Petrifaction is turning of human, plant or any other object to stone.
The slow and creeping
petrifaction that foregrounds insidious processes of geological change and through which reification is figured is replaced by images of war and sudden catastrophe.
The long history of political division led to the
petrifaction of local interests and crippled the development of any sense of commonality.
Does Martha now, after the loss of her daughter and her own emotional
petrifaction, see a link between herself and the ancient figure of Athena?
The last stage of its
petrifaction takes geopolitical and economic forms that sell purity as fake peace (the erasure of Israel, the burial of the genuine original by the imperial fraud).
This can be done by measuring the distance between benevolent criteria and its antithesis such as: development against destruction, peace against war, maturity against tyranny, right against wrong, creativity in return for
petrifaction, and closure in return for openness.
Rigidities and automatism emerge--for example, to comic effect--not as the polar opposite of some putative 'pure life' but as instances of
petrifaction within the processes generated by the difficult co-implication of subject and Other.
Feminist writer Anna Chave finds much amiss, here, much repeating from an old misogyny, but also laughs: the women hit back, with eyes, with angles, with take-no-prisoners, Medusa-headed terror; the clientele, the bordello-johns, the solicited soliciters offered gendered
petrifaction, offered anger like a Matisse in his first viewing, or like the tittering of a Derain or Braque, not knowing how much they disclose in their uncomfortable guffaws (Chave, 263, 267, 271).
The Edwardian melodrama is based on George Bernard Shaw's Passion, Poison and
Petrifaction and will be performed in a new English translation by David.
One concern especially common among regionalists was the risk of reducing costume to mere museum piece, and giving sanction through exhibition and encouragement of traditional costume to contrivance, nostalgia or
petrifaction. (28) FRF president jean Charles Brun's perspective would prove especially influential in its reconciliation of regional interests with modern economic and political realities; far from seeing costume as merely a holdover from an earlier age, the regionalist emphasized its evolution and adaptation over time.