Postcolonial polar cities? New indigenous and cosmopolitan urbanness in the Arctic

ABSTRACT

The arrival into geography, and especially urban geography, of a frame of questioning coming from postcolonial studies has contributed to a fascinating debate about what a “postcolonial” city is and how the urban duality between ethnically, socially, and spatially segregated “European” towns and “native” settlements is being reformulated and transformed. Obviously, Arctic cities are not postcolonial in the political sense of being independent from the former colonial centre – although this process may be under way in Greenland – but they have seen a progressive move from a Eurocentric culture toward greater hybridization. This article looks into two new trends that contribute to making Arctic cities postcolonial: first, the arrival of indigenous peoples in cities and the concomitant diminution of the division between Europeans/urbanites and natives/rurals; and second, the arrival of labour migrants from abroad, which has given birth to a more plural and cosmopolitan citizenry. It advances the idea that Arctic cities are now in a position to play a “decolonizing” role, in the sense of progressively erasing the purely European aspect of the city and making it both more local and rooted (through indigenous communities) and more global and multicultural (through foreign labour migrants).     

Tannery and Duhem on the Concept of a System in the History of Philosophy and History of Science

ABSTRACT

This article examines John Toland’s Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews (1714) by placing it alongside other elements of his engagement with Jewish history, Mosaic principles and wider “Hebraica” – specifically, an appendix to his Nazarenus (1718) and his Origines Judaicae (1709). Although Toland’s case for Jewish naturalization shows the strong influence of Locke’s case for political and religious toleration, and also of a general “mercantilism”, it is argued that one of its main characteristics is a philosophical naturalism, shown in its treatment of the human species as a whole. Furthermore, it is also argued that this same naturalism is evident throughout Toland’s engagement with Jewish history and Mosaic thought. Accordingly, when we “fold” these works into each other, we find each enhancing our understanding of the others – not just as examples of Toland’s treatment of “Jewish affairs”, but also as illustrations of a consistent conceptual materialism. To emphasize this, the article concludes by suggesting that the figure of Rabbi Simone Luzzatto, author of a 1638 plea for tolerance, provides an important clue in understanding the links between Toland’s political injunctions and the philosophical foundation on which they are built.     

John Banville’s “monstrous child”: freedom and inheritance in Shroud

ABSTRACT

John Banville has described his novel Shroud (2002) – a fictionalised re-imagining of the 1988 scandal of Paul de Man, whose war-time publications for a collaborationist journal were discovered after his death – as his “monstrous child” that only he could love. This essay turns to Derrida’s thoughts on monstrosity, and in particular his framing of the future-to-come as an unforeseeable reckoning between Nietzsche and Rousseau, whose approaches to human freedom and authenticity remain philosophically irreconcilable. Shroud engages with these two inheritances on a thematic level, bringing them into conversation through the characters of Vander and Cass. The interruption of intergenerational love and the prospect of a child between them, however, makes Derridean monstrosity – that more properly deconstructive trope that opens to the future by unearthing traumatic inheritances from the past – into a structuring principle, and the means by which we might best understand the novel itself as a “monstrous child”.     

Lucy Hutchinson,Lucretius and Soteriological Materialism

Abstract

This article examines Lucy Hutchinson's pervasive materialism, arguing that her use of corporeal imagery – in part shaped by her early translation of Lucretius – contributes to the soteriological purposes of her later works in multiple ways. Criticism on Hutchinson has tended to divorce the materialist imagery of her translation from the Calvinistic themes of her other writings. I argue, however, for the lasting presence of a materialism constructed from the vocabularies of Lucretian Epicureanism, Neoplatonism and John Owen. Focusing especially on the poem Order and Disorder and Hutchinson's theological tract to her daughter, I show how she uses materialism as a “means” to achieving assurance and grace. I suggest that these various responses to physical experience are part of Hutchinson's enduring investigation into the ontology of “Order” and “Disorder”, and her quest for stable spiritual being.     

Oraculorum Sibyllinorum fragmentum Osloense 1

This article discusses some textual questions in Ajax leading to the following conclusions: I. 54 add ?τ?? after λε?α?. – II. 208 the emendation ?ρεμ?α? (“rest”, “quietude”) suggested by Thiersch. – III. 405a–b the proposal κρ?τη / μοι to fill the lacuna. – IV. 476 defence of the line as transmitted. – V. 546 τοσ?νδε to go with ??νον. – VI. 719 ?νδρε?, ??λον τι πρ?τον instead of ?νδρε? ??λοι, τ? πρ?τον. – VII. 869 instead of με write γε. – VIII. 951 ?σ?ν? ?χθο? as a reference to Tecmessa’s heavy burden of woe.     

