In search of a Byzantine narrative canon: the Vita Basilii as an uncanonical work

Abstract

The problem of the literary genre of Vita Basilii and, by extension, of the lack of Byzantine examples of purely secular biography is one of the most well known literary controversies of Byzantine studies. With respect to this problem a revision of the usual parameters involved in the definition of literary genres will be suggested, one which will cover not only formal aspects but also contextual and functional ones. This study will propose that the features related to these parameters could be classified as more or less prototypical, thus laying the foundation for an approach to canonical narrative patterns and enabling further progress in our understanding of this unique work.     

Australindia: the geography of imperial desire

A tradition of imperial geographical fantasy fuses India and Australia. This paper discusses the strategic role these utopian proposals played in imperial erotics, in aiding the foundational ambition of empire, which is to connect. The proponents of these geographical hybrids (T.J. Maslen, W. Pickering and Thomas Livingston Mitchell) occupied very different positions in Greater Britain's colonial administration and the minority knowledges represented by their speculative overlays of India onto Australia circulated in very different cultural circles. The insider/outsider status of these ex-army, turned surveyors suggests a more complex ecology of alternative discourses circulating in the imperial imaginary: as proposals for future places, the schemes discussed in this article were fictions that aestheticized invasion, making it a metaphor for ultimate unity.     

Women,work, property and gender in early modern Europe

Natalie DAVIS & Arlette FARGE eds, A History of Women in the West, III. Renaissance and Enlightenment Paradoxes, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1993, ISBN 0–674–40372‐X.

Merry E. WIESNER, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993, ISBN 0–521–38459–1 hardback, 0–521–38613–6 paperback.

Hilary MARLAND, ed., The Art of Midwifery. Early Modem Midwives in Europe, Routledge, London, 1993, ISBN 0–415–06425–2.

Amy Louise ERICKSON, Women and Property in Early Modem England, Routledge, London, 1993, ISBN 0–415–06267–5.     

Expanding women's rural medical work in early modern Brittany: the Daughters of the Holy Spirit

During the eighteenth century, orders of nursing sisters took on an expanded role in the rural areas of Brittany. This article explores the impact of religious change on the medical activities of these women. While limits were placed on the medical practice of unlicensed individuals, areas of new opportunity for nuns as charitable practitioners were created by devout nobles throughout the eighteenth century. These nuns provided comprehensive care for the sick poor on their patrons' estates, acting not only as nurses, but also in lieu of physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries. This article argues that the medical knowledge and expertise of these sisters from the nursing orders were highly valued by the elites of early modern Brittany.     

Thai migrants in Singapore: state,intimacy and desire

In this article, I analyse Thai migration to Singapore, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork (2004–06) to discuss the experiences of male construction workers and female sex workers in negotiating heterosexuality during their temporary residence. I argue that these Thai migrants engage in transient heterosexual encounters as one of many calculated, strategic ways of negotiating their intimate identity and subjectivity in the survival circuits of this global city. Their transient sexual acts are intimate products of negotiated moves, which form a major part of their semi-anonymous, temporary life in a foreign land. The sexual practices of Thai migrant workers in Singapore, I argue, are best understood by taking the following factors into account: the host government's regulation and control of its migrant population; the foreign workers' economic and social situations of mobility as inscribed in their highly dynamic traveling biographies; and their rationalized willingness and desire to embrace transient sexual intimacies as part of their employment and/or struggling lives in the global city's survival circuits.     

'A Choice of Nightmares': Narration and desire in Heart of Darkness

This paper considers the gendered organisation of narration in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It is argued that the text fictionalises its audience as an exclusively masculine community of readers, bounded together by shared interests and commitments. The discursive construction of preferred reading positions is critically examined with reference to the mobilisation of discourses of cannibalism and representations of femininity in the text. It is argued that positive evaluations of the text, as a critique of imperialism or a commentary on the human condition, are problematised by consideration of the gender values inscribed in the texture of the narrative.     

Reconciliation and research in Afghanistan: an analytical narrative

This article examines the evolution of western policy towards the idea of pursuing negotiations with the Taliban, or ‘reconciliation’, in Afghanistan and the role that research and expert opinion played in that process. The official western position has evolved iteratively from initial rejection to near complete embrace of exploring the potential for talks. It is widely assumed that the deteriorating security situation was the sole determinant of this major policy reversal, persuading decision‐makers to rethink what had once been deemed unthinkable. Moreover, given the politicized and sensitive nature of the subject, we might expect the potential for outside opinion to influence decision‐makers to be low. Nevertheless, this article demonstrates that it would be a mistake to underestimate the role that research and expert knowledge played—the story is more nuanced and complex. Research coalesced, sometimes prominently, with other key drivers to spur and shape policy change. Importantly, it often took experts to make sense of events on the ground, especially where the failure of the military approach was not recognized, understood or palatable to those in official circles. Research interacted with changing events, policy windows, the emergence of new personalities and the actions of various intermediaries to shape emerging positions. More broadly, the case of reconciliation in Afghanistan reveals the difficulties and challenges, but also the variety of opportunities and techniques, for achieving research influence in conflict‐affected environments.     

Gender in Post-Doi Moi Vietnam: Women,desire, and change

On the eve of doi moi's twentieth anniversary, this group of papers examines the impact of ‘economic renovation’ on the lives of Vietnam's women. Economically, the transformation is unarguable. Socially, the impacts have been as deep, but more uneven and possibly less predictable. These four papers examine different aspects of contemporary Vietnamese women's experience through the lens of desire: mothers confronting the age-old desire for sons under the government's small-family policy, young women's desire to explore sexuality in the strict moral environment of the countryside, piece-workers' desire for better conditions and better lives but unable to mobilize their proletarian class position in a socialist regime, and the desire of authors to evoke women's war-time roles to create a shared national remembrance of suffering, sacrifice, and loss. In their diverse ways, these papers offer unusual insights and rare glimpses into the lives of women in post-doi moi Vietnam.

