Evil Gods and Reckless Saviours : Adaptation and Appropriation in Late Twentieth Century Jesus-Novels

Late twentieth century Jesus-novels search after a completely new picture of Jesus. Novels written for instance by Norman Mailer, José Saramago, Michèle Roberts, Marianne Fredriksson, and Ki Longfellow provide an inversive revision of the canonic Gospels. They read the New Testament in terms of the present age. In their adaptation the story turns often into a critique of the whole Christian history. The investigated contrast-novels end up with an appropriation that is based on prototypical rewriting. They aim at the rehabilitation of Judas, and some of them make Mary Magdalane the key figure of Christianity. Saramago describes God as a blood thirsty tyrant, and Mailer makes God combat with the Devil in a manichean sense as with an equal. Such ideas are familiar both from poststructuralist philosophy and post-metaphysical death-of-God theology. The main result of the intertextual analysis is that these scholars have adopted Nietzschean ideas in their writing. Quite unlike earlier Jesus-novels, these more recent novels present a revision that produces discontinuity with the original source text, the New Testament. The intertextual strategy is based on contradiction. The reader wittnesses contesting and challenging, the authors attack Biblical beliefs and attempt to dissolve Christian doctrines. An attack on Biblical slave morality and violent concept of God deprives Jesus of his Jewish Messianic identity, makes Old Testament law a contradiction of life, calls sacrificial soteriology a violent pattern supporting oppression, and presents God as a cruel monster who enslaves people under his commandments and wishes their death. The new Jesus-figure contests Mosaic Law, despises orthodox Judaism, abandons Jewish customs and even questions Old Testament monotheism. In result, the novels intentionally transfer Jesus out of Judaism. Furthermore, Jewish faith appears in a negative light. Such an intertextual move is not open anti-Semitism but it cannot avoid attacking Jewish worship. Why? One reason that explains these attitudes is that Western culture still carries anti-Judaic attitudes beneath the surface covered with sentiments of equality and tolerance. Despite the evident post-holocaust consciousness present in the novels, they actually adopt an arrogant and ironical refutation of Jewish beliefs and Old Testament faith. In these novels, Jesus is made a complete opposite and antithesis to Judaism. Key words: Jesus-novel, intertextuality, adaptation, slave morality, Nietzsche, theodicy, patriarchy.

Translation, literature and nation: the Xeneración Nós and the appropriation of Joyce's texts

Santamaría, José Miguel; Pajares, Eterio; Olsen, Vickie; Merino, Raquel; Eguíluz, Federico (eds.)

Can the dead speak? appropriation and rewriting of the canon in Angela Carters Nights at the circus and in Margaret Atwoods The Penelopiad

Esta dissertação visa estudar como autoras pós-modernas se apropriam e reescrevem textos canônicos em uma tentativa de trazer à tona e desconstruir as metanarrativas patriarcais, que informam tais textos. Tal objetivo pretende ser alcançado através de um estudo sobre a formação do cânone literário, dos conceitos de mito e principalmente das estratégias narrativas utilizadas por essas autoras em seu processo criativo. Para tal, um estudo sobre intertextualidade, a paródia e a intertextualidade paródica é levado a cabo nesta dissertação. Dois romances figuram como objeto de investigação neste trabalho. O romance Nights at the Circus, da escritora inglesa Angela Carter, é o primeiro a ser analisado. Nesse romance, as estratégias de apagamento das fronteiras entre os gêneros e a intertextualidade paródica entre textos e mitos clássicos como formas de apropriação e subversão do cânone, são privilegiadas. O outro romance que se faz presente nesta dissertação é a obra da autora canadense Margaret Atwood intitulada The Penelopiad. Nesse romance, personagens que antes eram marginalizados ou não tinham voz figuram como personagens principais, como é o caso de Penélope e de suas doze criadas. Esta dissertação visa, assim, mostrar como essas apropriações de textos canônicos exercem um papel fundamental no questionamento da artificialidade de discursos que são naturalizados e dos valores propagados pelos mesmos

Enactive appropriation.

