Beauty,Bath and Beyond: Framing Bathsheba as a Royal Fantasy in 2 Sam 11,1-5

This paper investigates the function of beauty in David and Bathsheba’s encounter in 2 Sam 11,1-5. It argues that the female bather’s pleasant appearance, rather than simply kindling king David’s desire, focalizes the woman as sexually available (and vulnerable) and wraps the whole episode in a royal fantasy of shared intimacy. The focus on Bathsheba’s beautiful body—her wash, her motion towards the king, her self-sanctification and her pregnancy—frames the episode in a very erotic way, suggesting adultery. It conceals the sexual violence committed by the king who sends, takes and sleeps with the woman. David’s violent entitlement to Bathsheba reveals the beauty politics at play in his royal House.     

Augustine on Justice: A Reconsideration of City of God,Book 19

I argue that Augustine’s message in City of God, Book 19, has been consistently misinterpreted and hence a vital part of his argument in City of God has been misunderstood. The received reading of Book 19, as found in the work of Mary Clark, Rowan Williams, John Milbank, Oliver O’Donovan and Robert Dodaro, is that in Book 19 Augustine rejected the possibility of finding social and political justice among pagans. I argue that Augustine reached no such conclusion in Book 19. On the contrary, I find that the only justice that Augustine denied to pagans in Book 19 was justice as righteousness, that is, the justice of worshipping and serving the true God. He found that pagans claimed justice as righteousness for themselves and on this basis claimed that Rome had been a republic. Augustine denied that pagans could ever possess justice as righteousness, and hence denied that pagan Rome had ever been a republic.     

Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theological Critique of Nationalism

Abstract

This paper argues that Han Urs von Balthasar’s work contains a thorough critique of nationalism that is rooted in theological categories. First, it examines the bases of this critique in Balthasar’s theology of history and in his thought on biblical Israel. Then, it outlines four categories of actors included in Balthasar’s notion of a theological drama: Christ, the individual, humanity, and the Church. Both implicitly and explicitly, these four categories displace the nation from the realm of theologically-significant history. Thus, the paper contends, there is a clear and compelling theological rejection of nationalistic ideology running throughout key aspects of Balthasar’s thought.     

“The Black Tile in the Mosaic”: Austin Chesterfield Clarke and the Canadian Literary Tradition

This paper engages selected moments in Austin Clarke’s literary journey to argue that in spite of his involvement in the development of Canadian literature (CanLit) during the 1960s and 1970s, the Canadian literary establishment continues to pay little critical attention to his contributions. This lack of recognition is specifically evident in recent writings about Canadian literature and the literary figures who spearheaded its development after Canada’s Multiculturalism policy of 1971. Canada’s becoming officially multicultural required a new narrative of Canada and new literary depictions of Canadians in their national literature, as ethnically diversified but of a single citizenship. I argue that Clarke’s legacy as a Black writer should be given more prominence in Canadian institutions because today this legacy is under threat of erasure as the number of Canadian Black voices telling mainstream stories about Black people’s experiences is evidently in decline.     

The salon as clinic: problematising,treating, and caring for skin

In this paper I draw upon Foucault's concept of the clinic, as well as his later work on the ‘care of the self’, in a consideration of the problems that are diagnosed, and the treatments that take place, within the beauty salon. As biotechnology descends to the sub-molecular level, so those spaces that are linked to the laboratory through the diffusion of knowledges, practices and material products—such as the salon—are also reworked. Traditionally the locus for an array of experts in both body and mind who instruct (mostly) women on how to care for the self, salons use a series of ‘cutting edge’ treatments to pamper and groom the body, correcting as it does so various problem areas such as the skin. I argue, using interview material from salon managers and employees, for the beauty salon as a key site wherein health and medical knowledge is disseminated, and the clinical gaze is brought to bear.     