El Género en Vietnam Post-‘Doi Moi’: Mujeres, deseo y cambio

La víspera de que cumple veinte años el doi moi, esta antología de papeles examina el impacto de ‘la reforma económica’ en las vidas de mujeres vietnamitas. Económicamente, no se puede discutir la transformación. Socialmente, los impactos han sido no solo profundo sino más desigual y posiblemente menos previsible. Los cuatro papeles examinan unos aspectos distintas de las experiencias contemporánea de mujeres vietnamitas a través de las lentes de deseo: madres se enfrentan al deseo antiguo de tener hijos bajo la política estatal de pequeña-familia; las mujeres jóvenes que desean a explorar su sexualidad dentro de un ambiente de morales estricto en el campo; el deseo de destajistas de tener mejores condiciones y vidas mejores pero incapaz de movilizar a sus posiciones de la clase proletaria bajo un régimen socialista; y el deseo de autores de suscitar los papeles de guerra que tenían mujeres para crear una conmemoración nacional compartida de sufrimiento, sacrificio, y pérdida. De sus modos diversos, estos papeles ofrecen perspicacias originales y raras vislumbres de las vidas de mujeres en post-doi moi Vietnam.     

The recollection of times past: Memory and event in Huichol narrative

Huichol cosmology, in general with the intellectual productions of other mesoamerican groups, has been presented as an anarchic hetrogeneity of deities and folk heros whose deeds are executed in an indeterminate and constantly changing landscape.

It is argued that sacred narratives, far from being the productions of caprice, structure the relations between divine personages and events by providing a classificatory matrix which partitions the universe into moral spaces. The value of an event or the significance of a deity is given by its spatial position.

Furthermore this scheme is extended to incorporate pre‐conquest and post‐conquest epochs into the same moral configurations and thereby provide a paradigm on which inter ethnic relations in the area are predicated.

The vectors of this order of orders provide the ligaments on which the structure of events is apprehended and the referents of memory are dependent.     

Transcending Borders: Objects on the Move

Does the demand for archaeological artefacts in the legal marketplace in Israel increase the looting of archaeological sites in the region? Through the course of investigating this question it became apparent that while consumer demand may be at the heart of the trade in antiquities, the nature and driving forces behind looting are far more complex than is often understood. The motivations for looting involve notions of nationalism, the forces of globalism, conflicting preservation and management plans, colonialism, and long-entrenched traditional practices. It is an examination of this complexity (i.e. the multiple forms of and incentives for looting), which forms the focus of this paper. This is an exploration of the multivocality of the various agents who make it possible for objects to transcend borders.     

Nation,narrative and commemoration: political ritual in divided Cyprus

This article examines the issue of political commemoration, focusing on the commemorations organized by different political parties in the two sides of divided Cyprus. It suggests a new analytical framework for the study of ritual in contemporary nation‐states that moves beyond the usual examination of any single ritual on its own terms. The use of comparison, both within each side and between the two sides, reveals how political actors stage commemorations of different historical events in order to propose contesting historical narratives. Hence, the meaning of any commemorative ritual can be understood only as part of the broader story that each narrative proposes. The historical narratives proposed by different political actors share certain common characteristics by virtue of all employing the narrative form: a beginning, a plot, certain categories of actors, the spatial location where history unfolds, the moral centre through which events are to be evaluated and the end. However, each narrative suggests a different story through which issues of identity and “otherness”, self‐justification and blame are negotiated in order to define the “imagined community” of the nation, its enemies and its pertinent history.     

Human security: a new strategic narrative for Europe

This article examines the potential of human security as a narrative and operational frame for the European Union's external relations. Human security is about the security of individuals and communities and it links physical and material security—‘freedom from fear’, and ‘freedom from want’. The article addresses both the lexis (language) and praxis (practice)of human security in relation to the EU. Much of the language currently used in EU external relations, particularly crisis management, civil—military cooperation and conflict management, already contains elements of a human security approach. At the same time, the concept of human security goes beyond these terms and if formally adopted and elaborated could greatly strengthen the EU's role as a global security actor. The article develops five principles of human security—human rights, legitimate political authority, multilateralism and regional focus—and makes the case that the application of these principles would increase the coherence, effectiveness and visibility of EU missions. The article concludes that the adoption of a human security approach would build on the foundational ideas of Europe in overcominga history of war and imperialism and could help to rally public opinion behind the European idea. More importantly, it would contribute to closing the real security vacuum that exists in large parts of the world today.     

The Essential Body: Mesopotamian Conceptions of the Gendered Body

Linguistic, art historical, hermeneutic, gender and intercultural analyses clarify body and gender concepts in Sumerian and Akkadian mythology, literature and visual arts. The body was a fundamental point of reference in ancient Mesopotamia, metaphor for the total self, royal ideology, cities, humanity and deities. Humanity was created without gender; sex, gender and social status were subsequently inscribed on the body. Gender taxonomy tolerated ambiguity beyond the ‘normative’ masculine/feminine. Body and mind were an inseparable unity and denoted by the same Sumerian word. Mind/body and male/female dichotomy were unknown.     

何谓“赫梯学”?——论赫梯学研究的对象和范畴

赫梯学的研究包括哪些内容?这个问题看似简单,答案清楚,实则不然。国内世界古代史学界通常将其局限在一个双重狭义的层面上。纵观赫梯人历史文化发展的客观事实以及国际赫梯学的研究和发展现状,可以发现这样的认识有待商榷。只有通过交流与讨论,在中国,赫梯学才能得到正确的认识,从而得到真正的重视和科学的发展。