Word: notionally
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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More stunning was the amount of public outrage that followed: there was none. The notion of giving individuals the power to invest at least part of their payroll taxes--in stocks, bonds or another savings plan they might choose--raised hardly a complaint in a week when the Dow closed above 9000 for the first time. The stock-market boom has, it seems, turned Americans into a nation of risk takers. In a TIME/CNN poll last week, 60% of those surveyed said they would like to play the market with some of their Social Security taxes; and if they could...
...rematch, Cardinal Saldarini called in all outstanding threads and samples without explanation two years ago, announcing only that the church would disown any testing on unreturned remnants. That is bad news, given 20th century humanity's ravenous hunger for literal certainty. Transubstantiation is well and good, but the tantalizing notion that the red spatters on linen are Christ's actual blood, rather than wine as blood, and that the imprint on cloth was left by the resurrected body, not a Communion wafer, is intoxicating...
...book's reflection on language, however, that deserves most attention. Throughout the novel, the power of words, as well as the notion of meaning, constantly comes into question. In the beginning, Pella confesses that she relies on her mother for words that serve as an "antidote" to her father's political speak. In a conversation between Efram and Pella's father Clement, this very speak implies the threat that Clement represents for Efram's power. Toward the end, Efram dies specifically because of the accusatory, lying words a child utters about him. This causation becomes clear a moment before...
...these examples hint at the power of language among the characters in the book. What is most striking and intelligent about this pondering on language, however, pertains to the notion of meaning. Pella is entirely and explicitly aware of the ambiguity of words, the indeterminate meanings of utterances. Archbuilder speech baffles her, often to the point of exasperance. During a sexually-tense moment between her and Efram, she borders on swooning and discerns the reality of her situation from dreams based on what words she hears. If they are too loaded with meaning, they probably belong to Efram...
...attractive black woman from a workingclass background, Harlan enters a world in whichnearly everyone has a preconceived notion of whatshe should be. While Harlan scrambles to put inplace her own system of beliefs, she is roughlypassed through the world from hand to hand, eachfist attempting to squeeze her into a mold ofexpected identity. Her Grandmother and Mother wishher to be the good housewife, but lose her to thecorruptive North. Her husband wishes her to be hiscollaborator in digging up African roots but losesher to her native America. The wealthy Germanhorse breeder wishes her to be the dangerous spybut loses...