amidst a global pandemic, issues of human behavior, and especially individual and societal resilience in response to disasters, are increasingly gaining focus. The theories of planned behavior and cognitive dissonance can help explain behavioral changes and underlying intrinsic conflicts. Especially in relation to global health, such phenomena as discrimination and exclusion are identified as having a negative impact on efforts to contain infectious diseases. In this context, the question arises of how to encourage members of a global society to behave cohesively in terms of quarantine, social distancing, and vaccination. This article demonstrates the existence of disbelief and misrepresentations in the context of vaccine fatigue and skepticism. While vaccinations have helped improve public health, skepticism, and resistance toward their efficacy are increasing. Looking specifically at the relatively new vaccines inoculating against the coronavirus, this article explores factors contributing to vaccine skepticism, especially with regard to Western Europe and the United States.

Although the duration of a pandemic has a limit, it is also a time wherein we comport ourselves toward a world where there is a pandemic. Pandemic time can be a time of panic, during which we may attempt to find solace in the comforting objectivity of the sciences. However much science is necessary, we should remember that science is not the only relevant discourse. Further, adjacent to the particulate matter that spreads airborne contagions, pandemic time can be a time of minuscule identity, the forgetting of our collective being when we are overwhelmed by a concern for personal survival. During a pandemic time, without a collaborative approach to scholarship in general, we can become stuck in pandemic time and isolated as precisely calculating beings that survive only to reproduce iterative knowledge and maintain existing routines.

To understand a text, or any other form of art work, as referring to a disease is not always obvious. This uncertainty, although confined to rare cases, nevertheless allows us to explore the limits and blind spots of certain frameworks proposed to think about the relationship between art and disease, notably Susan Sontag’s book Ilness as metaphor . In this article, I take a closer look at the calamity described in chapters 5 and 6 of the first book of Samuel and its various exegeses in the Western World. This calamity (still considered by many to be a bubonic plague), was not associated with the pandemic imaginary by ancient commentators, artists, and doctors, and it is only in modern times that medical diagnoses of the text change in this sense. I propose to see that these seemingly innocuous changes in diagnostic interpretations actually reflect deep changes in the relation between illness and divine agency. After a brief critical review of Susan Sontag’s writings on interpretation and their relationship to Ilness as Metaphor, I will proceed to trace the complex interpretation history of this calamity, before drawing observations about the place of interpretation in literary criticism and in the medical sciences.

This article explores how ideas regarding children and film were shaped and shifted from the 1910s to the 1950s by consulting three critical moments and key institutions: the British Board of Film Censors in the 1910s, the British Film Institute in the 1930s, and the Children’s Film Foundation in the 1950s. By doing so, the article elucidates how discourse and ideas about children’s films and audiences have transformed, resulting in policy shifts from restrictive to encouraging approaches that appreciate children’s tastes and the entertainment value of children’s cinema. Based on comparative historical research, this article empirically reveals that perceptions of children’s cinema have changed throughout history and that the policy documents offer significant materials to explain this.

This article puts forward two ways of understanding capacity: strong and weak theories. The strong theory of capacity self-evidently connects capacity with ideal humanity or pedestalizes it as an analytic concept, while the weak theory of capacity allows space for interpretations about life unfolding without murmurings about capacity. By considering capacity in a way that distinguishes these two theories, the article contributes to contemporary thinking in which capacity has emerged as a key concept. My perspective draws on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s ideas about strong and weak theories and is further influenced by methodological issues raised by disability studies scholars. I first recall Sedgwick’s ideas about strong theories, after which I focus on how capacity assumptions operate in Silvan Tomkins’ work, which has had an important impact on Sedgwick. I then identify two recent contributions in disability studies in the area of capacity-themed theorizing. I interrogate the ways in which these contributions share the habits of the strong theory and how they escape its problematic tendencies. Toward the end of the article, I outline how the weak theory of capacity could contribute new perspectives to the contemporary discussion.

