Invoking Mnemosyne

Across this volume, readers encounter the author’s qualitative inquiry into the lives of women academics, including herself, who originated from working-class or poverty-class backgrounds. Unconventionally conveyed, these encounters take shape as a self-speculative critique of the author’s feminist research practice, moving readers into the folds of the work to consider what constructivist, poststructural, and material feminist theories and methodologies do to the story she was able to tell at the time that she told it.

Ellis is the leading writer in the move toward person, autobiographical writing as a strategy for academic research. In addition to 'Final Negotiations' and 'The Ethnographic I', she has written stories that highlight the emotional power and academic value of autoethnography. This volume collects 12 of her stories.

Collis and Lyons (Simon Fraser University, Canada) enlist US and a few international contributors in English, American studies, and poetry to probe the poetry of Robert Duncan. Part 1 traces a variety of Duncan's influences and derivations. Some topics include textual poetics and the politics of reading in Duncan's "Night Scenes," and poetic abdication in Duncan and Laura Riding. Part 2 examines poets who in some way derive from Duncan, with discussion of quotation in the poetry of Duncan and Ronald Johnson, Jerome Rothenberg and the dream of "A Poetry of All Poetries," and anarchism and the practice of derivative poetics in Duncan and John Cage. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas (1925–1929) is a prescient work of mixed media assemblage, made up of hundreds of images culled from antiquity to the Renaissance and arranged into startling juxtapositions. Warburg’s allusive atlas sought to illuminate the pains of his final years, after he had suffered a breakdown and been institutionalized. It continues to influence contemporary artists today, including Gerhard Richter and Mark Dion. In this illustrated exploration of Warburg and his great work, Georges Didi-Huberman leaps from Mnemosyne Atlas into a set of musings on the relation between suffering and knowledge in Western thought, and on the creative results of associative thinking. Deploying writing that delights in dramatic jump cuts reminiscent of Warburg’s idiosyncratic juxtapositions, and drawing on a set of sources that ranges from ancient Babylon to Walter Benjamin, Atlas, or the Anxious Gay Science is rich in Didi-Huberman’s trademark combination of elan and insight.

From one of the 20th century's great writers comes one of the finest autobiographies of our time. Speak, Memory was first published by Vladimir Nabokov in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised and republished in 1966. The Everyman's Library edition includes, for the first time, the previously unpublished "Chapter 16"–the most significant unpublished piece of writing by the master, newly released by the Nabokov estate–which provided an extraordinary insight into Speak, Memory. Nabokov's memoir is a moving account of a loving, civilized family, of adolescent awakenings, flight from Bolshevik terror, education in England, and émigré life in Paris and Berlin. The Nabokovs were eccentric, liberal aristocrats, who lived a life immersed in politics and literature on splendid country estates until their world was swept away by the Russian revolution when the author was eighteen years old. Speak, Memory vividly evokes a vanished past in the inimitable prose of Nabokov at his best.

How Do We Become Free and Enter into the Mystery of Life? The Fourfold Path takes us on a healing journey inspired by the philosopher Plato and his teachings on how to know yourself by transcending all limitations within the human space. The model of transcendence leaves behind the metaphors we live by to pioneer humankind into the deepest and most powerful gnosis ever attained through the love of wisdom. Through transcendence, you can discover how to free yourself from the suffering that obstructs the complete vision of the soul. You can heal from the unconscious processes and go beyond the limitations of the ego. Once you have learned the Path, you can attain enlightenment and become like God, and attain the characteristics of divinity, immortality, and bliss. Transcendence is basic to all human cultures who move through the limitless possibilities given to humankind to evolve using the wisdom of the mind and the wisdom of the heart. This wisdom invites us to go deeper and move from self-realization to knowledge of God. Life itself inspires this change through the experiences of love, birth, death, miracles, blessings, and family. True enlightenment occurs when we process these life experiences as lessons on a soul journey that initiate a spiritual awakening. It is as simple as arguing that there are two identities: a true self and a false self. Philosophy is the means to know the difference between the two, while transcendence is the path that can lead humankind to know the truth. When humankind comes to know their true selves, they will be set free from suffering. This is the ascent toward what Plato called The Good, which many believe is also called God. The Fourfold Path shows us how to leave behind the limitations of the human space to discover a sacred place in communication and communion with Spirit, so you can become one with God and find true happiness.

A psychomagic journey to awaken lucid dream consciousness • Presents effective exercises and techniques, inspired by ancient texts, to deepen your personal awareness of the dream state and experiment with dreams for healing and divinatory purposes • Each initiatory chapter includes a psychodramatic narrative designed to generate the perfect dream for each stage in the initiation • Explains how dreaming has influenced cultural, religious, and spiritual thinking • Includes access to a seven-part hypnagogic guided journey recording Invoking Mnemosyne—Greek goddess of memory and eloquence, daughter of Heaven and Earth, mother of the Muses, and archetypal deity of the Asklepion dream temple tradition—this book initiates you into full dream consciousness, offering a lucid-dreaming ritual experience in the spirit of the Mystery Schools of antiquity. Sharing her more than a decade of research on Sleep Temples and Mystery Schools of the Esoteric Tradition, lucid-dreaming instructor Sarah Janes explores the evolution of imagination, memory, and consciousness throughout the ages and proposes that dreams have been fundamental in the creation and development of culture. Dreams play an important role in ancestor worship, afterlife beliefs, animism, religion, and wis­dom traditions. Explaining how a conscious dream life is essential for self-discovery, deep integration, and healing, Sarah presents exercises, techniques, initiations, and seven guided audio meditations to help you explore the inner depths of your psyche. Sarah reveals how dreams offer us an opportunity to remember and directly experience our divinity, to transcend the limitations of our mortality and enter timeless imaginal realms. These realms, accessible through dreams, can help you to form a better under­standing of who you are. Employing the power of story to affect the mind and lay down new neural pathways—as if one were really living the story—Sarah connects each initiatory chapter with a psychodramatic narrative as well as a guided audio meditation. Using symbolism and powerful imagery, these stories, combined with her meditations, help you generate the perfect dreams for each stage in the initiation. And by becoming a better dreamer, you can make better, more aware decisions in your waking life.

Narrative Inquiry of Displacement: Stories of Challenges, Change and Resilience describes a variety of displacement experiences in different cultures and contexts. The text uses narrative methodologies to share participant stories and explore the nature and effects of displacement. Each chapter examines and theorises the narrative approach used to show the link between the data collection and the story, illustrating research decisions and analysis in action. The book presents a range of displacement stories, including migration, immigration, social and political displacement. The chapters also provide stories of adoptions, diaspora communities and people affected by apartheid and the Holocaust. This volume is recommended for those working in qualitative inquiry and scholars of migration and refugee studies, providing immediate and theoretically nuanced accounts of displacement experiences globally.