Anton Dumitriu,the ‘Axiomatic Culture’ and the ‘Crisis of the West’

Anton Dumitriu (1905–92) was a Romanian philosopher and logician who attempted to develop the more or less consistent theory of an ‘axiomatic’ tradition, referring to culture and civilisation in the ‘East’ (defined actually as Far East) vs. the ‘West’ (mainly Europe, both Western and East-Central) especially in the inter-war and post-war periods. Dumitriu's essays on Romanian culture or on Eastern vs. Western culture as published in his book Eleatic and Heraclitic Cultures (1987) will make the object of this study. This work is a revised version of his East and West (1943). It should be noted that most of the material discussed here is actually still available only in Romanian since Dumitriu's work on Logic is already translated into English, but his musings on culture and civilisation are available only in Romanian and are, consequently, almost unknown outside the country. This study attempts to make up for that and also to connect Dumitriu's views on culture and civilisation or East and West both to earlier Romanian views and currents in defining culture as well as to contemporary general European trends, while also taking into account the context of the Communist regime in which the second edition of his book was issued.     

‘In gente Britanniarum,sicut quaedam nostratum testatur historia …’: national identity and perceptions of the past in John of Salisbury's Policraticus

This article examines the construction of national identity in John of Salisbury's Policraticus (c.1159). This well-known treatise has not been included in recent discussions of identities in medieval Britain. The focal point of the analysis is the author's contradictory representations of Britones. John of Salisbury emphasised the distinction and hostility between the Britons/Welsh and the English; at the same time, he claimed that the ancient Britons (Brennius and his companions-in-arms from Geoffrey of Monmouth's De gestis Britonum) were ‘compatriots’ and ‘ancestors’ of the ‘contemporary’ inhabitants of the English kingdom. Comparison with other twelfth-century texts reveals specific features of the model of national identity traced in the Policraticus: the appropriation not only of the British past, but also of the British name and identity, and the imagining of a unified people of Britain. This culminated in the invention of the unique term gens Britanniarum, which nevertheless did not exclude the ‘English’ as an alternative or even interchangeable name. The article discusses political agendas behind John of Salisbury's use of the language of ‘Britishness’, most importantly, support for the pan-British ambitions of the archbishops of Canterbury. The example of the Policraticus, with its combination of both conventional and original elements, nuances our understanding of how and for what ideological purposes national identity might have been constructed in twelfth-century England.     

Because Pigs Can Fly: Sexuality,race and the geographies of difference in Shyam Selvadurai's Funny Boy

This article explores the ways that the popular diasporic novel Funny Boy, set in Sri Lanka but written from Canada by an exiled Sri Lankan born Tamil, intervenes in the country's contemporary geographies of difference. The novel itself explores a Tamil boy's struggle to negotiate life in Sinhala-dominated Colombo while also coming to terms with his emergent same-sex desire. By focusing specifically on the writing of two familiar middle-class Sri Lankan spaces central to the novel's narrative—the family home and the school—the article shows how these everyday geographies regulate and normalise carnal desire in a society which still operates anti-homosexual legislation. It also suggests how the erosion of the meanings of these familiar spaces is a tactic central to the main protagonist's sexual liberation. By reading these sexualised geographies through the polemic racialised Sinhala/Tamil divisions in contemporary Sri Lankan society, the paper shows how the novel makes an important political intervention in contemporary Sri Lankan politics where devolution and federal solutions to recent civil unrest have produced territorialised geographies of difference that prescribe ‘places for races’. By evoking the Funny Boy's fictive and sexualised geographies of exclusion and resistance, this article unsettles the logic that binds intra-racial solidarity, its cognate geographical modelling, and instead highlights the exclusions that exist at all levels in Sri Lankan society.

Amma held up her hand to silence us. ‘That's an order,’ she said.     

East and West in Jewish nationalism: conflicting types in the Zionist vision?

ABSTRACT. This article analyses the ethnic and civic components of the early Zionist movement. The debate over whether Zionism was an Eastern‐ethnic nationalist movement or a Western‐civic movement began with the birth of Zionism. The article also investigates the conflict that broke out in 1902 surrounding the publication of Herzl's utopian vision, Altneuland. Ahad Ha'am, a leader of Hibbat Zion and ‘Eastern’ cultural Zionism, sharply attacked Herzl's ‘Western’ political Zionism, which he considered to be disconnected from the cultural foundations of historical Judaism. Instead, Ahad Ha'am supported the Eastern Zionist utopia of Elchanan Leib Lewinsky. Hans Kohn, a leading researcher of nationalism, distinguished between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ nationalist movements. He argued that Herzl's political heritage led the Zionist movement to become an Eastern‐ethnic nationalist movement. The debate over the character of Jewish nationalism – ethnic or civic – continues to engage researchers and remains a topic of public debate in Israel even today. As this article demonstrates, the debate between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ Zionism has its foundations in the origins of the Zionist movement. A close look at the vision held by both groups challenges Kohn's dichotomy as well as his understanding of the Zionist movement.     

