The Poetics of the Crocodile: Changing Cultural Perspectives in Ambonwari

ABSTRACT Ambonwari people from the East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, had a rich repertoire of song‐dances, each of which was associated with specific events and the birth of something new. Together they represented the entire human life cycle as well as the cosmology at large. Visual, verbal and tactile modalities of singing and dancing were tightly interwoven; images and symbols were enacted by the dancers, in their decoration, arrangement, movements and in the whole ceremony and were firmly situated in their landscape. Accordingly, song‐dances were also an important practice in male initiation ritual. The first song‐dance of the ritual was the crocodile song‐dance. This article analyses different transpositions of images and meanings which can be decoded from the dance, from the objects that were part of the initiation rite, and from the parallelism and rich allegory of verses. These transpositions operate at different levels until they converge upon the existential facts of birth and death. In the new millennium and under the influence of a Catholic charismatic movement, however, Ambonwari broke off their relationships with spirits, abandoned the men's houses and stopped talking about male initiation ritual. Along with other traditional song‐dances the crocodile song‐dance has been taken over by the song‐dances of the Holy Spirit. These changes in social and cultural perspectives, which are still taking place, are at the same time products and producers of the changes in their relationship to ‘space’ and ‘time’ which are at the same time changes in visual and auditory perception and expression of their life‐world. All these changes should not be seen merely in some abstract or symbolic terms but as tangible processes generated by people's action.     

The Emotions in Sixteenth‐Century Spanish Spirituality

This article examines discourses on emotion produced and circulated in the context of spiritual reform in sixteenth‐century Spain as teleological methods of self‐interpretation which nonetheless stressed the individuals’ responsibility in actively recognising, displaying, and directing their emotions to a spiritual purpose. Paying particular attention to key devotional books such as Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, Francisco de Osuna's Third Spiritual Alphabet, Bernardino de Laredo's Ascent of Mount Sion, and Teresa of Avila's Book of her Life and The Way of Perfection as a framework of beliefs and guidelines which helped to shape actual cultural practices such as self‐examination and meditation, it seeks to show the complexity of sixteenth‐century understandings of emotion, rationality and the role of the will. It thus aims to challenge the narrow approach taken by recent philosophers like Ronald de Sousa and Robert Solomon in their critique of the historical role of emotion within religion.     

Sovereign Power,Biopower, and the Reach of the West in an Age of Diaspora‐Centred Development

Why at this particular historical moment has there emerged a rousing interest in the potential contribution of diasporas to the development of migrant sending states and why is this diaspora turn so pervasive throughout the global South? The central premise of this paper is that the rapid ascent of diaspora‐centred development cannot be understood apart from historical developments in the West's approach to governing international spaces. Once predicated upon sovereign power, rule over distant others is increasingly coming to depend upon biopolitical projects which conspire to discipline and normalize the conduct of others at a distance so as to create self‐reliant and resilient market actors. We argue that an age of diaspora‐centred development has emerged as a consequence of this shift and is partly constitutive of it. We develop our argument with reference to Giorgio Agamben's “Homo Sacer” project and in particular the theological genealogy of Western political constructs he presents in his book The Kingdom and the Glory (2011). We provide for illustration profiles of three projects which have played a significant role in birthing and conditioning the current diaspora option: the World Bank's Knowledge for Development Programme (K4D); the US‐based International Diaspora Engagement Alliance (IdEA); and the EU/UN Joint Migration and Development Initiative Migration4Development project (JMDI‐M4D). Drawing upon economic theology, we make a case for construing these projects as elements of the West's emerging Oikonomia after the age of empire.     

