Material culture as memory: combs and cremation in early medieval Britain

This paper argues that mortuary practices can be understood as 'techno-logies of remembrance'. The frequent discovery of combs in early medieval cremation burials can be explained by their mnemonic significance in the post-cremation rite. Combs (and other objects used to maintain the body's surface in life) served to articulate the reconstruction of the deceased's personhood in death through strategies of remembering and forgetting. This interpretation suggests new perspectives on the relationships between death, material culture and social memory in early medieval Europe.     

High modernism in the Arctic: planning Frobisher Bay and Inuvik

This paper considers Frobisher Bay and Inuvik, two Canadian Arctic towns, as examples of the high-modernist planning that swept the globe during the middle decades of the twentieth century, but also Cold War projects reflecting a sudden interest in the Arctic as a region of military significance. Building on the framework provided by James Scott in Seeing like a State (1998), the paper details the connections between modernization theory and Cold War militarism before turning to the strikingly parallel case studies. In each instance, federal officials proposed ambitious urban models designed to simultaneously overcome the hostility of a northern environment and catapult native northerners into conditions of modern living. While the limits and failings of such schemes varied by location, both sites were also laboratories for social scientists employed by the federal government to document and analyze the modernization of the Arctic. The work of these scholars represents a particularly rich and complex record of governmental interventions, tied variously to Cold War imperatives, in northern lives and landscapes at a time of great faith in the transformative power of modern engineering.     

The poverty of anti‐nationalist modernism

Abstract. In this reply to Dr Özkirimli's article, after considering the relationship between modernist and ethnosymbolic approaches, I propose some arguments for, and explanations of ethnosymbolic accounts. I concentrate here on the four main points raised by Dr Özkirimli: (1) the restrictions on the role of elites, (2) the limitations of presentism, (3) the importance of collective passion and attachment and (4) the plurality of ethnic heritages. I conclude with an explanation of my normative stance in relation to the question of ‘romantic nationalism’.     

Nikos Gatsos' Amorgos,topography and the poetics of modernism

Abstract

Nikos Gatsos' Amorgos is approached here as a polyphonic poem that synthesizes elements of the Greek literary tradition into an intertextual palimpsest of fragments, in the vein of the modernist 'long poem'. The surrealist poet maintains a fine balance between tradition and radical innovation, shaping Amorgos as a place where poetry is created as an interaction of opposing tendencies. The topical character of the poem is underscored by its title: the sea-and-land imagery evokes the island as a literary topos of seclusion and self-sufficiency that lends its characteristics to the composition itself: a 'compendium' of poetic writing and avant-garde aesthetics.     

Avant-garde modernism and Italian Fascism: cultural politics in the era of Mussolini

The article explores the efforts of Marinetti's futurists, Sarfatti's Novecento movement, and the Tuscan circle that propounded strapaese to shape a cultural basis for Italian Fascism. The first two movements sought to become an official art for Fascism, while the third sought to produce a culture that would remain true to Fascism's origins in 1919, but all were in different ways 'modernist' movements and they are therefore contextualized both in terms of the challenge presented by Fascism and those faced by their modernist counterparts elsewhere in Europe. It is argued that the three movements enjoyed some success in the 1920s but were effectively shut down by the rise of the intransigent Right in the 1930s. Yet it is also argued that they needed the regime because they were too weak by themselves to assert the principle of artistic autonomy in the face of an internationally ascendant commodity culture. L'articolo esplora i tentativi dei futuristi facenti capo a Marinetti, del movimento Novecento di Sarfatti, così come del circolo toscano detto di Strapaese, nel costruire e definire le basi culturali del fascismo italiano. I primi due movimenti cercarono di costituire un'arte ufficiale del fascismo, mentre la terza si protese a far nascere una cultura che rimanesse legata alle origini del movimento fascista del 1919; ma tutti erano, in maniera diversa, movimenti 'modernisti' e sono qui tra l'altro posti sia nel contesto del cambiamento, nel clima politico e culturale, rappresentato dal fascismo che in quello degli altri movimenti modernisti europei. Viene messo in evidenza che i tre movimenti ottennero un discreto successo negli anni venti, ma furono censurati da una destra intransigente che emergeva negli anni trenta. Tuttavia, è possibile affermare che tutti e tre i movimenti avevano bisogno del Regime perché troppo deboli ed incapaci di consolidare un principio di autonomia artistica nei confronti di una emergente cultura consumista nel contesto internazionale.     

