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Poesie ermöglicht Zugänge : Potenziale deutschsprachig-muslimischer Lyrik für Unterricht und Praxis
(2023)
This study examines the political contestation among Malay Professional Satirists (MPS) through their selected political satire works between 2011-2018. Political satire challenges those in power and is often regarded as fake news and libel. Therefore, political satirists tend to be frequently subject to legal action and are accused of disrupting national harmony. However, there is another group within the social and cultural community, which I call Social and Cultural Professionals (SCP), who also use satire but are supported by the government. This group frequently received financial benefits from the state and are at lower risk of suffering legal consequences. These contrasting conditions raise several important questions: who are the Malaysian Professional Satirists? Who are the targets of MPS in their satirical work? Why do MPS satirise them? And why do the MPS still produce political satire despite the potential legal consequences? Therefore, this study attempts to identify the characters, themes, and issues the MPS highlight; it also considers the reasons and motivations that political satirists have for creating such allegedly controversial works. Malaysia’s Reformasi movement and the booming use of the internet in 1998 mobilised multiple alternative social movements, mainly through art-related activities. Art workers, NGOs, as well as musical and cultural groups, protested creatively against the UMNO-BN ruling regime. Creative protests that employed satire and humour somehow succeeded in attracting a significant proportion of the public to follow political and current issues, especially youths in universities who had been depoliticised with the inception of the University and University College Act (AUKU 1979). This study establishes a point of view that political satire is a fun, loose, free form of resistance, contrasting with formal procedural democracy. The previous literature proposes that the study of Malaysia’s political system should focus on formal political procedures, especially election and representation. However, the study of political satire vis-à-vis democratisation is often neglected and thus such studies are scarce, which might have resulted from how satire is strictly discussed in terms of language and media. There has been a growing interest in how satirist and satirical works are regarded; hence, this study attempts to fill a gap in research on political satire in Malaysia. In contrast, democratisation is often discussed in terms of history, politics, anthropology, sociology, and economics. This qualitative study presents a comprehensive account of interviews with four (4) art workers identified as MPS, as based on appropriate criteria. Each informant had either partaken in alternative social movements or faced legal action from authorities or, indeed, both. In this study, the Theory of Contestation and Two-Social Reality serves as a primary framework to lead to an understanding of the contestation of power in Malaysia through political satire. This study further intends to broaden the knowledge of political satire and humour in the study of democratisation, adding to the existing literature, particularly outside formal political procedures.
Nok Eisen : zentralnigerianische Eisenverhüttung in der Mitte des ersten Jahrtausends vor Christus
(2023)
Based on excavations, excavation documentation and archaeometallurgical analyses, this thesis aims to characterise Nok iron production in central Nigeria through a contextually based investigation.
In 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2016, the Nok research project at Goethe University Frankfurt/Main in collaboration with the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Nigeria excavated 27 iron-smelting furnaces from 8 sites 60 kilometres north of Abuja. All furnaces date around the middle of the first millennium BCE. Absolute dates, relative pottery chronology and terracotta figurine finds in furnace contexts suggest their affiliation to the Nok context. In comparison, all 27 furnaces resemble each other closely regarding their design and spacial arrangement. The numbers of furnaces per site, furnace width, furnace wall angle and thickness as well as pits beneath the furnaces are just some features with similar qualities. The similarities of the smelting sites also extend into their finds: the structure of tuyères and their position in situ as well as macroscopic slag morphology and distribution. Find morphology and distribution as well as furnace structure suggest a highly standardized way of Nok iron production. However, archaeometallurgical analyses show heterogeneous use of raw materials between sites and/or furnaces. In similarly structured furnaces different kinds of iron ore were smelted leaving a high iron content in the respective slags. This hints at an early stage of iron production in which the smelting process was limited to one operative set-up.