The religious politics of prophecy: Or,Richard Brothers's Revealed Knowledge confuted

The messianic messages delivered to Londoners by the self-styled prophet, Richard Brothers, were regarded by many sceptical observers and pamphleteers as eccentric or, worse still, the embarrassing utterances of someone wishing to reprise the political turmoil of a by-gone era marred by religious ‘fanaticism’. This article shows the extent to which Brothers's messages, as set down in his Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies and Times (1794–1795), were absolutely central to the religious politics and culture of the 1790s—or what one contemporary critic mockingly referred to as the ‘age of prophecy’. Brothers's prophecies came to the attention of the British government, which culminated in his arrest for treasonable practices in March 1795 when he became a cause célèbre, before being confined to an asylum for eleven years. He was deemed a criminal lunatic but, as this article seeks to demonstrate, his ‘prophetic imagination’ arose out of the same rich theological, political and cultural context that spurred ‘radicals’ like Tom Paine, whilst inspiring poets and artists such as William Blake. If the content of his prophecies were regarded by contemporary sceptics for having no validity, it remains true to say that Richard Brothers, as an educated gentleman and naval officer, dramatically altered 18th-century expectations and perceptions of what prophets were and the nature of prophecy itself.     

Whose Ethics? Which Cultural Contract? Imagining Arrernte Traditions Today

The paper uses an account of ‘tradition’ by the philosopher, Alisdair MacIntyre, to argue for the view that local Aboriginal culture that has been through extensive change is nonetheless still specifying for the Aboriginal people involved. Therefore these local traditions must be taken into account in discussions about ‘contracts’ or ‘policies’ concerning Aboriginal people today. An example is drawn from the Lutheran tradition of Western Arrernte people in Central Australia.     

‘Eastern History with Western Eyes’: E.A. Freeman,Islam and Orientalism

E.A. Freeman is remembered today as a confident proponent of English superiority, whose historical writings were distorted by mid-Victorian prejudices in favour of the Aryan race. This perspective privileges some of Freeman's ideas and works above others, and obscures the complexities of his view of the past which only fully emerge through an examination of his two neglected works on the East: The History and Conquests of the Saracens (1856) and The Ottoman Power in Europe (1877). In analysing Freeman's obscure Oriental volumes this article uses the insights of Edward Said who argued that the West exploits the East according to contemporary exigency and consistently represents the Orient as ‘other’. It demonstrates that Freeman composed the Saracens and Ottoman Power in direct response to Britain's support of the Ottoman Empire during the Crimean War and Eastern Crisis, and re-arranged the past to represent the Turk as distinct from, and inferior to, the West. Freeman's account of the distinctiveness of the Orient, however, suggests the need to revise literature on Western approaches to the East which has assumed that antagonism towards Islam declined in the modern period, or was masked behind narratives that purported to be secular and objective but which continued to empower Europe and subjugate the Orient. Juxtaposing Freeman's narratives on Western and Eastern history, I argue that his association of Christianity with European progress and Islam with Eastern barbarism is key to understanding his deep fear of cultural contact with the Orient. Far from bolstering the strength and power of the West vis-à-vis the East, Freeman's account of the fearful barbarity of the Islamic Orient is underpinned by his belief in an anti-Christian, Judeo-Islamic, conspiracy that threatened the West with degeneration and recapitulation.     

The Poison and the Spider's Web: Diderot and Eighteenth-Century French Epicureanism

This article argues that the term ‘Epicurean’ had multiple meanings in the moral and political thought of the eighteenth century. Concentrating on the reception of Epicureanism in France, it shows that some critics focused on Epicurus’ hedonistic moral psychology and labelled Epicurean those thinkers who denied natural sociability; for others, who instead focused on Epicurus’ materialist natural philosophy, to label a thinker an Epicurean was to label them an atheist. This polyvalence is presented as a salutary caution against essentialising claims about the content of eighteenth-century Epicureanism per se. Despite this sceptical stance, however, the article goes on to argue that it is nevertheless fruitful to investigate the engagement with Epicureanism by particular thinkers or in particular texts. Indeed, a comparative reading of Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie entry on ‘Epicuréisme’ and his source material in Johan Jakob Bruker and Pierre Bayle demonstrates that Diderot used his discussion of Epicureanism to intervene directly in contemporary theological controversies over the immortal soul and a providential god.     

