"Echoes of Cruelty" delves deep into Lila's harrowing journey, trapped in the intricate web of a malignant marriage. As she confronts a past rife with control, deceit, and emotional turmoil, Lila embarks on a transformative path of self-discovery, resilience, and healing. This gripping narrative masterfully interweaves themes of emotional abuse, the power of sisterhood, and the therapeutic essence of art. Readers will journey alongside Lila, from darkened corridors of despair to radiant meadows of hope. The story is not just a tale of survival but an ode to the indomitable human spirit. Lila's evolution, both poignant and empowering, serves as a beacon of hope, resilience, and rebirth. An essential read for anyone seeking an emotional and thought-provoking tale that resonates with the complexities of relationships, self-discovery, and the journey to find one's true voice amidst the echoes of cruelty.
Parting ways with the Freudian and Lacanian readings that have dominated recent scholarly understanding of Hitchcock, David Humbert examines the roots of violence in the director’s narratives and finds them not in human sexuality but in mimesis. Through an analysis of seven key films, he argues that Girard’s model of mimetic desire—desire oriented by imitation of and competition with others—best explains a variety of well-recognized themes, including the MacGuffin, the double, the innocent victim, the wrong man, the transfer of guilt, and the scapegoat. This study will appeal not only to Hitchcock fans and film scholars but also to those interested in Freud and Girard and their competing theories of desire.
This book is a daily devotional of the prophecies from the Old Testament fulfilled throughout history. The foretelling from these prophets is historically accurate. Most are fulfilled by Jesus Christ alone. Jesus talks about fulfilling the Law and the prophets. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that He had not come to abolish the Law or the prophets but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17). Scripture tells of prophets, their warnings, and their prophecies. Some spoke of good things to come, while others described desperate times. The fact that Jesus fulfilled the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings reminds us that the Word of God is true, steadfast, and eternal. God is active in every moment. Prophets foretold the birth of Jesus and how He would face trials, disappointment, the unbelief of the people, torture, and death on the cross. Scripture tells how Jesus would rise on the third day and ascend into Heaven to sit at the right hand of His Father. Through each word spoken and each action, Jesus showed what would happen. Jesus knew that the plan of His Father was the best. By reading and studying the Word of God, we learn that everything Jesus said would happen is true. Although not all prophecies have been fulfilled yet, Christians know that the day is coming when Jesus will return.
Partition is an enduring subject of Indian writers in English. The event was an unparalleled catastrophe of recent history which ravaged Indian and Pakistani and affected the Sikhs, Sindhis, Hindus, Punjabis and Bengal is in particular many hart rending stories and accounts of partition continue to be written and discussed and the blame game is still not over. It has been a favourite topic of many authors, artists, journalists, film makers and even writers of memoirs. The present Book discusses the highly complex subject of partition which deals with politics of greed, the abdication of the authorities and the sufferings of males and females during and after Partition. Numerous books have been written on the subject in regional and English language. For the purposes of present book entitled only four novels written in different decades, say 50s, 70s, 80s and 90s have been taken up and the novels like Train to Pakistan, Azadi, The Ice Candy Man and What the Body Remembers have been taken up for serious critical discussion in order to highlight the similarities and dissimilarities of approach and view points from both male and female points of view.
Reweaving the Relational Mat is an integrative response to the problem of violence against women which grounds theological and sociological analysis in the praxis of Oceanian Christian women's experiences of violence. It focuses on the collusion of the church in the problem of violence against women by critiquing the ways in which its theology and practices have contributed to 'power-over' ways of relating. Employing the Oceanian metaphor of weaving the mat, the analysis 'unravels' the 'patriarchal relational mat,' paving the way for a constructive 'reweaving' of a Christocentric 'egalitarian relational mat.' The study begins by unravelling the correlation between violence and the ideology of patriarchy. It then highlights the various strands of violence against women, and examines the complex mosaic of socio-cultural sources and manifestations of violence against women in Oceania. This leads to an analysis of the interwoven strands of religion and violence, focusing particularly on the church's captivity to patriarchy. The ensuing explication of problematic theological and biblical interpretations and church practices ends with a critique of male clergy power, particularly as it functions in the Oceanian context. This leads to an examination of the relationship between flawed theological education and violence against women. Case studies of violence against women in the Oceanian theological education setting are analysed. The subsequent 'reweaving of the relational mat' issues forth in specific challenges to church leaders, theological educators and church women.