‘Mr Neville did all in [his] power to assist me’: A. P. Elkin,A. O. Neville and Anthropological Research in Northwest Western Australia, 1927–1928

From the commencement of his field research A. P. Elkin sought to bring a practical application to his work on Aborigines. He positioned anthropology as an enabling science which had the capacity to reduce conflict, violence and misunderstanding on the frontier. He stated that the ‘object of his mission [field work]’ was both ‘academic and practical’. He declared that the knowledge gained through anthropological field research would serve not only narrow academic aims but would also be put at the service of government. Anthropology's purpose was to inform and influence the formulation of government Aboriginal policy. This paper examines Elkin's first encounter and interaction with government through his relationship with A. O. Neville, chief protector of Aborigines in Western Australia. It illustrates the beginnings of what Gillian Cowlishaw has called a discourse of helping, that is Australian anthropologists in the 1930s constructed a discourse about their usefulness to government. It was a discourse which seemingly lacked critical distance from the policies of government. I argue that this discourse of helping government was heavily influenced by Elkin once he became professor of anthropology but it can be discovered in this earlier period. I conclude by discussing how the implications of this discourse were played out in the decade of the 1930s. The focus of this paper is on Elkin and his relationship with Neville and the consequences of this relationship for Elkin's later actions.     

Historiographical Foundations of Modern International Thought: Histories of the European States-System from Florence to Göttingen

Summary

The foundations of modern international thought were constructed out of diverse idioms and disciplines. In his impressive book, Foundations of Modern International Thought, David Armitage focuses on the normative idioms of natural law and political philosophy from the Anglophone world, from Hobbes and Locke to Burke and Bentham. I focus on parallel developments in the empirically-oriented disciplines of history and historiography to trace the emergence of histories of the states-system in the Italian- and German-speaking worlds, from Bruni and Sarpi to Pufendorf and Heeren. Taking seriously Armitage's remark that ‘the pivotal moments in the formation of modern international thought were often points of retrospective reconstruction’, I argue that the historical disciplines supplied another significant intellectual context in which the modern world could be imagined as ‘a world of states’.     

Art,Transformation, Liberation: Balzac's Eugénie Grandet

Balzac's works about actual artists like Le Chef d’oeuvre inconnu have long been studied to derive the author's ideas about the artistic creative process. Eugénie Grandet also deals with art, however, even though there is not a real artist in it. In telling the story of Eugénie and her cousin Charles, Balzac suggests his views on the effects of beauty created by artful arrangement as opposed to the beauty in nature uncrafted by human art.     

Complex Space or Broken Middle? Milbank,Rose, and the Sharia Controversy

Abstract

Remarks by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, suggesting that British law recognize Islamic law in some cases provoked a public outcry. I reflect on what may have caused the strong reaction to Williams's remarks by situating them between the work of John Milbank and the work of Gillian Rose. What Williams, Milbank, and Rose are struggling to articulate is a "politics of the middle," a political theory that does not privilege the sovereignty of individual or state, and which puts intermediary associations at center stage. A politics of the middle offers the only alternative to political theology, I argue. However, attempts to articulate a politics of the middle have remained cloaked in residual political theology. Critics of secular liberalism, who often content themselves with offering genealogies instead of presenting a constructive alternative, should explore the possibilities held by a politics of the middle, possibilities (and challenges) exposed by the sharia controversy.     

Men and anti-violence initiatives: transnational feminist reflections from Afghanistan and Pakistan

Abstract

This article looks at how international development’s rhetoric for enlisting men to take up anti-violence against women’s work is translated into reality. Based on fieldwork conducted in Afghanistan and Pakistan, I argue that whilst there have been success stories of men’s behaviour changing, the localisation of gender concepts and ideas into local frameworks has not been as successful. Furthermore, inattention to how gender relations are shaped by conflict and violence results in the dilution of feminist values around work on violence against women. This inattention also privileges middle-class men’s activism at the expense of activism by women and men from lower-socioeconomic backgrounds. The article concludes with a call for further transnational feminist dialogue and interventions in the area of men’s involvement, so that current and future initiatives are critical, reflexive and relevant.     

