Meta-analysis done by the journal Psychological Bulletin found that women are more likely to commit an act of physical aggression against an intimate partner
Women were slightly more likely (d = -.05) than men to use one or more acts of physical aggression and to use such acts more frequently. Men were more likely (d = . 15) to inflict an injury, and overall, 62% of those injured by a partner were women
A HUGE meta-analysis of 343 scholarly investigations (270 empirical studies and 73 systematic reviews) found that women are as physically aggressive as men (or more) in their relationships with their spouses or opposite-sex partners
When you aggregate domestic-violence related suicides and homicides caused by intimate partners, men die of domestic violence-related deaths more than women
“When domestic violence-related suicides are combined with domestic violence homicides, the total numbers of domestic violence related deaths are higher for males than females.”
“Studies of undergraduate college students found that men sustained higher levels of moderate violence than women with severe violence being rare for both women and men (Katz, Kuffel, & Coblentz, 2002) and 29% of males and 35% of females reported perpetrating physical aggression; 12.5% of the males and 4.5% of the females reported receiving severe physical aggression; 14% of females reported that they were the sole perpetrators of aggression — injuries were sustained by 8.4% of males and 5% of females (Hines & Saudino, 2002). These rates, which suggest gender symmetry in the perpetration of relationship violence, are not unique and Fiebert (2004) has amassed a bibliography of 159 peer-reviewed publications finding equal or greater aggression by females than males. The total collected sample is geater than 109,000. An earlier version was published in 1997 (Fiebert, 1997).
“As our discussion demonstrates, female perpetrated abuse in intimate relationships is at least as common as male abuse, often extends to the same degree of severity, can result in serious negative outcomes for male and female victims, and seems to reflect a common set of background causes. Contrary to early socio-political explanations, which proposed that women's use of aggression reflected primarily, or solely, self-defense strategies in response to male initiated abuse, women are known to commit unilateral abuse.”
Now, the question remains does this remained true for most severities? And while a cursory glance of spousal homicides seems to back this up, the story doesn't stop there. And straight away you can tell that, even when it comes to homicide, the differences aren't that large. Intimate Partner Homicide Roughly 68% of intimate partner homicide victims are women. You can see a graph here: https://imgur.com/a/6Hx9dJt One thing to consider is that many people who murder their spouses are often trapped in abusive relationships themselves. Their murder is usually seen as being either retaliatory or in self-defense. This theory is known as the "battered partner syndrome", and it applies to both men and women (although there is something of a double standard when this explanation is applied to men). One researcher noted that according to several key criteria of the so-called "battered woman syndrome", abused men fit the profile better than abused women do.
All of the evidence indicates that abused men fit the theory of the “battered woman” better than abused women do.
Brown, G. A. (2004). Gender as a factor in the response of the law-enforcement system to violence against partners. Sexuality and Culture, 8(3-4), 3-139. http://www.familyofmen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Grant_Partner_Violence.pdf Another thing to notice is that the rate of men who are murdered by intimate partners has decreased over the years in comparison to women. In fact, some 40 years ago, women murdered their male partners at roughly the same rate as the reverse. Research suggests that this change in prevalence is because domestic violence shelters for women were opened during the same time period (source here). Instead of resorting to murder, many women can now escape their abuse through other means that are not available to men. Speculation is that if domestic violence against men was taken as seriously as domestic violence against women, the rate of murdered women would go down as well. Since abused men are left with fewer non-violent options compared to abused women, they often end up resorting to suicide or murder in order to escape their abuse. Of course, none of this is meant to downplay the problem of murdered spouses. Instead, I want to provide context, and propose a solution: If men were given better options to escape from abusive relationships (including better divorce options that don't ruin them financially or cost them access to their children), then there would be fewer women murdered by their partners. Better domestic violence resources for men wouldn't just help men, but would also help women. And despite all of this, 68% doesn't represent some kind of huge majority where male victims are a simple side note in the discussion. It also happens to be the only data point that skews towards women on this topic. And it represents the smallest number of victims overall, even compared to other forms of serious abuse. Put simply, spousal murder is incredibly rare, regardless of gender. Rates of serious injury and hospitalization It's probably best to describe research in this category as "mixed". But that is because most studies find rates that are fairly close to being the same for men and women, with only small deviations away from the middle. For example, a 2008 study conducted on college campuses (in 32 different countries) found that "severe assault" affected men 42% of the time, and women 58% of the time (Table 1, page 258). Another study found that 62% of people injured by intimate partners in heterosexual relationships were women. These are the types of studies people quote when they talk about domestic violence against women being worse than it is against men. And as you can see, that kind of conclusion is tempered by findings that aren't as dramatic as they're often implied to be. There are also quite a few studies that show rates that are higher for men than they are for women. For example, the 1975 US National Family Violence Survey found that 4.6% of men and 3.8% of women had experienced "severe" forms of domestic violence (among all forms of domestic violence, the rate was 12% for men and 11.6% for women) (source). Several other national surveys have found that "serious" cases of domestic violence tend to involve women as abusers, and men as victims, more often than the reverse. This is true even in years where the overall rate of male perpetration was higher than it was for female perpetration (like in the 2001 National Violence Against Women Survey, cited below). And when looking only at cases that require professional medical attention, 58% of victims are men (source also cited below). Still, myths about this continue to persist and are taken as fact, despite the data clearly indicating something very different.
16% of men and 14% of women report being seriously injured by their partner.
Straus, M. A., Hamby, S. L., Boney-McCoy, S., & Sugarman, D. B. (1996). The revised conflict tactics scales (CTS2) development and preliminary psychometric data. Journal of family issues, 17(3), 283-316. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/019251396017003001
Assaulted men are more likely than assaulted women to experience serious attacks by being hit with an object, beat up, threatened with a knife or being knifed.
Hoff, B. H. (2001). The risk of serious physical injury from assault by a woman intimate: A re-examination of national violence against women survey data on type of assault by an intimate. MenWeb on-line Journal (ISSN: 1095-5240 http://www.menweb.org/NVAWSrisk.htm). Retrieved from Web on Jan, 18, 2011.
1.8% of men and 1.2% of women reported that their injuries required first aid, while 1.5% of men and 1.1% of women reported that their injuries needed treated by a doctor or nurse.
The least commonly reported violence was severe perpetration (<1.0% of total sample or 5% of violent relationships, n = 32), where it appears more women (1.6%; n = 29) than men (.9%; n = 2) reported performing such violence...Other findings showed that men reported being the victim of severe violence (3.%; n = 51) more frequently than women (1.9%; n = 35); but, this differences was only marginally significant.
Studies of undergraduate college students found that men sustained higher levels of moderate violence than women with severe violence being rare for both women and men (Katz, Kuffel, & Coblentz, 2002) and 29% of males and 35% of females reported perpetrating physical aggression; 12.5% of the males and 4.5% of the females reported receiving severe physical aggression; 14% of females reported that they were the sole perpetrators of aggression — injuries were sustained by 8.4% of males and 5% of females (Hines & Saudino, 2002). These rates, which suggest gender symmetry in the perpetration of relationship violence, are not unique and Fiebert (2004) has amassed a bibliography of 159 peer-reviewed publications finding equal or greater aggression by females than males. The total collected sample is greater than 109,000. An earlier version was published in 1997 (Fiebert, 1997).
When domestic violence related suicides are combined with domestic violence homicides, the total numbers of domestic violence related deaths are higher for males than females.
‘She said “what are you gonna do? I’ll start screaming rape and you’re up in court tomorrow, do you think they’ll believe anything you’ve got to say?’’'
The legal system itself commonly gets abused, especially when children are involved. The so-called "silver bullet" refers to the fact that judges believe women by default, and will remove a child from the father's care if the mother lies about abuse. Up to 50% of child abuse cases, 70% of domestic violence cases, and 90% of restraining orders are estimated to be either false or baseless (which basically means "frivolous" in a legal context). Not only are children wielded by abusers against their victims, but financial assets are also commonly held over their heads as well. The fact that family court is incredibly biased against fathers gets exploited and used as a form of abuse in its own right. While these cases are not physically violent, I think it is important to realize that they have the potential to ruin lives, and can even lead to suicide. "I never put my hands on you" is not an excuse. This type of abuse is just as harmful and can be just as deadly, as physical abuse. Unreported Cases Research indicates that men have a tendency to underreport their abuse. It is estimated that men are 3 to 6 times less likely to report their abuse compared to women (source 1, source 2). Men are also less likely to press charges and are more likely to be intimidated against standing trial. And to make matters worse, the police are less likely to take male victims seriously compared to female victims, sometimes even arresting the man instead of the woman (source 1, source 2, source 3, source 4). This pattern is so pronounced that when laws were passed requiring the police to automatically press charges when called for domestic disturbances, the number of women arrested on domestic violence charges increased dramatically. This has been referred to as an "unintended consequence" by the proponents of these bills, who thought that they would see an increase in the number of arrests for men instead (source). Anyways, thanks for reading! And credit to u/Oncefa2 for some of this.
The Resurrection According to Paul: A Guide to Paul's Understanding of the Resurrection
Introduction: This post attempts to show that Paul could not have conceived of a resurrection body where the deceased earthly body is left behind in the grave. As John Granger Cook hypothesizes:
There is no fundamental difference between Paul’s conception of the resurrection body and that of the Gospels.
The most frequently used verb for resurrection in the New Testament is ἐγείρω/egeirō. Throughout the chapter, Paul uses the verb "egeirō" for the resurrection of the dead (cf. 1 Cor 15:15-16, 29, 32, 35, 42-43, 44, 52). Surprisingly, however, despite it's importance in the NT and it's central place as language for the resurrection, this verb has received little detailed study. This verb was not a slippery term as often assumed. Until the reaction of the Gnostics in the 2nd century and later, this word was used to denote bodily resurrection by both Jews and pagans, and both groups continued to use "egeiro" to denote bodily resurrection into late antiquity (cf. John Granger Cook, Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Apotheosis, Mohr Siebeck, 2018, pp. 574). James P. Ware writes:
The Greek verb ἐγείρω has a more restricted semantic range, and cannot mean raise or rise in this wider sense of elevation or ascension. Rather, ἐγείρω means to get up or stand up, that is, to rise from a supine to a standing position. Thus the verb is regularly used to denote the raising or rising up of one who has fallen (LXX Exod 23.5; LXX1 Kings 5.3; LXX Eccles 4.10; Jdt 10.23; Philo, Agr. 122; Mut. 56; Migr. 122; Matt 12.11; Mark 9.27; Acts 9.8; 1 Clem 59.4). It is also used of one kneeling or prostrate being raised back to a standing position (LXX 1 Kings 2.8; LXX 2 Kings 12.17; LXX Ps 112.7; LXX Dan 10.10; Philo, Ebr. 156; Post. 149; Matt 17.7; Luke 11.8; Acts 10.26; Hermas, Vis. 2.1.3; 3.2.4). The verb is used of one lying down, very frequently of one lying sick,who is restored to a standing posture (Matt 8.15; 9.5, 6, 7; Mark 1.31; 2.9, 11, 12; Luke 5.23–4; John 5.8 ; Acts3.6-7; James 5.15). The verb is also frequently used of one sitting who rises to stand (LXX Ps 126.2; LXX Isa 14.9; Matt 26.46; Mark 3.3; 10.49; 14.42; Luke 6.8; John 11.29; 13.4; 14.31; Hermas, Vis. 1.4.1). In no instance within ancient Greek literature does ἐγείρω denote the concept of ascension, elevation or assumption. Rather, it denotes the action whereby one who is prone, sitting, prostrate or lying down is restored to a standing position.
(James P. Ware, The Resurrection of Jesus in the Pre-Pauline Formula of 1 Cor 15.3–5, New Testament Studies, 2014, p. 494) The 2018 Brill Encyclopedia entry affirms Ware's work. Cook in his 2018 monologue (Mohr Siebeck) conjured up a gallery of examples in ancient literature where "egeiro" simply entailed standing up from a supine position (and not ascension). This following short gallery derives from Cook's book Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Apotheosis, Mohr Siebeck, 2018 (pp. 13-15, 19-20): (1) In a passage in the Iliad, Nestor wakes Diomedes:
Wake up, son of Tydeus, why do you sleep the whole night through? ... So he spoke, and he leapt up very quickly. (Homer Il. 10.159, 162)
"Wake up" includes the sense of “getting up,” or at least implies it. - (2) The chorus (that is, the Furies) in the Eumenides of Aeschylus cry to each other to wake/get up after Orestes has escaped:
Wake/get up, you get her up, and I [will get] you up. Do you still sleep? Stand up, shaking off sleep. (Aeschylus Eum. 140–1)
The command to stand clarifies the action (motion upward) implicit in the command to “wake” or “get up. - (3) Cytherea, in Bion’s Epitaph for Adonis, uses the verb to coax her dying lover upward, even if for one last kiss:
Rouse yourself a little, Adonis, and kiss me for a final time; kiss me as much as your kiss has life, until you breathe your last into my mouth, and your spirit flows into my heart ... (Bion [Epitaph. Adon.] 1.45–8)
- (4) An idyll attributed to Theocritus about two fishermen illustrates the motion of standing up straight from a supine position:
And their customary labor roused up the fishermen, and chasing the sleep from their eyelids, provoked speech in their minds. (Theocritus Id. 21.20–1)
- (5) In a much later example from Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic emperor contemplates the occasional difficulty of waking/getting up from sleep:
Whenever you wake/get up from sleep with difficulty, remember that according to your condition and human nature you perform social activities, and that sleeping is something also shared with irrational animals. (Marcus Aurelius Med. 8.12)
The active component of the verb (i.e., getting up) is readily apparent in the emperor’s text. - (6) In Aristophanes’ Clouds, a father attempts to get his sleeping son up:
(Strepsiades) But first I wish to wake him/rouse himup. How then could I rouse him up in the gentlest way? How? Phidippides, my little Phidippides. (Phidippides) What, father? (Str.) Kiss me, and give me your right hand. (Aristophanes Nub. 78–81)
Presumably, Strepsiades sits or stands up after his father takes his hand. But the verb probably contains, even here, the sense of rising up from his supine position, since the father clearly intends to get his son into an upright position, as the reference to his “hand” makes clear. - (7) In his Frogs, Aristophanes includes a character who roused himself up (or “woke up”), after Dionysus recounts his exploits to Heracles: "and then I roused myself up" (Aristophanes Ran. 51). - (8) An ancient scholiast also believed the verb indicates “getting up,” since it implies that Dionysus dreamed of his alleged naval victory:
And then I woke up: it is a joke about Dionysus. And then, he said, I got up from a dream; making it clear that a dream accomplished these things. (Scholia in Aristophanem Ran. 51)
Clearly the scholiast believes that a seme of “upward motion” belongs to the verb. - (9) In the Rhesus the king’s charioteer awakes from sleep when he dreams that the king’s horses are being ridden by wolves:
And I roused up from sleep warding off the beasts [wolves] from the horses. For the night terror urged me. And raising my head, I hear the moaning of the dying. A warm stream of new blood from the wound of my master falls on me, as he died hard. I rise upright, my hand empty of any spear ... ([Euripides] Rhesus 787–92).