Drugs of the future; drugs of the past

Medical Botany: Plants Affecting Man's Health. Walter H. Lewis and Memory P.F. Elvin‐Lewis. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1977. xv ‐ 515 pp. Index, illustrations. $29.50     

From Utopia to reality: Plaid Cymru and Europe†

ABSTRACT. This paper traces the evolution of Plaid Cymru's attitude towards Europe. It does so by focusing in turn on: the place of Europe in the ideas of Saunders Lewis, the dominant figure in the party between its foundation in 1924/25 and 1945; the more ‘northern’ or Nordic vision of Europe that gripped the party in the post ‐ World War II era; and the waxing and waning of the party's most EU‐enthusiastic phase between the mid ‐ 1980s and the present day. By adopting a longer timeframe than is normally the case, the paper argues that Europe has played a wider role in the thinking of the party than is often conceded; a role that was not at all or only tangentially related to actually existing institutions. The paper goes on to argue that it was in part the chastening impact of Plaid Cymru's eventual exposure to actually existing European institutions that led the party in 2003 to abandon its utopian commitment to a post‐sovereign Europe in favour of an explicit commitment to ‘independence’ as its long‐term aim.     

Women's Organizations,Voluntarism, and Self‐Financing in Solomon Islands: a Participant Perspective

Arguing that the capacity to organize is not foreign to Solomon Islands women, this paper demonstrates their resourcefulness, resilience, and significant but neglected national potential by focusing on a key domain of women's practice and management expertise ‐ women's groups, organizations, and associations, most of which are church‐based, and government programs or projects directed to women. The paper surveys the establishment and operation of different categories of women's groupings before and since independence in 1978. It highlights the commitment to voluntarism and self‐financing that has enabled many groups and organizations to function and even flourish despite recent armed conflict and the resultant near collapse of the economy and the state, especially in the capital, Honiara. It exemplifies the priority shift which has seen many women and their organizations supplement the traditional concerns of home economics, health, education, and community service with overt attention to questions of economic development, political participation, and human rights. The paper concludes by considering the problems facing women's groupings in Solomon Islands, including those generated by women's own attitudes and behaviour as well as gendered and other external constraints.     

4. REASON,AGENCY, AND HISTORY: REMARKS ON KANT AND BENJAMIN

This essay begins by determining the nature of Richard Eldridge's project. Referring mainly to writings by Immanuel Kant and Walter Benjamin, I view his attempt as considering what it involves to be an agent in a historical setting. According to Eldridge, the correct answer will have to involve the right combination of Kant's emphasis on rational self‐determination and Benjamin's account of spontaneous (yet nonrational) self‐transformation. In response to this answer, I suggest that Benjamin's view may not easily lend itself to being made compatible with Kantian thinking. In particular, Benjamin's effort to think experience in terms that do not make any reference to rational self‐determination must be viewed as deeply foreign to Kant's project. I also argue that Kant's third Critique, in particular its conception of reflective judgment, could have provided Eldridge with a view of agency and experience that does not deviate substantially from Kant's project elsewhere. At the end of the essay, I argue that the duality we find in Eldridge's exposition should be viewed as not only related to individuals but to society in general. An attempt to resolve it must involve reflection on how historically constituted social forms create such stark oppositions between reason and its other.     

Russia's European policy under Medvedev: how sustainable is a new compromise?

This article argues that Dmitry Medvedev's term in office, despite the continuity in Russia's foreign policy objectives, brought about a certain change in Russia's relations with the European Union and the countries of the Common Neighbourhood. The western perceptions of Russia as a resurgent power able to use energy as leverage vis‐à‐vis the EU were challenged by the global economic crisis, the emergence of a buyer's market in Europe's gas trade, Russia's inability to start internal reforms, and the growing gap in the development of Russia on the one hand and China on the other. As a result, the balance of self‐confidence shifted in the still essentially stagnant EU–Russian relationship. As before, Moscow is ready to use all available opportunities to tighten its grip on the post‐Soviet space, but it is less keen to go into an open conflict when important interests of EU member states may be affected. The realization is slowly emerging also inside Russia that it is less able either to intimidate or attract European actors, even though it can still appeal to their so‐called ‘pragmatic interests’, both transparent and non‐transparent. At the same time, whereas the new modus operandi may be suboptimal from the point of view of those in the country who would want Russia's policy to be aimed at the restoration of global power status, it is the one that the Kremlin can live with—also after the expected return of Vladimir Putin as Russia's president. Under the current scheme, the West—and the EU in particular—does little to challenge Russia's internal order and leaves it enough space to conduct its chosen course in the former Soviet Union.     