Reactionary modernism: Technology,culture, and politics in Weimar and the Third Reich

Scholarship on European imperialism in the Americas has become increasingly prominent in the historiography of early America after a long period when the subject was hardly discussed. Historians have come to see that local experience in the Americas needs to be placed in a wider, comparative Atlantic context. They have realised that what united most peoples’ experiences in the Americas was that they lived as colonial subjects within colonies that were part of imperial polities. This article examines recent writings on European empires in the Americas, relating imperial history to related developments in fields such as Atlantic history. It suggests that renewed attention to imperialism allows historians to discuss in a fruitful fashion the relationship between power and authority in the formation of colonial societies and draws attention to the continuing importance of metropolitan influence in the articulation of colonial identities.     

Gulliver meets Descartes: early modern concepts of age-related memory loss

Age-related memory loss was a marginal issue in medical discussions during early modern times and until well into the second half of the 17th century. There are many possible explanations: the lack of similar traditions in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, insufficient physiological and morphological knowledge of the brain, and the underlying conflict between idealistic and materialistic perspectives on the functions of the soul and the conditions of these in old age. After these boundaries had been pushed back by the influence of Cartesianism and Iatromechanism, the problem of age-related memory loss was increasingly regarded as a physical illness and began to receive more attention. This trend first occurred in medicine, before spreading to the literary world, where the novel "Gulliver's Travels" is one clear and famous example.     

Councils, memory and mills: the early development of the Peace of God in Catalonia

The Peace councils which took place throughout west Francia from the late tenth century have long been recognized as complex political, social and ritual events. Discussions of the Peace, however, often neglect the local factors which informed these councils. The earliest councils in Catalonia were characterized by remarkable variety in both their organization and in their objectives. Some elements of these councils reflect longstanding regional traditions. Earlier provincial synods, for example, shared many of the same concerns expressed at Peace councils. Both synods and councils testify to an impressive level of regional episcopal co-operation. The 1027 Council of Toulouges provides a rich opportunity to explore the microsocial and micropolitical alliances and animosities which motivated one council. The monastery of Sant Miquel de Cuixà, whose abbot organized this council and two others, had been developing a network of mills and irrigation canals near the council's site. The choice of the council's site was motivated, in part, by the desire to secure Cuixà's grip on these property rights. The mills near Toulouges are an example of the local impulses which informed early Peace councils; understanding these impulses can contribute to current debates about the Feudal Revolution.     

The preservationist paradox: modernism, environmentalism and the politics of spatial division

According to Bruno Latour, the imposition of crude classificatory schemes onto complex entities has two main effects: firstly, the classifications lead social actors to sift the world into the schemes' simple categories; secondly, underlying relations subvert the schemes' functioning, resulting in the production of transgressive 'hybrids'. Thus, classification and relation interact and this interaction shapes both the practice of classification and the world that is classified. In this paper, we examine the interaction between a scheme of spatial classification and the spaces that are enrolled within the scheme. We show that a division between urban and rural areas was put in place in post-war England in order to protect a 'vulnerable' rural nature from urban advance. However, as soon as it was imposed, this division was transgressed by complex socio-economic processes. We assess the response to this transgression by considering the activities of the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), an environmental group that played some considerable part in constructing the urban–rural divide in the first place. We show that the CPRE has responded to the 'paradox of preservationism' by placing urban–rural divisions in the context of 'ecological' relationships. We illustrate this 'ecologization' of the modernist divide using the example of housing and we argue that the CPRE's ecological approach illustrates how a new alignment between 'urban' and 'rural' may herald a new and more sophisticated form of spatial classification.     

Fred Halliday: high modernism and a social science of the Middle East

This article examines Fred Halliday's research and writing on the politics of the Middle East. It classifies Halliday as a ‘high modernist’, who organized his work around a constant commitment to a universal rationality, historical progress and an opposition to relativism and a particularist reading of the Middle East. The article identifies the two dominant units of analysis that shaped Halliday's work on the region throughout his life. These were the transformative capacity of capitalism and the role of a comparatively autonomous state. The article then examines how the content of each unit was transformed as Halliday moved from an overt Marxism to a more diffuse liberalism. It then goes on to argue that Halliday's ideological affinities and his deployment of these units marginalized the role and importance of ideology, specifically both nationalism and Islamism. Finally, it traces the influence of this approach and the deployment of these units in Halliday's work on Iran, Iraq and the Arab–Israeli conflict.     

Gramsci and the issue of religion: Catholic modernism and the Italian Partito Popolare

ABSTRACT

Gramsci's interest in Italian politics led him to tackle a key issue in the present-day discourse: the relationship between the Holy See and the national State. Additionally, he paid close attention to internal issues of Christianity, from its origins to his own times and – similar to many other socialist thinkers – he believed that there were several echoes between the early Christian experiences and contemporary socialism. From this arose his concern with the religious crisis of the early twentieth century – so-called ‘Modernism’ – as well as the story of the Partito Popolare (Popular Party, PPI), the organization founded by the priest Luigi Sturzo after the First World War, which was marked – especially amongst its left-wing components – by its anti-fascist positions.