This is a clear example of the spatial motion upward contained in the verb. - (10) An ordinary inscription from Rome also provides striking additional evidence. The last line from this burial inscription says ("ἐντεῦθεν οὐθὶς ἀποθανὼν ἐγ[ε]ίρετ[αι]") (‘no one who has died arises from here’). In this inscription, the use of ἐντεῦθεν (‘from here’) together with ἐγείρω unambiguously indicates the concept of getting up or arising from the tomb (IGUR III.1406). There are further arguments in favor of the notion that Paul is arguing for a resurrected body that is continuities to the body that is laid in the tomb, and against the Martin, Engberg-Pedersen, and Borg view of the resurrected body being some sort of ethereal body (see Ware's article here):
Within 15:36–49, which is structured by twelve antithetically paired verbs (that is, six pairs of verbs) denoting death (or the mortal state) and resurrection (or the risen state), the subject of these antithetical verbal pairs is one and the same both for verbs denoting death, and those denoting resurrection. The subject throughout is the perishable body, which “dies” but “is made alive” again by God (15:36), which is “sown” (speiretai) in mortality and death, but “raised” (egeiretai) to imperishable life (15:42–44). This basic observation, which is nonetheless commonly ignored by interpreters, has profound exegetical implications. Paul does not describe resurrection as an event in which x (the present body) is sown, but y (a body distinct from the present body) is raised, but in which a single x (the present body) is sown a perishable x, but raised an imperishable x.
"Throughout 15:50–54 [SEE DIAGRAM BELOW], the subject of the verbs Paul uses to describe the resurrection event is the corruptible body of flesh, whether laid in the tomb or still living at the parousia. It is this present body that is raised and transformed. Indeed, the fourfold repetition of “this” (τοῦτο) emphasizes that it is this mortal, perishable body that is the subject of the transformation. “The subject persists throughout the radical change." Mortal flesh, far from being excluded from this divine, saving event, is the subject of that event. (Ware, "Paul's Understanding of the Resurrection," pp. 825). The fact that Paul envisions the bodies of the living to be transformed rather than annihilated is one more clear indicator of the physical and bodily character of the resurrection of the dead in his thought, since he envisions the same "change" for all (1 Cor 15:51).
In addition to the verb egeiro, Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 employs a variety of additional verbs to denote the resurrection event: zoopoieo (“make alive”; 15:36, 45; cf. 15:22), phoreo (“be clothed”; 15:49), alasso (“change”; 15:51, 52), and enduo (“clothe”; 15:53, 54). These additional verbs are significant, for they each express, in different ways, not the annihilation or replacement of the fleshly body, but its revival (zoopoieo), investiture (phoreo, enduo), and transformation (alasso).
The series of contrasts within 15:36–54 bet ween the ante-mortem and risen body do not occur in the subject of these periods, but in their predicates (verbs and verbal complements). And these predicate complements invariably describe a change of quality rather than of substance, in which what was once perishable, dishonored, weak, and mortal is endowed with imperishability, glory, power, and immortality (15:42–43; 15:52–54). Paul’s series of oppositions does not describe two bodies distinct in substance, but two contrasting modes of existence of the same body, one prior to and the other subsequent to the resurrection.
For #2 (from Ware's article):
Subject
Verb
Predicate
will be clothed with
image of the Man from heaven
V. 51 we all
will be changed
______________________
V. 52 the dead
will be raised
imperishable
we
will be changed
______________________
V. 53 this perishable
must be clothed with
imperishability
this mortal body
must be clothed with
V. 54 this perishable body
is clothed with
imperishability
this mortal body
is clothed with
immortality
Moreover, Paul explicitly teaches a resurrection where the earthly body itself is transformed instead of discarded in his other epistles. See, for example, Philippians 3:21:
[Jesus Christ] will transform our lowly body to be conformed to his glorious body, in accordance with the outworking of his power whereby he is able to subject the entire universe to himself.
When one reads the context of Phil 3:1-4:1, it becomes clear that, just like, 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15, Paul's thought embraces the whole eschatological event, involving both the living and the dead. On Philippians 3:21 for instance, the exclusion of the resurrection from this passage will not work exegetically. This verse needs to be read within the larger passage, Philippians 3:1-4:1. 3:21 picks up, and brings to a climax, the thought in 3:10-11, where Paul expresses his personal hope that he "may by any means possible arrive at the resurrection from the dead." The "we" of Philippians 3:20-21 picks up the "I" of Philippians 3:10-11. In light of 3:10-11, it is impossible that the thought of 3:21 excludes the resurrection. Than there is Rom 8:11:
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
Lastly, in ancient Judaism there were a number of options for the afterlife: eternal soul, resurrection of the body, awakening of the spirit, or nothing. It seems, however, that whenever Jewish texts affirmed of resurrection (i.e. upward movement), they affirmed of bodily resurrection. In other words, while there were many different beliefs in the afterlife, there were not various types of "resurrection" beliefs. As John Granger Cook says in his recent book, "The current fashion among some scholars of asserting that there were various concepts of “resurrection” in Second Temple Judaism seems fundamentally wrong [...] Spirits or souls do not rise from the dead in ancient Judaism, people do. (2018, 569). Many Jewish texts spoke of bodily resurrection. This gallery here is also derived mostly from Cook's 2018 monologue (chapter 6): (1) Daniel 12:2-3 (II B.C.E.)
“Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.
"Daniel is almost certainly referring to the resurrection of the dead. [...] The decisive confirmation of the bodily nature of resurrection in Daniel is the conclusion of the book where the seer is told that he will himself rise from the dead" (Cook, 465, 467):
12:13 But you, go your way to the end and rest; you shall rise [“stand”] for your reward at the end of days (NRSV mod.)
- (2) 2 Maccabees 7:7, 9-11, 23 (II B.C.E.)
7 After the first brother had died in this way, they brought forward the second for their sport. They tore off the skin of his head with the hair, and asked him, “Will you eat rather than have your body punished limb by limb?” 8 He replied in the language of his ancestors and said to them, “No.” Therefore he in turn underwent tortures as the first brother had done. [...] After him, the third was the victim of their sport. When it was demanded, he quickly put out his tongue and courageously stretched forth his hands, 11 and said nobly, “I got these from Heaven, and because of his laws I disdain them, and from him I hope to get them back again.” - 23 The creator of the cosmos, the one who shaped the origin of the human and invented the origin of all things, shall restore breath and life to you again with mercy, since now you disdain your very selves for the sake of his laws.
"2 Maccabees represents one of the most intensely physical understandings that can be found in early Jewish literature. The martyrs profess their hope in a resurrection in which the very same members of the body will be restored to them in a new and everlasting life (7:7, 9–11)." (C.D Elledge, Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism, 200 BCE-CE 200, Oxford Press, 2017, p. 26-27) - (3) 1 Enoch 92:3:
The righteous one will arise from sleep; he will arise and walk in the paths of righteousness, and all his path and his journey (will be) in piety and eternal mercy.
"There seems to be no fundamental reason for rejecting the conclusion that the text refers to the resurrection of the righteous and their subsequent behavior. The image of walking apparently envisions a “physical resurrection from the dead.” The emphasis on physically rising from sleep, and not just waking from sleep, also supports the contention that the reference is to resurrection." (Cook: 490-491) - (4) Syrian Baruch (Late I C.E.) "2 Bar 30:1 describes the fate of those who hope in the Messiah:
And it shall come to pass after these things, when the time of the advent of the Messiah is fulfilled, that He shall return in glory. Then all who have fallen asleep in hope of Him shall rise again.
The author then describes the appearance of the souls of the righteous and the wicked (2 Bar 30:3–5). The Lord announces the resurrection to Baruch (2 Bar 42:8):
And the dust shall be called, and there shall be said to it: “Give back that which is not yours, and raise up all that you have kept until its time.”
The prophet queries the Almighty (2 Bar 49:2):
In what shape will those live who live in Your day? Or how will the splendor of those who (are) after that time continue?
He wonders if their form will be changed (2 Bar 49:3):
Will they then resume this form of the present, and put on these members that chains clothe, which are now involved in evils, and in which evils are consummated, or will you perchance change these things which have been in the world as also the world?
The question is about the nature of the resurrection body. The same image appears in this text (2 Bar 50:2–3):
For the earth shall then assuredly restore the dead, which it now receives, in order to preserve them. It shall make no change in their form, but as it has received, so shall it restore them, and as I delivered them unto it, so also shall it raise them. 3 For then it will be necessary to show the living that the dead have come to life again
This is undoubtedly resurrection of the body. The shape of the wicked will then become more evil, and the shape of the righteous will “become progressively more glorious” (2 Bar 51:2–5)." (Cook, pp. 496-497) - (5) The Fourth Sibylline Oracle (Late I C.E.)
God himself will again give shape to the bones and ashes of people, and will raise mortals again, as they were before. (Sib. Or. 4.181-2)
"The Fourth Sibylline Oracle affirms that resurrection bodies will have the same form as they did in life." (Cook: 500) - (6) The Testament of Judah 25:1 (II B.C.E -II C.E.)
And after these things shall Abraham and Isaac and Jacob arise unto life (25:1)
"The verb’s use [arise] indicates bodily resurrection" (Cook: 456) - (7) T. Ab. 7:17 (I-II C.E.) Bodily resurrection occurs in T. Ab.:
“At that time all flesh shall rise” (T. Ab. 7.17; the short recension)
- (8) SEG 15, 811 (II-III C.E.) "A funerary inscription for a Jewish woman named Regina from the Monteverde catacombs [says]:
She will live again, return to the light again. For she can hope that she will rise to the life promised as a real assurance to the worthy and the pious in that she has deserved to possess an abode in the hallowed land.
Joseph S. Park writes that surgat “seems to evoke an image of the deceased literally rising from the grave” (Park, Conceptions, p. 167)." (Cook: 474) ________________________________________________________________________________________________________
An Ethereal Resurrection?
According to many, what Paul thinks of is an ethereal resurrection - a heavenly body discontinuities with the body that decomposes in the ground. Thus Paul states that we are raised in a "spiritual body" (1 Cor 15:44), which he contrasts with the earthly body ("it is sown a physical body"), and that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor 15:50). Paul also seems to believe that the earthly body is like a seed husk - discarded, while we are transformed into a new ethereal body (cf. 1 Cor 15:36-37). 2 Corinthians seems to be even clearer when Paul says in 2 Cor 5:1 that “the earthly tent we live in is destroyed (kataluthē)” and in 2 Cor 5:3, where Paul says that the earthly body “will be taken off (ekdysamenoi).” Thus, the source of the resurrected body is not the present earthly body, but it will be brought from heaven (2 Cor 5:2).
(1) On 1 Corinthians 15:44, what Paul has in mind when he says "it is raised a spiritual body" is a physical body that is empowered by pneuma, not made by it. The first indication of this is the use of the verb "egeiro." While egeiro appears in some contexts in which the soul is stimulated or roused, "nowhere in classical Greek or in the Greek of Jewish texts does a soul (or spirit) “rise” in a text that describes a resurrection" (John Granger Cook, Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Apotheosis, Mohr Siebeck, 2018, pp. 36). This was true until gnostic interpreters of the second century (ibid, 36). Furthermore, in 1 Cor 2:14-15, Paul makes a similar distinction between psychikos and pneumatikos. 1 Cor 2:14-15 says:
Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny.
It makes no sense imagining Paul speaking about a person composed of soul verses those composed of pneuma. The adjective pneumatikos is used to refer to people or things empowered by the Spirit of God, such as: palpable manna and water (10:3–4), a tangible rock (10:4), and flesh and blood human beings (3:1; 14:37). Used with soma in 15:44, pneumatikos indicates that the risen body will be a physical body empowered by pneuma. James P. Ware writes:
The adjective that Paul here contrasts with πνευματικός is not σάρκινος (cognate with σάρξ), referring to the flesh, but ψυχικός (cognate with ψυχή), referring to the soul. This adjective is used in texts outside the NT, without exception, with reference to the properties or activities of the soul (e.g., 4 Macc 1:32; Aristotle, Eth. nic. 3.10.2; Epictetus, Diatr. 3.7.5–7; Plutarch, Plac. philos. 1.8). Modifying σῶμα as here, with reference to the present body, the adjective describes this body as given life or activity by the soul. The adjective has nothing to do with the body’s composition but denotes the source of the mortal body’s life and activity.