Die Arbeit widmet sich der im Jahr 2017 verstorbenen Frankfurter Künstlerin Martina Kügler und der Darstellung von Geschlechtlichkeit in ihren Zeichnungen. Der erste Teil der Arbeit beschreibt ihre Ausbildung an der Städelschule und ihre künstlerische Entwicklung. Schon früh entwickelte Kügler einen eigenen, radikal reduktionistischen, aber dennoch figürlichen Stil in ihren Zeichnungen. Vor dem Hintergrund gesellschaftlicher und künstlerischer Strömungen, die sich der sexuellen Liberalisierung verschrieben hatten, experimentierte Kügler in ihren Arbeiten mit sexuell konnotierten Motiven und geschlechtlichen Zuschreibungen, verarbeitete und zitierte dabei Vorbilder der klassischen und modernen Kunstgeschichte und spielte nicht ohne Ironie mit hergebrachten Bildtraditionen. Der zweite Teil der Arbeit analysiert die Geschlechtlichkeit in Küglers Zeichnungen vor dem Hintergrund von Erkenntnissen der feministischen Kunstgeschichte und der Genderstudies. Dabei zeigt sich, dass Erotik und Sexualität in den Zeichnungen allgegenwärtig sind, ohne dass nackte Körper einem antizipierten Begehren der Betrachtenden zur Schau gegeben werden. Die Künstlerin löst sich von Bildtraditionen, die mit ästhetisierendem Framing oder aufreizenden Posen auf männliche Triebhaftigkeit Bezug nehmen. Sexualität und Erotik erscheinen als lustvolles anarchisches Geschehen, frei von objektifizierenden Blick-Perspektiven. Dies zeigt sich insbesondere im Vergleich mit erotischen Zeichnungen von Surrealisten wie Hans Bellmer und André Masson. Auch bezüglich des Geschlechts der Figuren wird erkennbar, dass Kügler heteronormative Traditionen hinter sich lässt. Viele ihrer Figuren passen nicht in eine binäre Ordnung von männlich/weiblich. Die Geschlechter vermischen sich und durchdringen einander zu einem allgemein menschlichen Bild von Lust und Begehren. Damit scheinen in Küglers Zeichnungen bereits in den 1970er und 1980er Jahren Aspekte von Geschlechtlichkeit auf, die erst später in der feministischen Kunstwissenschaft und in den Genderstudies expliziert wurden.
[Nachrufe] Dr. Isa Kubach-Richter und Dr. Wolf Kubach *19.05.1934 / *07.10.1940 // † 24.01.2022
(2022)
Reduplicative words like chiffchaff or helter-skelter are part of ordinary language use yet most often found in substandard registers in which attitudinal and expressive meaning components are iconically foregrounded. In a rating experiment using nonwords that either conform to, or deviate from, conventional reduplicative patterns in German, the present study identified affective meaning dimensions, judgments of familiarity and esthetic evaluations of sound qualities associated with such words. In a subsequent recall test, we examined
the respective mnemonic potential of the different types of reduplication. Results suggest that, in the absence of semantic content, reduplicative forms are inherently associated with
several affective meaning associations that are generally considered positive. Two types of reduplicative patterns, namely full reduplication and [i-a]-vowel-alternating reduplication,
boost these positive effects to a particularly pronounced degree, leading to an increase in perceived euphony, funniness, familiarity, appreciation, and positive belittling (cuteness) and, at the same time, a decrease in arousal. These two types also turn out to be particularly memorable when compared both to other types of reduplication and to non-reduplicative structures. This study demonstrates that reduplicative morphology may in and of itself, that is, irrespective of the phonemic and the semantic content, contribute to the affective meaning and esthetic evaluation of words.
The article examines the Finnish branch of Chabad Lubavitch as a fundamentalist and charismatic movement that differs from other branches of ultra-Orthodox Judaism in its approaches to outreach to non-observant Jews. Whilst introducing the history of Chabad Lubavitch in Finland and drawing on historical and archival sources, the authors locate the movement in a contemporary context and draw on 101 semi-structured qualitative interviews of members of the Finnish Jewish communities, who either directly or indirectly have been in contact with representatives of Chabad Finland. The material is examined through the theoretical concept of ‘vicarious religion’. As the results of the article show, whilst Chabad very much adheres to certain fundamentalist approaches in Jewish religious practice, in Finland they follow a somewhat different approach. They strongly rely on people’s sense of Jewish identification and Jewish identity. Individuals in the community ‘consume’ Chabad’s activities vicariously, ‘belong without believing’ or ‘believe in belonging’ but do not feel the need to apply stricter religious observance. Whilst many of them are critical of Chabad and their activities, they do acknowledge that Chabad fills the ‘gaps’ in and outside the Jewish Community of Helsinki, predominantly by creating new activities for some of its members.
