From Populism To Protagonism (and Back?) in Bolivarian Venezuela: Rethinking Ernesto Laclau’s on Populist Reason

Ernesto Laclau’s On Populist Reason, now over a decade old, is one of our generation’s most nuanced contributions to debates on political community and social change in the era of mass democracy. Against critiques of populism as illiberal demagoguery, Laclau’s conceptualization emphasizes the discursive nature of power and politics and considers populist sequences as radical democratic openings in an era of consolidated global neoliberal capitalism. This article considers the shifting terrain of democracy – from liberal, to populist, and finally to protagonistic forms – in the context of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. I argue that despite Laclau’s important contributions, the formulations of power that underlie his populist reason are symptomatic rather than critical of contemporary liberal politics. The article offers an analysis of Bolivarian Venezuela that emphasizes popular experimentation with protagonism as an expression of democracy based in grassroots collective autonomy and direct democracy over the representation and managed development of the modern state.     

Heroes and the renegotiation of national identity in American history textbooks: representations of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, 1982–2003

ABSTRACT. American history textbooks for the USA's public schools act as quasi‐official loci for the renegotiation of national identity and are, as such, subject to much controversy. The choice of heroes and the way in which textbooks depict them display the interplay between competing visions of popular ethno‐history and scholarly historiography. This article examines contemporary renegotiation of the national narrative through an analysis of the evolving representation of the USA's two most prominent traditional national heroes – George Washington and Abraham Lincoln – in history textbooks for elementary‐school students published from the early 1980s to 2003. This period marks the development of the multiculturalist movement and its subsequent conservative backlash, with debates intensifying in the wake of the events of 11 September 2001.     

Kelp Highways,Siberian Girls in Maui,and Nuclear Walruses: The North Pacific in a Sea of Islands

ABSTRACT

Epeli Hau‘ofa's definition of the Pacific as a ‘sea of islands' should be extended to the Indigenous history of the North Pacific Ocean. Several themes prominent in the history of Oceania – such as humans' orientation towards the ocean, the complex ways in which European and Indigenous histories mixed in the colonial era, and the notion of vast, interconnected spaces – apply to North Pacific history as well. This essay looks at the ways in which the history of the Russian Far East and Alaska could be written as Pacific history and integrated into histories of Oceania. Such an integration would provide numerous benefits for historians and activists in the North Pacific. Some important topics in the history of these northern regions, such as the interdependence of human and natural systems, could also enrich historiography in Oceania.     

Postcolonial Denmark: Beyond the Rot of Colonialism?

This article begins by providing a brief overview of Danish colonial and imperial history in the tropics, the Arctic and the sub-Arctic. It then discusses how Danish colonialism relates to a broader regional (Scandinavian/Nordic) and pan-European colonial history. From there it moves on to consider Denmark's postcolonial condition, that is, it identifies issues in contemporary Denmark deriving from Danish (and European) colonialism's aftermath. This unfinished business includes contemporary historiography of the migrant other in Danish society, refugee discourse in the public domain, the early stages of a reconciliation process with former colonies – reconciliation has been placed on the public agenda in both Greenland and the US Virgin Islands (formerly the Danish West Indies) - and the still unfolding process of Greenlandic and Faroese independence. The article maps out how the emerging dis-connections between Denmark and its former colonies are paradoxically juxtaposed with processes of new reinforcement: The U.S. Virgin Islands has emerged as an important tourist destination for Danes (more than 10,000 visitors each year). Ghana is one of the major recipients of Danish development aid. Major restoration programs are and have been conducted in all former Danish tropical colonies. In Greenland, Denmark is using its sovereignty to boost its international status as part of the Arctic council, as a scientific power centre on Polar/Arctic research – not least in relation to climate change. The article concludes by looking at critical approaches to Danish colonial history and its legacy in contemporary Danophone literature.     

‘But Private Notes for My Own Memory’? Parliamentary Diaries,Parliamentary History and the Politics of Information in Early Stuart England*

Early modern parliamentary diaries are a standard source for historians, and have long been used as a supplement to the official journals in reconstructions of debates and business at Westminster. This article adopts a contrasting approach and examines what diaries – viewed as sources in their own right – reveal about parliament and its members, methods of contemporary note-taking, and the circulation and readership of political information. It begins with a review of the evidence for why, how, and to what ends members kept parliamentary diaries, before exploring the extent of their dissemination in early Stuart England. While recent literature has emphasized the circulation of materials relating to Jacobean and especially Caroline parliaments during the early 17th century, the article recovers the existence of a simultaneous interest in the parliamentary proceedings of the Elizabethan era. At a time when the future of parliament seemed uncertain, it argues that the evident market for, and readership of, Elizabethan material reflects contemporaries’ increasing recognition of parliament's significance within the English state and their changing attitudes towards parliamentary history. Moreover, while Elizabethan parliamentary diaries and journals seemingly reinforced memories of a past ‘golden age’ of parliamentary rule, the article contends that contemporaries’ production, dissemination, and reading of that material was a conscious form of political action in response to the constitutional crisis of their day.     