(Ware, "Paul's Understanding of the Resurrection," pp. 832). Thus, “if σῶμα πνευματικόν in this context describes the composition of the future body, as a body composed only of spirit, its correlate σῶμα ψυχικόν would perforce describe the composition of the present body, as a body composed only of soul. Paul would assert the absence of flesh and bones not only from the risen body but from the present mortal body as well!” (Ware, "Paul's Understanding of the Resurrection," pp. 832-833). Lastly, "the notion of a risen body composed of corporeal pneuma perforce entails (as Engberg-Pedersen has demonstrated) a specifically Stoic and pantheistic understanding of the relation of the divine to the cosmos, with the corollary that Paul conceived of the Spirit of God as a corporeal entity, composed of the same substance as the sun, moon, and stars (see Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology and Self, 8–38; idem, “Material Spirit,” 184–87). [...] Such a reconstruction of Paul’s thought [is] without historical plausibility (cf. Rom 1:20–25; 4:17; 11:33–36; 1 Cor 8:4–6; 10:7; 10:14; 1 Thess 1:9–10)." (Ware, "Paul's Understanding of the Resurrection," pp. 833-834). (2) On 1 Corinthians 15:36-37. Paul is comparing the naked seed (A) placed in the ground with the human dead body (B) that is placed in the ground; so as the (future) plant body (A') will be, so will the resurrection body (B') be. So as A is to B, A' is to B' - if one were to commit the analogy to symbolic form. The analogy points to both the material continuity of the mortal and risen body and the transformation of the mortal body that takes place in the resurrection event. As James P. Ware points out:
What is often missed is the critical significance of verse 39 for our understanding of resurrection in Paul. For the juxtaposition of 15:39 with 15:37 and 15:40–41 shows that here, reflecting the normal usage of Paul’s Greek-speaking audience, “flesh” (sarx) and “body” (sōma) function as synonymous terms for the human body. Paul’s analogy in 15:36–41 assumes both that the risen body will be a body (15:37–38, 40–41) and that it will be composed of flesh (15:39). Paul’s reminder of the various kinds of flesh (15:39), bodies (15:40), and bodily splendor (15:41) functions to prepare the reader for the depiction of transformed embodiment to follow in 15:42–54, in which the risen body of flesh is differentiated from its mortal counterpart not by change of substance, but by its freedom from weakness, mortality, and decay.
(James P. Ware, Paul's Theology in Context, Eerdmans, 2019, pp. 213-214) Furthermore, Paul’s saying in 1 Cor 15:37, γυμνὸς κόκκος, has nothing to do with a Platonist naked soul or Stoic imagery of sowing and seeds. The context itself indicates that stoicism or Platonism is not in the mind of Paul when he says "γυμνὸς κόκκος." Instead, as John Granger Cook says, texts from Greek biology and agriculture are far more revealing. See John Granger Cook, A Naked Seed: Platonism, Stoicism, or Agriculture in 1Cor 15,37?, Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft | Volume 111: Issue 2, 2020. 1 Clement and 3 Corinthians, for example, could be instructive for how we interpret 1 Cor 15:37, for the authors also refer to the resurrection using the image of naked seeds, and they are early interpretations to the preferred biological/agricultural reading of 1 Cor 15:37. 1 Clement says:
The sower went out and cast into the ground each of the seeds, which falling on the ground dry and naked decay. Then out of decay, the magnificence of the master’s providence raises them up, and from one seed more grow and produce fruit. (1 Clem 24:2)
"Clement’s imagery is physical, and the seeds are not naked souls, nor does he include any Stoic metaphors" (ibid, 308). 3 Corinthians says:
For they do not know, Corinthians, that the seed of wheat or other varieties, which are cast into the ground naked and which decay below, are raised by the will of God in body and clothed; so that not only is the body raised that was cast (into the ground), but it is abounding, upright, and blessed. (3Cor = AcPlCor 2:26–27)
3 Corinthian's imagery is clearly a flesh and bones resurrection. (3) On 1 Corinthians 15:50, "flesh and blood" is not a synonym for "physical" or "that which is opposed to the physical." It is a semitism (or a figure of speech) for mortality. Thus, Paul is saying that mortality does not inherit the kingdom of God. John Granger Cook writes:
“flesh and blood” – in particular its use as a rabbinic expression which simply refers to human nature in its fragility and not simply to “physical flesh.” An early rabbinic example is from the Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael where Exod 12:12 “I am the Lord” is explained as “What flesh and blood cannot say” (Mek. Pesach 1:7). Another occurrence is a discussion of Exod 15:1 “I will sing unto the Lord for he is really exalted,” which is explained by an example that begins “when a king of flesh and blood enters a province … (Mek. Shirata 3:1)
(John Granger Cook, Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Apotheosis, Mohr Siebeck, 2018, pp. 585) (4) On 2 Corinthians 5:1-5, there is nothing in this passage that conflicts with Paul's robust doctrine of a "flesh and bones" resurrection. First off, in verse 3, what Paul wrote was endysamenoi (I put on, clothe), instead of ekdusamenoi (having put off). The manuscript evidence that supports this is overwhelming (p46 א B C D2 Ψ 0243. 33. 1739. 1881. Byz, lat, sy, co; Cl.). The evidence for ekdusamenoi is far less (see: Kevin Daugherty, Naked Bodies and Heavenly Clothing, Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism 8 [2011–12], pp. 214). 2 Cor 5:4 is instructive on this regard when Paul says: "not that we wish to be unclothed (ekdusasthai) but more fully clothed (ependusasthai)." This expresses both the continuity of the risen body with the mortal body, and its discontinuity, in its transformation to imperishability through the work of the Spirit. "Destroyed" in 2 Cor 5:1a is referring to death. 2 Cor 5:1 than stresses upon the transformation of the resurrection body when it says that we will receive an eternal heavenly body. It does not, however, indicate that the earthly body is left behind (cf. 2 Cor 5:3-4). That Paul in v. 2 is thinking of the heavens as a place where some kind of ethereal body that is now literally existent is probably false. Just like in 1 Cor 15:47, when Paul speaks in v. 2 of "the heavens" he is referring to God in the fullness of his presence and glory. Paul thus describes the risen body as "from heaven" in v. 2 in that it is the direct work of the Spirit of God (cf. 1 Cor 15:47-49). (5) On Josephus, "at no point in any of these texts does Josephus adopt the clear verbs for resurrection used by the Hellenistic translators of Dan 12:2. His language resembles reincarnation far closer than the texts of resurrection surveyed in this chapter." (John Granger Cook, Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Apotheosis, Mohr Siebeck, 2018, pp. 513). Paul in 1 Cor 15 is expressing a flesh and bones resurrection as evidence by his use of the language that Josephus here starklyavoids: the Jewish language of resurrection (egeiro and anastasis). Plus, as D. Boyarin writes: “Josephus’s allusion ... to the idea of metempsychosis is presumably an attempt to present resurrection in a form more familiar to his audience.” (Border Lines. The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, 2004, pp. 13–22). ________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Bibliography
Boyarin, Daniel. Border LinesThePartition ofJudaeo-Christianity. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
Cook, John Granger. “A Naked Seed: Platonism, Stoicism, or Agriculture in 1Cor 15,37?” ZeitschriftFür DieNeutestamentlicheWissenschaft, vol. 111, no. 2, 2020, pp. 289–309. doi:10.1515/znw-2020-0012.
Cook, John Granger. “Resurrection in Paganism and the Question of an Empty Tomb in 1 Corinthians 15.” New Testament Studies, vol. 63, no. 1, 2017, pp. 56–75. https://doi.org/10.1017/S002868851600028X
Daugherty, Kevin. Naked Bodies and Heavenly Clothing:gumnosin 2 Corinthians 5.3. Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism 8, (2011-2012).
Elledge, C. D. Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism, 200 BCE-CE 2000. Oxford Univ. Press, 2016.
Ware, James P., Paul's Theology in Context: Creation, Incarnation, Covenant, and Kingdom. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2019.
Ware, James P. " Paul's Understanding of the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:36–54." Journal of Biblical Literature , Vol. 133, No. 4 (Winter 2014), pp. 809-835 https://doi.org/10.15699/jbibllite.133.4.809
Ware, James P. “The Resurrection of Jesus in the Pre-Pauline Formula of 1 Cor 15.3–5.” New Testament Studies, vol. 60, no. 4, 2014, pp. 475–498. doi:10.1017/s0028688514000150
How music expresses and exorcises grief in Three Colours Blue (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1993)
Three Colours Blue is like magic to me, the way it's put together just seems so perfect, it never fails to make me feel. It's like magic to me. I wrote an essay on how its use of music. It's quite long, so it might just be interesting to you if you already love (or at least enjoy) this film, but here it is anyway! This essay is available with illustrative images here, as well as full bibliography: https://filmpositivity.com/2021/02/05/music-and-grief-in-three-colours-blue/ If you just want to read the text though, here it is: Unplugging the Empathy Machine: The Inescapability of Music in Three Colours Blue Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1993) (contains spoilers for Three Colours Blue) I absolutely adore this film, the way it wordlessly allows intimate access to its main characters emotional state, and makes the audience feel. I wrote a little about it for a Film of the Month entry previously, but this is a much more intensive look into the film, and its use of music. I don’t talk about the quality of the music itself, but rather its narrative purpose and the ways it is used filmically. So I just want to state up front that composer for the film Zbigniew Preisner’s music is gorgeous throughout, and complements the film beautifully. Three Colours Blue: Grief and Music Roger Ebert described cinema as “the most powerful empathy machine in all the arts.” (Ebert 2005), the best means in the arts to feel and live in the experience of another human being, even if only for a brief time. Music is a huge part of the experiential nature of cinema, amplifying tone, feeling and character. Three Colours Blue (henceforth referred to as Blue) embodies and expresses grief through film form. It makes its audience feel, and seems itself to feel right along with us. Music is what most drives this expression and feeling. Music is the broken but still beating heart of the film. Each film in the Three Colours trilogy corresponds to the colours of the French flag, and each is thematically linked to the ideals of the French motto “Liberty, equality, fraternity.”, albeit loosely. Blue is tied to liberty, and tells the story of Julie (Juliette Binoche), a wealthy young woman who, at the film’s beginning, is involved in a car crash which causes the death of her composer husband and young daughter. The rest of the film follows her attempt to deal with this grief by physically and emotionally detaching herself from the ties that bind her to other people, exploring in an extreme sense the theme of emotional liberty that Kieślowski intended for the film. On Blue’s enigmatic title, Kieślowski said: “The moment something is named, the possibility of free interpretation is cut off. The moment you leave something unnamed, and leave the place of the name open, that place can be filled by anyone in the cinema, everyone who has bought a ticket.” (Coates 1999, p. 173) Similarly, a piece of music does not need an explanatory title for it to illicit an emotional response, or be interpreted. This absence of elucidated meaning is evident in Blue’s depiction of Julie’s emotional state. Through its use of music, as well as camera, editing and, of course, colour, Blue wordlessly creates a sense of Julie’s anguish and allows the audience to share in her experience. The audience is given an opportunity to share in Julie’s experience and extract their own meaning from the film, almost from its very beginning. A Sudden Loss The opening scene depicts the car crash that kickstarts the film’s narrative, with an emphasis on close-ups of the car in motion and on Julie’s daughter Anna. Many shots are bathed in blue, as cinematographer Sławomir Idziak wrapped “the entire camera in blue gel and opening the back gate at key moments so that the film stock would be directly exposed to a nebulous blue light” (Woodward 2017, p. 63). It’s clear the colour is to be a powerful source of meaning in this film, but at this point in the film that particular meaning has not yet been made clear. Julie is both absent and present in this opening scene, mirroring her emotional and physical withdrawal from friends and family in the rest of the film. While physically present in the car with her husband and daughter, she is not discernibly seen in any shots, which instead show Julie’s daughter Anna and establish a connection between Anna and the colour blue, which will recur throughout the film. At this time the focus of the film has not yet been established, instead showing an un-named and un-speaking group of people in a car before a tragic accident. Even the crash itself is not shown, the impact instead happening off-frame and then the wreckage viewed from a distance as a hitchhiker runs towards it to provide help. The screen fades to black, in preparation for revealing its central focus. “In the blank screen, Blue testifies to an absence, a space which will fissure the film as representation. The film will remain split between intense subjectivity and the denial of vision.” (Wilson 1998, p. 351). So far, music is similarly absent from the film. Following the crash and fade to black, there is a cut to a close up of a wispy looking thread or feather on a bed, with the background out of focus. A figure appears in this unfocused background, and hand reaches towards the camera, and there is a cut to an extreme close-up of an eye, with a doctor reflected on the iris. The doctor delivers the news of the death of Julie’s husband, and the camera cuts to a close-up revealing Julie’s entire face. She asks about her daughter, and the doctor confirms her death as well. Julie shuts her eyes tight and pushes her face towards the pillow, the camera remaining tightly focused on her face. Immediately following this there is a cut to a glass window being shattered. This creates an association of violence and devastation, the audience is sharing in Julie’s earth-shattering and world-changing grief: “From this point, the film is about the interior of Julie—her mind, her experience, her self—as she comes to terms with her traumatic injury” (Robinson 2007, p. 510). We cannot come to know her grief through words, but it will become clear and be exorcised through music. Internal and External Music As Julie views the funeral of her famous composer husband and daughter from her hospital bed, music makes its first appearance. The funeral march that accompanies the service soon becomes apparent as “a theme of the film, one that, like an extended motif, represents Julie’s suffering through memories of her dead husband.” (Paulus & McMaster 1999, p. 67-68). This music is introduced diegetically, but becomes meta-diegetic as the film goes on, appearing at times of great emotion for Julie, the theme playing in her mind and heard only by her and the audience. Throughout Blue there is a distinct lack of non-diegetic music, music appears only diegetically or meta-diegetically, which gives the impression of music being a character itself, “a physical body that is not just a fiction and a fantasy, but represents reality, is a real part of Julie’s life, a genuine reality, however ugly or beautiful that reality might be.” (Paulus & McMaster, p. 71). This relative scarcity of music means the audience is particularly attuned to its affect and importance whenever it does appear. The film begins with almost 9 minutes without music, so its first appearance through the funeral march theme highlights its significance, which will become more and more evident as the film continues, with music initially serving to give the audience a feeling for Julie’s inner emotional state. The March becomes inextricably linked to Julie’s grief as it plays while she watches the funeral on a portable TV under the covers of her hospital bed, a series of close-ups and extreme close-ups of her face