Session 12: Evil Stalks the Land

Session 12: Evil Stalks the Land
Chair: Janice Miller

Falstaff in the Worlds of Utopia – or, Human Wickedness Seen as a Necessity
Natalia Irina Roman
University of Bucharest, Romania

It could be easy to present the ugly aspects of human wickedness. However, what about getting to the other side and try to figure it out the lights in all this darkness, in a very literary way?
There were several proposals of worlds with no evil and no human wickedness along the history. They were called utopias, as they were not something ever to be achieved. Among them, some of the most famous were: Plato’s “Republic”, Thomas More’s “Utopia” and Tommaso Campanella’s “The City of the Sun”.
With this paper, I propose to get a closer look to what evil is in these three utopias, what they replace it with, which are their solutions.
Afterwards, I will point out the lack of humanity the utopias are facing with.
To better demonstrate what they are missing, I will bring into question Shakespeare’s Falstaff, character that appears in “Henry IV”, parts I/II, and in “The Merry Wives of Windsor”. I will show how despite all his human wickedness, Falstaff is what gives life to the society around him. Falstaff is, in fact, his world’s spirit.
This paper brings into light an important cause of the bad functioning of these utopias’ models. This paper tries to answer questions like: could the presence of Falstaff make a difference in the process of changing the utopia to a more viable model? Is Falstaff a necessity that could make them work? Therefore, is human wickedness necessary?

Aspects of Terrorism in the Tourism Industry
Thomas Herdin
Universität Salzburg, Fachbereich Kommunikationswissenschaft, Abteilung für transkulturelle Kommunikation, Salzburg, Austria

Tourism has become a major industry. In the decade of the 1990s alone, total tourist arrivals rose from 458 million (1990) to 670 million (2000). Revenues from tourism increased from USD 267 billion to USD 460 billion.
The economic importance of tourism is undeniable. The impact of terrorism on a state’s economy may be enormous, leading to unemployment, deflation, crime and other economic and social ills. This industry is averse to trauma and highly sensitive to political and economic events. That is the reason why tourism has long been a target for terrorism, particularly since the early 1980s. Tourism is attacked by terrorists for a number of reasons: it is seen to be symbolic of capitalism, tourists represent western oppressive regimes and it is seen as a way to influence political behaviour. The targeting of tourists, especially international tourists, can generate a great deal of attention…
The aim of this presentation is to outline the most important aspects of terrorism (reasons, strategies, impacts and interdisciplinary approaches) and provides an overview about possible scenarios.

Stop Making Sense: The Image of the Disembodied Talking Head in the French Revolution
Elizabeth McCarthy

No abstract is presently available