Remembrance as a Tool for Reflecting a National Identity: A Cuban Punk Approach

This paper takes several examples from the work of one Cuban punk band – Porno Para Ricardo – to assess the use of memory as a tool for reflecting fragments of a national identity which is both quotidian and contemporary. This singular case study is chosen not for their pertinence within Cuban culture, or even within Cuban alternative music, but rather as an exemplar of the assertion that popular music, rather than changing identities, often reflects aspects of identity and how they manifest in the everyday. Porno Para Ricardo are one such point of reflection. However, their remembrances often stray into areas too traumatic or politically admonished to be ‘remembered’ as part of a more rigid revolutionary history. By remembering the cultural (and thus, vicariously, the political) legacy of the Soviet Union within Cuba, and by re-personalising (or personifying) the traumas of mass generational exodus experiences in the early 90s, Porno Para Ricardo both augment the space of collective Cuban memory, and thus identity, but also attempt to reconnect the slabs of Cuban history often cleaved into evental epochs after which a ‘new way of being’ is constructed, as a means to better make sense of, and better reflect, contemporary Cuban identity.     

Ideologies of artistic vocation – implicitly gendered cultural policies?

This paper argues that notions of artistic vocation – the idea that artists receive a metaphysical calling to follow their path – can be understood as implicit cultural policies, among other functions deepening the connection between art and spirituality, as well as regulating gender access to creative production. The matter is addressed generally and with reference to two specific case-studies: the musical era of German Romanticism and contemporary Mexican indigenous groups of the Huasteca, both of which display reliance on narratives of vocation. Also, both cases – one historically remote, and the other removed from Western main-stream musical practices – are to act as mirrors to invite future discussions concerning the continuing cultural currency of ideas of vocation and their complex and subtle complicity in the perpetuation of arguably desirable (such as the promotion of creativity) and oppressive practices within the art world.     

Calling 911: intimate partner violence and responsible citizenship in a neoliberal era

For most of United States’ history, the state did not intervene in violence perpetrated within the home or intimate relationships. Women experiencing intimate partner violence had little recourse from state institutions for security or legal justice. This article’s inquiry centers on two policing practices – preferred arrest and evidence-based prosecution – that emerged in the 1980s to redress the state’s long history of ignoring intimate partner violence. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines how these two policing practices affect the experience of citizenship for intimate partner violence survivors by showing how the state creates a distinction between ‘cooperative’ victims who support the arrest and incarceration of their abusers and ‘uncooperative’ who do not. To develop this argument, I conceptualize the policing and prosecution response to intimate partner violence as a social contract of rights and responsibilities that mediates the relationship between the state and women who experience intimate partner violence. By illustrating how the state discursively constructs ‘uncooperative’ victims as irrational, this article utilizes a feminist geographic analytic to examine the everyday discursive and material technologies that the state employs to reregulate responsible citizenship in a neoliberal era.     

“自下而上”:当代中国农村社会研究的社会史视角

从互助组到人民公社体制结束,是一个前后相继、不可割裂的时代。从"自下而上"的社会史角度对此进行研究,可以纠正以往研究的缺失,丰富我们对新中国历史的认识。中国社会史研究应当引入到现当代史的研究,这亦是社会史研究应有的社会关怀。     

Scholarship and the ship of state: rethinking the Anglo‐American strategic decline analogy

This article uses the centenary of the First World War as an opportunity to re‐examine a major element of the existing literature on the war—the strategic implications of supposed British decline—as well as analogies to the contemporary United States based upon that interpretation of history. It argues that the standard declinist interpretation of British strategy rests to a surprising degree upon the work of the naval historian Arthur Marder, and that Marder's archival research and conceptual framework were weaker than is generally realized. It suggests that more recent work appearing since Marder is stronger and renders the declinist strategic interpretation difficult to maintain. It concludes by considering the implications of this new work for analogies between the United States today and First World War‐era Britain, and for the use of history in contemporary policy debates.     

Preaching,politics and episcopal reform in Wulfstan's early writings

Putting Wulfstan's earliest legal texts – the Canons of Edgar and the so‐called Peace of Edward and Guthrum – in dialogue with his homilies on the role of the bishop, this article argues that, from his earliest writings, Wulfstan adapted approaches from Kings Alfred and Edgar as well as from the Benedictine reform to make ambitious claims concerning the role of the bishop in the secular sphere. These claims went beyond the contemporary understanding of the relationship between bishop and king both in England and on the Continent, to frame the bishop as the primary authority in the nation because he is the teacher of teachers.     

