Defiance to compliance: Visions of the computer in postwar Britain

In a climate of profound uncertainty over Britain’s postwar status, some industrialists and policymakers sought solace in a ‘defiant modernist’ aesthetic, proposing radical technological transformations to circumvent economic constraints. The British computer industry, which briefly challenged that of the USA for technological sophistication, presents a revealing instance of this approach and its limitations. Early promoters, notably Vivian Bowden of Ferranti, shrewdly laid the rhetorical groundwork to position the new machines as the natural outcome of a uniquely British technological trajectory. Into the 1960s, however, their agenda was disrupted not only by economic realities, but also by the increasing importance of software and compatible systems as opposed to individual machines, and by growing public and industrial familiarity with computing in general. Promoters sought new points of differentiation, but had made little headway when a combination of national policy changes, growing market dominance by US-based corporations, and Anglo-French rapprochement rendered the British national exception largely unworkable. Its powerful rhetorical appeal, however, ensured that it never entirely disappeared.     

Absurd Avatars,Transcultural Relations: Elia Suleiman,Franco-Palestinian Filmmaking and Beyond

This article illuminates the threads of connection drawing together the work of the Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman and French cultural production, while acknowledging the broader international contexts of these connections. The transcultural relations identified in the article title are a means of articulating these concerns. Suleiman's films, funded by French production companies and supported by French film festivals, have a tacit connection to France. Suleiman's mute self-representation within his films also draws upon auteurist and absurdist tropes familiar to European literature and art in the twentieth century. First discussing the broader cultural and geopolitical contexts of Franco-Palestinian filmmaking, the article then engages closely with critical tropes of the Absurd and human gesture in relation both to the critical reception of Suleiman's films, and the films' aesthetics, specifically in his recent feature films Divine Intervention (2002) and Le Temps qu'il reste/The Time that Remains (2009). Offering an alternative articulation of these complex transcultural relationships, the article explores Suleiman's position as a mute filmic figure and auteur director. It re-opens an often ‘unspoken’ dialogue of Franco-Palestinian cinematic relations which has been frequently designated as historical or political, rather than also and in equal measure, cultural, aesthetic, ethical and personal. At the same time, it seeks to open out these dialogues beyond France and Palestine, towards transcultural relations between Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and North America.     

Visions of visibility: LGBT communities in Turin

Recent anti-discrimination campaigns by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) activists in Italy have increased the visibility of these communities and individuals, but have not resulted in the desired improvements to legislation. In light of this situation, this article analyses modalities of ‘visibility’ as defined and desired by the active LGBT community in Turin, host city for National Pride 2006. The Pride committee scheduled an unprecedentedly ‘visible’ year-long programme of consciousness-raising and cultural events that went far beyond the more usual one-day march. Drawing on a series of interviews with members of the committee and of the lesbian community conducted in Turin in March and June 2006, the discussion explores social, cultural and political visibility in this LGBT community as it hosted National Pride.

I think people live in a state of non-visibility, lacking self-acceptance; there are gay men and lesbians in Italy who are in hiding. (Andrea Benedino)1 1.?Interview conducted by the author, 31 March 2006.      

Comparative Approaches to Visions of Community

The aims of the first VISCOM conference were to compare different methods employed in the study of community to address new methodological perspectives for the analysis of categories of identification and belonging, the conditions and processes of the making of communities across large cultural and geo-political fields. At the same time, this exchange was meant to provide thorough reflections on the process of comparative research itself. This contribution sets out to discuss the diversity and creative tension of these methodological approaches before proceeding to outline how they may contribute to future collaboration both within the VISCOM project and beyond in interdisciplinary and, eventually, in transdisciplinary collaboration between historians and socio-anthropologists. The text thus focuses on the methodological tools and the very practical research processes addressed at the conference and in the case studies brought together in this thematic issue. It will specifically address the challenge to develop comparable, but contextually differentiated approaches to different types and amounts of medieval source material across time and space, viewing the methodological and conceptual framework of the project and the contributions of this issue as a toolbox. I will thus take up the claims of several contributors to more thoroughly contextualise the very conceptual notions underlying our research (such as identity, ethnicity and community) and argue in favour of a less “loaded” and more flexible conceptual vocabulary developed in close relation with the source material to cope with the high diversity of sources and methodological approaches.     

Holy Nigerian Nationalisms and Apocalyptic Visions of the Nation

Abstract. This article examines the rise of religious political radicalism and its critique and appropriation of secular Nigerian nationalism. It argues that the revitalisation and radicalisation of religion in Nigeria is both an expression of the deep legitimacy crisis confronting secular nationalism and a means of resolving such a crisis. Religion is seen as fundamental to nationalism because it provides the sacred normative essence that ultimately enables individuals and communities to accept as permanent and meaningful the suffering which is integral to a national identity. In ‘holy nationalism’, the collective emotional force of nationalism merges with religion so that the two are one and the same. God chose a particular people and promised them a particular land.     

Muslims in Britain and France

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Visions of reconciliation: Longley,Heaney and the Greeks

At the heart of myth is negotiation, as the inner world comes to terms with external conditions. Many contemporary Irish poets have turned to mythical material in order to explore how, as Derek Mahon suggested, a good poem could be a paradigm of good politics. This essay explores the ways in which Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley have used ancient Greek myths to bring a hopeful light against seemingly intractable political problems, in line with the principle of third-party intervention, or the deus ex machina that prevents further misunderstanding. Translation opens up entrenched perspectives, forcing the self, in unfamiliar situations, to face the reality of the other, and to consider the other's perceptions and needs. This intervention aims for reconciliation, whether between individuals, social groups, individual and state, or between the living and the dead, and it reveals that reconciliation is always an approximation that must be continually fought for.