The Middle Ages are often thought of as an era during which cruelty was a major aspect of life, a view that stems from the anti-Catholic polemics of the Reformation. Daniel Baraz makes the striking discovery that the concept of cruelty, which had been an important issue in late antiquity, received little attention in the medieval period before the thirteenth century. From that point on, interest in cruelty increased until it reached a peak late in the sixteenth century.Medieval Cruelty's extraordinary scope ranges from the writings of Seneca to those of Montaigne and draws from sources that include the views of Western Christians, Eastern Christians, and Muslims. Baraz examines the development of the concept of cruelty in legal texts, philosophical treatises, and other works that attempt to discuss the nature of cruelty. He then considers histories, martyrdom accounts, and literary works in which cruelty is represented rather than discussed directly. In the wake of the intellectual transformations of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, an increasing focus on the intentions motivating an individual's acts rekindled the discussion of cruelty. Baraz shows how ethical thought and practice about cruelty, which initially focused on external forces, became a tool to differentiate internal groups and justify violence against them. This process is evident in attacks on the Jews, in the peasant rebellions of the later Middle Ages, and in the Wars of Religion.
Many believers neglect to study the Old Testament because they find it confusing or because they assume that it is less important to the Christian faith than the New Testament. We cannot understand Jesus or His gospel without a proper grounding in the Old Testament Scriptures. Thus, we need to read and study the whole counsel of God. Let us not neglect the study of either testament. Unique among all books ever written, the Bible accurately foretells specific events in detail many years, sometimes centuries, before they occur. Approximately 2,500 prophecies appear in the pages of the Bible, about 2,000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter—no errors. (The remaining 500 or so reach into the future and may be seen unfolding as days go by.) Since the probability of any one of these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance averages less than one in ten (figured very conservatively) and since the prophecies are for the most part independent of one another, the odds for all these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance without error is less than one in 102000 (that is 1 with 2,000 zeros written after it)! God is not the only one, however, who uses forecasts of future events to get people’s attention. Satan does, too. Through clairvoyants (such as Jeanne Dixon and Edgar Cayce), mediums, spiritists, and others come remarkable predictions, though rarely with more than about 60 percent accuracy, never with total accuracy. Messages from Satan, furthermore, fail to match the details of Bible prophecies, nor do they include a call to repentance. The acid test for identifying a prophet of God is recorded by Moses in Deuteronomy 18:21-22. According to this Bible passage (and others), God’s prophets, as distinct from Satan’s spokesmen, are 100 percent accurate in their predictions. There is no room for error. The New Testament indicates that what happened at the cross and on it was what the prophets had predicted would happen long before. Details of Jesus’ life and death were written in divine prophecy hundreds of years before He was born in Bethlehem. Throughout the Gospels, this amazing truth is emphasized. As Jesus and His apostles left the upper room for the Garden of Gethsemane, He said to them, “You will all fall away because it is written, ‘I will strike down the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered’” (Mark 14:27). After Judas’ betrayal, Jesus rebuked Peter for drawing his sword and cutting off the ear of Malchus and said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. . . How then will the Scriptures be fulfilled, which say that it must happen this way?” (Matthew 26:52–54). On the cross Jesus waited until He saw that “all things had already been accomplished” before He uttered His only physical request, “I am thirsty” (John 19:28). Later, the spear was thrust into Jesus’ side, and blood and water came out. We read, “For these things came to pass to fulfill the Scripture, ‘Not a bone of Him shall be broken.’ And again, another Scripture says, ‘They shall look on Him whom they pierced’” (John 19:36, 37). The angel who was at the tomb on the morning of the resurrection said, “. . . Remember how He spoke to you while He was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rises again” (Luke 24:6, 7). When Jesus met with the apostles and disciples Sunday evening, the same day He arose from the dead, He said to them, These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. . . . Thus, it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem (Luke 24:44–47). In Jesus’ affirmation to those Sunday night witnesses, He referred to all three divisions of the Hebrew Old Testament—the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms —as He described the prophecies that had been fulfilled in Him. It has been said that if one reads any part of the Bible and does not see Jesus in it, he should go back and reread it, for he has missed something very important! In Peter’s first gospel sermon on the Day of Pentecost, he declared that Jesus had been delivered into the hands of godless men to be put to death “by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). In his second sermon in Acts, Peter covered in one sweeping sentence the prophecies of the whole Old Testament, saying that Jesus’ sufferings on the cross fulfilled all that had been prophesied: “But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled” (Acts 3:18).