This paper focuses on the question of the representation of nasality as well as speakers’ awareness and perceptual use of phonetic nasalisation by examining surface nasalisation in two types of vowels in Bengali: underlying nasal vowels (CṼC) and nasalised vowels before a nasal consonant (CVN). A series of three cross-modal forced-choice experiments was used to investigate the hypothesis that only unpredictable nasalisation is stored and that this sparse representation governs how listeners interpret vowel nasality. Visual full-word targets were preceded by auditory primes consisting of CV segments of CVC words with nasal vowels ([tʃɑ̃] for [tʃɑ̃d] ‘moon’), oral vowels ([tʃɑ] for [tʃɑl] ‘unboiled rice’) or nasalised oral vowels ([tʃɑ̃(n)] for [tʃɑ̃n] ‘bath’) and reaction times and errors were measured. Some targets fully matched the prime while some matched surface or underlying representation only. Faster reaction times and fewer errors were observed after CṼC primes compared to both CVC and CVN primes. Furthermore, any surface nasality was most frequently matched to a CṼC target unless no such target was available. Both reaction times and error data indicate that nasal vowels are specified for nasality leading to faster recognition compared to underspecified oral vowels, which cannot be perfectly matched with incoming signals.
Until today, iron gall ink is classified as an exceptional underdrawing material for paintings. Its study and definite identification is usually based on invasive analysis. This article presents a new non-destructive approach using micro-X-ray fluorescence scanning (MA-XRF), LED-excited IRR (LEDE-IRR) based on a narrow wavelength-range of infrared radiation (IR) for illumination and stereomicroscopy for studying and visualising iron gall ink underdrawings. To assess possibilities and limits of these analytical techniques, the approach was tested on panel paintings by Hans Holbein the Elder and Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano. Results are compared to invasive examinations on cross-sections using scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDX). The holistic setup could successfully visualise iron gall ink underdrawings, allowing to harness the formerly invisible underdrawing lines for interdisciplinary studies.
Around 400 BC, pottery- and iron-producing populations immigrated into the Inner Congo Basin (ICB) and subsequently spread upstream some major tributaries of the Congo River. Until recently, their subsistence was almost completely unknown. We present an archaeobotanical study of three sites in the ICB covering parts of the Early Iron Age (ca. 400 BC-AD 650) and of the Late Iron Age (LIA) as well as subrecent times (ca. AD 1300–2000). We studied 82 flotated samples of botanical macroremains, and 68 soil phytolith samples, recovered from the terra firme sites Iyonda and Mbandaka, and the floodplain fishing camp site of Bolondo. The EIA assemblage from Iyonda yielded domesticated Cenchrus americanus (pearl millet), Vigna unguiculata (cowpea), Canarium schweinfurthii, Elaeis guineensis (oil palm), several wild plants, and parenchyma fragments tentatively attributed to Dioscorea sp. (yams). The exploitation of these plants originated in the savannas and forest-savanna ecotones of West Africa. The presence of C. americanus in LIA contexts at Bolondo and Mbandaka, dated to ca. AD 1350–1550, indicates that its cultivation is not dependent on a seasonal climate with a distinct dry season, contrary to previous views. The role of C. americanus as a staple is difficult to assess; it might have been used for special purposes, e.g. beer brewing. In spite of extensive screening, we did not detect any banana phytoliths in the EIA samples. Musa phytoliths were only present in LIA contexts after ca. AD 1400, leaving room for the possibility that the introduction and spread of Musa spp. AAB ‘Plantain’ in the ICB was a late phenomenon.
Sterben, Tod und Jenseits werden in der Medienlandschaft täglich behandelt. Bilderbücher und Graphic Novels werden mit diesen Themen häufig nicht in Verbindung gebracht, jedoch steigt die Anzahl an Veröffentlichungen. Dabei stellt sich die Frage, welche Bilder dargestellt werden. Wie wird die teils junge Zielgruppe berücksichtigt?
