Don Isaac Abravanel and Leonardo Bruni: A Literary and Philosophical Confrontation

Abstract

Don Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508) was one of the first Jewish thinkers to express republican positions, yet very little is known about his knowledge of humanistic republican conceptions. Had he read Leonardo Bruni’s republican writings? Had he even heard of them? In this essay I attempt to address this philological gap by comparing Abravanel’s republican commentary on 1 Samuel 8 with Bruni’s Laudatio florentinae Urbis, especially the motif of the plea to God to authorize a political regime. This comparison is particularly useful for illuminating their respective positions on republicanism, their shared interests and conceptions, as well as their divergent attitudes to their own political and historical environment. This divergence, I argue, sheds light on the early modern Christian and Jewish receptions of ancient republicanism.     

Truth as historical recapitulation: the dead of Cape Town’s District One

In this essay, I reflect on the massive and dramatic re-emergence of the dead of Cape Town’s District One in 2003, and its aftermath. I discuss how the resurfacing of these ancestors helps us understand how heritage discourses operate in Cape Town, and how their agency forces us to consider what it means to live in the city during post-apartheid urban renewal. I argue that the agency of the District One dead hinges on their exposure of the internal workings of discourse and the associated disciplinary practices through which we experience Cape Town and its heritage. This story ends ambiguously. I discuss how, following the storage of the District One dead in the Prestwich Ossuary, the gaze on Cape Town was redirected away from the city’s past and towards its future; I explore how their reinterment foreclosed a series of discussions regarding the reconciliation of past events with the present realities of Cape Town. I argue, finally, that truth at District One can be understood as a form of historical recapitulation.     

Researching ‘gay Cape Town’ finding value-added queerness

An initiative to market Cape Town as a premier gay and lesbian tourist destination has steadily gathered steam over the last decade. I set out to study this phenomenon thereby adding to conversations about the normalization and globalization of queerness. Rather than straightforwardly presenting my findings, however, this paper considers queer theorizing as an inductive process by detailing the answers I did not find in the field and the questions I did. Based on my close readings of queer theory, I went looking for resistance and therefore queerness in the normalized space of ‘gay Cape Town’. I was disappointed. But I did not instead find outright capitulation. Rather, in this process of queer's commodification, I found anxieties, cracks and fissures beneath a veneer of assured mainstreaming. I found an undetermined process that did not represent either ‘un-African-ness’ or ‘global queer homogeneity’ or ‘African-ness’ and ‘local queer heterogeneity’. I found not an un-queering through commodification, but a queer commodity struggling to gain a foothold in a nation in which the terrain for gay and lesbian politics has drastically changed in such a way that the market cannot be ignored. To grapple with these findings, I argue for a more ambivalent approach to queer theorizing.     

历史层累视角下的地方形成机制探讨——以北京东高村镇为例

在工业空间的演替过程中,地方是如何形成的?这是地理学探究的问题。本文结合多琳·梅西地方历史层累理论,以北京平谷东高村镇为例,采用访谈方法,调查当地不同时期和同时期内各种动力对该镇地方性的影响。结论表明:资本作用和提琴技艺传承的能动性是决定东高村镇是否保持地方性的关键。本文认为:第一,一个地方历史层累的过程可以视为资本在当地的积累过程。第二,经济层与文化层的互动,以及多元主体的进入,使得原本不构成地方性的制琴技艺,试图转化成为地方性知识传承创新系统。第三,地方还由层内不同行动者与资本结构的博弈产生,一旦行动者无法突破资本结构的束缚,将导致地方性削弱。     

Following the Ancestors: Six Moments in a Genealogy of Urban Design and Heritage in the City of Cape Town

In 2014, Cape Town is celebrating its design in all its forms, having been voted the World Design Capital (WDC). The hopeful rhetoric of the city as ultimate holiday destination, African creative metropolis, prime global-events location or city of freedom indicates powerful cultural discourses at work. In this paper, I will give a series of insights into the links between colonial modernity, on the one hand, and the origins of contemporary discourses of urban design and heritage in Cape Town, on the other. I intend to discuss the function of official discourse concerning the design of the city as well as the sudden eruptions that disturb these constructs. I point to the recurrent patterns and moments in which design is made plain and unspoken. I will trace the genealogy of official or top-down design and heritage discourses as well as the moments or movements that are at odds with or embarrass this official discourse.     