Spinoza’s genealogical critique of his contemporaries’ axiology

Among Spinoza’s principal projects in the Ethics is his effort to “remove” certain metaethical prejudices from the minds of his readers, to “expose” them, as he has similar misconceptions about other matters, by submitting them to the “scrutiny of reason”. In this article, I consider the argumentative strategy Spinoza uses here – and its intellectual history – in depth. I argue that Spinoza’s method is best characterised as a genealogical analysis. As I recount, by Spinoza’s time of writing, these kinds of arguments already had a long and illustrious history. However, I also argue that, in his adoption of such strategies, we have good reason to think Spinoza’s primary influence was Gersonides. Elucidating this aspect of Spinoza’s critique of his contemporaries’ axiologies brings a number of explicatory and historical boons. However, regrettably, it also comes at a cost, revealing a significant flaw in Spinoza’s reasoning. Towards the end of this article, I consider the nature of this flaw, whether Spinoza can avoid it and its ramifications for Spinoza’s wider philosophical project.     

Said,Auerbach, and the Return to Philological Hermeneutics

ABSTRACT

This essay explores the relationship between Edward Said’s well-known contrapuntal reading of history and Erich Auerbach’s Ansatzpunkt, or point of departure, as a means of entering a given hermeneutic circle. Although Auerbach occupied an increasingly prominent place in Said’s critical thought, his engagement with the work of the German philologist has been largely ignored or downplayed. In this essay I take the figure of exile, which is so central to Said’s scholarship and which he explicitly links with the intellectual mission of critique, as a point of departure for a deepened exploration of Said’s critical method—a method developed in critical dialogue with Auerbach’s work. Building on the existing literature, I argue that Auerbach offers more than simply a way for Said to problematize identity politics and to challenge the dogmatism of received notions of home and political belonging. More than this, I argue that the German philologist provides Said with a way to reconfigure the dialectic between history and literature; to develop his contrapuntal approach to reading history; and to rethink the parameters of a historicist humanism that, in turn, enables him to reactivate the critical potential of philological hermeneutics.     

Theology,Idolatry and Science: John Williams’ Missionary Ethnography and Natural History of the South Pacific

This article contributes to the recent scholarly efforts toward a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship between Protestant missionaries and the practice of natural history and ethnography in the early nineteenth century. Exploring John Williams’ work in the South Pacific, I argue that not only was Williams practicing science in the form of ethnography and natural history, but that his theology was, in fact, central to his scientific work. Through a careful exploration of Williams’ account of his missionary activities in the South Pacific, I contend that Williams’ conception of idolatry served as an explanatory tool that shaped the practice of his ethnography. In the minds of missionaries like Williams, whereas Christianity’s truth was universal, idolatry was the worship of a false god: false because it was just a deification of a particular desire rather than worship of the universal God. This conception of idolatry shaped Williams’ contention, central to his ethnography, that the islanders’ religion was a product of their particular cultural needs. In this way, I argue, Williams used a theological concept to perform explanatory scientific work, contributing to the idea that religion is a product of culture, a notion that became central to nineteenth century studies of religion.     

Impatience: On Derrida,Milbank and the Decision

Abstract

Derrida has long served as a foil, in the work of John Milbank, and represented the neo-pagan nature of much contemporary philosophy. He appeared in Theology and Social Theory as one of the heirs of Nietzsche, politically justifying and ritualizing violence. In the Vico books, Derrida appears again, contrasted with Vico's ability to imbue language not only with constituting power, but with a teleologically oriented realism. This theme is expanded in subsequent works, where Milbank makes Christological and Trinitarian studies of linguistic difference, and accuses Derrida's thought of degenerating into nihilism. Nonetheless, Milbank and Derrida are disturbed by a similar problem. There is, for both, an irrational moment at the foundations of political life that calls out for a decision. For Derrida this decision institutes the whole order of meaning, undergirded by the quasi-transcendental structure of writing. According to Milbank, this renders all content arbitrary, leaving Derrida unable to imagine a genuinely meaningful world. Milbank argues, instead, that the important decision is whether or not one will see the content of experience as meaningful or meaningless. Derrida's denial of meaning, which is also a denial of God, is ungrounded. One ought, instead, see the world as the image of God.     