Anhand von Fallbeispielen aus Bilderbüchern und Graphic Novels zeigt Birte Svea Philippi auf, welche gemeinsame Bildideen die Autor*innen aufgreifen
Am 16. September 2021 fand ein digitaler AIWG Roundtable zur „Gesetzlichen Neuregelung des äußeren Erscheinungsbilds von Beamt_innen und seine Implikationen für Muslim_innen“ statt. Die beiden Impulse aus der muslimischen Zivilgesellschaft und der Rechtswissenschaft sowie die anschließende Diskussion haben eines schnell erkennen lassen: Niemand kann bisher mit Sicherheit sagen, wie die tatsächlichen und rechtlichen Konsequenzen für Muslim_innen aussehen werden. Aber auch wie es zu dem Gesetz kam, das Anfang des Jahres durch einen Regierungsentwurf angeregt wurde, ist ein Prozess, welcher viele Fragen aufwirft. Warum wurden hier so unterschiedliche Regelungsgegenstände wie Haarlänge, Barttracht und Tattoos einerseits und Kopftuch, Kippa, Kreuz und Dastar andererseits in einem einzigen Gesetz geregelt? Woher kam der Anstoß für diese umfassende Regelung? Und vor allem: Warum gab es keine öffentliche Debatte dazu?
Moulages are contact media – images made by contagion in the most literal sense: their production relies on a process in which the object to be reproduced is touched by the reproducing material. In the case of dermatological moulages, the plaster touches the infected skin of the sick and, once dried, serves as the negative form for the waxen image of a disease. Focussing on the collection of the Hôpital Saint-Louis in Paris, the article situates the production of dermatological moulages within the visual culture of 19th-century medicine and raises the question how an ancient technique of image production could become such a prevalent tool for the documentation of skin diseases during a period usually associated with the rise of scientific medicine and a reconsideration of theories of contagion in medical aetiology.
Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der türkischen Musikpolitik in der Zeit von Atatürk und seinem Auftrag insbesondere an den Komponisten, Ahmed Adnan Saygun, im Rahmen der vielfältigen Reformen in der jungen türkischen Republik, eine zeitgenössische türkische Kunstmusik zu schaffen. Mit dem Begriff des Kulturtransfers wird die Umsetzung von Atatürks Musikpolitik beschrieben, der auf die Entwicklung der Musik im 19. Jahrhundert, dem Zeitalter des sogenannten Nationalismus, zurückgreift und mit dem Kulturtransfer anderer Nationen verglichen wurde. Neben Saygun wurde auch das Wirken von vier anderen türkischen Komponisten, die mit Saygun die sogenannten ‚Türkischen Fünf‘ bildeten, erwähnt, die diesen Auftrag Atatürks sehr unterschiedlich umsetzten in einer Zeit der gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen und des ‚Kulturkampfs‘. In diesem Zusammenhang wurden die fünf Sinfonien von Saygun analysiert, der als ein Vorbild und Pionier fast aller Arten türkisch-klassischer Musik im Rahmen dieser musikalischen Revolution angesehen werden kann.
Saygun hat in Zusammenarbeit mit Béla Bartók türkische Volkslieder aufgenommen, verschriftlicht und systematisiert. In dieser Arbeit wurde daher untersucht, wie Saygun, der die türkische Kunst- und Volksmusik sowie in Paris die westeuropäische klassische Musik studiert hat, diese mit Mitteln klassischer Musikformen verbindet. Anhand der fünf Sinfonien von Ahmed Adnan Saygun wird gezeigt, dass er nicht nur als Komponist, sondern auch als Musikethnologe eine führende Rolle in der zeitgenössischen türkischen Kunstmusik übernahm und über den Kulturtransfer hinaus eine eigene ‚musikalische Sprache‘ entwickelte.