This study aims to use a corpus-based analysis to examine loan translation (LT) as an Arabicization technique in Written Standard Arabic (WSA) for information technology (IT) and investigate the factors impacting LT formation. Data were collected from four corpora: four Arabic online newspapers, the Microsoft Language Portal, two user manuals, and the Arabic Corpus of King Abdul-Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST). Four LT strategies were identified: morphosyntactic pattern alteration, literal translation, loan blending, and metaphorical extension. Literal translation occurred in three degrees: full LTs, partial LTs, and non-LTs, through calquing. Metaphors based on functional similarity played a crucial role in understanding and accepting IT terms in WSA. Paradigmatic variation prevailed in LTs, with synonymous variations more common than nonsynonymous ones, and no syntagmatic variation. The KACST analysis showed significant differences in occurrence frequency among LT variants. LT formation and variation were influenced by linguistic factors such as lexical need, semantic transparency, and lexical borrowing, as well as extralinguistic factors such as nationalism and lack of coordination among Arabic language academies. The study concludes with implications for addressing the absence of coordination between these academies and improving IT-related LT quality between English and WSA.

The present research aimed to evaluate the comprehension level of conversational implicature among a group of 30 senior Native Arabic-speaking students enrolled in the BA program of English Language and Literature at a UAE university. The participants’ comprehension of implicatures was assessed by providing them with 20 excerpts from the American sitcom Seinfeld (https://www.seinfeldscripts.com/seinfeld-scripts.html). The participants were asked to select the implied meaning of one underlined utterance as it occurred in context. The findings of the study indicate that Arab English as a Foreign Language learners have a slightly below-average proficiency in comprehending implicatures produced by native English speakers, which can be attributed to their lower level of proficiency, lack of pragmatic competence, and their lack of information about the American culture. The most challenging types of implicatures to grasp were those flouting the maxim of manner (35.34%), while the easiest types to interpret were those flouting the maxim of quantity.

This article delves into the intricate connections between noise and the socio-historical contexts within James Joyce’s Ulysses. The focal point is the Aeolus episode, which vividly depicts the auditory landscape of 1904 Dublin. Rather than focusing on clear technological transitions, Joyce accentuates the deepening of historical appreciation via modern sonic experiences. Joyce weaves a narrative that echoes the prevailing spirit of the state. His portrayal evokes a sense of a waning epoch, setting the grandeur of ancient Greece against the present-day stagnation and gloom of Dublin. Ultimately, this aural cultural historical design highlights Joyce’s sonorous narrative that exemplifies his drive to depict history with multifaceted depth.

Culture, a multifaceted concept, embodies the diverse aspects of human life, differing markedly across communities. Each community is distinguished by unique characteristics that collectively define its cultural identity. This diversity presents translators with considerable challenges, particularly when it comes to translating cultural references (CRs). An adequate translation requires an in-depth comprehension of the source culture’s nuances to accurately represent them within the target culture. It also necessitates not only a linguistic translation but also a cultural transposition, where the essence of one culture is thoughtfully conveyed to another, preserving its original meaning and context. The current research therefore aimed to investigate the various factors that present cultural barriers in terms of the translation of CRs from English to Arabic and vice versa . To achieve this, it employed an integrated approach made up of hermeneutics, translation equivalence, textual analysis, and functionality, allowing analysis of all aspects of the text. The findings demonstrate the importance of thorough text analysis that encompasses both intratextual and extratextual elements, alongside interpretation of the text within its primary context. It was also noted that CRs in English and Arabic pose challenges for translators in terms of both comprehension and production: such challenges include the existence of forms that may not readily enable translators to deduce meanings and difficulties in conveying English concepts accurately into Arabic. To overcome these hurdles, the study thus recommends the adoption of an integrated approach to culture-based texts to ensure that the internal and external features of the source text are captured in the target text.

The present study examines the role of context in understanding colloquial Arabic idiomatic expressions by Jordanian good and poor comprehenders in two age groups: 10- and 12-year-olds. Children read short stories comprising Arabic expressions that could be interpreted as idiomatic or not; depending on the context in which they are presented. Familiar and unfamiliar idiomatic expressions were used in this study. The effect of four variables: age, reading comprehension level, meaning condition as well as familiarity with the idiomatic expressions on children’s understanding of idiomatic expressions was examined. Three variables were found to have a main effect on the number of correct answers given by children, these are: meaning condition, reading comprehension level, and familiarity of the idiom. Children gave more correct answers in the transparent meaning condition. More correct answers were given for familiar idiomatic expressions. Also, good comprehenders gave more correct answers than their poor counterparts. On the basis of age, the differences between the groups were not significant.