YOUNG MAN M

This article focuses on the case of young man M, who had planned to assassinate the Governor-General of Finland in 1878. The Physician-in-Chief Thiodolf Saelan conducted a psychiatric assessment on M’s mental state and concluded that M suffered from moral insanity. Saelan backed up his argument with cases of political violence in Europe and in the United States that Finnish newspapers had reported with great detail. I argue that Saelan had specific aims in presenting M’s case to the public, and the main aim was to defend the category of diminished responsibility in criminal law. He stressed the role of psychiatric expertise in evaluating responsibility. Saelan’s arguments were a success, as the category of diminished responsibility was included in the Criminal Code of Finland (39/1889).     

Zbigniew Herbert,Poet-Errant

Abstract

Under the guise of an Arthurian metaphor, this article explores the depiction of violence and totalitarian rule, and the quest for sense and dignity in Herbert’s poetry. Doing justice to his stylistic devices and his creative design, I attempt to understand the ways of epic writing. The echo of Herbert’s work in Poland and other Central and East European countries demonstrates the power of words for people afflicted by a painful history.     

J.G.A. Pocock and the idea of the ‘Cambridge School’ in the history of political thought

This article offers a reinterpretation of the origins and character of the so-called ‘Cambridge School’ in the history of political thought by reconstructing the intellectual background to J.G.A. Pocock's 1962 essay ‘The History of Political Thought: A Methodological Enquiry’, typically regarded as the first statement of a ‘Cambridge’ approach. I argue that neither linguistic philosophy nor the celebrated work of Peter Laslett exerted a major influence on Pocock's work between 1948 and 1962. Instead, I emphasise the importance of Pocock's interest in the history of historiography and of his doctoral supervisor, Herbert Butterfield. By placing Pocock's intellectual development in these contexts, I suggest, the autonomy of diverse versions of the ‘Cambridge’ approach can more readily be perceived.     

Matters of Sex and Gender in F. J. Gall’s Organology: A Primary Approach

The originator of phrenology, F. J. Gall (1758–1828), saw himself as a natural scientist and physiologist. His approach consisted of brain anatomy but also of palpating skulls and inferring mental faculties. Unlike some of the philosophical principles underlying Gall’s work, his conception of sex/gender has not yet been examined in detail. In this article, I will focus on Gall’s treatment of men and women, his idea of sex differences, and how far an assumed existence of dichotomous sexes influenced his work. In examining his primary writings, I will argue that Gall held some contradictory views concerning the origin and manifestation of sex/gender characteristics, which were caused by the collision of his naturalistic ideas and internalized gender stereotypes. I will conclude that Gall did not aim at deducing or legitimizing sex/gender relations scientifically, but that he tried to express metaphysical reasons for a given social order in terms of functional brain mechanisms.     

The challenge of the oceanic feeling: Romain Rolland’s mystical critique of psychoanalysis and his call for a ‘new science of the mind’

In a letter written in 1927, the French writer Romain Rolland asked Sigmund Freud to analyse the ‘oceanic feeling,’ a religious feeling of oneness with the entire universe. I will argue that Rolland’s intentions in introducing the oceanic feeling to Freud were much more complex, multifaceted, and critical than most scholars have acknowledged. To this end, I will examine Rolland’s views on mysticism and psychoanalysis in his book-length biographies of the Indian saints Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, which he wrote just after he mentioned the oceanic feeling to Freud in 1927. I will argue that Rolland’s primary intentions in appealing to the oceanic feeling in his 1927 letter to Freud – less evident in his letters to Freud than in his biographies of Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda – were to challenge the fundamental assumptions of psychoanalysis from a mystical perspective and to confront Freud with a mystical ‘science of the mind’ that he felt was more rigorous and comprehensive than Freud’s psychoanalytic science.