Eine der wichtigsten Quellen dieser Arbeit sind die handschriftlichen Partituren der Sinfonien und die Originalartikel von Ahmed Adnan Saygun, insbesondere Sayguns handgeschriebene Artikel ‚Orkestra‘ (dt.: Orchester) und die Artikelsammlung ‚Yalan‘ (dt.: Lüge), die in die deutsche Sprache übersetzt wurden. Als Ergebnisse der Analyse und Interpretation dieser und anderer Quellen, konnten Methoden aufgezeigt werden, die in Sayguns Werke und insbesondere in seinen Sinfonien in rhythmischen, melodischen, harmonischen und motivisch-thematischen Strukturkonstruktionen verwendet und als Beispiele einer zeitgenössischen türkischen Kunstmusik interpretiert werden. Dabei wurde herausgearbeitet, wie Saygun Elemente der türkischen Kunst- und Volksmusik verwendete, diese zunächst in tradierte Formen westeuropäischer klassischer Musik einbettete, um unter Hinzuziehung von eigenen kunstphilosophischen Ansätzen eine Form von ‚universaler Musik‘ zu kreieren.
This article provides a comparative overview of phonological and phonetic differences of Mukrī Kurdish varieties and their geographical distribution. Based on the examined data, four distinct varieties can be distinguished. In each variety area, different phonological patterns are analyzed according to age, gender, and social groups in order to establish cross-regional and cross-generational developments in relation to specific phonological distributions and shifts. The variety regions which are examined in the present article include West Mukrī (representing an archaic form of Mukrī), Central Mukrī (representing a linguistically peripheral dialect), East Mukrī (representing mixed archaic and peripheral dialect features), and South Mukrī (sharing features of both Mukrī and Ardałānī). The study concludes that variation in the Mukrīyān region depends on phonological developments, which in turn are due to geographical and sociological factors. Moreover, contact-induced change and internal language development are also established as triggering factors distinguishing regional variants.
This article explores the liturgical functions of cross-shaped staurothekes, reliquaries of the True Cross, in twelfth-century Sicily. These luxurious objects were once at the centre of the devotion of the growing Christian communities on an island undergoing dramatic social changes. This contribution examines the figuration of these crosses and the messages they conveyed to their audiences, focusing on documented processions as displays of public piety. To this end, the contents of two liturgical manuscripts from Palermo, evidence in contemporary pictorial arts and coinage, and the urban layout of the Norman capital will shed light on the reception of the symbol of the cross in the cosmopolitan, yet increasingly intolerant Sicilian kingdom.
Significant changes in the material culture, subsistence and mode of life are associated with the Middle (c. 2000–1600 BCE) and Late Bronze Ages (c. 1600–1300 BCE) in Eastern Arabia. Since first excavations in the 1970s, research has focused on the United Arab Emirates, where all major sites of this period known to date are situated. This birthed the idea of two different lines of development in the second millennium BC. While a more gradual change is assumed for the United Arab Emirates, Central Oman was regarded as having completely abandoned settled agricultural life, returning to a less complex social organisation. This article presents new evidence from Tawi Said, Al-Mudhairib and the Wilayat al-Mudhaybi that shows that the developments in both regions were more akin to each other than previously assumed. This encourages us to reconsider our assumptions about Central Oman’s social complexity during this pivotal period of Oman’s history.
Der US-amerikanische Architekturdiskurs der 1990er Jahre ist entscheidend von den Theorien Gilles Deleuzes geprägt. Die Aneignung seiner philosophischen Konzepte und jener, die er gemeinsam mit Félix Guattari entwickelt hat, findet vor allem innerhalb des architekturtheoretischen Netzwerks der »Anyone Corporation« statt: In ihren Diskursen wimmelt es von glatten Räumen, organlosen Körpern, Rhizomen, Falten, abstrakten Maschinen und Diagrammen. Frederike Lausch zeigt auf, wie sich die »Anyone Corporation« durch die Bezugnahme auf Deleuze als intellektuelle Elite der Architekturdisziplin inszeniert und wie im Zuge der Entpolitisierung seiner Theorien die »Post-Criticality«-Bewegungen entstehen.