and mouth forcing the audience to take-in and experience even the most minute of facial muscle movements, palpably demonstrating her grief and despair. As Julie reaches out to touch the TV screen displaying the coffins of her departed family, that feeling of being able to touch but still being separated is mirrored by the audience and its relationship to Julie through the cinema screen. The static on the TV screen by the funeral’s end signifies the end of Julie’s previous life, and the uncertainty of her future. Experience and Appearance In the realm of human experiences, Daniel Frampton notes that “appearances are real, they belong to being.” (2006, p. 40). Using a cube as an example to define intention and appearances, Frampton notes that only two or three sides of a cube can be seen at any given time, but the other sides can appear and be intended (and therefore experienced) in our minds, even though absent. (2006, p.40). For Blue, the audience can substitute this cube for Julie, the viewable sides of her being her physical form, words and actions, with the unseen and hidden side being her grief and internal emotions. Julie’s internal life and the depth of her grief is fully realised through her relationship to music, and Blue’s use of music in concert with image. We cannot phyiscally see it, but it is nonetheless fully experienced. At this stage of the film, Julie has found she is unable to kill herself, but does not wish to live the same life as before. She resolves to sever all emotional and physical ties to her former life and sets about getting rid of all those things that attach her to it: her former home and possessions, former friends and loved ones. Significantly, she retrieves the sheet music for her deceased husbands unfinished Concert for the Unification of Europe and destroys it, the theme playing in Julie’s head as she throws it into the back of a garbage truck and as the sheet music is pulped, the music similarly becomes mangled and destroyed on the soundtrack itself. The destruction of art is a particularly powerful image, and Julie’s actions demonstrate the strength of her intention to disconnect, as well as emphasising the power and depth of her grief to the audience, as “Although music is not a living being, especially not a loved living being, the destruction of the score is experienced as the death of a loved person.” (Paulus & McMaster 1999, p. 80). Blue and Blue Through music, colour, and the closeness of the camera “We are given the sense that we follow always one step behind [Julie], attentive to her every perception, but mindful also of our distance from her consciousness.” (Wilson 1998, p. 352). As the film continues, music and the colour blue intrude on Julie with greater frequency and impact, and help elucidate her emotional state for the audience’s experience, as the “perception of distance is subtly collapsed as we see too that while never knowing Julie’s trauma, or her state of mind, we are nevertheless subject to her shattered perceptions and to the intrusion of her mental disturbance.” (Wilson 1998, p. 352). Music will continually find its way into Julie’s life and remind her of her past, such as when an outside street performer plays the theme from the unfinished concerto while Julie is sitting in a café. Music is a constant intruder. One night, sitting on the stairs outside her apartment, Julie closes her eyes. Flecks of blue light begin to appear on screen, and part of the Song for the Unification of Europe begins to play. Julie’s eyes snap open, and the music and lights stop immediately. She closes her eyes again, and the music and lights return. The music, a reminder of her old life, is inescapable. Through combination of sound and image, the audience knows that the music is playing inside Julie’s head, not simply as part of the film’s soundtrack. It is not exactly diegetic, but meta-diegetic, coming from within Julie herself. Often, following intrusions like these are scenes of Julie in an overwhelmingly blue swimming pool, acting “as a barometer for Julie’s emotional condition” (Evans 2005, p. 80), and also doubling as a womb substitute (Olivier 2002, p. 122-123) and site of possible rebirth (Robinson 2007, p. 518). There are four of these scenes in all, and the second is perhaps the most emotionally and experientially powerful of them all, coming straight after Julie’s meeting with the hitch hiker who was first at the scene of her and her family’s car crash. In this meeting, the hitch hiker attempts to return a gold necklace he found at the scene, and the sight and touch of it appears to trigger a powerful memory of the incident. There is no visual rendering of the memory, only the music of the Funeral March and a fade to black to indicate an abrupt moment of introspection, before fading back in some time later to continue the same scene. A fade is typically used in film to denote the passage of time or change of place (Bordwell et al 2017, p.251-252), but in this case Kieślowski goes against established film form and the visual language of cinema to instead use the fade to powerfully signify a retreat into the internal space of the character’s mind, with the re-appearing musical motif of the funeral march emphasising a link to Julie’s departed family, and the sustained period of blackness signifying deep introspection. The blackness lasts for about 10 seconds, and its unconventional use and placement make this time seem even longer, so by the time the film fades back in to continue the scene it is unclear how much time has actually been spent in introspection by Julie, only that it was a powerful emotional moment. This meeting is immediately followed by the second swimming pool scene, where a suddenly remembered burst of music, a portion of the unfinished concerto, erupts into her head as she is exiting the pool, stopping her cold and causing her to slowly slip back into the pool and take refuge, curling up under the surface of the water seemingly attempting “more to drown her memory than drown herself.” (Wilson 1998, p. 354). As Julie retreats underwater, the music similarly becomes drowned out on the soundtrack, underlining its meta-diegetic nature, heard and felt only by Julie in her mind (and of course, by the audience). Touch and Tactility Blue is an incredibly tactile film, privileging touch, closeness, experience and intimacy over distance and mere observation. Tactility is “a mode of perception and expression wherein all parts of the body commit themselves to, or are drawn into, a relationship with the world that is at once a mutual and intimate relation of contact.” (Barker 2009, p. 3). The closeness of the camera to and its particular focus on Julie promotes the audience’s intimacy towards her and enhances their experiencing of her emotions, while the abundance of extreme close-ups of hands and fingers emphasises touch and physicality, tying the physical and emotional worlds together. The scene in which Julie leaves her old home is particularly potent in this regard: Having just left her old home and previous life behind, Julie walks down a country path with the camera sharply focused on her severe, contemplative face. This look dissolves into one of emotional pain as she takes her hand and scrapes it along a harsh stone wall, the camera cutting to follow her hand as it roughly goes over the wall’s abrasive surface, Julie’s emotional pain being transferred into the physical. That physical discomfort is felt by the audience, further emphasising Julie’s pain. Touch and music are also linked throughout Blue, with written music lying inert on paper bursting to life as Julie traces her finger across it. Camera, soundtrack and touch combine to create the impression that the music is playing in Julie’s head, allowing further access into her inner world. Touch does not always give life to music though, as seen when the jaws of the garbage truck obliterated the sheets of music Julie threw there. As the jaws tear through the paper, the music distorts and fades before disappearing from the soundtrack entirely. Music and Re-engagement Eventually Julie is no longer able to deny the impulses that draw music, and by extension humanity, into her. Music and her relationship with it changes. Rather than destroying and denying her musical impulses and inclinations, Julie reconnects with Olivier (Benoît Régent), a composer colleague of her deceased husband and former lover, and the two set about completing the unfinished Concert for a Unified Europe. As the two complete the composition the camera becomes unfocused, and the emphasis is entirely on the music they are creating, “the external is completely overawed by the internal, material gives way to idea, reality is lost so that it is possible for the whole of the being to be immersed into the sound and the imagination” (Paulus & McMaster 1999, p. 81), and the audience is indeed immersed, fully experiencing the therapeutic process of artistic creation. The loving and social nature of humanity, and Julie’s own good nature, shatter her attempts at detachment from it, and “the film ends with a complex montage linking together all of the main characters and ending with Julie now openly crying, finally mourning – that is, recognizing – her loss.” (Woodward 2017, p. 68). While Blue is felt, sensed and experienced by the audience, the meaning derived from this experience can differ. In Blue, this is keenly characterised through the sugar cube scene, where Julie sits in a café, and there is a close-up of her hand holding a sugar cube just above a cup of coffee. The white sugar cube absorbs the dark brown coffee over a period of 5 seconds until turning completely brown itself, and Julie drops it into the coffee where it disappears with a splash. For Kieślowski, this shot was meant to “show that nothing around [Julie] is of interest to her – neither other people, nor their affairs, nor even this man who loves her and went through a lot to find her. She doesn’t care. Only the sugar cube matters, and she intentionally focuses on it to shut out all the rest.” (Kieślowski 1994). For scholar Bert Olivier however, it is “a powerful visual metaphor for Julie’s inability […] to withdraw or free herself from her surroundings once and for all: even things (the coffee, the sugar cube) conspire to merge with her, to draw her into their embrace.” (2002, p. 123). I’m more inclined to agree with Olivier’s interpretation, as we see the impossibility of shutting out “all the rest” throughout Blue. Memory, other people, music, something always intrudes. It is fitting that a film where art and humanity are inescapable, always drawn to a person, should attract rich and unintended meaning from its viewers. Just as Julie cannot unplug herself from emotion and society, tethered by memory and music, we cannot plug ourselves from the great empathy machine of cinema.
Lately, I have encountered a disturbing trend in both the public circle and the Church. The Church is abandoning patriotism, national pride, and basic principles of self-preservation. The Christians in mind make cases for these beliefs by taking parts of Scripture out of context – grossly out of context. I wrote a paper back in college for an ethics course that handled why the aforementioned behaviors are un-Christian and unhealthy. Today, I have tailored that paper to handle the specific topics at hand. INTRODUCTION Justifiable war: so many people are plagued by the issue. You need only look at the world to understand that this is an issue. In the roughly 3,400 years of secularly recorded existence, mankind has only seen about 250 non-consecutive years of peace.[i] Of those 3,400 years, 2,000 of them have been under Christian[ii] influence. In the modern world it seems as though there is no end to the amount of conflicts. In the Middle East, the Islamic State radical, militant Islamic group daily threatens the livelihood of Kurds, Yazidis, non-extremist Sunni Muslims,[iii] and non-Muslims altogether.[iv] Civil War rages on in numerous countries around the world; just do a quick online search to know this. The fact that war is a reality for everyone eventually comes to mind of the Christian, and he asks, “What should I do?” What should a Christian do in this fallen world that thrives on warfare? In what ways can a Christian participate in these wars, if at all, and why or why not? Is the Christian relegated to the sidelines – to borrow the colloquialism? Or is the Christian allowed to join the military and engage in combat? The Bible shows that the conscience should be the guide for the Christian. Some Christians believe that members of their faith should never engage in warfare. Other Christians believe that it is one of the highest callings for a Christian to join the Armed Forces. Still others prefer to have no opinion for other Christians and hold to whatever they believe as their own opinion. With Christians taking up 31.5% of the world’s population[v] a Christian cannot afford to keep his opinion to himself on the issue. A Christian must end up an open Patriot-Pacifist or a Patriot-Warrior; no middle ground exists.
PATRIOT-PACIFIST
What is, or rather, who is a Patriot-Pacifist? One might say, “Patriotism and pacifism are directly antithetical? How could one person be both?” First of all, this is a very narrow-minded view of both patriotism and pacifism. A patriot is any person that is willing to sacrifice in order to protect his country.[vi] Who is a pacifist? A pacifist is a person who believes that man should never enter into armed conflict.[vii] How do these two combine into a single person then? Because the majority of pacifists are only opposed to violence and armed conflict, they often find themselves in the voting booth or in public office fighting to protect their beloved nation; this makes them patriots as well. How does the Christian end up in this category then? Most Christians who end up as pacifists base their beliefs on God’s Love. 2 Peter 3:9 is often one of the verses that motivates the conscience of the pacifist Christian. 2 Peter 3:9 tells the Christian that God does not desire to see any person go to Hell. The pacifist Christian believes if God does not desire to see the unsaved go to Hell, then the Christian should in no way cause someone to go to Hell (i.e. shooting a Muslim in a war and killing them).[viii] Another passage that many Christians will cite is Christ’s attitude on during the betrayal of Judas. Matthew 26:52-53 records Jesus’ words to Peter after he had just cut off the priest’s servant’s ear. “52 Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. 53 Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?” (AV) Christians then will combine the principle of this verse with the numerous mandates in the Epistles to imitate Christ.[ix] Most common though is the Christian assent to God’s Law “Thou shalt not kill.” 1 John 3:15 for many Christians seems to indicate that murdering a person is assent to the lack of salvation.[x] The most famous pacifist Christians are Quakers. While not all Quakers will claim pacifism, the desire for peace often guides the Quakers to adopt forms of pacifism.[xi]
PATRIOT-WARRIOR
Many Christians would claim quickly to support armed conflict if the conflict had a just cause. Due to limited space, this paper is not the place to define or argue for or against justified war. This paper assumes that the war in question is justifiable and now the Christian must decide whether or not he will join the fight. The Patriot-Warrior Christian will see joining the conflict and defending his nation in arms as his duty. Many of these Christians God has gifted in warfare. These Christians will look at the same passages as the pacifists and come to different conclusions. The warriors will look at 1 John 3, 2 Peter 3, and the numerous commands to follow Christ and associate them with spiritual persecution, not physical oppression. God never once condemned a soldier for fighting a war that sought to defend biblical principles.[xii] God has supported war in the past. Even Christ engaged in physical conflict to cleanse the Temple (John 2:12-22). Numerous examples of God for a time condoning violence appear in Scripture. God only condemns murder, which is different than war. Many Christians today would cite the reduction of the Islamic State (ISIS) to a mere shadow of its former existence as evidence that engaging in armed conflict is justifiable; otherwise, God would not have allowed the United States to crush ISIS. Not all warriors are physical warriors. A great many Christians are warriors at heart. Not all are able to join an armed conflict. Being a warrior is a state of heart, not a state of physicality. For the sake of this paper though, the definition of a warrior is limited to those who support armed conflict.
