The Arbutus Review (TAR)

Letter from the Editor

Emily Arvay — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Managing Editor:
Emily Arvay

Associate Editor:
Yin Lam

Cover image:
Sun Melt by Heliotrope Stardust. Copyright 2023 by The Arbutus Review. Printed with permission.

Was Dionysus a Music Therapist?

Kiara Hosie — Sun, 10 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0700

In the Ancient Greco-Roman world, Dionysus was the deity to call upon for all things relating to intoxication, ritual madness, and religious ecstasy. Living firmly in the realm of festivity and celebration, he appears to be a one-dimensional pleasure deity. But what if Dionysus was more than simply the god of parties? I propose the potential therapeutic value of Dionysian (ecstatic) music by applying both ancient and modern interpretations to close readings of Ancient Greco-Roman mythological texts. In section one, I define Dionysian music against its more demonstrably therapeutic Apollonian counterpart, drawing from a variety of Ancient writers including Homer, Euripides, and Ovid. While this section emphasizes negative psychological effects of Dionysian music, section two argues that the mythical hero-musician, Orpheus, links Apollo to Dionysus and thus suggests the therapeutic potential of Dionysian music. I further this argument in section three through a discussion of how Dionysian music can be interpreted by Plato, Aristotle, and modern psychologists as therapeutic due to its ability to both express and regulate emotions. I conclude that although Dionysus does not belong amongst modern music therapists, his presence is certainly at home in modern theories of music therapy.

Absolute Power and Unsustainable Tyranny

Jonathan Granirer — Sun, 10 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0700

This article explores Roman political theory on the legitimacy and use of emperors’ absolute power. Circa 55 C.E., Seneca, a Stoic philosopher and senior advisor to the Roman Emperor Nero, authored the treatise De Clementia, in which he advised the young emperor to rule with clemency and moderation. Despite the rich body of scholarship that examines this treatise, there is an absence of academic analyses that situate De Clementia within the context of the governmental mechanics of Rome. In this article, I argue that Seneca’s treatise depicts Nero’s supreme authority as contingent upon his capacity to uphold his obligations as an emperor. Further, I contend that this interpretation provides a genuine account of the political relations between Nero’s regime and Rome’s political elite that have not been examined in detail by previous scholarship on De Clementia. Finally, I posit that this treatise reveals how those operating at the top of Rome’s political hierarchy understood the emperor’s possession of absolute power to be tenuous and therefore cultivated tactics to maintain the longevity of the reigning regime.

Attending to the Full Moral Landscape

Christopher Sanford Beck — Sun, 10 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0700

This article explores the potential of recognizing ethical obligations to the other-than-human world. In particular, I emphasize how emotional responses to other-than-human beings reflect a proper apprehension of the moral landscape, which then allows ethical insights into our obligations towards others. Although this article overlaps with other work in environmental ethics, I specifically relate Margaret O. Little’s moral epistemology to our emotional experiences with the other-than-human to illustrate how a gestalt shift from “humans as apart from” to “humans as embedded within” complicates the moral picture of how we live with and in this world. I argue that when humans attend to our experiences with nature in an open and caring way, we can more easily and accurately ascertain the moral significance of the other-than-human parts of nature. Affective responses reveal important details of the moral landscape. Recognizing a reality of deep interrelatedness with the other-than-human world, our emotional responses to other-than-human beings enable us to appreciate moral obligations to care for the rest of nature and consider our relationality with the other-than-human world as a moral issue.

Stories of Sustenance, Nourishment, and Feasting

G. A. Ribeiro — Sun, 10 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0700

This article describes community formed within the grassroots mutual aid organization Community Food Support (CFS) located on lək̓ʷəŋən territory (“Victoria, B.C.”) and explores how components of mutual aid frameworks are employed within CFS Delivery Program’s sorting space to support the building of this community. An experiential study was constructed using a feminist activist ethnographic approach to outline the crucial role of storytelling in the CFS community. Through a thematic analysis of the data, stories of place and care addressed the research questions and pointed to the importance of connection, relationships, education, sharing, and play in establishing a collective identity and sustaining the organizing space. These findings were connected to civic muscle and creative placemaking, which highlight the capacity for mutual aid efforts to promote change and actively shape social, political, and geographic space through creative and relational means.

"We are very proud and very tempted and determined to make this food"

Saraf Nawar Rodyna — Sun, 10 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Food plays a critical role in an individual’s maintenance of cultural identity and social connection. The process of preparing, sharing, and consuming cultural food (i.e., cultural foodways) serves to connect immigrants to their families, communities, and cultures—especially when experiencing a new way of living in an unfamiliar environment. Limited access to cultural food resources can contribute to feelings of isolation or a loss of culture; therefore, continual engagement in cultural food practices is crucial for migrants to maintain their identity and well-being. This study explores the relationship between cultural foodways, identity maintenance, and well-being among immigrant Muslim women. Through semi-structured interviews conducted with two immigrant Muslim women and through personal self-reflection, the intersections between gender, religion, and culture reveal the complexity of immigrant lives in relation to food. Participants describe their experiences navigating cultural food accessibility and identify how cultural food practices, especially the sharing of cultural food, affirm their cultural identity and contribute to their well-being. By engaging in cultural foodways, the participants situate their identities in the present, connect to their cultural histories, and imagine opportunities for the continued transfer of food knowledge.

Rap and Realism

Nadia Ekkel — Sun, 10 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Over a century and a half since his passing, scholars remember Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) as a French painter who expanded the boundaries of art through his rejection of traditionally imposed artistic conventions and cultivation of a larger-than-life persona. As a master of self-promotion and image creation, Courbet’s unique self-positioning and performance of identity are frequently explored within contemporary scholarship. However, extant literature has yet to consider the similarities between Courbet’s performance of identity and that of influential contemporary rap artists. Looking to artistic themes employed by the painter and his self-presentation, I argue that Courbet tailored his identity performance so that audiences conflated his artistic output with his public image, both of which drew upon his rural background to suggest a disadvantaged socioeconomic status—a background lauded by his supporters as providing Courbet with the authenticity required for artistic legitimacy. Furthermore, I argue that contemporary rap artists perform their identity in much of the same manner. Like Courbet, contemporary rap artists continuously enact qualities associated with a low socioeconomic status and reference this social standing in their music to fuse their personal reputation and musical output, which affords these artists the authenticity required for success.