This study investigates the relationship between architectural heritage in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States, providing insights for place-based learning (PBL). The researcher analyzes the similarities and differences between New Mexico (NM) and Saudi Arabia, such as materials, color, and motif units, to design and apply them to develop a range of modern designs. The study method used is an experiential approach based on a case study, based on the author’s living experience in NM from 2014 to 2018, visiting museums and heritage areas, taking photographs, and tasting the culture. Moreover, this study includes a literature review for PBL. In addition, the research study uses a descriptive and experimental method and practical procedure by designing, borrowing, and analyzing the inspiration of specific traditions and integrating both cultures into artworks and ornaments in weaving beads and textiles. The result of the study applied six innovative designs by creating art projects through experimental learning. The result presented three themes: (1) similarities in instructions, materials, and colors of the architectural heritage between the Santa Fe and Saudi Najd styles, (2) differences between the architectural heritage doors, windows, and roof system, and (3) drawing inspiration from architectural heritage for textile bead weaving designs.

Ulysses is widely accepted to be a book about everyday existence. Set on a single day, the novel portrays numerous mundane acts through its characters, and of these, smoking is included. Multiple characters smoke on June 16, 1904. Interestingly, typically as a social act, smoking is heavily involved in dialogues between characters. When Joyce’s characters smoke, what does it reveal about their discursive habits and, moreover, about their identities? This study will begin by arguing that smoking assists in kickstarting conversations between characters in Ulysses and in expressing identities. In such a dialogic novel as Ulysses , there are many instances of smoking and dialogue being intertwined. Beyond simply beginning dialogues, smoking is also involved in maintaining dialogues. For example, in the “Telemachus” episode – the opening of Ulysses – Haines and Stephen share a morning smoke, and this scene helps set the stage for the relevance of smoking throughout the novel. This article argues that, as a quotidian practice, Joyce’s use of smoking with his characters sheds light on, not just the poetics of smoking, but how we humans converse with others through objects on a daily basis.

This article explores intermediality and synaesthesia in James Joyce’s Ulysses , particularly focusing on the “Sirens” chapter. It examines how Joyce, akin to Johann Sebastian Bach’s innovative musical techniques and Richard Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk concept, weaves a rich tapestry of sensory experiences through his narrative. Joyce’s use of intermedial techniques transcends traditional literary forms, creating a synaesthetic experience that blends visual and auditory elements. With this approach, he manages to convey a sense of simultaneity and polyphony that resembles a musical harmony, which is demonstrated through a detailed analysis of the structure, motifs, and thematic elements of the chapter. The article highlights how Joyce’s own innovative narrative techniques mirror musical composition techniques by Bach and Wagner, particularly in their use of fragmented polyphony, Klangfarbenmelodie , the alliterative preparation of words, leitmotifs, and thematic development, offering a reading experience that challenges and expands the boundaries of literary expression.

This study aims to develop accountability practices that harmonize with the local spiritual culture in the Jimbaran traditional village. The current accountability practices are viewed not just as formal procedures but also as informal practices involving moral and ethical relationships with God. An ethnomethodological study integrated with Catur Marga culture as a critical perspective revealed the problem of delays in submitting accountability reports due to the shift in the cultural meaning of “ngayah” and the shift in the implementation of religious ceremonies from spiritual practices to more formal activities. These problems can be addressed by synergizing Catur Marga principles with accountability practices. First, involve community representatives, religious leaders, and traditional elders in the village's financial management, as in regular meetings to align the vision and mission to strengthen the “ngayah” motivation in governance and financial accountability. Second, the traditional village governments must consistently provide Dharmawacana and management accounting training to balance scientific knowledge with traditional spiritual–cultural knowledge. Last is the development of the Catur Marga-based Pararem, which regulates the technical aspects of financial management accountability and should be synchronized with the spirit of devotion to God to preserve the local spiritual culture in the Jimbaran traditional village.