After-school Hours and the Meanings of Home: Re-defining Finnish Childhood Space

School children's use of their home during the after-school hours has become a controversial question in Finnish society. The article discusses cultural conceptions and uses of home as a specific space for children by comparing two different sets of empirical data: children's accounts of their after-school spaces and media debate on the same topic. Activated public concern in media accounts is analysed as a process of re-defining the properties of ‘proper places’ for children, whereas children's accounts are interpreted as expressions of local cultures. For the children, home is an ideal place for spending after-school time, while the public debate portrays the home as empty and children as lonely and unsafe. Definitions of home in after-school time are considered as part of a broader cultural process of re-defining contemporary Finnish childhood in which control turns out to be a crucial dimension of children's ‘proper places’.     

La prudencia de Cortés: teoría política y práctica retórica en la Historia de la conquista de México de Antonio de Solís

The Historia de la conquista de México, published by Antonio de Solís in 1684, and later extensively reissued and translated, has been praised for the ‘elegance’ and ‘sweetness’ of its style. From very early on these qualities made the Historia to be read as a prose model worthy of imitation. Different scholars have studied Solís's sources and the way he manipulated them on the one hand, and, on the other, the extent of the reliability of his account. However, very little has been said about the actual writing practices of the Historia in the context of contemporary historiographical theories, or the author's own ideas about history or politics. This paper analyzes how some of these rhetorical techniques (I particularly focus on the use of oratio figurata, sententia, and epiphoneme) gave shape to Solís's political ideas, in particular the concept of prudence.     

Mythology Wars: The Indian Diaspora, “Wendy's Children” and the Struggle for the Hindu Past

A schism has appeared between sections of the Indian diasporic community and members of the Western academy over the authority to present and interpret Hindu mythology. This paper tells the story of these “Mythology Wars”. It focuses on critiques of Western scholarship by self-identified Hindu critics, primarily Rajiv Malhotra in his articles ‘RISA Lila–1: Wendy's Child Syndrome’ and ‘RISA Lila–2: Limp Scholarship and Demonology’ (Malhotra, 2002 and 2003). The primary foci of diasporic criticism are Wendy Doniger's writings, including The Hindus (2009), and three works by other scholars, Jeffrey Kripal (Kālī's Child,1995), Sarah Caldwell (‘The Blood-thirsty Tongue and the Self-feeding Breast’, 1999) and Paul Courtright (Ga[ndot]e?a, 1985). There is no end in sight to the Mythology Wars. It is unlikely that critics in the diaspora will become less vigilant or less vocal. While members of the Western academy may become more circumspect and more sensitive to the potential strife they face, they are unlikely to impose any form of self-censorship. The defence of “academic freedom” has a long and deep history.     

Ancient Greek Myth in Angelos Sikelianos

Abstract

In the introduction to Angelos Sikelianos: Selected Poems, the translators speak of Sikelianos's ‘mythological attitude … toward life’ and of his conception of myth not so much ‘as a rhetorical or metaphorical device but as a spontaneous creation of the human soul directed toward the revelation of a hidden spiritual life’, in short, of mythology as a kind of religion closely related to Schelling's perception of the function of myth. These remarks, written originally some years ago, may have their just proportion of truth, but in keeping with most introductory remarks, they strike me as rather too general, rather too undiscriminating when one brings them face to face with Sikelianos's practice at different moments of his career. I want to try to be more discriminating by considering the role of myth – specifically ancient Greek myth – in the poet's work both early and late in his career. I think it is a changing role, perhaps not in his fundamental association of gods with a contemporary landscape and his revelation of those mysteries that lie hidden in our everyday lives, but in the mode of this association and this revelation, and in the depth of their poetic significance.     

‘Working for’ and ‘Working’ among Western Arrernte in Central Australia1

This article discusses some conflicts between kin‐ and market‐based society as they are reflected in the lives of Western Arrernte in and around Ntaria (Hermannsburg). Both political economy and cultural analysis provide accounts of concomitant ‘problems about work’ and training initiatives in remote communities. Neither brings together, however, the issues of economic marginalisation and a history of cultural difference with its own transformations. This discussion takes its departure from the Arrernte's attempts to reconcile kinship service (‘working for’) and paid employment (‘working’) in everyday practice. It demonstrates that this attempt is part of broader change concerning the ways in which hunter‐gatherer people in Australia have been compelled to adapt to a world of cash and commodities, and waged employment. In this discussion, the focus is on remote indigenous Australians today.     