Die Dissertation widmet sich einem Aspekt der hellenistischen Lebenswelt: dem Stellenwert des Athleten und des Intellektuellen innerhalb der für männliche Polisbürger geltenden Wertprädikationen. Hintergrund der Fragestellung bildet ein für die hellenistische Zeit postuliertes abnehmendes Ansehen der körperlichen gegenüber der geistigen (Aus)bildung – eine Annahme, die sich unter anderem auch auf ein Zurückgehen von Athletenbildern in der griechischen Sepulkralkunst stützt und in der Dissertation kritisch hinterfragt wird. Dazu liegt mit dieser Arbeit eine ausführliche, lokal und chronologisch eingegrenzte Studie zur Ikonographie hellenistischer Grabstelen männlicher Verstorbener aus einem Zeitraum vom 3. Jh. v. Chr. bis in das fortgeschrittene 1. Jh. v. Chr. vor. Die Materialbasis bilden die Stelen aus Delos, Smyrna, Ephesos, Samos, Kyzikos und Rhodos.
Zur Klärung, wie sich die Darstellung von Athleten und Intellektuellen in den betrachteten Regionen quantitativ niederschlägt, wurden das Bildthema sowie die Bildzeichen auf den Grabreliefs analysiert. Hierbei sind mit Bildzeichen vorhandene Attribute, aber auch weitere Hinweise, wie bestimmte Körperhaltungen, gemeint. Unterschieden wird bei den Bildzeichen außerdem zwischen primären und sekundären Bildzeichen, wobei primäre dingliche Zeichen – wie Schriftrolle oder Strigilis – eine meist sichere Zuschreibung zur athletischen bzw. intellektuellen Sphäre gewährleisten, wohingegen etwa die in der Arbeit zu den sekundären Zeichen gezählte Bekleidung oder Haltung ohne weiter verifizierende Bildinhalte zumeist deutungsoffener sind.
Über eine ausführliche quantitative Auszählung der einzelnen Bildzeichen in Verbindung mit den vorkommenden Darstellungsschemata gelangen Rückschlüsse auf die männlichen Repräsentationspraktiken in den betrachteten Regionen. So zeigte sich beispielsweise, dass die Stelen auf Delos im Allgemeinen zwar eher attributarm sind, die Wahl für sportthematische Bildzeichen jedoch vergleichsweise häufig getroffen wurde. Der Vergleich mit Grabmälern aus den übrigen untersuchten Poleis schärfte die Aussagekraft der ikonographischen Analysen, da Unterschiede sowie Gemeinsamkeiten der jeweiligen lokalen Bildsprache, ihrer Kompositionsvorlieben und Bildtraditionen herausgearbeitet werden konnten. Solche stadttypischen Ausprägungen zeigen deutlich, dass die hellenistische Kunst bzw. Kultur nicht als strenge Einheit zu begreifen ist.
Abschließend ist festzuhalten, dass die Athletenpräsentation konstant im männlichen Wertespektrum verankert und etabliert geblieben ist. Folglich ist die Annahme, sportliche Repräsentation habe im Hellenismus zugunsten einer geistigen abgenommen, in dieser Deutlichkeit nicht haltbar. Vielmehr gelten geänderte Bild- und Darstellungsformen, die im Vergleich zur vorhellenistischen Praxis bisweilen recht subtil erscheinen, aber vor allem eine kombinierte Vorführung verschiedener Qualitäten, darunter sowohl geistige wie sportliche inbegriffen, anstrebten.
As 2021 draws to a close, Covid-19 continues to prevail worldwide. With the proverbial return to normalcy still appearing distant, there is now a tacit acceptance globally that at least for the foreseeable future, we must live with Covid-19. Given that Covid-19 is an infectious disease—which by definition is transmitted from person to person—the continued prevalence of Covid-19 has implications for how local authorities, communities, and individuals around the world will approach public spaces. While it may be premature to assume a so-called coronacene (see Higgins et al. 2020), going into the future our use of public spaces will be overshadowed by the possibility, even if remote, of illness or death by virtue of close proximity to other individuals.
Along with parks and squares, streets and avenues, bazaars constitute ubiquitous public spaces, including in countries of the developing world, such as Armenia and Georgia, our countries of discussion here. Although there is not a clear bifurcation between bazaars and other types of marketplaces, bazaars will usually be comprised of a multitude of nonfranchised, self-owned, small businesses that are variously family-run or rely on family labor. They are usually perceived as chaotic places that lack hygiene (the purportedly unhygienic character of the bazaar was brought to the forefront with the pandemic, given how Covid-19’s origin is widely assumed to be a Wuhan wet market).