La prose metrique de l'ancienne historiographie romaine

In this attempt at an overall interpretation of Hadrian's poem (Büchner fr. 3) the author discusses the meaning of vagula and blandida in 1. 1 and puts a comma after vagula. He assesses in particular the two most disputed lines of the poem, 3 and 4, taking quae as an exclamation and adding some reasons for combining loca with pallidula rigida nudula. As to the marked use of diminutives ‐ 5 in as many lines ‐ the author sees no reason for giving them a uniform emotional meaning, but argues for grouping them into three categories according to the semantic value of the primitive involved. He discusses also how to read 1. 5 syntactically. In the last part of the study the aim is to show in what particular sense the poem can be reasonably taken as a product of the emperor's pen on his very deathbed.     

Der Natur‐Begriff des 17. Jahrhunderts und zwei seiner Inter‐pretamente: „res extensa”︁ und „intima rerum”︁

This article aims to show the general and broad use of the concept of nature in the philosophical discourse of the 17th century ‐ and in this context it is obvious that this discourse includes both philosophy and theology. I will discuss two opposite views concerning its fundamental understanding of nature, yet will not go into elaborating differences concerning such particular concepts as, for example, space, void or motion. These views and the theoretical positions from which they emerged will here be called res extensa and intima rerum ‐ this is done in order to clarify the basic opposition: there is no interior in pure extension and there is no extension at all in that what is called the interior. My aim is to show that these two views are, in fact, not quite as incompatible and contradictory as it easily may seem at first glance. Although I will for heuristic purposes introduce the two concepts res extensa and intima rerum as complete opposites and in a wholly contrary manner, ist should become clear that there exist both influences and interactions between these two notions. Theorists introduced here as advocates of the intima rerum‐position, can, for example, be seen as having been influenced by the mechanistic, or res extensa‐position, mainly through the formally and methodologically attractive geometric and mathematical argumentation. Likewise theorists advocating a mechanistic position can be said at some points to have been led by a substantial necessity concerning the contect of their argumentation to take recourse to the concept of intima rerum, at least partly or in a modified manner.     

Beyond ‘State Ibuism’: Empowerment Effects in State‐led Development in Indonesia

This article examines the ways women's processes of self‐formation are indicative (or not) of new possibilities for women's gendered selves in the post‐Reformasi period in Indonesia. It focuses on the development arena to reveal how shifts in state rhetoric, from top‐down guidance based on a patriarchal familial model to bottom‐up, inclusive development based on empowerment, have transformed what is referred to as the ‘topography for self’. The article draws upon theories of personhood a) to show how gendered selves emerge and are contested within particular historical conditions; and b) to develop an alternative framework of ‘empowerment’ that focuses not on capabilities and choice, but on an expansion in the possibilities for self. It argues that models of community‐driven development have provided new opportunities for women to hold and enact socially recognizable subject positions. This constitutes a form of empowerment for individual women but does not necessarily reflect challenges to patriarchy in Indonesia.     

Dreams,Laki, and Mourning: A Psychoanalytic Ethnography of the Yagwoia “Inner Feminine”

In the first part of this study (Oceania, 76/1) I presented the general cosmo‐ontological background of Yagwoia dreaming and the fundamental dialectics of the contra‐sexual self‐identity of a conjugal couple (Tilm and QANG) manifest in their oneiric encounters. The second part focuses on the man, QANG, and the vicissitudes of his soul's power to affect gambling outcomes. I explore the intrinsic relationship between dreaming and the practice of gambling which in the Yagwoia life‐world is a domain of men's homo‐social participation in the self‐generative life‐death flow of the world‐body at large. In this aspect, Yagwoia gambling exhibits its true characteristic as an extension and modification of the male‐exclusive domain of hunting, warfare, and the ceaseless in‐/ex‐corporation of the cosmic life‐death flow. The pursuit of gambling is a fully libidinized field of male interaction. Through cards and dice men screw and drain each other of their bodily sexual potency which flows in the world‐body as a whole.     