Need and Misery in the Eastern Periphery: Nordic Sámi Media Debate on the Kola Sámi

Abstract

This article investigates Nordic Sámi discourse on the Kola (Russian) Sámi through analysis of texts from Sámi newspapers and journals 1992–2009. Among the findings are that the relationship between Nordic and Kola Sámi is frequently discussed as a donor–recipient pattern similar to that of general Western discourse on “the [global] South” and the 1990s’ “great misery discourse” on Russia. This portrayal of the Kola Sámi is here referred to as “the discourse of need”. However, the study also finds that this most divergent subgroup of the Sámi people is accepted into the border-transcending Sámi “nation” without question – it is never challenged that they are part of a larger “us”. The article also comments on some similarities between the discourse on the Kola Sámi as a “suffering” group, and certain patterns in Nordic Sámi self-representation. In comparison, a selection of non-Sámi media texts displayed less interest in the Kola Sámi; their paying attention to the group was more dependent on its members being perceived as victims of crisis and/or injustice; and they articulated the discourse of need more often. The two decades from which texts were drawn (1990s and 2000s) differed mainly by the latter period showing a general decrease in interest in the group; and by Sámi media being less dominated by the discourse of need, and containing more texts portraying the Kola Sámi as culturally and politically active.     

Topoiesis de la recepción literaria

ABSTRACT

This article proposes a particular notion about “topoiesis,” focusing on the text reception point of view. Initially, it establishes a theoretical framework using useful concepts from hermeneutics and post-structuralism, to later discuss the real existence of a dialogue or a “fusion of horizons” in which a “sense of space” of a text would be blended in the meeting point between textuality and the reader. Finally, through this space we propose a categorization of the different types of “topoiesis” of literary reception, establishing correspondences with the concept of “enunciative instances” in the text space, detailed in another article.     

Activism for End Times: Millenarian Belief in an Age of Climate Emergency

ABSTRACT

To be labeled an “eco-millenarian” has invariably pejorative connotations, insinuating the use of catastrophic rhetoric of an ecological end-times to bypass rational decision-making and democratic processes. In this article I critically assess this association, and also consider whether new political concerns – the suggestion that we are in a “climate emergency” – lend a new credibility to the structure of millenarian belief for an era of climate change. Clearly, caution is required here: the legacy of Christian millenarianism to secular politics has at times inspired peaceful, egalitarian revolution, but it is probably better known for motivating violent conflict and new forms of authoritarianism. Thus, we need to specify carefully which theological legacies are being evoked when discussing the relevance of millenarian belief today. Political theology can offer guidance to a new generation of environmental activists seeking resources with which to renew politics in times of emergency.     

Competing Visions of the Rule of Law in Southeast Asia: Power,Rhetoric and Governance

Abstract

This article introduces a special issue on the emergent relationship between the rhetoric and implementation of the rule of law concept in Southeast Asia. It thematically introduces four country case studies (Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam), and the case of ASEAN’s adoption of the rule of law in region-building, which are included in this special issue. We highlight how ideals that are arguably central to the “tradition” of the rule of law are being excised, marginalised, defended and/or undermined in Southeast Asian contexts. We emphasise how the very concept is deeply contested and far from neutral – at stake is the very notion of “law” for whom, and for what. The article offers insight into the social dynamics affecting how the rule of law is being interpreted by political actors and how it is being contested and consolidated via governance practices in the region, and proposes new avenues for research in assessing how the rule of law is operating in transitional and authoritarian state settings.     

Red Aesthetics,Intermediality and the Use of Posters in Chinese Cinema after 1949

Abstract

This article focuses on the aesthetic and affective techniques of saturation through which posters legitimated the Party-State in Mao’s China by closing the gap between everyday experience and political ideology. Propaganda posters were designed to put into practice the principle of unity, as conceptualised by Mao Zedong. The argument posits that while the “poster” is normally a printed edition of a painting or design intended for mass distribution in this way, the term may fairly be deployed to capture other cultural objects that function as “posters”, in that they provide public, political information that expresses or constructs a political self in aesthetic form. This approach requires a metonymic understanding of a visual field in which cultural objects are interrelated and mutually reinforcing. The essay draws on recent in-depth interviews with poster artists of the 1960s and 1970s.     