In Armenia and Georgia, and indeed, across the former Soviet Union, bazaars are a source of employment for the urban and peri-urban population; they also offer goods at price points attractive to a wide demographic. This working paper builds on the premise that the bazaar is an informal institution. Bazaar traders will typically assemble networks by themselves (with manufacturers and wholesalers, buyers and transporters). These networks will usually vary from one business to another. Also, ownership and rent structures are frequently opaque, and the majority of commercial transactions are in cash, which does not appear in state records. As a consequence, for the state, many small businesses do not exist (Fehlings and Karrar 2016, 2020).
For those of us researching bazaar trading, Covid-19 has given rise to a basic question: How have independent businesses been transformed by the pandemic? This working paper is an attempt to parse this question in light of developments in Armenia and Georgia. In this working paper, we suggest that the Covid-19 pandemic has deepened informality in the bazaar. That being said, we want to underscore that the present discussion is exploratory. Our ethnography remains limited, and we look forward to returning to the field as soon as it is safe to do so.
Filz zählt neben Fett zu den prägendsten Materialien im Œuvre von Joseph Beuys. Er nutzt es bereits im Frühwerk der 1950er-Jahre und setzt es im Laufe von vier Jahrzehnten künstlerischer Tätigkeit gattungsübergreifend in Collagen, Assemblagen, Skulpturen, Environments und in den Aktionen ein. In den frühen bildhaften Arbeiten in der Fläche verbleibend, nimmt das Textil von hier aus in skulpturalen, installativen und performativen Werken zunehmend räumliche Ausmaße an; mit dieser vielseitigen Verwendung verbunden ist ein selbstreflexiver Impetus, der sich kritisch sowohl gegen die Einheit der Form und damit auch des Kunstwerks als auch gegen die strikte Trennung künstlerischer Gattungen wendet. Das Ausgreifen der Filzarbeiten in den Raum und der damit verknüpfte selbstkritische Ansatz wird in vorliegender Dissertation mit dem Konzept der Selbstkritik der Kunst verknüpft, das von Theodor W. Adorno in seiner 1970 posthum erschienenen „Ästhetischen Theorie“ entwickelt wurde. Das Brüchigwerden der Form, für Adorno Ausgangspunkt werkimmanenter Kritik des Kunstwerks an sich selbst, lässt sich in der jeweiligen Komposition der Filzarbeiten beobachten, wie anhand von Werkanalysen zentraler Filzarbeiten gezeigt wird.
[Nachruf] Manfred Faßler
(2021)
Based on Ivan Marcus’s concept of “open book” and considerations on medieval Ashkenazic concepts of authorship, the present article inquires into the circumstances surrounding the production of Sefer Arugat ha-Bosem, a collection of piyyut commentaries written or compiled by the thirteenth-century scholar Abraham b. Azriel. Unlike all other piyyut commentators, Abraham ben Azriel inscribed his name into his commentary and claims to supersede previous commentaries, asserting authorship and authority. Based on the two different versions preserved in MS Vatican 301 and MS Merzbacher 95 (Frankfurt fol. 16), already in 1939 Ephraim E. Urbach suggested that Abraham b. Azriel might have written more than one edition of his piyyut commentaries. The present reevaluation considers recent scholarship on concepts of authorship and “open genre” as well as new research into piyyut commentary. To facilitate a comparison with Marcus’s definition of “open book,” this article also explores the arrangement and rearrangement of small blocks of texts within a work.
This paper was presented at the workshop “Goods, Languages, and Cultures along the Silk Road” at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, October 18 and 19, 2019. While many contributions to the workshop focused on recent developments in China’s current “New Silk Road” politics, on forms of communication, and on contemporary exchange of goods and ideas across so-called Silk Road countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia and with China, this short essay focuses on the history of the so-called Silk Road as an important transport connection. Although what is now called the “Silk Road” was not a pure East-West binary in antiquity but rather developed into a network that also led to the South and North, the focus here will be on describing the East-West connection.