NO MIDDLE GROUND
A Christian will either be a pacifist or a warrior. While many Christians would fight for their own lives, or the lives of their families, even if that fight would cost the opponent his life, there are still others who believe that a Christian should never raise his hand against another man. A Christian will either fight or die. No middle ground is present. In the life-or-death, non-religious persecution situation, a Christian will either be a pacifist or a warrior.
CASE FOR THE PATRIOT
For whom should the Christian fight though? Allow a case to be made for national patriotism. Daniel 2:21 states, “[God] removeth kings, and setteth up kings,” making a case for the belief that God is in control of the flux of wars and conflicts. Romans 13 calls every Christian to support the laws of the land that do not directly contradict Scripture. If the law of the land needs defending, it is the duty of the Christian to defend those laws: regardless of whether or not he is a pacifist or a warrior. If the law of the land is unbiblical or oppressive, it is the duty of the Christian to accept the punishment for breaking those laws obediently, though not necessarily to confess. In every way he can without violating Scripture, the Christian must support his country: this is Christian patriotism. Many Christians will interject at this point and claim that our citizenship is in Heaven therefore we cannot be loyal to any nation here on earth. I cannot begin to tell you how out of context those Christians have taken that verse (Philippians 3.20) out of context. Paul was writing to the Philippians. In that particular Congregation some of the Christians had a superiority complex because of their ethnicity and citizenship. Rome did not grant citizenship at birth to everyone that existed under its control. Citizenship was a privilege, gave privilege, and came with responsibility. Philippi was a unique location because natural residents were automatically Roman citizens. The Christians that were Roman citizens tried to hold themselves in esteem in the Church because of their citizenry. To put it in modern terms, if you are not a Southern Baptist, born in the USA to a white family with a generic American name (Smith or Jones for example) you are not only a lesser human being, you can never be as good of a Christian as I am. Paul wanted to take those Philippians off their high horse and remind them that we are all depraved in the eyes of God and then your ethnicity and nationality cannot make you a better servant of the Lord.[xiii]
SUMMARY
All Christians will find themselves either as Pacifists or as Warriors; but they should find themselves as Patriots. Christians make up 31.5% of the world’s population, they must make the decision to fight on the battlefield or in the ballot box. 92% of world history revolves around conflict. The only questions a Christian must ask before entering a conflict are, “Is this conflict justified? and, “How will I fight, on my knees or with my hands?” “1 Blessed be the LORD my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight:” (Psalm 144:1, AV)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ali, Alisha, Emily McFarlane, Kristin Lees, and Neha Srivastava. 'WHO IS A PATRIOT? PSYCHOLOGICAL RECOLONIZATION AND THE PROLIFERATION OF US NATIONALISM.'. Race, Gender \& Class 20, no. 1-2 (2013): 351--360. al-Obaidi, Hassan. 'Moderate Sunni Clerics Suffer ISIL Crimes: Iraqi Scholars'. Mawtani. Last modified 2014. Accessed October 29, 2014. http://mawtani.al-shorfa.com/en\_GB/articles/iii/features/2014/09/16/feature-01. Catechism of the Catholic Church,. Citta del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993. Fiala, Andrew. 'Pacifism'. Plato.Stanford.Edu. Last modified 2006. Accessed October 29, 2014. http://plato.stanford.edntries/pacifism/. Hedges, Chris. What Every Person Should Know About War. New York: Free Press, 2003. Melick, Richard R. Philippians, Colossians, Philemon. Vol. 32. The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1991. Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project,. 'Global Religious Diversity'. Last modified 2014. Accessed October 29, 2014. http://www.pewforum.org/2014/04/04/global-religious-diversity/. Quaker.org.uk,. 'Quakers And Peace | Quakers In Britain'. Last modified 2014. Accessed October 30, 2014. http://www.quaker.org.uk/quakers-and-peace-0. Shaw, R. Paul, and Yuwa Wong. Genetic Seeds Of Warfare. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989. Slick, Matthew. 'Should A Christian Go To War?'. Christian Apologetics And Research Ministry. Last modified 2014. Accessed October 30, 2014. http://carm.org/should-christian-go-war. Wenger, J. 'Pacifism And Biblical Nonresistance'. Bibleviews.Com. Last modified 1967. Accessed October 30, 2014. http://www.bibleviews.com/Biblicalnonresist.html#Whatdoes. [i]. R. Paul Shaw and Yuwa Wong, Genetic Seeds of Warfare (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989). 3. [ii]. The reader should note that the author uses the term “Christian” to refer to any person who identifies themselves with a Christian religious affiliation. [iii]. Hassan al-Obaidi, 'Moderate Sunni Clerics Suffer ISIL Crimes: Iraqi Scholars', Mawtani, last modified 2014, accessed October 29, 2014, http://mawtani.al-shorfa.com/en\_GB/articles/iii/features/2014/09/16/feature-01. [iv]. This portion is slightly dated. ISIS has been reduced to a mere shadow of its existence. Later we will discuss how it came to be that way. [v]. Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project, 'Global Religious Diversity', last modified 2014, accessed October 29, 2014, http://www.pewforum.org/2014/04/04/global-religious-diversity/. [vi]. Alisha Ali et al., 'WHO IS A PATRIOT? PSYCHOLOGICAL RECOLONIZATION AND THE PROLIFERATION OF US NATIONALISM.', Race, Gender \& Class 20, no. 1-2 (2013): 351-360. Please, tell me how this is unbiblical. [vii]. Andrew Fiala, 'Pacifism', Plato.Stanford.Edu, last modified 2014, accessed October 29, 2014, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pacifism/. [viii]. J. Wenger, 'Pacifism And Biblical Nonresistance', Bibleviews.Com, last modified 1967, accessed October 30, 2014, http://www.bibleviews.com/Biblicalnonresist.html#Whatdoes. [ix]. Ibid. [x]. Catechism of the Catholic Church (Citta del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993). [xi]. Quaker.org.uk, 'Quakers and Peace | Quakers in Britain', last modified 2014, accessed October 30, 2014, http://www.quaker.org.uk/quakers-and-peace-0. [xii]. Matthew Slick, 'Should A Christian Go To War?', Christian Apologetics And Research Ministry, last modified 2014, accessed October 30, 2014, http://carm.org/should-christian-go-war. [xiii] The entire book of Philippians is a comparison of the physical to the heavenly. The Philippians were too earthly minded. Simple as that (NAC: Philippians, Colossians, Philemon). Sadly, many Christians conflate nationalism and patriotism. Nationalism is “my country is better than yours”. Patriotism is supporting your country. Statism is “my country and government are the best in the world and I will follow them blindly.”
combating plagiarism through NCT lyrics: the prequel
hi, yes, it's me again, your questionably-friendly neighbourhood shitposter. in honour of being crowned the winner of "weirdest daily acts" and "most sleep deprived" in u/WhiplashForSisters's rendition of Mark Awards as well as being inspired by this wonderful comment, I decided that I would propose a brilliant idea for yet another series of mine. you see, some of you might know that I have the tendency to type whatever I hear into all of my articles, papers, assignments, you name it. as an example, I typed this out as a form of satire: "'In a 2016 study conducted by a team of sociology researchers, there was a 69% increase in what was described as 'clown energy' after participants were subjected to specific forms of audio and visual stimulation. Similarly, an academic journal emphasized the impact of "gO gO GO GO 生命那么厉害 wHOA whoA whOa wHOA" (Dong Sicheng, 2019).' all I need is an entry in my bibliography to officially submit the lyrics of "Moonwalk" to my professor, in all of its APA7 glory. heck it, here goes nothing: 'Dong, S. (2019). Take Over the Moon. Moonwalk,1(1), 1-1. Retrieved 2021, from https://youtu.be/UsaGgEjqNoE'" no, I wasn't going to post about this. I did not intend for the above to spiral into whatever tomfoolery you're about to witness, but it happened, my brain conjured up another incredibly curséd but somewhat ingenious idea: I'll just type complete and utter nonsense in academic vocabulary, label it as a research paper, bibliography and all, and not so subtly cite NCT MVs and NCT MVs only. one paper for each subunit: WayV, NCT 127, NCT Dream, and NCT U. so now, whoever decides to plagiarize directly from the web will click on the link (still not sure where and how I would post them but I'll figure something out), think they have a free pass to an assignment, and either 1) not look through it thoroughly and actually submit the document or 2) check the bibliography just to be redirected to "I liKe shiNiNg yOU bE lyINg, I bE gRinDing, yOU wASTe tiME" and "I can hear it cALLIN~ loVin tHe wAy yOU wAnNA tALk, tOUCH ME TEASE ME FEEL ME UP" you heard that right, even though I'm buried in a pile of work and sleep-deprivation, I still manage to dig another hole for myself. but this is merely an idea, a spark of inspiration, a prequel --- an entire new realm of potential for intellectual clownery. if you also happen to be oddly efficient in writing academic nonsense that sounds convincing enough to obtain a passing score (which, let's be honest, that's how we all got through any university-level humanities course), feel free to join me in this journey. in what way can we accomplish this feat? to which extent can we take it? where the heck and how the heck are these research papers going to be discovered? comment your ideas and thoughts, and let's brainstorm. together. wow that was unnecessarily dramatic, I need to tone it down before it's too late EDIT: okay uh, upon further research, I think I'm actually going somewhere with this. like, with MIT's "fake research paper generator" , some of the papers ended up being accepted by multiple journals. there's literal controversies about journals accepting hoax culture studies papers as legitimate, I'm whEEZING- and with machine learning, nonsensical essays and academic articles can be generated in minutes. replace the citations, graphs, and bibliographies, and boom, there we go. now I just need an outlet to utilize this kind of power. still not sure how to use SEO to my advantage here. where would people even find these papers? how? why?
Tartaria: The Supposed Mega-Empire of Inner Eurasia
Introduction
For those not in the know, the Tartaria conspiracy theory is one of the most bizarre pieces of pseudo history out there. Its core notion is that the region known as ‘Tartaria’ or ‘Grand Tartary’ in Early Modern European maps was not simply a vague geographical designate, but in fact a vast, centralised empire. Said empire emerged… at some point, and it disappeared… at some point, but for… some reason, its existence has been covered up to suit… some narrative or another. As you can tell, there’s a lot of diverse ideas here, and the fact that there hasn’t been the equivalent of a Christological schism every time a controversial thread goes up is really quite impressive. While this post will primarily address one particular piece of writing that is at the core of Tartaria conspiracy theorising, I’ll include a few tidbits to show you just how much madness its adherents have come up with. But first, some background.
State of Play, and why I’m doing this
The Tartaria theory has a small but active following on subreddits such as Tartaria, tartarianarchitecture, and CulturalLayer, which as of writing have around 5,300, 2,400 and 23,000 subscribers, respectively, but it’s clear from the 8 questions on the topic asked at AskHistorians since January 2019 and this debunk request from June that it’s a theory that has somewhat broad appeal and can reach beyond its core niche. This is unsurprising given how little education most people in the West receive about basically anything east of Greece: simply put, the reality of Eurasian history is just not something most of us are taught. And if we don’t know the reality of Eurasian history to begin with, or if we do then it's all in bits and pieces where we might not even know a basic set of dates and names, then what seems to be a pretty developed narrative about a lost empire actually turns out rather plausible. Unfortunately, many debunks of the Tartaria narrative come from people pushing competing conspiracy theories, like this guy claiming that there’s a global Jewish Phoenecian conspiracy and that Tartaria is simply rehashing the notion that Khazars were Jews in order to distract from the real Phoenecian threat at the heart of global society or some nonsense like that. (I don’t really care, I died of laughter after page 3.) Now, there are those coming from serious perspectives, but they focus largely on the problems with Tartaria as a concept rather than addressing the more specific claims being made. This is of course valuable in its own right (shoutout to Kochevnik81 for their responses to the AskHistorians threads), but we can go deeper by really striking at the roots of this ‘theory’ – what is the ‘evidence’ they’re presenting? But to do that, we need to find out what the origins of the ‘theory' are, and thus what its linchpins are. Incidentally, it is because of some recent events regarding those origins that I’ve been finally prompted to write this post.
Where does it come from?