“Twitter Bodhisattva”: Ai Weiwei’s Media Politics

Abstract

This article investigates artist and activist Ai Weiwei’s media politics. In 1997 Ai Weiwei imagined a modernist movement that would practise a “non-compromising vigilance on society and power” and since 2005 he has embraced blogging and micro-blogging to enact such intent. We argue that his “communication activism” is part of a broader artistic and political program that long predates his online presence. The study examines how the artist has experimented with blogging and micro-blogging to spread his message of “awakening” in defiance of censorship and surveillance. It shows how Ai Weiwei’s communication strategy combines an international celebrity status, criticism, irony and a round-the-clock interaction with his netizen audience and the media. It also critiques the effectiveness and coherence of this mode of activism from two perspectives – namely, Jean Baudrillard’s analysis of “private telematics” and Jodi Dean’s “blog theory” – and finally assesses its impact. The study aims to enhance our understanding of the web-based communication strategies of Chinese activists, shedding light on cultural production and consumption in Chinese cyberspace as a socio-political barometer.     

Russia,China, and the universalism of modernity: the “Account of the Reforms of Peter the Great” by Kang Youwei

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes a short essay by Kang Youwei (1858–1927) – one of the intellectual and political protagonists of late imperial and early Republican China. In it, he interpreted the historical experience of Russian modernization under Peter the Great (1672–1725) and used it as a “success story” for the renewal of Chinese monarchical institutions. It was written in 1898 and presented to the Manchu throne under the title “Account of the Reforms of Peter the Great”, and for our purposes will be the departing point for a “global intellectual circuit” through which the following questions will be addressed: Why was seventeenth and eighteenth century Russia considered as a model for China by the author? How did he manage to adapt the historical experience of Russia into a social and political conceptual framework for China? What was Kang’s historiographical method, and what kind of philosophy of history framed his reflections? What does this short essay tell us about Kang’s view on “Westernization”, on the concept of “modernity” itself, and on its use for historiographical purposes?     

The French Idea of History: Joseph de Maistre and his heirs 1794–1854

ABSTRACT

Historians of modern design and sociology have shown little interest in the leaders of the ever resourceful and influential British Positivist Society. One of the aims of this essay is to show that the Positivist polymath Frederic Harrison (1831–1923) cultivated ideas and practices that are compatible with modernists’ aspirations to improve the lives of the masses. It is accordingly shown that Harrison was an ardent supporter of working-class causes and that on this basis he developed sociological survey methods and produced social programmes to initiate the comprehensive reorganisation of cities. Harrison intended to realise a modern utopia called the “Occidental Republic”, created by Auguste Comte, the Positivist Philosopher who – during the 1830 and 1840s – introduced both sociology and the Religion of Humanity. While many studies pore over the Positivists’ “church” rituals, this essay is the first to argue that the Religion of Humanity and sociology were of equal consequence – and that together they formed the basis of their controversial spatial theory and practice, which was considered the means to realise Comte’s utopia. This vision, it is argued, is central to appreciating how Positivism percolated into the “modern movements” of architecture and planning.     

“There are only realities built in the mind”

Abstract

In the wake of the First World War, Vilhelm Bjerknes and his colleagues in Bergen established their so-called front meteorology. With their new concepts and models they “appropriated” the weather – to use Robert Marc Friedman's expression – for physics and for Norwegian science. A regular weather forecasting service was established at the same time for the whole of the Norwegian coast, and fishermen soon became the meteorologists’ primary allies in their struggle for state support and resources. This article examines how the alliance was established, how weather forecasting was “appropriated” by the coastal population, particularly in the north, and what difference this made.     

Announcements

ABSTRACT

What did it mean to “vulgarize” in Renaissance Italy? Was it simply a matter of translating into the vernacular, or did it mean making a text more accessible to the people – to in some sense popularize it? The answer is far from simple and certainly never one-sided; therefore, each individual case needs to be independently assessed on its own merits. This article seeks to shed some light at least on the major treatments of the theory of vulgarization by the likes of Ludovico Castelvetro, Faustus Longianus, Francesco Robortello, Alessandro Piccolomini, Orazio Toscanella and Girolamo Catena, which were central to the debate from the 1540s onwards.     