《还粹集》与“三生会”杂忆

上世纪二三十年代,闽中诗人何梅生（振岱）、刘龙生（敬）、高颖生结成“三生会”,不时聚会咏唱。高颖生《还粹集》刻成,赠我祖父刘敬一部,祖父在集中有批语,我年少时亲见过。此集旱已遗失,不料而今被福建图书馆找到。消息传来,惊喜不已,勾起对三位诗老昔日风采的回寸乙。     

True Story of a Folk Tale About Haize Lake in Reshi Area

While working one time in Xiaojin County of Garze, the remotest Khanniu area, I heard of many strange stories. The following is a folk tale about the mysterious Haize lake in Reshi area. One day, I joined some colleagues in inspecting the project of planting grass and feeding livestock in Khanniu Township of the Khanniu area. Our destination was Zumo Village. There is a Tibetan village named Reshi within Zumo Village, and above the village there is a plateau lake named Haize Lake in Re…     

Self and others

ABSTRACT

What is the relation between self-knowledge and knowledge of others? And how do we develop an understanding of others and ourselves? In this paper, I will argue that our sense of self is thoroughly social even though self-knowledge is not based on the same kind of evidence as knowledge of others. Moreover, I will suggest that we need to distinguish between different kinds of self- and other-understanding: some are based on procedural knowledge or knowing-how and involve an implicit representation of self or other, while others involve conceptual abilities. I will conclude with some considerations regarding the role of the second-person perspective in structuring the development of the concept of ourselves and others as persons.     

The Bullfight Festival in Drenxia Town of Panam County

Having heard of the bullfight fes- tival to take place in the town of Drenxia in Panam County,I went to make an on-the-spot ob- servation during my trip.It was really a great and unique event! The history of mankind embarking on ani-     

Whistling the Death March? Listening in to the Acoustics of Ludwig Leichhardt's Australian Exploration

Scholars considering the acoustics of exploration have focused on how explorers heard Australian space in terms of silence, to argue this silenced Indigenous presence, or that stillness, was incongruous with how a place to be colonised should sound. I focus on the acoustically attuned Ludwig Leichhardt, a science-poet indebted to the Enlightenment, but also engaged with the German Romantic legacy. The manifold acoustic dimensions of expeditioning – including music – were important to him in different ways. The acoustic world could be assayed and harnessed in ways that were often consistent with colonialism. But there was also something fugitive about acoustics. They could mark a site for emotional engagement with place, and sometimes embryonic cross-cultural dialogue. Yet the possibilities were not always heard and, in line with Romanticism, the acoustic could drag down expeditioners’ spirits just as it could buoy them up. It could baffle or be a site for Indigenous resistance.     

Narratives in Anecdotes,Memory and Interlocutors: An Early Engagement with Neville Alexander’s Story

In this article, I present a story about South African Marxist and activist-scholar Neville Edward Alexander. As historians, social scientists and intellectuals embedded in the humanities, a part of the job we have awarded ourselves or that we assume to be part of our disciplinary reasoning, our intellectual orbit, is to bring to life the periods that, and the people about whom, we reflect. This we do through writing and telling stories, often constructed with a “moral message” of sorts. In these acts of writing and story-telling, objectivity plays a disputed and a precarious role, and misrepresentations could be conscious or unwitting. The lack of objectivity in bringing to life the period and the people we talk about in our stories, in our exaggeration and our understatement about what we have read, about what we have heard, and then about what we write, is part of an academic’s narrative. These human traits of exaggeration and understatement can lead to historical error. In this early exploration of seeking answers to the questions, “Who is Neville Alexander?” and “What can we learn from his writings?” I offer two anecdotes about the man. My proposition is that overcoming historical error does not rest exclusively with factual verification. It has to factor in an appraisal of the ideological intention or even political wish of the people telling the stories, in written texts and orally, and of the interlocutors’ context that we recover in our historical studies. In writing this preliminary sketch of Alexander, I take a detour into higher education issues, particularly the field of doctoral studies, and I paraphrase some of the concerns that have been raised by Alexander. I conclude this introductory study with some thoughts on Alexander’s contributions to social change, to “race,” and to language policy and multilingualism.     

