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- Gray, Billy, 1961-
(författare)
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“A thrilling beauty”? : Violence, Transcendence and the Shankill Butchers in Eoin McNamee’s Resurrection Man
- 2014
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Ingår i: Estudios Irlandeses. - 1699-311X. ; :9, s. 54--66
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Shankill Butchers, a small group of Ulster Volunteer Force (U.V.F.) members based in aprotestant enclave in Belfast called the Shankill Road during the 1970’s, acquired areputation for indulging in pathological violence to a degree unparalleled in the annals of‘Troubles’ related murders. Led by a prominent U.V.F. member called Lenny Murphy, theShankill Butchers became notorious for the kidnapping, torture and murder of randomlyselected Catholics. As Conor Cruise O´Brien has noted, the Shankill Butchers “remain uniquein the sadistic ferocity of their modus operandi” and according to Feldman, the extremity oftheir actions push all conventional notions of violence in Northern Ireland to the backgroundand mark an “outer limit” in relation to what he terms “the symbolics of sectarian space andthe radical reduction of the Other to that space”.Eoin McNamee’s Resurrection Man, while unable to lay claim to being the first literaryinvestigation into the atrocities carried out by Lenny Murphy and his associates, isnevertheless a text which has been accorded the greatest degree of critical attention in relationto the controversial manner in which it has attempted to remediate the Shankill Butcherlegacy. My paper will attempt to prove that the novel’s metafictive universe, self-consciousreflectivity and innovative generic hybridity, represents an attempt to transcend the spatialborders of Northern Ireland in order to present the conflict as an allegory of existential,postmodern alienation. Moreover, the violent psychopathology of the Shankill Butchers is, inMcNamee’s text, of universal as opposed to local, significance. Violence is portrayed as asearch for intimacy and transformation, a performative act that conveys agency in a worlddefined by virtual reality
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- Gray, Billy, 1961-
(författare)
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From the Secular to the Sacred : The Influence of Sufism on the Work of Leila Aboulela
- 2021
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Ingår i: Narratives Crossing Borders. - Stockholm : Stockholm University Press. - 9789176351437 - 9789176351406 ; , s. 145-168
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The contemporary Sudanese writer Jamal Mahjoub has used the term ’Transcultural’ to describe a specific form of Literature which he argues: demands more, both of reader and writer. It does not have the support of those cheering, waving crowds who would like you to be European or Third World, Black or African or Arab. It can rely only on that crack of light which lies between the spheres of reader and writer. Gradually that crack grows wider and where there was once only monochrome light, now there is a spectrum of colours. (Mahjoub, The Writer and Globalisation 1997) Leila Aboulela, whose first novel The Translator (2000) is a contemporary writer whose fiction has been defined as embodying predominant elements of the transcultural experience. Daughter of a Sudanese father and Egyptian mother, born in Cairo in 1964, Aboulela grew up in Khartoum but currently resides in Aberdeen, Scotland and her fiction is attuned to emerging female Muslim voices within the migrant communities of the West. Aboulela’s experience of Britain and British culture provides her with a terrain against which she attempts to articulate a specific identity: the Muslim Arab/African woman in exile. In her novels, the migrant experience serves as the foundation for a mystical but nonetheless assertive religiosity that functions as an antidote to hegemonic Western materialism. This religious frame offers not merely consolation and a firm sense of identity; it also, according to Geoffrey Nash (2012) ‘shapes an emerging awareness of difference and helps articulate an alternative to Western modernity’. According to Lleana Dimitriu (2014), the last decade has witnessed a resurgence of interest, both theoretical and creative, in the complexities of what she terms ‘faith based subject positions’, particularly in the context of global crises and mass migrations and Leila Aboulela’s fiction suggests that in the midst of postcolonial ruptures and mass migration, there is the possibility of alternative forms of ‘re-rooting’ and belonging, with ‘home’ perceived as a state of mind and identity as anchored in the tenets of religious faith. My article will engage with the manner in which Aboulela is preoccupied with the ethical dilemmas faced by Muslims currently residing in secular societies and how a mystical form of Islam –in particular Sufism – serves less as an ideological marker for her characters and more as a code of ethical behaviour and a central marker of identity.
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- Gray, Billy, 1961-
(författare)
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Rumi, Sufi Spirituality and Western Sufism in Elif Shafak's The Forty Rules of Love
- 2020
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Ingår i: Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis. - Åbo Finland : Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis. - 0582-3226 .- 2343-4937. ; 29, s. 124-146
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In William Patrick Patterson’s Struggle of the Magicians, a detailed study of the relationship between the prominent figures of Western esotericism, G. I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky, he writes ‘Only in a time as confused as ours could one think that the teacher–student relationship – an archetypal and sacred form – exists as an option, rather than a necessary requirement, a station on the way’ (1997: 92). My paper examines the numerous ways in which the famous teacher–disciple relationship that existed between Muhammad Jalal ad-Din, known to the anglophone world as Rumi, and his spiritual guide and mentor, Shams of Tabriz, is represented in Elif Shafak’s novel The Forty Rules of Love (2010) and how her depiction of this relationship is predicated upon her knowledge of, and belief in, the general principles of what can be termed ‘Western Sufism’. Although she had previously thematised elements of Sufi dialectics in her earlier fiction and clear, if minor, references to Sufi philosophy permeated novels such as The Bastard of Istanbul (2007), Shafak’s fascination with the teachings of Rumi and Shams of Tabriz reaches its culmination and most significant artistic expression in The Forty Rules of Love. Published in 2010, the novel situates a fictionalised representation of the relationship between Rumi and Shams at the centre of the narrative and provides an overt depiction of the emanationalist, perennialist and universalist ethics contained within Sufi dialectics. In addition, given that Shafak’s text represents one of the more prominent and commercially successful contributions to what Amira El-Zein (2010: 71–85) has called ‘the Rumi phenomenon’ my paper examines how, in privileging the aesthetics and the interests of American readers over conveying a more complete and more nuanced image of Sufism, Shafak succumbs to the oversimplification and decontextualisation of Rumi’s teachings perpetrated by the Western popularisers of his work.
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- Zamorano Llena, Carmen, 1973-, et al.
(författare)
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Introduction : Fear, anxiety, and crisis. Europe and emotions in the twenty-first century
- 2023
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Ingår i: Crisis and the Culture of Fear and Anxiety in Contemporary Europe. - London : Taylor & Francis. - 9781000916836 - 9781032268606 ; , s. 1-19
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This chapter defines the main features of the core concepts in the collection, namely the dominant discourses of fear, anxiety, and crisis in a twenty-first-century global and, particularly, European context. To do so, it situates the study of these public emotions within the theoretical context of the turn to affects and emotions. One of the innovative aspects of this chapter is that it provides a succinct overview of the recent ascent of the scholarly interest in emotions and affects and distinguishes between these two turns, unlike the current trend which tends to conflate them as synonyms of essentially the same phenomenon. The chapter also identifies what is distinct about the present “culture of fear” and its relationship with the public spread of anxiety. In terms of the discourse of crisis, it is associated with the concept of “moral panics,” which despite its conceptualisation almost five decades ago is still recognised as a pertinent term to analyse affective responses to contemporary crises, such as those relating to COVID-19 or climate change. The introduction concludes with a presentation of the rationale and a presentation of the internal coherence of the collection.
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