My attempts to find the exact origins of the Tartaria conspiracy have been not entirely fruitful, as the connections I’ve found have been relatively circumstantial at best. But as far as I can tell, it at least partially originates with that Russian pseudohistorian we all know and love, Anatoly Fomenko. Fomenko is perhaps best known in the English-speaking world for his 7-volume ‘epic’ from 2002, History: Fiction or Science?, but in fact he’s been pushing a complete ‘New Chronology’ since the publication of Novaia khronologia in Russian in 1995. While the New Chronology is best known for its attempt to explain away most of the Middle Ages as a hoax created by the Papacy on the basis of bad astronomy, it also asserts a number of things about Russian history from the Kievan Rus’ to the Romanovs. Key to the Tartaria theory is its claim that there was a vast Slavo-Turkic ‘Russian Horde’ based out of ‘Tartaria’ which dominated Eurasia until the last ‘Horde’ ruler, Boris Godunov, was overthrown by the European Mikhail Romanov. This, of course, is a clear attempt at countering the notion of a ‘Tatar Yoke’ over Russia, as you can’t have a ‘Tatar Yoke’ if the Tatars were Russians all along. Much as I’d like to explain that in more detail here, I don’t have to: in 2004, Konstantin Sheiko at the University of Wollongong wrote an entire PhD thesis looking at the claims of Fomenko’s New Chronology and contextualising them within currents of Russian nationalism, which can be accessed online. But I personally suspect that if there are Fomenko connections as far as Tartaria specifically is concerned, they are limited. For one, at one stage users on the Tartaria subreddit seemed unfamiliar with Fomenko, and there are those arguing that Fomenko had ‘rewritten’ Tartarian history to be pro-Russian. This is why I said that the evidence was circumstantial. The only other link to Fomenko is indirect: the CulturalLayer sidebar lists the ‘New Chronology Resource Collection’ and the audiobook of History: Fiction or Science? under ‘Essential Resources’, and Tartaria in its ‘Related Subs’. As far as I can tell, the ultimate origin of its developed form on the Anglophone web traces back to this post on the StolenHistory forums, posted on 17 April 2018. This makes some chronological sense: only one top-level post on CulturalLayer that mentions Tartaria predates this. Moreover, KorbenDallas, the OP of the thread, was also the forum’s chief admin, and given that StolenHistory is still (as of writing) the top resource on CulturalLayer’s sidebar, that suggests significant influence. However, using the search function on camas.github.io, it was mentioned in comments at least 9 times before then, with the first mention, on 10 January 2018, mentioning that the ‘theory’ had been doing the rounds on the Russian web for at least 5 years. Nevertheless, as the detail in these early comments is sparse and generally refers only to speculation about maps, it is probably fair to say that the first in-depth English-language formulation of the Tartaria ‘theory’ was thus the April 2018 forum post. Funnily enough, it is not cited often on Tartaria, but that subreddit was created on 27 December, long after discussion had been taking place on places like CulturalLayer, and combined with the ‘mudflood’ ‘theory’ and the notion of giant humans, which are not significant features of the StolenHistory thread. This more convoluted and multifaceted version of the Tartaria theory doesn’t really have a single-document articulation, hence me not covering it here. It is this StolenHistory thread which I will be looking at here today. Not just because it seems to be at the heart of it all, but also because it got shut down around 36 hours ago as of writing this post, based on the timestamps of panicked ‘what happened to StolenHistory’ posts on CulturalLayer and Tartaria. So what better occasion to go back to the Wayback Machine’s version, seeing as it’s now quite literally impossible to brigade the source? Now as I’ve said, this is not the most batshit insane it gets for the Tartaria crowd, in fact it’s incredibly tame. But by the end of it, I bet you’ll be thinking ‘if this is mild, how much more worse is the modern stuff!?’ And the best part is, I can debunk most of it without recourse to any other sources at all, because so much of it involves them posting sources out of context or expecting them to be read tendentiously. But that’s enough background. Let us begin.
Part 1: The Existence
Exhibit 1: The Encylcopædia Britannica, 1771
”Tartary, a vast country in the northern parts of Asia, bounded by Siberia on the north and west: this is called Great Tartary. The Tartars who lie south of Muscovy and Siberia, are those of Astracan, Circassia, and Dagistan, situated north-west of the Caspian-sea; the Calmuc Tartars, who lie between Siberia and the Caspian-sea; the Usbec Tartars and Moguls, who lie north of Persia and India; and lastly, those of Tibet, who lie north-west of China.” - Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. III, Edinburgh, 1771, p. 887.
Starting a post about the ‘hidden’ history of Central Asia with an encyclopædia entry from Scotland is really getting off to a good start, isn’t it? Anyone with a sense of basic geography can tell you that Tibet lies due west of China, not northwest. But more importantly, this shows you how single-minded the Tartaria advocates are and how tendentiously they read things. ‘Country’ need not actually refer to a state entity, it can just be a geographical space, especially in more archaic contexts such as this. Moreover, the ethnographic division of the ‘Tartars’ into Astrakhanis, Circassians, Dagestanis, Kalmuks, Uzbeks, and, for whatever reason, Tibetans, pretty clearly goes against the notion of a unified Tartary.
Now compare to the description given by Wikipedia, ”Tartary (Latin: Tartaria) or Great Tartary (Latin: Tartaria Magna) was a name used from the Middle Ages until the twentieth century to designate the great tract of northern and central Asia stretching from the Caspian Sea and the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, settled mostly by Turko-Mongol peoples after the Mongol invasion and the subsequent Turkic migrations.”
Obviously, Wikipedia is not a good source for… anything, really, but the fact that they’re giving a 349-year-old encyclopaedia primacy over the summary sentence of a wiki article is demonstrative of how much dishonesty is behind this. And it only gets worse from here.
Exhibit 2: Hermann Moll’s A System of Geography, 1701
THE Country of Tartary, call'd Great Tartary, to distinguish it from the Lesser, in Europe, has for its Boundaries, on the West, the Caspian Sea, and Moscovitick Tartary; on the North, the Scythian, or Tartarian Sea; on the East, the Sea of the Kalmachites, and the Straight of Jesso; and on the South, China, India, or the Dominions of the great Mogul and Persia : So that it is apparently the largest Region of the whole Continent of Asia, extending it self [sic] farthest, both towards the North and East: In the modern Maps, it is plac'd within the 70th and 170th Degree of Longitude, excluding Muscovitick Tartary; as also between the 40 and 72 Degree of Northern Latitude.
Immediately underneath the scan of this text is the statement, clearly highlighted, that
Tartary was not a tract. It was a country.
Hmm, very emphatic there. Except wait no, the same semantic problem recurs. ‘Country’ need not mean ‘state’. Moreover, in the very same paragraph, Moll (or rather his translator) refers to Tartary as a ‘Region’, which very much disambiguates the idea. Aside from that, it is telling that Moll refers to three distinct ‘Tartaries’: ’Great Tartary’ in Asia, ‘Lesser Tartary’ in Europe, and ‘Muscovite Tartary’ – that is, the eastern territories of the Russian Tsardom. If, as they are saying, ‘Great Tartary’ was a coherent entity, whatever happened to ‘Lesser Tartary’?
Exhibit 3: A 1957 report by the CIA on ‘National Cultural Development Under Communism’
Is a conspiracy theorist… actually believing a CIA document? Yep. I’ll add some context later that further complicates the issue.
Or let us take the matter of history, which, along with religion, language and literature, constitute the core of a people’s cultural heritage. Here again the Communists have interfered in a shameless manner. For example, on 9 August 1944, the Central Committee of the Communist Party, sitting in Moscow, issued a directive ordering the party’s Tartar Provincial Committee “to proceed to a scientific revolution of the history of Tartaria, to liquidate serious shortcomings and mistakes of a nationalistic character committed by individual writers and historians in dealing with Tartar history.” In other words, Tartar history was to be rewritten—let its be frank, was to be falsified—in order to eliminate references to Great Russian aggressions and to hide the facts of the real course of Tartar-Russian relations. [similar judgement on Soviet rewriting of histories of Muslim areas to suit a pro-Russian agenda]
What’s fascinating about the inclusion of this document is that it is apparently often invoked as a piece of anti-Fomenko evidence, by tying New Chronology in with older Russian-nationalist Soviet revisionism. So not only is it ironic that they’re citing a CIA document, of all things, but a CIA document often used to undermine the spiritual founder of the whole Tartaria ‘theory’ in the first place! But to return to the point, the fundamental issue is that it’s tendentious. This document from 1957 obviously is not going to be that informed on the dynamics of Central Asian ethnicity and history in the way that a modern scholar would be. In a broader sense, what this document is supposed to prove is that Soviet coverups are why we don’t know about Tartaria. But if most of the evidence came from Western Europe to begin with, why would a Soviet coverup matter? Why wasn’t Tartarian history deployed as a counter-narrative during the Cold War?
Exhibit 4: ‘An 1855 Source’
This is from a footnote in Sir George Cornwalle Lewis’ An Inquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman History, citing a travelogue by Evariste Huc that had been published in French in 1850 and was soon translated into English. From the digitised version of of Huc’s book on Project Gutenberg (emphasis copied over from the thread):
Such remains of ancient cities are of no unfrequent occurrence in the deserts of Mongolia; but everything connected with their origin and history is buried in darkness. Oh, with what sadness does such a spectacle fill the soul! The ruins of Greece, the superb remains of Egypt,—all these, it is true, tell of death; all belong to the past; yet when you gaze upon them, you know what they are; you can retrace, in memory, the revolutions which have occasioned the ruins and the decay of the country around them. Descend into the tomb, wherein was buried alive the city of Herculaneum,—you find there, it is true, a gigantic skeleton, but you have within you historical associations wherewith to galvanize it. But of these old abandoned cities of Tartary, not a tradition remains; they are tombs without an epitaph, amid solitude and silence, uninterrupted except when the wandering Tartars halt, for a while, within the ruined enclosures, because there the pastures are richer and more abundant.
There’s a paraphrase from Lewis as well, but you can just read it on the thread. The key thing here is that yes, there were abandoned settlements in the steppe. Why must this be indicative of a lost sedentary civilisation, and not instead the remnants of political capitals of steppe federations which were abandoned following those federations’ collapse? Places like Karakorum, Kubak Zar, Almaliq and Sarai were principally built around political functions, being centres for concentration of religious and ritual authority (especially monasteries) and stores of non-movable (or difficult to move) wealth. But individual examples of abandoned settlements are not evidence of broad patterns of settlement that came to be abandoned en masse. Indeed, the very fact that the cited shepherd calls the abandoned location ‘The Old Town’ in the singular implies just how uncommon such sites were – for any given region, there might really only be one of note.
Exhibit 5: Ethnic characteristics in artistic depictions of Chinggis and Timur
I… don’t quite know what to make of these.
Today, we have certain appearance related stereotypes. I think we are very much off there. It looks like Tartary was multi-religious, and multi-cultural. One of the reasons I think so is the tremendous disparity between what leaders like Genghis Khan, Batu Khan, Timur aka Tamerlane looked like to the contemporary artists vs. the appearance attributed to them today.
Ummm, what? These are apparently what they look like today. These are ‘contemporary’ depictions of Chinggis:
In what bizzaro world are these contemporary? We’ll get to Batur Khan in a moment because that’s its own kettle of worms. But can this user not recognise that artists tend to depict things in ways that are familiar? Of course white European depictions of Chinggis and Timur will tend to make them look like white Europeans, while East Asian depictions of Chinggis will tend to make him look Asian, and Middle Eastern depictions of Chinggis and Timur will make them look Middle Eastern. This doesn’t prove that ‘Tartaria’ was multicultural, in fact it you’d have an easier time using this ‘evidence’ to argue that Chinggis and Timur were shapeshifters who could change ethnicities at will!
Exhibit 6: Turkish sculptures
Why this person thinks modern Turkish sculptures are of any use to anyone baffles me. The seven sculptures shown are of Batu Khan (founder of the ‘Golden Horde’/Jochid khanates), Timur, Bumin (founder of the First Turkic Khaganate), Ertugrul (father of Osman, the founder of the Ottoman empire), Babur (founder of the Mughal Empire), Attila the Hun, and Kutlug Bilge Khagan (founder of the Uyghur Khaganate). They are accompanied (except in the case of Ertugrul) by the dates of the empires/confederations that they founded – hence, for instance, Babur’s dates being 1526 to 1858, the lifespan of the Mughal Empire, or Timur’s being 1368 (which seems arbitrary) to 1507 (the fall of Herat to the Shaybanids). To quote the thread:
A few of them I do not know, but the ones I do look nothing like what I was taught at school. Also dates are super bizarre on those plaques.
Again, Turkish sculptors make Turkic people look like Turks. Big surprise. And the dates are comprehensible if you just take a moment to think.
Do Turks know something we don't?
Turkish, evidently.
Exhibit 7: A map from 1652 that the user can’t even read
The other reason why I think Tartary had to be multi-religious, and multi-cultural is its vastness during various moments in time. For example in 1652 Tartary appears to have control over the North America.
The official history is hiding a major world power which existed as late as the 19th century. Tartary was a country with its own flag, its own government and its own place on the map. Its territory was huge, but somehow quietly incorporated into Russia, and some other countries. This country you can find on the maps predating the second half of the 19th century.
You know, a common theme with historical conspiracy theories is how badly they’re laid out, in the literal sense of the layout of their documents and video content. Don’t make a header called ‘The Coverup’ and then only have one thing before jumping back to the evidence for the existence again.
Exhibit 9: A Table
Yet, some time in the 18th century Tartary Muskovite was the biggest country in the world: 3,050,000 square miles.
You can look at the images on the thread itself but here’s a few highlights:
1654: Bellum Tartaricum, or the Conquest of China By the Invasion of the Tartars, who in the last seven years, have wholly subdued that empire
1670: Historia de la Conquista de la China por el Tartaro
Histories of the Qing conquest of China, because as far as Europeans were concerned the Manchus were Tartars. Proof of Tartaria because…?
1662: The Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors of the Duke of Holstein, to the Great Duke of Muscovy, and the King of Persia… Containing a compleat History of Muscovy, Tartary, Persia, and Other Adjacent Countries…
An ambassador who never set foot in ‘Tartary’ itself, cool cool, very good evidence there. There’s also three screenshots from books that aren’t even specifically named, so impossible to follow up. Clearly this is all we need.
Exhibit 11: Maps
The maps are the key think the Tartaria pushers use. All these maps showing ‘Grand Tartary’ or ‘Tartaria’ or what have you. There’s 20 of these here and you can look for yourselves, but the key thing is: why do these people assume that this referred to a single state entity? Because any of these maps that include the world more generally will also present large parts of Africa in generic terms, irrespective of actual political organisation in these regions. And many of the later maps clearly show the tripartite division of the region into ‘Chinese Tartary’, ‘Russian Tartary’, and ‘Independent Tartary’, which you think would be clear evidence that most of this region was controlled by, well, the Chinese (really, the Manchus) and the Russians. And many of these maps aren’t even maps of political organisation, but geographical space. See how many lump all of mainland Southeast Asia into ‘India’. Moreover, the poor quality of the mapping should give things away. This one for instance is very clear on the Black Sea coast, but the Caspian is a blob, and moreover, a blob that’s elongated along the wrong axis! They’re using Western European maps as an indicator of Central Asian realities in the most inept way possible, and it would be sad if it weren’t so hilarious. The fact that the depictions of the size of Tartaria are incredibly inconsistent also seems not to matter.
