Decadent Conservatism: Politics and Aesthetics in The Senate

Abstract: The relationship between late-Victorian Decadence and Aestheticism and politics has long been vexed. This article explores the hitherto under-explored confluence of conservatism and avant-garde literature in the period by introducing The Senate, a Tory-Decadent journal that ran from 1894-7. While Decadent authors occupied various political positions, this article argues that The Senate offers a crucial link between conservatism and Decadence The article presents the journal in its political and publishing context, outlining its editorial position on such issues as the Liberal Unionist-Conservative coalition governments, Britain's relationship with Europe and the threat of ‘State Socialism’, as well as its valorisation of Bollingbroke and eighteenth-century Toryism, and its relationship to, and difference from, key Decadent journals the Yellow Book and The Savoy. It then goes on to articulate its relationship to Decadence by focussing on the presence of Paul Verlaine in its pages and its vitriolic response to the press coverage of Oscar Wilde's trials. The article concludes by exploring the surprising wake of The Senate, briefly tracing the editors' influence in the development of Modernism and links with the journal BLAST.     

Polycarp's Cup: Imitatio in the Martyrdom of Polycarp

While imitatio Christi has widely been recognised as a narrative element of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, other possible literary allusions have been under‐explored. This article examines the presence of allusions to the death of Socrates in the Martyrdom of Polycarp. Socrates was often used in Christian apologetic contexts, thus its possible presence in Martyrdom of Polycarp is not surprising. This article seeks to understand the narrative function of Socratic allusions, especially relating to the text's construction of martyrdom and its Christology. It posits that imitatio Christi and imitatio Socratis function together apologetically to demonstrate the reasonableness of Christian worship of Jesus.     

Women in European culture and society

Summary

Historians of all kinds are beginning to return to temporally expansive studies after decades of aversion and neglect. There are even signs that intellectual historians are returning to the longue durée. What are the reasons for this revival of long-range intellectual history? And how might it be rendered methodologically robust as well as historically compelling? This article proposes a model of transtemporal history, proceeding via serial contextualism to create a history in ideas spanning centuries, even millennia: key examples come from work in progress on ideas of civil war from ancient Rome to the present. The article concludes with brief reflections on the potential impact of the digital humanities on the practice of long-range intellectual history.     

From Risorgimento to Il Politecnico: impegno and intellectual networks in the Einaudi publishing house, 1945

The article unveils the (dis)continuities between two post-WWII journals, Risorgimento and Il Politecnico, both published by Einaudi in 1945. By reassessing the publishing history of Risorgimento from a genealogical perspective, the article aims to chart the evolutions of the then current intellectual debate on impegno. Specifically, by analysing the relevant contributors’ correspondence and the essays that were published in the journals, the article examines the journals as sites of networking but also tension between different intellectual habitus. This will illuminate not only how the two editors-in-chief (Salinari and Vittorini, respectively) took different positions in relation to both the literary field and the PCI (Italian Communist Party), but also the opposition of editorial staffs – based, respectively, in Rome and in Milan – in relation to the publisher Einaudi.     

Re-examining the Meaning of Sunzi’s Bu zhan er qu ren zhi bing 不戰而屈人之兵 and Its Practicality

This article re-examines the meaning of bu zhan er qu ren zhi bing 不戰而屈人之兵, one of the core notions of Sunzi 孫子, and discusses its practicality. The article questions the popularly pacific and defensive view on this expression and refutes the argument that it is an idealistic concept. By analyzing the context and historical background of Sunzi, this article argues that bu zhan er qu ren zhi bing is a realistic strategy developed to adapt to the increasingly fierce competition during the period of the Chunqiu 春秋 (770–5th c. B.C.E). The term can be applied to both offensive and defensive strategies. Its meaning does not equate to but includes subjugating the enemy or frustrating his strategic goals through famou 伐謀 and fajiao 伐交 rather than engaging in decisive battles. Through studying four historical cases from the Chunqiu, this article analyses how to apply famou and fajiao to achieve bu zhan er qu ren zhi bing in practice.     