时代、实践与主流意识形态:当代中国思想史研究的三重维度

当代中国思想史研究必须把握三重维度:一是探究思想变迁与社会发展的关系,准确把握当代中国思想史的时代维度,因为时代维度决定着当代中国思想发展的主题,决定着当代中国思想发展的历史进程及其方向;二是探究社会实践与思想变动的互动关系,准确把握当代中国思想史的实践维度,因为实践维度决定着当代中国思想发展的高度,也决定着当代中国思想发展的理论深度;三是探究主流意识形态的变迁,准确把握当代中国思想史的主流维度,因为主流维度决定着当代中国思想发展的核心和主脉。     

Myths and symbols in the political culture of Catalan nationalism (1880–1914)

Historiography on the phenomenology of nationalisms has often pointed to the importance of myths and symbols in the construction of these political movements, underlining how the past is transfigured and/or particular historical episodes are recast for use in creating a given political discourse in the present. By adopting this viewpoint, the aim of this paper is to analyse the evolution of historiographical thinking on the use of myths and symbols in contemporary politics, giving particular attention to how they were brought to bear in the early days of the Catalan nationalist movement. This initial period, covering the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is of special interest in the case of Catalan nationalism because it was a phase of politicisation marked – much as it was in other nationalist movements across Europe – by a nationalisation of history, a selection of foundation myths and historical milestones, and a crystallisation of the movement's symbols.     

20世纪中国的史学方法论研究

20世纪中国史学方法论研究,是一笔丰厚的史学遗产。从梁启超的《新史学》,到三四十年代一系列史学理论方法论读本的出版,再到当代台湾的史学方法论研究,是新史学派史学方法发展的大体脉络。从李大钊对马克思主义历史观的介绍和宣传,到郭沫若所代表的开始用马克思主义研究中国历史的尝试和实践,再到翦伯赞的《历史哲学教程》的出版,标志着中国马克思主义史学发展的第一阶段;从50到70年代是马克思主义史学方法广泛普及和曲折发展的时期;改革开放以后的20年,是中国马克思主义史学史上方法论研究空前繁荣和活跃的时期。总结百年来的史学方法论研究,给新世纪史学发展留下了诸多启示。     

Between heroism and sainthood: New martyr Evgenii Rodionov as a moral model in contemporary Russia

This paper explores the developing cult of a new martyr – the Russian soldier Evgenii Rodionov, killed in 1996 in Chechen captivity, allegedly for his refusal to convert to Islam. I examine how the notion of moral personhood – a capacity to have convictions and values and to stand by them – emerges as a central object of ethical problematization across the disparate narratives of the soldier’s death. I argue that the appeal of the radical model of morality personified by the soldier’s figure reflects a pervasive trend of longing for spirituality in contemporary Russia, which developed in response to the perceived moral collapse that followed the democratic transition. Through investigating how Evgenii’s image is being employed as a public symbol of patriotism and as a private moral exemplar for militaristically oriented young men, this article contributes to the understanding of the entangled relationship among religion, nationalism and conservative morality in contemporary Russia.     

从“时代特色”看马克思主义当代化

马克思主义当代化就是把马克思主义同当前时代的发展、同当前时代的特征相结合起来。当今世界争中国正在发生前所未有的广泛而深刻的变革。实现马克思主义当代化是坚持和发展马克思主义的内在要求，是历史的经验总结，是当代世界和中国变化的需要。这就要求马克思主义必须要与时代同步，立足当代实践，体现时代精神，积极推进理论创新。     

Apparitions of Desire: Clive van den Berg and the Art of Historical Unknowability

This paper considers the art of South African artist, Clive van den Berg. Van den Berg has long been engaged in a careful exploration of landscapes and their capacity to bear traces of what is no longer known, often in ways that question the archive fever of contemporary historians and cultural activists. In a variety of media – from fire‐installations to oil pastel, from light and wood to acrylic, in video and in mono‐print – he has probed the history of eros and its relationship to the violences of apartheid, simultaneously citing the aesthetic traditions of the Italian Renaissance and Southern Africa. The paper both describes and explicates the aesthetico‐political ambition of the artist's work as it has developed over the last decade, in the aftermath of apartheid's dismantling.     

Recent research on Chinese republican history

Chinese republican history has proved to be the most dynamic subject area within Chinese history studies – with the most substantial research achievements – since China adopted its policy of reform and opening up in 1978. This paper provides an overview of new developments and trends in the recent study of Chinese republican history by Mainland Chinese scholars.     

Georges Perec’s experimental fieldwork; Perecquian fieldwork

This paper traces key themes in contemporary experimental fieldwork – explorations of ordinary places by artists, writers, activists, enthusiasts, students and researchers – to the works of Georges Perec. Preoccupations of this work – including playfulness, attention to the ordinary, and writing as a fieldwork practice – are all anticipated and elaborated in Perec’s oeuvre, where they converge around an ‘essayistic’ approach. Exhibiting these traits, some contemporary fieldwork is more convincingly Perecquian than psychogeographical or Situationist, despite the tendency to identify it with the latter. Through Perec, it is therefore possible to bring contemporary experimental fieldwork into focus, identifying a coherence and sense of project within it, while speaking to the question of what it means and could mean to conduct fieldwork experimentally. Particular attention is paid in this paper to Perec’s most accomplished and sustained field texts, both of which have been translated into English: An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris (2010, from 1975 original in French) and Species of Spaces (1999/1974).