Exhibit 12: The Tartarian Language
There’s an 1849 American newspaper article referring to the ‘Tartarian’ language, which is very useful thank you, and definitely not more reflective of American ignorance than actual linguistic reality. The next one is more interesting, because it’s from a translation of some writing by a French Jesuit, referring to the writing of Manchu, and who asserted (with very little clear evidence) that it could be read in any direction. In April last year, Tartaria users [claimed to have stumbled on a dictionary of Tartarian and French](np.reddit.com/Tartaria/comments/bi3aph/tartarian_language_dictionary/) called the Dictionnaire Tartare-Mantchou-François. What they failed to realise is that the French generally called the Manchus ‘Tartare-Mantchou’, and this was in fact a Manchu-French dictionary. In other words, a [Tartare-Mantchou]-[François] dictionary, not a [Tartare]-[Mantchou]-[François] dictionary. It is quite plausible, in fact probable, that the ‘Tartarian’ referred to in the newspaper article was Manchu.
Exhibit 13: Genealogies of Tartarian Kings
Descended From Genghiscan
Reads the comment above this French chart. How the actual hell did OP not recognise that ‘Genghiscan’ is, erm, Genghis Khan? Is it that hard to understand that maybe, just maybe, ‘Tartars’ was what they called Mongols back in the day, and ‘Tartaria’ the Mongol empire and its remnants?
Exhibit 14: Ethnographic drawings
These prove that there were people called Tartars, not that there was a state of Tartaria. NEXT
Exhibit 17: Flags of Moscow on one particular chart
It is also worth mentioning that in the British Flag Table of 1783, there are three different flags listed as a flag of the Tsar of Moscow. There is also an Imperial Flag of Russia as well as multiple naval flags. And all of them are proceeded by a flag of the Viceroy of Russia.
By that logic, the Royal Navy ran Britain because the Royal Navy ensigns precede the Union Jack. It’s simply a conscious decision to show the flags of individuals before the flags of states. The ‘Viceroy’ (unsure what the original Russian title would be) and ‘Czar’ of Muscovy would presumably be, well, the Emperor of Russia anyway, so as with the British section where the Royal Standard and the flags of naval officers came first, the same seems true of Russia. Also, as a side note, the placement of the USA at the end, after the Persians, the Mughals and ‘Tartarians’, is a fun touch.
Significance of the Viceroy is in the definition of the term. A viceroy is a regal official who runs a country, colony, city, province, or sub-national state, in the name of and as the representative of the monarch of the territory. Our official history will probably say that it was the Tsar of Russia who would appoint a viceroy of Moscow. I have reasons to doubt that. Why is the flag of the Viceroy of Moscow positioned prior to any other Russian flag? Could it be that the Viceroy of Moscow was superior to its Czar, and was "supervising" how this Tartarian possession was being run?
No.
Part 3: 1812
This, this is where it gets really bonkers. A key part of this post is arguing that Napoleon’s invasion of Russia was a cover story for a joint invasion against Tartaria gone horrendously wrong. All the stops are being pulled out here.
There is a growing opinion in Russia that French invasion of Russia played out according to a different scenario. The one where Tsar Alexander I, and Napoleon were on the same side. Together they fought against Tartary. Essentially France and Saint Petersburg against Moscow (Tartary). And there is a strong circumstantial evidence to support such a theory.
Oh yes, we’re going there.
Questions to Answer: 1. Saint Petersburg was the capitol of Russia. Yet Napoleon chose to attack Moscow. Why?
2. It appears that in 1912 there was a totally different recollection of the events of 1812. How else could you explain commemorative 1912 medals honoring Napoleon?
Because it’s a bit of an in-your-face to Napoleon for losing so badly?
And specifically the one with Alexander I, and Napoleon on the same medal. The below medal says something similar to, "Strength is in the unity: will of God, firmness of royalty, love for homeland and people"
Yeah, it’s showing Alexander I beating Napoleon, and a triumphant double-headed Russian eagle above captured French standards. Also, notice how Alexander is in full regalia, while Napoleon’s is covered up by his greatcoat?
3. Similarity between Russian and French uniforms. There are more different uniforms involved, but the idea remains, they were ridiculously similar.
Ah yes, because fashions in different countries always develop separately, and never get influenced by each other.
There was one additional combat asset officially available to Russians in the war of 1812. And that was the Militia. It does appear that this so-called Militia, was in reality the army of Tartary fighting against Napoleon and Alexander I.
4. Russian nobility in Saint Petersburg spoke French well into the second half of the 19th century. The general explanation was, that it was the trend of time and fashion. Google contains multiple opinions on the matter. * Following the same logic, USA, Britain and Russia should've picked up German after the victory in WW2.
Clearly never heard of the term lingua franca then.
5. This one I just ran into: 19th-century fans were totally into a Napoleon/Alexander romance
I am pleased with [Emperor] Alexander; he ought to be with me. If he were a woman, I think I should make him my mistress.
But Napoleon’s ‘honeymoon period’ with Russia following the Treaty of Tilsit should not be seen as indicative of a permanent Napoleonic affection for Russia. Notably, Napoleon’s war with Russia didn’t just end in 1812. How are the Tartaria conspiracists going to explain the War of the Sixth Coalition, when Russian, Prussian and Austrian troops drove the French out of Germany? Did the bromance suddenly stop because of 1812? Or, is it more reasonable to see 1812 as the end result of the bromance falling apart?
Conclusions
So there you have it, Tartaria in all its glorious nonsensicalness. Words cannot capture how massively bonkers this entire thing is. And best of all, I hardly needed my own sources because so much of it is just a demonstration of terrible reading comprehension. Still, if you want to actually learn about some of the history of Inner Eurasia, see below:
Bibliography
The Cambridge History of Inner Asia – 2 volumes so far, covering up to 1886. Not really a single contiguous narrative, as each chapter has its own individual author, but a good general coverage.
Scott C. Levi, The Bukharan Crisis: A Connected History of 18th Century Central Asia (2020) – A book about actual Central Asian history, focussing on the global and local factors that led to the weakening and collapse of the Chinggisid state in Bukhara and the rise of the Uzbek-led Emirate. Also a very good historiographical examination of lay understandings of the period.
Mark C. Elliott, ‘The Limits of Tartary: Manchuria in Imperial and National Geographies’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 59, No. 3 (2000) – A discussion of conceptions of Manchuria by Manchu, Chinese, Japanese and European cartographers and geographers, with the section on European geographers being important for getting at the ‘Tartary’ aspect.
David Christian, ‘Inner Eurasia as a Unit of World History’, Journal of World History, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1994) – A somewhat older view, presenting Inner Eurasia as a distinct unit in world history, but largely in terms of effects on the rest of Eurasia.
Nicola di Cosmo, ‘State Formation and Periodization in Inner Asian History’, Journal of World History, Vol.10, No.1 (1999) – A partial response to Christian, offering an alternate periodisation based more on the internal dynamics of nomadic state formations and stressing viewing Inner Asian history in terms of those internal dynamics, rather than relegating it to a subordinate place in the histories of ‘Outer Eurasian’, sedentary states.
Konstantin Sheiko, ‘Lomonosov’s Bastards: Anatolii Fomenko, Pseudo-History and Russia’s Search for a Post-Communist Identity’ [PhD Thesis] (2004) – Specifically deconstructs Fomenko’s version of Tartaria.
Writing your first research article can be a challenge. Learning to discover and use sources and then mention them properly is an effort that many new students find overwhelming. Some professors like to add even more to this stress by requesting not just a research paper but an accompanying annotated bibliography. Since most students have never encountered the term annotated bibliography before entering post-secondary education, this additional requirement tends to leave students everywhere scratching their heads and wondering why they ever thought earning a degree was a good idea. If you are presently starting to get research skills, you perhaps don't even understand how to make a bibliography, let alone how to write an annotated bibliography. What the heck is an annotated bibliography, anyway, and why is your professor so focused on your learning to create one? Didn't you acquire enough skills writing the cursed card? What does this teacher want from you? Where does it end? Madness! The audacity of this professor! That's enough to make you want to quit. Don't despair, dear student. Because, like numerous things in academic, the term annotated bibliography is far less complex than it seems. Below we present a simple guide on how to write an annotated bibliography. We've also included a brief rationale to explain your professor's reason for making you take on this annoying extra task in the first place. What is an annotation? An annotation is essentially a brief summary of a source's content and topic, as well as an explanation of how that source fits into the topic you're making in your article. Annotations are naturally written straight after the reference list entry for a source and naturally should not exceed 150 words. The goal is short and concise. Be sure to check your professor's guidelines, as they may have different expectations for the duration. Annotations should not be confused with abstracts. Although both are short summaries of particular works, an abstract accompanies an article in a journal, providing a brief description of the article's content. An annotation also provides an assessment of the book, article, or resource in question. When should I write my annotations? The basic sequence for creating an annotated bibliography should be this: 1. Decide your thesis. 2. Find sources to support your thesis, modifying it if necessary. 3. Keep track of those sources, including the information you are taking from them, so that you can cite them correctly in your article. 4. Write your article, including quotes. 5. Using the information gathered during the research process, create a bibliography with annotated entries. So, you basically want to gather the information you need to write each annotation as you write your article. You still need to keep track of what you're getting from each source, so this isn't really extra work. The difficult part of how to write an annotated bibliography is not gathering the correct information, rather it is stating that information as concisely as possible. Subdivision: the anatomy of an annotation Now that you have (hopefully) the idea, here's an annotated reference example. This example was taken from a paper that claimed that purple is the best color because it is a combination of blue and red. Note that the sample quote is written in the APA style; the formatting, particularly of the citation, differs between style guides, but the basic information contained in the annotation generally remains the same. In the example below, orange text indicates what the article is about, purple explains what makes it a credible source, green outlines the article's findings, and blue describes how the topic in the document applies to the pap of the article. Author why do you have to understand how to create an annotated bibliography, anyhow? If you've been working on the same card for years, the last thing you want to do is spend more time on that card. It may seem like your professor is simply trying to irritate you, but rest assured, there's a reason your teacher wants you to know how to write an annotated bibliography. The reason is that creating a list that shows exactly how you used each source demonstrates two things. First, it shows that you have read and understood the research you mentioned in your work. This basically ensures that you've actually learned how to write a research paper correctly, which is a major focus of college classes. Secondly, the creation of an annotated bibliography Contact: www.mbaprojectreports.com +91 8097027355 I +91 9222086563, +91 9137256150 450, Mastermind 1 - IT Park, Royal Palms, Aarey Colony, Goregaon(E), Mumbai, India 400065
[FULL TEXT of Taibbi's new piece] If it’s Not “Cancel Culture,” What Kind of Culture is it? Another long week in the all-stick, no-carrot revolution
Last Friday, over 500 students and lecturers signed a letter denouncing Harvard professor Steven Pinker. Citing five tweets and one line from a book, the signatories demanded Pinker be repudiated by the Linguistics Society of America for a history of “speaking over genuine grievances” at “the exact moment when Black and Brown people are mobilizing against systemic racism.” The charges were beyond obscure. The effort to find traces of racism in Pinker’s massive bibliography of public statements recalled the way excited Christians periodically discover the face of Jesus in tree stumps or wall mold. Pinker for instance is accused of having tweeted “Police kill too many people, black and white” (an “all lives matter” trope, signatories cried!), of using the phrase “urban crime” (a dog whistle!), and of calling it “statistically obtuse” to suggest the incel murderer of six women at UCSB was not acting as part of a sexist pattern. That last episode particularly enraged signatories, as evidence of “downplaying the actual murder of six women.” Unfortunately, none of the accusing lecturers and PhD candidates, who presumably have done research before, noticed the actual spree killing to which Pinker referred involved two women and four men, not six women. But who’s counting? “Regardless of the identities of his victims,” the letter-writers noted in a bitter correction, “the murderer was driven by misogyny.” To back up a charge of “downplaying actual violence,” the signatories pointed to a description of subway shooter Bernhard Goetz as a “mild-mannered engineer” in Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature. This passage, about the ways American culture shifted in response to a rise in the violent crime rate, has to be quoted at length to show the absurdity:
The flood of violence from the 1960s through the 1980s reshaped American culture... Mugger jokes became a staple of comedians... New Yorkers imprisoned themselves in their apartments with batteries of latches and deadbolts... Books, movies and television series used intractable urban violence as their backdrop, including Little Murders, Taxi Driver, The Warriors, Escape from New York, Fort Apache the Bronx, Hill Street Blues, and Bonfire of the Vanities. Women enrolled in self-defense courses to learn how to walk with a defiant gait, to use their keys, pencils, and spike heels as weapons, and to execute karate chops or jujitsu throws to overpower an attacker, role-played by a volunteer in a Michelin-man-tire suit. Red-bereted Guardian Angels patrolled the parks and the mass transit system, and in 1984 Bernhard Goetz, a mild-mannered engineer, became a folk hero for shooting four young muggers in a New York subway car. A fear of crime helped elect decades of conservative politicians…
Pinker wasn’t litigating the justice of the Goetz incident. He was making an offhand description as part of a huge list detailing what he called the “overblown” reactions of a city gripped by fear and paranoia. If he had written in language closer to what the letter-writers would have found acceptable, e.g. “a rage-filled neo-Nazi named Bernhard Goetz became a folk hero after shooting four Black youths who asked him for five dollars” (signatories had a problem with the word “mugger” as well), it would have strengthened rather than changed Pinker’s rhetorical point: that New Yorkers, to at least some degree irrationally, were afraid of crime during a twenty-year period of rising crime rates. This letter was written by linguistics experts, and they don’t know how to read. It’s incredible. When I reached out to the group’s listed email, they declined comment:
As hundreds of linguists have signed the letter, and since we have received a number of death threats, we are not comfortable either saying things that would go beyond the letter (as we have no mandate to do so), or to reveal our identities. Kind regards, the letter editors
