The Irish Sandow school: physical culture competitions in fin-de-siècle Ireland

ABSTRACT

Beginning with an examination of Ireland’s turn of the century interest in physical culture, this article highlights the case of Eugen Sandow’s “Great Competition” and its Irish contestants. Seen as a precursor for today’s bodybuilding competitions, Sandow’s contest enjoyed submission photographs from hundreds of half-naked men – many of whom were Irish – posing in Greco-Roman pose. In studying this topic, the article addresses two pressing issues. In the first instance, the article examines how and why physical culture competitions became a competitive outlet for Irishmen in the first decade of the twentieth century. Secondly, it argues that these contests were often connected to broader societal ideals surrounding acceptable forms of masculinity. The article thus examines a previously unexplored but nevertheless important part of sporting and athletic behaviour in early twentieth-century Ireland.     

J.A. Symonds,socialism and the crisis of sexuality in fin-de-siècle Britain

This article analyses the theory of sexuality, personality and politics developed by the literary critic John Addington Symonds (1840–1893). Sections 1 and 2 introduce Symonds’ changing reputation as a modernist theorist of ‘sexual inversion’ (homosexuality). Section 3 examines his conceptualization of the processes whereby an individual can sublimate sexual urges to create a harmonious and unalienated personality which acknowledges the need to combine transgressive self-expression with social convention. Section 4 demonstrates how this theory led Symonds to endorse an eroticized form of democratic socialism, while Section 5 explores the culmination of Symonds’ thought in a form of pantheistic idealism. This research is significant in that it extends our understanding of socialism and sexuality into areas that are marginalized and yet historically important.     

About Medicine and the Arts Charcot and French Literature at the fin-de-siècle

The relationship between medicine and the arts, literature in particular, has many aspects. One of the most obvious relations is the use of literature as a source for historical studies. Jean-Martin Charcot and his school often appear in French literature at the end of the 19th century. Several aspects will be highlighted in this study, including (1) the ideas about degenerative diseases in the work of Emile Zola, the main author of the naturalistic movement; (2) decadence and spiritism in two transitional novels by Joris Karl Huysmans, who, once supporter of the naturalistic movement, changed his ideas following observations of disease and cure that could not be explained in a scientific way. Charcots work on hysteria and hypnosis, as well as Brown-Séquards rejuvenation experiments with testicular extracts played an important role with this respect; (3) Charcots relationship with the Daudets, in particular his treatment of Alphonses tabes dorsalis and the ambivalent attitude of his son Léon Daudet towards Charcot; (4) the influence of the lectures at the Salptrire on the work of Guy de Maupassant, who attended the lessons in the mid-1880s. The reading of novels and biographies of these authors provides a part of the social context and the cultural atmosphere in Paris at the “fin-de-siècle” when Charcot and his school played an important role in medicine. Moreover, it shows the influence of medicine and science on society as recorded by writers.     

The Construction of Soviet Ethnography and “The Peoples of Siberia”

The multi-generation book project \"The Peoples of Siberia\" enabled a group of Leningrad-based scholars to reshape their museum into a Soviet ethnographic community. This article analyses the face-to-face performances, the legalistic stenographic documentation, the collective crafting of a single authoritative style, and a unique temporal frame as an important background to understand a hallmark volume in Siberian studies. The authors argue that the published volume indexes nearly thirty years of scholarly debates as much as it indexes the peoples it represents. The article concludes with a critical discussion of how this volume was translated and received by a Euro-American readership influencing the perception of Siberian peoples internationally. It also links the volume to contemporary post-Soviet publication projects which seem to retrace the same path. The article is based on extensive archival work and references collections recently discovered and which are presented for publication here for the first time.     

From a Politics of Conviction to a Politics of Interest? The Changing Ontologics of Youth Politics in India and Nicaragua

There exists a longstanding association between youth and revolution, partly due to the assumption that the politics of the former are inherently “prefigurative” in nature. Youth politics can often actually be quite conservative, however, as can be observed in contemporary Nicaragua, where rather than attempting to “change the world” in the way that previous militant youth generations were famously associated with, current Sandinista youth activists engage primarily in forms of neo‐patrimonial clientelism. At the same time, the evolving experience of everyday political action by university educated youth in Uttar Pradesh, India highlights how economic endeavours can, under certain circumstances, become a form of politics, often of a more transformative variety than classic forms of collective mobilization. The comparison of Nicaragua and India thus highlights the critical importance of considering the wider environment within which youth mobilize and take action in order to understand how and why particular political “ontologics” emerge.     

The Ideational Dimension of Federalism: The ‘Australian Model’ and the Politics of Equalisation in Canada

This article examines the ideational dimension of federalism and its consequences for the analysis of policy development. With this objective in mind, the article offers an explanation for Canada's rejection of the two main aspects of the ‘Australian model’ of equalisation: the assessment of expenditure needs and the existence of an arms-length commission to determine payments. As argued, the ideological prevalence of provincial autonomy in Canada explains why federal officials opted to reject the ‘Australian model’ as they prepared to establish the country's program and why subsequent reforms never introduced a needs-assessment dimension or created an arms-length agency to administer equalisation. At the theoretical level, this article shows how ideational factors can shape policy outcomes.