Fatherhood and the British Fathercraft Movement, 1919–39

Fathercraft and Fathers' Councils ‐ male adjuncts to Maternity and Infant Welfare Centres ‐ reacted to the maternal dominance in infant welfare and parenting in interwar Britain by arguing that fathers should play a crucial role in the upbringing of children. This article outlines how rigid ideas about the 'public' and 'private' spheres meant that education schemes for fathers had to be explicitly and recognisably 'masculine' and were often focused on public functions that reinforced a man's traditional function as a breadwinner and provider. Yet, at the core of the fathercraft message was the idea that these traditional functions were insufficient. Fathers, it was argued, should have an active and involved role in their children's lives and men could no longer adequately fulfil their duties from the margins of the family. However, within a culture that placed great emphasis on motherhood and gender differences, the idea of instructing men in parenting was fraught with contradiction, confusion and resistance. Fathercraft was one version of fatherhood that attempted to reconcile these contradictions in a desire to involve fathers more fully with their children for the good of the Infant Welfare Movement, mothers and, indeed, for men themselves.     

Submergence: Precarious Politics in Colombia's Future Port‐City

This article examines popular politics under precarious conditions in the rapidly expanding port‐city of Buenaventura on Colombia's Pacific coast. It begins by identifying the intersecting economic, ecological, and political forces contributing to the precarity of life in Buenaventura's intertidal zone. Focusing on conflicts over land in the waterfront settlements of Bajamar (meaning “low‐tide”), it then describes the efforts of Afro‐Colombian settlers and activists to defend their territories against threats of violence and displacement. In doing so, they must navigate historical legacies of ethno‐racial politics as well as formations of liberal governance and their multicultural and biopolitical logics of vulnerability and protection. The socio‐material conditions of the intertidal zone, and in particular the figure of submergence, are used to illuminate forms of political life in Colombia's future port‐city. The struggles of Afro‐Colombians to contest violent dispossession in Buenaventura reflect the racialized politics of precarity under late liberalism.     

The Parthenon Marbles as icons of nationalism in nineteenth‐century Britain

Theories of nationalism place native culture at the core of national self‐fashioning. What explains a state's adoption of foreign objects to sustain national identity? In this paper, I argue that the incorporation of the Parthenon Marbles into British public life is an early example of supranational nationalism. The nineteenth‐century ‘art race’ was a competitive field in which European nation‐states vied for prestige. Of the thousands of art trophies that were brought to Britain from Mediterranean and North African countries, the Parthenon Marbles were uniquely iconicised. Using data from period newspapers and official documents, I assert that this was because they were assiduously presented as prenational by British authorities. In this way, they belonged simultaneously to no nation, to every nation, and to Britain. The case demonstrates the emergence of a particular form of national distinctiveness that transcended the smallness of particularity and rose to the level of universal civilisation.     

Nation‐building in contemporary Germany: the strange conversion of Hitler's ‘word made of stone’

This article examines the contending redefinitions of national identity in contemporary Germany's memorial culture, focusing particularly on the ensemble of monuments and parade fields known as the former Nazi Party rally grounds in Nuremberg. In a detailed case study, I analyse the recent conversion of one of the physical remnants of National Socialism – Albert Speer's transformer station – into a fast‐food restaurant and interpret this conversion as a novel contribution to the discourse on German nationhood. I argue that the provocative commercial reutilisation of the former Nazi monument gives expression to a renewed self‐confidence that Germany has gained from displaying a willingness to face up to its past as perpetrator nation. While the intervention thus deviates from the self‐indicting spirit that had been characteristic for Germany's memorial culture after World War II, an ironic note is conspicuous in this act of commemorative politics that indicates a way of dealing with the fascist legacy that is, surprisingly in some respects, superior to more conventional memory strategies.     