To recap: 500-plus academics sign a letter publicly smearing one of their own as a racist, but when asked for comment, the “editors” insist on anonymity. The campaign seems to have failed, as it doesn’t appear the LSA is planning on taking action. “I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve got tenure,” Pinker says. “It’s the more vulnerable junior faculty and lecturers and people who work for private companies who are much more worthy of concern.” Pinker is a successful public intellectual whose niche is the analytic corrective to disaster-porn coverage strategies of modern news. If you turn on the TV every day to see street crime, terrorism, “killer” storms and plane crashes statistically over-represented in “dirty laundry” eyeball-grabbing schemes, Pinker has compiled data for you arguing that, statistically speaking, life isn’t so bad. Critics dismiss him as trite and seethe at his full head of Einsteinian hair, but he’s basically an optimist, which is a strange thing to be offended by – unless we’re talking about 2020 America, where we hate everyone except Greta Thunberg (and we hate her too, of course). Pinker didn’t see this exact campaign coming, as “I don't consider myself a political provocateur, and I'm a mainstream liberal Democrat.” However, he says, “over the years I’ve realized I have some vulnerabilities.” His main problem, apart from being a famous white guy, is that he ascribes to a view of the world that may be going out of style. By way of explaining, he referenced pseudonymous psychiatrist Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex, who also went through difficulty lately – he deleted his blog after a New York Times reporter decided for some reason to out his real name. Alexander, Pinker explained, described two different views on solving social problems in an essay called Conflict Versus Mistake. In the first view, “we're all like physicians trying to diagnose an illness. Society is the patient,” Pinker says. In contrast, in the “conflict mindset," there’s “a faction that has been monopolizing power, and it's time for the wrongs to be righted, and previously disempowered groups to seize power.” Pinker added, “Therefore anything said from the mistake perspective in terms of diagnosing the problems of society would be seen in the conflict perspective as part of a problem, namely a justification for maintaining the status quo.” Any attempt to build bridges between the two mindsets falls apart, often spectacularly, as we saw this week in an online fight over free speech that could not possibly have been more comic in its unraveling. A group of high-profile writers and thinkers, including Pinker, Noam Chomsky, Wynton Marsalis, Salman Rushdie, Gloria Steinem and Anne Appelbaum, signed a letter in Harper’s calling for an end to callouts and cancelations. “We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom,” the authors wrote, adding, “We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.” This Hallmark-card-level inoffensive sentiment naturally inspired peals of outrage across the Internet, mainly directed at a handful of signatories deemed hypocrites for having called for the firings of various persons before. Then a few signatories withdrew their names when they found out that they would be sharing space on the letterhead with people they disliked. “I thought I was endorsing a well meaning, if vague, message against internet shaming. I did know Chomsky, Steinem, and Atwood were in, and I thought, good company,” tweeted Jennifer Finney Boylan, adding, “The consequences are mine to bear. I am so sorry.” Translation: I had no idea my group statement against intellectual monoculture would be signed by people with different views! In the predictable next development – no dialogue between American intellectuals is complete these days without someone complaining to the boss – Vox writer Emily VanDerWerff declared herself literally threatened by co-worker Matt Yglesias’s decision to sign the statement. The public as well as Vox editors were told: The letter, signed as it is by several prominent anti-trans voices and containing as many dog whistles towards anti-trans positions as it does, ideally would not have been signed by anybody at Vox… His signature on the letter makes me feel less safe. Naturally, this declaration impelled Vox co-founder Ezra Klein to take VanDerWerff’s side and publicly denounce the Harper’s letter as a status-defending con. “A lot of debates that sell themselves as being about free speech are actually about power,” tweeted Klein, clearly referencing his old pal Yglesias. “And there’s a lot of power in being able to claim, and hold, the mantle of free speech defender.” This Marxian denunciation of the defense of free speech as cynical capitalist ruse was brought to you by the same Ezra Klein who once worked with Yglesias to help Voxraise $300 million. This was just one of many weirdly petty storylines. Writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, who organized the letter, found himself described as a “mixed race man heavily invested in respectability politics,” once he defended the letter, one of many transparent insults directed toward the letter’s nonwhite signatories by ostensible antiracist voices. The whole episode was nuts. It was like watching Bruce Springsteen and Dionne Warwick be pelted with dogshit for trying to sing We Are the World. This being America in the Trump era, where the only art form to enjoy wide acceptance is the verbose monograph written in condemnation of the obvious, the Harper’s fiasco inspired multiple entries in the vast literature decrying the rumored existence of “cancel culture.” The two most common themes of such essays are a) the illiberal left is a Trumpian myth, and b) if the illiberal left does exist, it’s a good thing because all of those people they’re smearing/getting fired deserved it. In this conception there’s nothing to worry about when a Dean of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell is dismissed for writing “Black Lives Matter, but also, everyone’s life matters” in an email, or when an Indiana University Medical School professor has to apologize for asking students how they would treat a patient who says ‘I can’t breathe!’ in a clinical setting, or when someone is fired for retweeting a study suggesting nonviolent protest is effective. The people affected are always eventually judged to be “bad,” or to have promoted “bad research,” or guilty of making “bad arguments,” etc. In this case, Current Affairs hastened to remind us that the people signing the Harper’s letter were many varieties of bad! They included Questioners of Politically Correct Culture like “Pinker, Jesse Singal, Zaid Jilani, John McWhorter, Nicholas A. Christakis, Caitlin Flanagan, Jonathan Haidt, and Bari Weiss,” as well as “chess champion and proponent of the bizarre conspiracy theory that the Middle Ages did not happen, Garry Kasparov,” and “right wing blowhards known for being wrong about everything” in David Frum and Francis Fukuyama, as well as – this is my favorite line – “problematic novelists Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, and J.K. Rowling.” Where on the irony-o-meter does one rate an essay that decries the “right-wing myth” of cancel culture by mass-denouncing a gymnasium full of intellectuals as problematic? Already another group letter is circulating, denouncing the character deficiencies of the Harper’s signatories in even stronger language. “Jesse Singal, another signer, is a cis man famous for advancing his career writing derogatorily about trans issues,” is one example, while Chatterton-Williams stands accused of believing, contemptibly enough, “that racism at once persists and is capable of being transcended.” The series of events was likely only followed by a tiny sliver of too-online media personalities, myself included. The rest of the world, to the extent that it heard what happened at all, seems mostly to have recoiled from everyone involved and/or wished the NBA season had re-started early enough for them to have missed the whole thing. It did sort of matter, though, as the Harper’s letter was basically an attempt to build a small statue to the “free exchange of information and ideas,” only to have it beheaded and tossed in a pile with Columbus, Grant, and the rest. It shouldn’t and doesn’t matter what Yale University ends up being called (I actually like “The University Formerly Known as Yale”), and no one who thinks about it should really be bothered if a cringey statue of Teddy Roosevelt gets taken down. I doubt most people have much personal attachment to statues of Thomas Jefferson, for that matter. The real issue with the symbol-erasing mania of the last weeks is what it says about the erasers’ attitudes toward the ideas that people like Jefferson represent. Do they want those dumpstered, too? Because that would be a much more serious issue. The intellectuals whose ouster is being called for by the new revolution were themselves products of the last cultural revolution. People like Chomsky, Steinem, and even Pinker came of age during the sixties liberation movements, which shaped academia and popular culture for generations. These were people raised on beat poetry, antiwar marches, Jimi Hendrix and movies like The Graduate, whose one-word summary of the aspirations of their parents’ generation – “Plastics” – represented everything these new educators didn’t want for their students. This new intellectual class had grown up in a time of empowerment for women, for gays and lesbians, and for black and brown people, but also of the human spirit generally. Long before the term “intersectionality” was coined in 1989, post-sixties liberals understood the interlocking nature of political and intellectual repression. The tumult of the sixties revealed the clear relationship between the ignorant conventions that kept women at home and gays in the closet, and the academic orthodoxies suppressing the research of people like Alfred Kinsey, whose work would lift everything from the female orgasm to bisexuality out of the dungeon. Dr. Benjamin Spock became famous for telling “good mothers and fathers” that what they “instinctively feel like doing for their children” was better than a century of ignorant child-rearing books (written by highly-credentialed men, mainly) that told them not to kiss or hold their kids. So many things that were banned, from Where the Wild Things Are to The Catcher in the Rye to Billie Holliday’s Strange Fruit, turned out to be revelatory. The animating principle of the revolution that swept through America back then was that once ignorance was conquered, we would be free to celebrate our common humanity. It’s no accident this message made great art. The power of everything from jazz and rock to abstract painting and Gonzo journalism derived from exploding conventions. There was symbolism in the way people of all backgrounds felt like dancing to the new music or laughing at Richard Pryor’s forbidden comedy (similarly, cracks formed in the Soviet state when dissidents overseas chuckled over samizdat copies of The Master and Margarita). There was a universal urge toward peace, love, forgiveness and humor that brought people together. No one needed to be driven by whip toward this message. People were born with a hunger for it, which is why it became culturally hegemonic for half a century after Vietnam and Woodstock. Contrast that with today. If sixties liberals were able to sell their message to the rest of the country by making music even squares and reactionaries couldn’t resist, the woke revolution does the opposite. It spends most of its time constructing an impenetrable vocabulary of oppression and seething at the lumpen proles who either don’t get it or don’t like it. Its other chief characteristics seem to be a total lack of humor, an endless, crotch-sniffing enthusiasm for hunting skeletons in closets, a love of snitching and decency committees, a fear of metaphor (woke culture is 100% literal), a mania for collectivist scolding (“Read the room” is this week’s “Destroy the four olds!”), and a puritanical mistrust of humping in the apolitical context. The woke version of erotica is writing an article for the Guardian about how “ejaculating” skyscrapers are symbols of cisnormative dominance. They make the Junior Anti-Sex League seem like Led Zeppelin. The question isn’t whether or not “cancel culture” exists. The question is, without canceling, what would this culture be?
A bibliography is a list of the books and other sources that are referred to in a scholarly work-such as an essay, term paper, dissertation, or a book. The bibliography comes at the end of the work. There are different ways to format a bibliography, and the style that you use will depend on the discipline in which you are writing. Your bibliography should include a minimum of three written sources of information about your topic from books, encyclopedias, and periodicals. You may have additional information from the Web if appropriate. Examples of Bibliography Formats. There are standards for documenting sources of information in research papers. Even though different journals may use a slightly different format for the A bibliography is an alphabetized list of all the sources used in the paper. This list is found at the end of the work and allows the reader to verify the veracity of the statements and/or figures presented in the essay. It also allows a writer to give proper credit for quotes or key phrases so as to avoid plagiarism. A Chicago style bibliography lists the sources cited in your text. Each bibliography entry begins with the author’s name and the title of the source, followed by relevant publication details. The bibliography is alphabetized by authors’ last names. A bibliography is required if you have cited your sources with short notes. If you have given complete references for every source in full notes, a bibliography is not necessary. If a bibliography or reference list is required, to another student's entry/response in a Discussion post then do not cite it but simply mention the other student's entry in your sentence. Example: I agree with Susan Day (Discussion Post October 30, 2018) where she lists specific state legislatures that supported the Affordable Care Act. More info. General Rules has more information about Formatting a Harvard style bibliography. Sources are alphabetised by author last name. The heading ‘Reference list’ or ‘Bibliography’ appears at the top. Each new source appears on a new line, and when an entry for a single source extends onto a second line, a hanging indent is used: Harvard bibliography example SAMPLE BIBLIOGRAPHY ENTRIES A bibliography is an alphabetical list of all the sources used in your research. Sources are alphabetized by author or by title if no author is given. 6 Bibliography Style A bibliography style has to be chosen. The bibliography style can be declared with \bibliography{style} command, which may be issued anywhere after the preamble.The style is a file with .bst extension that determines how bibliography entries will appear at the output, such as if they are sorted or not, or how they are labeled etc… A bibliography, by definition, is a detailed listing of the books, journals, magazines, or online sources that an author has used in researching and writing their work. It is important to note that it must be a complete list including every source used during the research phase – not just the ones referenced in the text in any styles of writing. Notes Example: Note: Autobiographies, Collected Letters and Editions of Complete Works often include the author's name in the title. In such cases, the citation can begin with the title of the work. Both the author name and title must be included in the bibliography. 5. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (New York: Macmillan, 1977), 31.
Creating an APA Format Annotated Bibliography - YouTube
Recorded with http://screencast-o-matic.com Steps to manual data entry in your EndNote library. Category ... REST API concepts and examples - Duration: 8:53. ... Bibliographies and Cross References - Duration: 8:07. KnowledgeWave 497,533 ... An explanation of the differences between primary and secondary references, when/why you would choose to use a secondary reference, and how the citations dif... *Please note a verbal error in this video regarding serif v. sans serif fonts. Times New Roman is a SERIF font. Arial or calibri are examples of sans serif... This video is unavailable. Watch Queue Queue. Watch Queue Queue Creating an APA Format Annotated Bibliography ... How to create Data Entry Form in Excel - Ms Office? ... Hypothesis Testing Statistics Problems & Examples - Duration: 23:41. Math and ... An overview of the Preliminary Bibliography assignment, with some coverage of APA format. Full Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLALQuK1NDrh9HgAQ22wep8X18Fvvcm8R--Watch more How to Write Essays and Research Papers videos: http://ww...