A GLIMPSE OF THE CENTRAL PRIMARY SCHOOL OF KYITOD TOWNSHIP

In the second half of July in 2008 I was conducting interviews on the housing project beginning in Geren Village of Kyitod Town in Riwoche County(Chamdo Prefecture).By chance Jampel Nyima,the town administrator,     

Bargya Rinpoche and the Stories of Gesar in Axu Grassland

The Legendary Homeland of Gesar The reincarnation Bargya is one of the abbots of the Chacha Monastery in Axu Town,Dege County in the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan Province. As a high profile identity with profound Buddhist knowledge, Bargya Rinpoche is also the local administrator in charge of the famous Gesar Temple.Being very     

论光绪朝的继统之争

在慈禧的操弄下,光绪继位,但留下诸多危机变数,从而引发摇荡朝局数年的继统立嗣之争.先有广安、潘敦俨的奋起,继有吴可读尸谏,最后以群臣参政的方式得以解决.而类似吴可读这样愚忠以至不惜舍生事君者也渐成末世绝响,清流们的"烟墨烂然"不过是传统社会向近代转型时期的回光返照.     

An anti‐racism methodology: The Native Sons and Daughters and racism against Asians in Nanaimo,British Columbia,Canada

Over the past number of years there has been increased interest in racism and anti‐racism amongst geographers. This paper focuses on one type of anti‐racism methodology that relates to critically interrogating my own white colonial settler ancestors and particularly the institutions and structures of which they were a part, and using those understandings to resist the contemporary increase in white supremacy and anti‐Asian racism. It also seeks to demonstrate the links between anti‐racism and decolonization. Particularly, I examine the Native Sons and Daughters of British Columbia, Canada, in the Nanaimo city area, where my great‐grandparents from northern England and Scotland settled as working‐class miners at the beginning of the 20^th century. I examine white working‐class settler racism against Asians, especially as practiced against Chinese and Japanese immigrants. While I do not argue that this is the only or even the most important type of anti‐racism methodology, this sort of research and associated production of knowledge can be useful in resisting present‐day anti‐Asian racism, even though I acknowledge that I am still embedded in colonial structures of racism and white privilege.     

Public consultation or political choreography? The Howard Government's quest for community views on defence policy

On 27 June 2000, the Howard Government released a public information paper on defence which set in train a process of public consultation in which the people's views were sought on a range of defence and defence-related issues. This paper examines why the Government chose to go to the people, how and by whom the community consultation was conducted, who was consulted and listened to, and how what was heard at the public meetings component of the process was both interpreted and reported. The paper concludes that the public consultation process was more about politics than policy; it is inappropriate for the Government to claim or imply that it has heard from the 'Australian people' or even 'the majority of the community' on the issues raised; and the consultation process and its outcomes are not entirely risk-free for the Government and the defence establishment.     

江西南昌蛟桥东汉墓发掘简报

2003年8月,江西省文物考古所对南昌市昌北区一处墓地进行了清理发掘,共清理墓葬4座。墓葬均为砖室结构,墓向基本相同,排列有序,出土随葬器物丰富,有泥质陶器、印纹硬陶器、釉陶器、青釉瓷器、绿釉陶器、铜器、铁器、银器等。根据墓葬布局及随葬器物特征判断,此处墓地应属家族墓地,年代不晚于东汉晚期。     

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Forest Soils and Nutrient Cycles, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne Division of National Mapping Climate, Atlas of Australian Resources Herbicides in Agriculture: Minimum Tillage, Science and Society Population aging in Australia: Implications for social and economic policy Australia's Changing Population: Trends and Implications, Melbourne The Natural Environment. Australia–a geography Volume I, Sydney The Adelaide City Plan: Fiction or Fact, Wakefield Press, Adelaide With Conscious Purpose: A History of Town Planning in South Australia Atlas of South Australia, Adelaide     

上海老城厢:一个江南城市的景观演变史及其动力机制

本文以上海老城厢城市景观演变的历史过程为主线,分析了主导这一过程的驱动因素及其相互间的关系。在人为侵占与河浜自然属性的交互作用下,"因浜成路"一直是上海老城厢独具特色的城市扩展方式;19世纪下半叶,传统的环境基础加上西方公共卫生观念的介入,使原来民间层面上的"因浜成路"发展为官方主导下的"填浜筑路",主干河浜消亡的速度骤然加快。这虽然局部改善了老城厢的市容与卫生状况,却对整体的水网生态和后来的城市环境造成了不利影响。这一过程中的内在规律,恰从区域可持续发展的角度,对城市化进程中人与自然间的耦合关系和互动尺度做出了注解,因而具有一定的启发意义。