"Giroux refuses to give in or give up. The Violence of Organized Forgetting is a clarion call to imagine a different America--just, fair, and caring--and then to struggle for it."--Bill Moyers "Henry Giroux has accomplished an exciting, brilliant intellectual dissection of America's somnambulent voyage into anti-democratic political depravity. His analysis of the plight of America's youth is particularly heartbreaking. If we have a shred of moral fibre left in our beings, Henry Giroux sounds the trumpet to awaken it to action to restore to the nation a civic soul."--Dennis J. Kucinich, former US Congressman and Presidential candidate "Giroux lays out a blistering critique of an America governed by the tenets of a market economy. . . . He cites French philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman's concept of the 'disimagination machine' to describe a culture and pedagogical philosophy that short-circuits citizens' ability to think critically, leaving the generation now reaching adulthood unprepared for an 'inhospitable' world. Picking apart the current malaise of 21st-century digital disorder, Giroux describes a world in which citizenship is replaced by consumerism and the functions of engaged governance are explicitly beholden to corporations."--Publishers Weekly In a series of essays that explore the intersections of politics, popular culture, and new forms of social control in American society, Henry A. Giroux explores how state and corporate interests have coalesced to restrict civil rights, privatize what's left of public institutions, and diminish our collective capacity to participate as engaged citizens of a democracy. From the normalization of mass surveillance, lockdown drills, and a state of constant war, to corporate bailouts paired with public austerity programs that further impoverish struggling families and communities, Giroux looks to flashpoints in current events to reveal how the forces of government and business are at work to generate a culture of mass forgetfulness, obedience and conformity. In The Violence of Organized Forgetting, Giroux deconstructs the stories created to control us while championing the indomitable power of education, democracy, and hope. Henry A. Giroux is a world-renowned educator, author and public intellectual. He currently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University. The Toronto Star has named Henry Giroux “one of the twelve Canadians changing the way we think." More Praise for Henry A. Giroux's The Violence of Organized Forgetting: "I can think of no book in the last ten years as essential as this. I can think of no other writer who has so clinically dissected the crisis of modern life and so courageously offered a possibility for real material change."--John Steppling, playwright, and author of The Shaper, Dogmouth, and Sea of Cortez "A timely study if there ever was one, The Violence of Organized Forgetting is a milestone in the struggle to repossess the common sense expropriated by the American power elite to be redeployed in its plot to foil the popular resistance against rising social injustice and decay of political democracy."--Zygmunt Bauman, author of Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All? among other works Prophetic and eloquent, Giroux gives us, in this hard-hitting and compelling book, the dark scenario of Western crisis where ignorance has become a virtue and wealth and power the means of ruthless abuse of workers, of the minorities and of immigrants. However, he remains optimistic in his affirmation of radical humanity, determined as he is to relate himself to a fair and caring world unblemished by anti-democratic political depravity."--Shelley Walia, Frontline
The first book-length study of an influential voice in contemporary queer American literature Since the early 1980s, Jim Grimsley has received increasing acclaim for his achievements in a variety of dramatic and literary genres. Through his novels, plays, and short stories, Grimsley portrays an unrelenting search for happiness and interrogates themes of corruption, technology, poverty, domestic abuse, sexuality, and faith in the contemporary United States. Through unique characters and a multitude of forms, the award-winning author explores the complexities of southern culture, his own troubled childhood, and larger pieces of the human experience. In Understanding Jim Grimsley, David Deutsch offers the first book-length study of Grimsley's diverse work and argues for his vital role in shaping the contemporary queer American literary scene. Deutsch helps readers navigate the intricacies of Grimsley's influential drama, fiction, and fantasy science fiction—including his most popular novel, Dream Boy—by weaving together discussions of common themes. Placing Grimsley's plays, novels, and short stories in conversation with one another, Deutsch reveals Grimsley's development throughout a career in which he has investigated hope and hardship, youth and maturity, experimentation and convention. Deutsch also provides vital historical and cultural contexts for understanding how Grimsley engages, expands, and challenges literary and theatrical traditions. Deutsch demonstrates a deep, critical understanding of Grimsley's hard-earned, pragmatic optimism. Intertwining Grimsley's major fiction and plays and contextualizing these within a broader American landscape, this volume brings his work more completely into the conversation on southern queer literature.