The interaction of methodology with an impegno del dopo in Nuto Revelli's collections of oral testimonies

Among his varied publications, Nuto Revelli (1919–2004) produced three collections of oral testimonies gathered from the contadini (peasants) of Piedmont: La strada del davai, Il mondo dei vinti and L’anello forte. This article argues that these collections were the product of the same specific impegno del dopo (‘obligation of afterwards’) as his initial autobiographical writings, which had arisen from his experiences as an officer on the Russian Front during the Second World War. From this premise, the article then examines the interaction of Revelli's sense of impegno del dopo with the methodology he developed. The article concludes with an assessment of Revelli's stated aims and his actual achievements.     

Theory and Akrasia in Aristotle's Ethics

Abstract

In book 7 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that vice, lack of self-restraint (akrasia), and brutishness are to be avoided. While the opposite of vice is virtue, the opposite of akrasia is self-restraint, and of brutishness a form of divinity. This article explores Aristotle's analysis of self-restraint and its lack, akrasia, focusing on the phenomenon of akrasia and its causes. Self-restraint is the experience of excessive and idiosyncratic desires that are nevertheless resisted. Like self-restraint, akrasia, or lack of self-restraint, involves the experience of excessive and idiosyncratic desires. However, those lacking in self-restraint give in to these desires; the unrestrained person knows the good but does the opposite nonetheless. Possible causes of akrasia are the overpowering of reason by desire among the young and the effeminacy of some women and womanly men. This article argues, however, that the most interesting cause of akrasia in Aristotle's account is theoretical thinking.     

The art of displacement – curating a preschool context in a public transport system

ABSTRACT

This article discusses ways of enabling the youngest children at preschool (1–3 years) to participate in creating space in the public transport system. One researcher, two preschool educators and six preschool toddlers travelled on foot, by bus and by underground train to the Brunkeberg tunnel, a pedestrian tunnel in the centre of Stockholm, Sweden. Drawing on artistic site-specific methods of displacement, this article details three propositions for how to ‘do’ preschool in the public transport system: locations, dimensions and positions. By placing the routines and rhythms of a preschool practice into the urban spaces of transport, the ‘miniature preschool’ comes to curate context. The article proposes methods for a preschool practice to curate context through activating mobile but particular locations within a specific place; creating a vocal mobile architecture; and enabling multiple and mobile positions within one specific situation.     

Religion,secularisation and nationalism in Quebec and the Basque Country: a comparative approach

This article analyses the relationship between religion, secularisation and nationalism in Quebec and the Basque Country using a comparative approach. I will first outline the ethnic‐religious origin of these nationalist movements. Second, I will examine the extent to which the ‘new’ secular and violent nationalism (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna and Front de Libération du Québec) that emerged in the 1960s was fuelled in its origin by a transfer of sacrality. Third, I will address an aspect that has led some theorists to view religion and nationalism as analogous phenomena, in which nationalism is construed as a religion of blood sacrifice. Fourth, I will examine another aspect that leads to this view of religion and nationalism as analogous phenomena, as the latter also provides a framework of transcendent meaning through an imaginary of continuity between the different generations. The article concludes with a series of general considerations on the relations between nationalism, secularisation and religion.     

The Uterus in History

Books reviewed in this article: Rickie Solinger (ed.), Abortion Wars: A Half Century of Struggle, 1950-2000 Nicola Beisel, Imperilled Innocents: Anthony Cornstock and Family Reproduction in Victorian America Helen Hardacre, marketing the menacing Fetus in Japan Karen Newman, Fetal Positions: Individualism, Science, Visuality     

The Forgotten Semantics of Regression Modeling in Geography

This article is concerned with the semantics associated with the statistical analysis of spatial data. It takes the simplest case of the prediction of variable y as a function of covariate(s) x, in which predicted y is always an approximation of y and only ever a function of x, thus, inheriting many of the spatial characteristics of x, and illustrates several core issues using “synthetic” remote sensing and “real” soils case studies. The outputs of regression models and, therefore, the meaning of predicted y, are shown to vary due to (1) choices about data: the specification of x (which covariates to include), the support of x (measurement scales and granularity), the measurement of x and the error of x, and (2) choices about the model including its functional form and the method of model identification. Some of these issues are more widely recognized than others. Thus, the study provides definition to the multiple ways in which regression prediction and inference are affected by data and model choices. The article invites researchers to pause and consider the semantic meaning of predicted y, which is often nothing more than a scaled version of covariate(s) x, and argues that it is naïve to ignore this.     