I will start with a few brief remarks on the origins of the connection referred to as the Silk Road and will then introduce the different great empires that shaped this connection between antiquity and the Middle Ages through military campaigns and by using it as a trading route and network. But the Silk Road was by no means only of economic and military importance. Its significance for the exchange and dissemination of religions should also be mentioned. This paper does not detail the importance of the numerous individual religions in the area of the Silk Road but discusses the phenomenon of the spread of religions and the loss of some of their own distinguishing characteristics in this spread, a phenomenon that could be described as a “unity of opposites” (coincidentia oppositorum). Finally, the essay asks who, in the face of the regular replacement of powers, held sovereignty over the transport connection: the subject (in the form of the empires) or the object (in the form of the road).
Who were the main protagonists of and along the Silk Road in the course of history? Who were the people who became the great powers of the ancient Silk Road, building up the material route, governing parts of it, and organizing trade and relationships from the far East to the extreme West of the Eurasian continent?
The merchant language of the Georgian Jews deserves scholarly attention for several reasons. The political and social developments of the last fifty years have caused the extinction of this very interesting form of communication, as most Georgian Jews have emigrated to Israel. In a natural interaction, the type of language described in this article can be found very rarely, if at all. Records of this communication have been preserved in various contexts and received different levels of scholarly attention. Our interest concerns the linguistic aspects as well as the classification.
In the following paper we argue that the specific merchant language of Georgian Jews belongs to the pragmatic phenomenon of “very indirect language.” The use of mostly Hebrew lexemes in Georgian conversation leads to an unfounded assumption that the speakers are equally competent in Hebrew and Georgian. It is reported that a high level of linguistic competence in Hebrew does not guarantee understanding of the Jewish merchant language. In the Georgian context, the decisive factors are membership in the professional interest group of merchants and residential membership in the Jewish community. These factors seem to be equivalent, because Jewish members of other professional groups (and those from outside the particular urban residential area) have difficulties in following the language that are similar to those of the Georgian majority. We describe the pragmatic structure of interactions conducted with the help of the merchant language and take into account the purpose of the language’s use or the intention of the speakers. Relevant linguistic examples are analysed and their sociocultural contexts explained.
This study explores literary representations of gender and sexuality in contemporary Malaysian Popular Fiction in English (MPFE) written by Malay Muslim authors that are published in between the years 2010 to 2020. It questions why gender and sexuality are considered sensitive topics and the public discussion of these topics is deemed taboo by some Malay Muslim traditionalists and contemporary scholars of Malay literature. Previous studies suggests that Islamic rules and regulations influence the Malaysian Malays worldview. Its sacred book, the Quran, has established clear-cut prohibitions against any sexual indulgence among its believers. Muslim writers must learn to restrict themselves from indulging in sexual writings in order to prevent them from intentionally or unintentionally arousing their readers’ sexual fantasies that may lead both parties to sinning. However, at the end of the twentieth century, many factors such as the impact of modernisation through scientific and industrial revolution on Malaysian society, the influence of Western Humanities theories among local intellects, and the introduction of Internet culture have contributed tremendously to the dramatic social changes in Malaysia. These changes are reflected heavily in its literary culture. In recent years, the Malay people’s awareness of their body and individuality is heightened. There is a surge of curiosity among contemporary Malay Muslims about their gender and sexuality and they would want a discussion. Following this development, the first objective of this study is to provide the latest discussion on gender and sexuality in MPFE by Malay Muslim authors. The second objective is to provide observations on how MPFE authors employ their literary strategies to approach aspects of gender and sexuality in their literary works. It pays attention to how writers express their acceptance, negotiations, and/or rejections towards the dominant “normative” or “common” values in the Malay society with regards to their body and sexuality. Using textual analysis to examine one novel and six short stories from the MPFE genre, this paper cross-examines Malay literary theories on sexual and erotic literature available in Pengkaedahan Melayu (Malay Methodology), Persuratan Baru (Genuine Literature), as well as Western theoretical approaches in Postcolonialism, Postmodernism and Feminism on gendering system and sexuality, in its aim to explain the growing interest in the topics in spite of the red-tape around sexual taboos in Malaysian literature.