Marriage is one of many important topics discussed in the Qur’an and is a vital component of the customs and traditions of every community. This study aims to qualitatively investigate the procedures employed by classical and recent translators in rendering Qur’anic marriage expressions into English and see whether there has been improvement in tackling them. The collected data consists of a set of marriage expressions that are critically analyzed from a translational perspective. Eight famed English translations from 1930 to 2015, which are trustworthy and easily accessible, are examined, along with three exegesis. They are unlike other earlier translations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that were done by non-Muslims who had little knowledge or no background Islam and were often criticized for biased and erroneous content. The results reveal that both classical and recent translators offer successful renditions in some cases, but they fail to do so in several cases due to hurdles involving lexical and cultural gaps, as well as figurative usage. Although workable formal equivalence should remain a priority, paraphrase, transliteration, footnoting, or combinations of them need to be considered when formal equivalence falters. Further, the results show that there has not been any noticeable improvement in this area from classical to recent translations. The differences between them mainly involve lexical variation only, apart from conceptual emendations. The study recommends that Qur’an translation be conducted by an expert team, rather than one individual, whose members must have high language and cultural competence in both languages, have solid religious and cultural background in Qur’anic discourse, consult authoritative exegeses, and have adequate knowledge of translation strategies and procedures.

The relevance of the study is due to the increased interest of researchers in the study of the chronotope category in recent decades, and the lack of a unified approach to the analysis of the chronotope in the scientific community. The purpose of the article is to study the value aspects of space-time in the author’s mind through the study of the linguistic representation of the chronotope in Kazakh fiction and journalistic prose. To achieve the goal, the article uses a structural, biographical, hermeneutical, and comparative method. The article studies the spatiotemporal organization of literary texts of Kazakh writers: “Diary of a trip to Issyk-Kul” by Sh.Sh. Ualikhanov, “Tuyuk su” by G.K. Belger,” and “The tale of a century-old steppe man” by B.T. Alimzhanov. Based on the study of literary texts, using the indicated methodology, the key chronotopes for each selected work are identified. It has been established that the category of space-time in all the studied works is characterized by complexity, diversity, and multidimensionality. The practical significance of the study lies in the fact that the method of analysis of the chronotope category presented in the article can be applied in the study of the chronotope in literary texts.

This article results from a knowledge transfer report commissioned by the Culture Area of the A Coruña City Council in Galicia (Spain), a city with an average population of 250,000 inhabitants. The report’s goal was to map all the cultural actions happening in the city. Due to their variety, dispersion, and multiplicity, the local government’s culture department required a comprehensive catalogue of these practices. The initial challenge was to collect and structure the information to create a visual atlas that would allow for the mapping of these activities, identifying potentialities, shortcomings, and weaknesses to establish future cultural action lines. As a result of investigative and fieldwork, it was decided to document the actions carried out by both public and private institutions, whether conducted by the City Council’s culture department, funded externally, or independent. This information was analysed to draw conclusions for planning the city’s cultural future.

Throughout the history of translation in China, almost every major translation movement has been accompanied by the activities of foreign translators. China, during the seventeen years from 1949 to 1966, absorbed a large number of foreign translators, who made significant contributions to the translation profession of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). These foreign translators participated in China’s translation practice, resulting in distinct characteristics of the translators group. This article takes the concept of the “translator community” of the State Translation Program (STP) as the departing point to explore the characteristics of the foreign translators group engaged in STP in China from 1949 to 1966 and digs out the reasons behind the generation of the foreign translators group. It is found that the foreign translators group in the early 17 years after the founding of the PRC are specifically manifested as the translator positioning of state translators, the predominant translator identity of non-professionals, and the translator image of “gears” and “repairmen.” The generation of these groups is the result of multiple factors, including the state’s strategic requirement for translation output, the state’s macro-regulation of the allocation of translation talent resources, as well as the state’s manipulation of the translation process.