The appropriation of digital artefacts involves their use, which has changed, evolved or developed beyond their original design. Thus, to understand appropriation, we must understand use. We define use as the active, purposive exploitation of the affordances offered by the technology and from this perspective; appropriation emerges as a natural consequence of this enactive use. Enaction tells us that perception is an active process. It is something we do, and not something that happens to us. From this reading, use then becomes the active exploitation of the affordances offered us by the artefact, system or service. In turn, we define appropriation as the engagement with these actively disclosed affordances—disclosed as a consequence of, not just, seeing but of seeing as. We present a small case study that highlights instances of perception as an actively engaged skill. We conclude that appropriation is a simple consequence of enactive perception.

"I have nothing to say, only to show": appropriation in the poetries of Trevor Joyce, Alan Halsey, and Susan Howe

This thesis studies contemporary poetry’s innovations in textual borrowing and the range and scope of its appropriative practices. The restrictions of the inherited definitions of appropriation include a limited capacity for expression and meaningfulness, a partial concept of appropriation’s critical capacity, and an inadequate sense of the poet’s individual and unique practice of appropriation. This thesis resolves the problematic constraints limiting contemporary definitions of appropriation by tracing the history of the practice to reveal an enduring relation between appropriation and poetic expression. Close readings of Trevor Joyce’s, Alan Halsey’s, and Susan Howe’s poetry serve as evidence of contemporary poetry’s development of appropriation beyond the current ascriptions and offer some direction on how the critical understanding of appropriation might be extended and redefined. Here, appropriation is recognized as another source of lyric expression, critical innovation, and conceptual development in contemporary poetry. This thesis encourages a new perspective on the purpose and processes of poetic appropriation and the consequences of its declarative potential for both poet and poem.

Taking as Giving, Appropriation as Access: Transfers of Land Development Rights and China’s Recent Experiments

Economic development at both the domestic and global levels is associated with increasing tensions which are inextricably linked to the meaning and allocation of property rights, which has a great impact on appropriation of resources and may lead to different paths of development. “Taking”-- the appropriation of private land for public needs -- is a typical example that exhibits those tensions, posing a challenge to the conventional conception of property as individualistic and exclusive rights of possession, use, and disposition and to the associated neoliberal model of development. Should the individual landowner be left to bear the cost of a regulatory intervention which endures to the wider benefit of the whole community? How to mitigate the tensions between private ownership and public regulation? If we take the liberal concept of property, then private property seems to be in constant conflict with public interests and wider social concerns. Meanwhile, community, situating between the state and the individuals, and community’s relationship to development rights, have not provoked enough discussion. The paper explores the different ways land development rights might be seen both in Western, essentially common law systems, and in China, especially now and in view of two case studies. An empirical example in Wugang, China reveals the importance of integrating the “community lens” proposed by Roger Cotterrell into studies of the transfer of land development rights. Reading through the community lens, taking could be giving and appropriation could also be access. This approach provides a new perspective to re-evaluate the relationship between legal appropriation and development.

A qualitative enquiry into the appropriation of mobile telephony at the bottom of the pyramid

Purpose: The paper aims to analyse Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) customers’ (e.g. Bangladeshi farmers) use and appropriation of mobile telephony and to critically identify a suitable research strategy for such investigation.

Design/methodology/approach: Concentrated ethnographic immersion was combined with both methodological and investigator triangulation during a four-month period of fieldwork conducted in Bangladeshi villages to obtain more robust findings. Concentrated immersion was required to achieve relatively speedier engagement owing to the difficulty in engaging with respondents on a long-term basis.

Findings: The farmers’ use of mobile telephony went beyond the initial adoption, as they appropriated it through social and institutional support, inventive means and/or changes in their own lifestyle. The paper argues that technology appropriation, being a result of the mutual shaping of technology, human skills and abilities and macro-environmental factors, enables users to achieve desired outcomes which may not always be the ones envisaged by the original designers.

Research limitations/implications: The paper contributes to two major areas: first, it identifies technology appropriation as an important and emerging concept in international marketing research; second, it suggests a concentrated form of ethnographic engagement for studying technology appropriation in a developing country context.

Practical implications: A good understanding of the dynamic interplay between users’ skills and abilities, social contexts and technological artefacts/applications is required in order for businesses to serve BoP customers profitably.

Originality/value: The paper presents a dynamic model of technology appropriation based on findings collected through a pragmatic approach by combining concentrated ethnographic immersion with methodological and investigator triangulation