Review articles

Colette is not generally included in recent narratives of twentieth-century French neoclassicism. However, her contemporaries of various political and aesthetic persuasions considered Colette to be a classique of the first order. This article explores classification as classique by critics sympathetic to Charles Maurras and the aesthetics of the Action française as well as left-leaning critics associated with André Gide and the group surrounding the Nouvelle Revue française. The article shows that it is Colette's strong association with a particular type of femininity that allows her to be thought of as classique by critics of such different political and aesthetic commitments. The article also examines examples of resistance to Colette's categorisation as classique, and attempts to assert the modernity of her work, coining the term classique moderne as a way of bringing together diverse attempts to explain the harmony between classicism and modernity in Colette's work. The article suggests that Colette's incorporation in the canon of the classique is part of a larger solidifying of the role of femininity in French identity at that moment.     

From Friend to Foe: The Portrait of Licinius in Eusebius

The object of this article is to analyse the portrait of emperor Licinius in three important sources of the reign of Constantine the Great: Lactantius' De mortibus persecutorum and, especially, Eusebius' two historical works, the Historia ecclesiastica (HE) and the Vita Constantini (VC). The influence of rhetoric, with the keywords vituperatio/laudatio and progymnasmata, is emphasized in Eusebius' way of depicting Licinius, this great loser in Late Roman History.     

New‐Build Gentrification and the Everyday Displacement of Polish Immigrant Tenants in Greenpoint,Brooklyn

In response to research that has downplayed or denied the reality of gentrification‐induced displacement, critical urban geographers have called for rethinking the concept of displacement. This article takes up that call by examining the impact of new‐build gentrification on the everyday place‐making abilities of Polish immigrant tenants in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Based on nearly four years of work as a tenant organizer, this article looks at the forms of “everyday displacement”—the ongoing loss of the agency, freedom, and security to “make place”—experienced by immigrant tenants who struggle to remain in the neighborhood. Drawing upon Lefebvre's spatial triad and Blomley's work on the social relations of property, this article argues that everyday displacement is experienced through the production of new spaces of prohibition, appropriation, and insecurity that constitute a form of neighborhood erasure.     

Exploring children's foodscapes

In this article, we discuss children's becoming as food consumers in the intersection of various foodscapes. We draw from a project, Children as co-researchers of foodscapes, where we have been working with children as co-researchers, using basically ethnographic methods, and as co-designers in a collaborative design effort. This article focuses on the findings from a theoretically inspired perspective, using the concept of foodscapes. These are food-related structures of different kinds, which evolve as the child explores them and where children as food consumers are generated. In this article, we highlight the scapes of taste, routines, people, things, commerce, child (as opposed to adult) and health and give brief accounts of the way the children related to them. Finally, we turn to the benefits of working with foodscapes for a better understanding of children's becoming as food consumers in the intersection of various foodscapes. This article is based on data gathered by the children, but also on our fieldwork notes and observations following the children in their foodscapes.     

Enclosures from Below: The Mushaa’ in Contemporary Palestine

This article traces the declining fortunes of the mushaa’, a once‐prominent Levantine culture of common land. Palestinians managed to resist attempts by the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate to break up the mushaa’. Under Israeli colonization, the remaining commons are now subject to another type of appropriation: individual Palestinian contractors seize hold of mushaa’ land and build on it. This article introduces the concept of “enclosures from below”, whilst looking at the dynamics of seizure of the commons by Palestinian refugees, who once were peasants practising mushaa’ on their lands and are now landless, some having become expert contractors. I show that the contractors consider their actions to be a form of resistance against the settler colonial project, manifested in the advancing of the Wall and settlement expansion. This is described through a case study of the Shu'faat area in Jerusalem. Changing uses of mushaa’ land reflect wider tendencies in the Palestinian national project that has become increasingly individualized.     