Cool nothing: Dom Sylvester Houédard’s coexistentialist concrete poetics

ABSTRACT

This article concerns the concrete poetics of Dom Sylvester Houédard, which I define using a term from his 1963 article ‘Concrete Poetry & Ian Hamilton Finlay’, ‘coexistentialist’. Houédard's concrete poetry has sometimes been criticized for an anachronistic avant-garde quality, because of its non-semantic use of written language, and its associated air of intermedia experiment. But the term ‘coexistentialist’ has various connotations which allow us to interpret Houédard's work as highly responsive to its cultural moment, and to the unique theological tradition from which it emerged. These connotations include: the relationship between early and mid-twentieth-century modern art and literature; existentialist philosophy, especially the writing of Jean-Paul Sartre; Marshall McLuhan's theories on modern communication and ecumenical dialogue within the Catholic Church during the Second Vatican Council. After presenting an outline of Houédard's poetics related to these themes, I analyse some of his concrete poems or ‘typestracts’, produced between 1967 and 1972.     

Strauss on Maimonides’ Secretive Political Science

Abstract

In this article, the authors review Joseph Cropsey's last collection of essays, Humanity's Intensive Introspection. They argue that Cropsey's essays draw on resources in the Western tradition, both from within liberal thought and from ancient sources, to elevate human life and to fortify modern society, especially against contemporary critiques of liberalism. Philosophy's discovery of the inscrutability of the whole opens it to revelation and also provides a basis for philosophy's active contribution to an open or liberal society.     

The regressing ‘culture of anarchy’ in ancient China and its implications for Wendt's progressive constructivism

What does the qualitative increase in the brutality of international relations in the Eastern Zhou period of ancient China (770–221bc) mean for the implicit progressivism of Alexander Wendt's constructivism, as espoused in his landmark text Social Theory of International Politics (1999)? Wendt's constructivism is useful in understanding international systems outside the contemporary Westphalian order and provides an excellent analytical tool for understanding ancient China. However, this article argues that Wendt's implicit teleology of progressively cooperative ‘cultures of anarchy’ in international politics is empirically questionable. It is demonstrated that such a progression is not supported by the historical evidence of ancient China, which represents an instance of an international system ‘regressing’ from a more to a less cooperative international social structure.     

The Concept of Corruption in J.G.A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment

SUMMARY

In the scholarship on the concept of political corruption, one frequently encounters the lamentation that the manner in which the concept is deployed in liberal modernity is insufficiently attuned to the richer sense in which the term was employed in the ‘civic humanist’ tradition. In these lamentations, the usual point of reference is J.G.A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment, a work that made corruption the central term of art in a political language stretching from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century and beyond. Certainly there is something quite attractive today about the ‘Machiavellian’ inflection of the term—our era is replete with the very things the protagonists of Pocock's story decried: debt, dependency, oligarchy, standing armies and the diminution of civic duties. But to what extent is Pocock's classic text a reliable guide for those studying the concept of corruption? This article suggests that Pocock uses the term in an excessively capacious manner, which both weakens his book's utility for understanding eighteenth-century political thought and undermines its power as a foundation for political critique by civic-minded anti-corruption reformers.     

The World Map as an Emblem: Abraham Ortelius and the Stoic Contemplation

Although the close association of word and image in medieval cartography is widely acknowledged, the significance of the relationship after the rediscovery of Ptolemy's Geography and throughout the Renaissance has been overlooked, despite Abraham Ortelius's choice of the term ‘Reader’ for users of the Theatrum orbis terrarum (1570). In this paper, the map of the world, which (as in Ptolemy's Geography) opens Ortelius's Theatrum, is analysed to show how Ortelius's concept of space was very different from Ptolemy's. Attention is drawn to the content of the texts on the map, to Ortelius's notion of geography as the eye of history, and to the importance in the Renaissance of the emblem as a conceit, or device, in the system of acquisition and transmission of knowledge. As in emblems, the words on Ortelius's map are not there to explain or to comment on what is seen but to give the image meaning; the purpose of the map is to invite contemplation of God's world. The map is contradictory, however; for Ortelius's accurate and up‐to‐date presentation of the physical world is qualified by a verbal statement that the world is ‘nothing’, a mere pinpoint in the immensity of the universe. It is concluded that Ortelius was not a geographer in the same way Ptolemy was, and that Ortelius was using geography as a philosopher and his world map as an illustration of his moral and religious thinking.     

Zu papyri osloenses III

The sixth Roman ode of Horace has usually been dated to 29/28 B.C. from the reference to the great temple restoration programme in the first stanza. This dating, however, tends to affect our reading of the whole cycle. An ‘inner’ dramatic date deliberately established by the poet (post Actium but before 28 B.C.) should not be mistaken for the time of writing (after 28, probably about 25 B.C.). There are even calculated effects arising from the poet's use of a dramatic date. Moreover, the poem is not independent to the effect that it is a self‐contained expression of the poet's political stance. Its provoking diagnosis of contemporary society is a warning reflecting Augustus’ policy and paving the way for reforms. It is instructive to compare epode XVI, to which III 6 bears resemblances which seem to support the late dating of the epode (cf. the author's Horaz und Actium 1984).