Framing the High North: Public Discourses in Norway after 2000

Abstract

The article presents an overview of the main public debates in Norway that can be said to have framed and defined the High North since the turn of the Millennium. It is based on a qualitative study of over 3000 articles published in four Norwegian newspapers issued between 2000 and 2006. Our discussion is structured around three overarching, interconnected narratives that we think capture the essence of the Norwegian public discourses on the High North between 2000 and 2006. These are “Fragments from the 1990s”; “The great narrative of the High North”; and “Mixing cold water with hot blood”. The first half of the 2000s is characterised by an almost total absence of the High North as a discursive and politically coherent concept. From 2004, however, usage grew fivefold, alongside an extensive, dynamic discursive mobilisation. When the Russians decided in 2006 to shelve the Shtokman project and critical voices were heard condemning Norway's environmental performance in northwest Russia, public opinion swung back again. A feeling of cold reality replaced the sense of optimism towards the energy potential of the north, and an exercise in collective soul-searching commenced – similar to that of the early years of the decade. We believe the type of discursive change we document in this article constitutes policy trends in connection both with the High North and with other sectors where policy is subject to intense public debate and appraisal. We hope that discourse analysis has enabled us to investigate and share how Norwegian public discourses on the High North are socially produced, framed and maintained but at the same time are always in flux and open to “new” directions which should be possible – at least in theory – to trace by going back in time.     

Anti-ism thinkers: The post-May Fourth schism in political thought

Abstract

This article is a continuation of “Advent of the Age of Isms,” which primarily discusses a period teeming with various “isms” (主義 zhuyi). During this time, there were in fact a number of figures who held overtly or covertly opposing attitudes, in both cases giving rise to a phenomenon of fragmentation and asystematicness. Whether consisting of negative responses to the new political theory of “isms,” this “remedy for all ills,” or of piecemeal, asystematic criticism, the phenomenon itself served as a foil to the colossal intellectual forces of the Age of “Ismization.” This article offers a preliminary discussion of this phenomenon.     

Creative preservation: The development of an artistic approach to the preservation and presentation of the past

Abstract

The article proposes “Creative Preservation” as an artistic approach to contemporary questions concerning the preservation and presentation of archaeological sites. By examining critically the role of cultural heritage today, it attempts to search for alternative perspectives and to retrieve forgotten sensibilities such as Diderot's “Poetics of Ruins”. It first examines concepts of time and authenticity, especially in archaeological sites, as interpreted by various authors from Poincare, von Schiller, Bergson and Simmel to Choay and Jokilehto.

Dedicated to immaterial qualities of places, “Creative Preservation” suggests the refinement of “images of authenticity” in an attempt to penetrate and to communicate with deeper levels in the complex reality of ancient places – actual and specific locations which anchor and root memory in material.

A first realization of this approach is presented in the form of the spiral viewpoint recently constructed at the northwest part of the archaeological site of Ramat Rachel near Jerusalem.     

The Picture of Artificial Intelligence and the Secularization of Thought

ABSTRACT

This article offers a critical interpretation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a philosophical notion which exemplifies a secular conception of thinking. One way in which AI notably differs from the conventional understanding of “thinking” is that, according to AI, “intelligence” or “thinking” does not necessarily require “life” as a precondition: that it is possible to have “thinking without life.” Building on Charles Taylor’s critical account of secularity as well as Hubert Dreyfus’ influential critique of AI, this article offers a theological analysis of AI’s “lifeless” picture of thinking in relation to the Augustinian conception of God as “Life itself.” Following this critical theological analysis, this article argues that AI’s notion of thinking promotes a societal privilege of certain rationalistic or calculative ways of thought over more existential or spiritual ways of thinking, and thereby fosters a secularization or de-spiritualization of thinking as an ethical human practice.     

The religious geography of Marvell’s “An Horatian Ode”: popery,presbytery, and parti-coloured picts

ABSTRACT

Marvell’s “Ode” (1650) is an English poem about a British problem – a problem further problematized by religion. The “Ode” lauds Cromwell’s Irish and Scottish campaigns, but English responses to these “colonial” wars were in reality complicated by protestant infighting among presbyterians, independents, and sectarians. Writers like Milton and Nedham rallied English support for Cromwell’s Irish campaign by recycling Spenserian stereotypes of Irish catholic barbarity. But Milton and Nedham also undercut English protestant unity by flinging these same anti-catholic stereotypes at Scottish presbyterians in Belfast and Edinburgh. Departing from previous studies, this article argues that Marvell’s “Ode” eschews Milton and Nedham’s anti-Presbyterianism in ways calculated to elide, rather than divide, protestant communities. The article explores how the “Ode” presents Cromwell’s Irish and Scottish campaigns as exclusively anti-catholic (rather than anti-presbyterian) crusades, comparing Marvell’s presentation of Cromwell in the “Ode” with his identification of Cromwell as an anti-catholic crusader in “First Anniversary” (1655). Both poems anticipate in this respect Marvell’s later anti-catholic, but pro-nonconformist, approach to Ireland in Rehearsal transpros’d (1672–1673). The article is therefore concerned to root Marvell’s post-Restoration commitment to protestant tolerationism within the anti-catholic language of the “Ode”.