Reclaiming the social body through self‐directed violence: Seeking anthropological understanding of Suicide attacks (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Suicide bombings receive tremendous attention in the media and are a central aspect of the Western public's imagination of terrorism, yet anthropology has remained relatively silent in debates around this form of violence. Drawing on constructs central to anthropology, namely embodiment and agency, I suggest that when political and structural violence threatens the body and thus the identity of both individual and group, this force can be ultimately rejected and the body can be ‘reclaimed’ through self‐directed violence. In trying to explain the horror that this act generates in the West the article introduces a new element central to anthropology ‐ namely pollution ‐ that has not previously been examined in discourse around suicide bombing. This is a theoretical piece that tries to problematize the role of the body, as a physical entity central to this ‘act’ and offers some questions and potential hypotheses for further research.     

“Rousers of the Rabble” in the New Mexico Land Grant War: La Alianza Federal De Mercedes and the Violence of the State

Abstract: This paper examines the patterns of state‐sponsored and state‐tolerated violence directed at a social movement organization in New Mexico known as La Alianza Federal de Mercedes during the 1960s and 1970s. Beginning in the 1960s, Alianza mobilized a broad‐based movement of Chicano activists and Hispano land grant communities to advocate the return of lands they claimed had been stolen following the Mexican American War of 1846–1848. As a result, its leaders and many of its members became targets of law enforcement surveillance programs and counterintelligence operations. In this paper I examine the patterns of surveillance and physical violence directed at Alianza members. Confronted by Alianza's challenge to racial inequality and economic injustice, the state construed Alianza as a generalized, and racialized, threat to social order that required in response the use of coercive control and physical violence.     

1. PRÉCIS IMAGES OF HISTORY: KANT,BENJAMIN, FREEDOM,AND THE HUMAN SUBJECT

My fundamental motivation in writing Images of History was to avoid some forms of hubris and despair that trouble contemporary philosophy and to develop instead a picture of human life in historical time. According to this picture, we live amid institutional and practical inheritances we can address but can never fully stabilize and perfect. In different ways, Kant and Benjamin each accept this thought, and they each develop a picture of philosophy as historically situated, open criticism of existing practices and institutions. Each emphasizes the priority of the practical over any fixed metaphysical‐theoretical stance. I survey each of their general theories of critical historical understanding, and I pay special attention to the texts in which they each provide detailed, specific accounts of Western social‐historical development or circumstances: Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and Benjamin's One‐Way Street. Where Kant's philosophical criticism is reformist, liberal, and casually dismissive of non‐Christian religion, Benjamin's is modernist, erotic, and improvisatory. Their respective images of history according to which we achieve orientation are both complementary and fundamentally opposed—not readily combinable into a consistent whole. Drawing on the work of Jonathan Lear, I end with a picture of maturity and practical self‐unity as centrally a matter of developing the skill of modulated alternation between these two orientation‐affording images.     

HEGEL AND PATHOLOGIZED MODERNITY,OR THE END OF SPIRIT IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

This article has two broad concerns, both of which are pursued primarily with reference to Hegel's philosophy of history. First, it examines whether Hegel can help explain the difficulty we have in modernity in responding to climate change and ecological crisis. It argues that Hegel provides a useful analysis of this problem, since the model of self‐determination that he appeals to is comprehensively embedded in embodied forms of culture. This helps explain why even a self‐correcting worldview like modernity is obdurate in the face of this crisis. Second, Hegel claims that the defining attribute of spirit is its capacity for self‐production. Modernity is characterized by the emerging and widespread knowledge that spirit is self‐producing. Modernity develops institutions that facilitate and provide an objective reality for spirit's self‐production and its freedom. This aspect of the article examines whether the distinctive capacity of spirit for self‐determination, which is realized in modernity, is subject to the same atrophying conditions by which Hegel says all other historical shapes of spirit are characterized. It asks if the present ecological crisis, something that is directly attributable to spirit itself, represents the limits of self‐producing spirit. The article concludes by examining the difficult position of those countries that cannot be considered to be responsible for the emergence of the Anthropocene but whose actions in the present will amplify its impact.