Portrayals and Perceptions: Greek Curved Blades in Black- and Red-Figure Iconography

Abstract

This article examines the portrayal of the curved blade in black- and red-figure painted pottery. The curved sword in ancient Greece has most often been assigned two names: ‘kopis’ and ‘machaira’. These are transliterations of the ancient Greek terms κοπ?? and μ?χαιρα. It will be pointed out here that this nomenclature is unhelpful as there are, in fact, more than two morphological types of curved sword from ancient Greece and the ancient Greeks did not definitively differentiate between what they termed κοπ?? (kopis) and μ?χαιρα (machaira). The curved knife was also included under these two terms. Here, I will discuss my own typology of the five different morphologies present in black- and red-figure art. The foundation of this article is the survey of black- and red-figure representations of the curved blades. This survey permits the examination of the morphologies of the curved sword, as well as the techniques used, and the professions and nationalities of the bearers in ancient black- and red-figure iconography.     

Putting Religion into Multiculturalism: Conceptualising Religious Multiculturalism in Indonesia

This article examines the ways in which multiculturalism as a policy, discourse and practice has been conceptualised, implemented and applied in Indonesia. The post-Suharto democratisation process has allowed new space for the expression of previously oppressed identities. While literature on multiculturalism focuses mainly on ethnic and racial difference, this article endeavours to broaden the scope of the term to include religious difference, and evaluate the possibility of “religious multiculturalism”. It addresses the following questions: What are the different interpretations of multiculturalism? How is multiculturalism different from pluralism? How is multiculturalism understood and implemented in Indonesia? How is the Western discourse of multiculturalism different from Indonesian discourses of diversity (kebhinnekaan or kemajemukan), heterogeneity (keberagaman) and unity-in-diversity (Bhinneka Tunggal Ika)? And lastly, in what ways can the concept of multiculturalism be expanded to accommodate multi-religiosity?     

Economic structures in Western Norway in the early iron age

In this issue of Norwegian Archaeological Review the book Økonomiske strukturer på Vestlandet i eldre jernalder (Economic structures in Western Norway in the Early Iron Age) by Knut Odner (1973 a) has been chosen as subject for discussion. The book is the second part of a major work on the settlement in a rock shelter called Ullshelleren in a Norwegian mountain valley; the first part of the publication (Odner 1969) has previously been reviewed and discussed in NAR (Myhre 1972, Bakka 1973, Odner 1973 b).

As an introduction to the discussion we reprint with a few editorial alterations the second part of Odner's article, Ecological settings for economic and social models (1972, pp. 637–649), previously published in Models in Archaeology edited by David L. Clarke. We are grateful to Mr. David L. Clarke and the publisher, Methuen &; Co. Ltd., for the permission to reproduce parts of this article.

Comments by Berta Stjernquist, Carl‐Axel Moberg, Gutorm Gjessing, Charlotte Blindheim, Heid Gj?stein Resi, Magnús Stefánsson and Axel Sommerfelt are followed by a reply from Knut Odner.     

Popular Italian cinema,the media,and the economic miracle: rethinking commedia all’italiana

This article seeks to reposition the popular cinematic genre commedia all’italiana within the context of the rapid expansion of the media industries which accompanied Italy's postwar economic miracle. The article looks at three distinct aspects of the relationship between commedia all’italiana and other media. First, it outlines the important role played by the media during the boom in disseminating images of consumer lifestyles, and highlights the way in which commedia all’italiana participated in this process. Second, through a discussion of media appearances by Vittorio Gassman and Nino Manfredi, the article emphasises the extent to which their commedia all’italiana star personas were constructed and circulated in a multimedia context. Finally, it examines how the genre represented other media, focusing in particular on the representation of gender in advertising scenes. Through close readings of commedia all’italiana advertising scenes, the article notes points of continuity with and difference from advertising imagery that was circulating at the time. The article argues that in order to further our understanding of commedia all’italiana and its relationship to Italian society, it is essential to understand the genre's relationship to other media production of the period, which both influenced the comedies’ representations and was influenced by them in turn.