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.     

P.H. Pearse and Thomas MacDonagh: a literary friendship

ABSTRACT

Tracing the relationship between P.H. [Patrick Henry] Pearse (1879–1916) and Thomas MacDonagh (1878–1916), this essay explores the impact their friendship had on their careers as writers and critics. Their work together in St Enda’s, the school for boys founded by Pearse in 1908, provides a significant context for this exploration. There, while working with MacDonagh, Pearse made drama an important part of school life and started writing plays for public performance. Meanwhile, their collaboration in putting together the St. Enda’s school journal, An Macaomh (1909–1913), helped to hone MacDonagh’s skills as a literary critic and to prepare for his later editorial role at the Irish Review (1911–1914). Attention then turns to how MacDonagh’s views on Irish literature and his translations from Old Irish influenced his friend’s development as both a critic and poet. Paticular consideration is paid to “Mise Éire”, one of Pearse’s best-known poems. Finally, similarities are considered between MacDonagh and the hero of The Wandering Hawk (1915–1916), Pearse’s unfinished, English-language, school story for children. Taken together, these various investigations reveal that, despite differing temperaments and at times divergent approaches to Irish writing, Pearse and MacDonagh enjoyed a mutually stimulating friendship that impacted positively on their literary careers.     

A Witness to the Early Reception of Bonaventure’s Collationes in Hexaëmeron: Nicholas of Ockham’s Leccio at Oxford (c. 1286) — Introduction and Text

Abstract

This essay presents a brief introduction to and an edition of Nicholas of Ockham’s Leccio at Oxford, which begins with the biblical verse, O altitudo diviciarum sapiencie et sciencie Dei (Romans 11. 33). This leccio may have been Nicholas’s inaugural sermon as a Master of Theology at Oxford and therefore dates to 1286. Whatever the precise genre of Nicholas’s leccio, the text is also important because much of it copies entire sections of St Bonaventure’s (d. 1274) Collationes in Hexaëmeron. Nicholas’s text is therefore a witness to Oxford University practices of the late thirteenth-century and to the late thirteenth-century reception of Bonaventure.     

The Buddhist Ineffable Self and a Possible Indian Political Subject

ABSTRACT

It is well known that the sovereign, the cakkavatin, in India is the one who turns the wheel of dhamma. What is not so well appreciated is that the Buddha’s dhammachakkapabbatana, the turning of the wheel of dhamma and the attainment of nibbana, can be read as a political act, involving the emergence of a political subject. It will be seen that the 4th Century AD Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu’s vijnanavadin notion of the Ineffable Self (anavilapya atman) helps us unravel the epistemological underpinnings of the political subject in consonance with the revolutionary act of turning the wheel of dhamma. Seen in this light, we can better appreciate B. R. Ambedkar’s attempt at treating Buddhism as the “Revolution” against the Brahminical “Counter-Revolution,” something whose implications unfold almost daily in India’s political struggles. What can be called (in academic-speak) Buddha’s “pluralist non-essentialist framework,” even a convergence of sorts between Buddha and Spinoza, does not necessarily exclude the notion of a revolutionary political subject. This opens up the possibility of reading Buddha's notion of the turning of the wheel of dhamma alongside more recent ideas of revolution as another turning and churning.     

Textual and Exegetical Issues in Vergil's Fifth and Seventh Eclogues

(I) At 5. 3 read considimus instead of consedimus, (II) at 8 certet instead of certat, (III) at 38 pupurea instead of purpureo, (IV) at 66 understand altaria as apposition to duas tibi, Daphni as well, (V) at 7. 5 take pares not as a predicative, but as governing cantare (‘equally competent at singing’) reflecting Theocr. 8. 4. (VI) Arguing against identifying Micon (29–30) with Corydon I take si proprium hoc fuerit (31) as expressing Corydon's own hope as a hunter, (VII) I modify the usual interpretation of Thyrsis' response (33–35), (VIII) find the idea that Thyrsis impersonates Galatea in 41–44 improbable and (IX) at 64 prefer the ancient reading Veneris instead of corylos.     

An outline of Alan Wilson’s philosophy of knowledge,with special attention given to the importance of interdisciplinarity and its role in undergraduate education

ABSTRACT

This article explores two ideas due to Alan Wilson: superconcepts and enabling disciplines. These ideas emerge from Wilson’s philosophy of knowledge and, in particular, from his thinking on interdisciplinarity. Both ideas are described, analysed and developed in the context of their wider importance in interdisciplinary undergraduate education and their implementation on the Arts and Sciences BASc at UCL. Some suggestions for future developments of these ideas at the proposed new university at the London Interdisciplinary School are offered.     

Appropriation,Absence and the Canadian Studies Classroom

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on “appropriation of voice” or “cultural appropriation” in the Canadian Studies classroom. It is aimed at instructors who teach Canadian Literature outside Canada, in places where Canada is itself a strange, foreign or even exotic country. Keeping classroom practice in mind, I divide the article into three sections. The first provides a classroom-oriented overview of appropriation debates; the second looks at tokenism on reading lists; the third reflects on problems of absence or of dealing with canonical texts that skim over Canada’s Indigenous Peoples—specifically, by analyzing two brief examples from Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912) and one from Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces (1996).     

Australia and the promise and the perils of humanitarian diplomacy

ABSTRACT

Humanitarian diplomacy has always been a crucial element of humanitarianism, however it is now becoming a more prominent element of states’ foreign policies. It holds many attractions and much promise. It provides states with a way of expressing important qualities of international empathy and solidarity and can also enhance a state’s international reputation and provide valuable means for building relationship of trust and cooperation. This can in turn can be conducive to a state’s broader foreign policy objectives. However, there are also perils to the incorporation of humanitarian diplomacy into a state’s foreign policy. It can generate ambiguity and even conflict within a state’s diplomatic endeavours due to tensions between humanitarian and broader national interests. In exploring these issues it is useful to distinguish between humanitarian diplomacy and humanitarianism as diplomacy. This article explores these issues in relations to Australia’s diplomacy. It argues that Australia has actively engaged in humanitarian diplomacy and humanitarianism as diplomacy. Whilst the two are often complementary, there are areas in which they have been in tension and even at odds. This has implications for Australia’s international reputation but also for its capacity to undertake genuine and effective humanitarian action.     

Writing,Immigration, and Sex in Dany Laferrière and Kim Thúy

ABSTRACT

Québécois immigrant writers Dany Laferrière’s and Kim Thúy’s first novels, Comment faire l’amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer (1985) and Ru (2009), both thematize the process of coming-to-writing and autofiction in parallel with the tropes of the sexualization of the nonwhite “other” in a global (post)colonial context. This article examines Laferrière’s and Thúy’s starkly different novels to begin to account for the connection between the act of entering literature and the indictment of racial inequality and sexual exploitation.     

Johann Gaspar Spurzheim: The St. Paul of phrenology

ABSTRACT

Franz Joseph Gall’s wayward discipline Johann Gaspar Spurzheim greatly modified Gall’s original system and introduced it to the English-speaking world. Through an active program of itinerant lecturing, publishing and converting disciplines, Spurzheim made phrenology. He also developed a philosophy of following the laws of nature that was adopted and further promoted by his disciple, George Combe. Combe’s book The Constitution of Man (1828) became one of the best-selling works of its genre in the nineteenth century. Thus Spurzheim, never particularly original, exercised an enormous influence on nineteenth-century culture.     

Uncomfortable proximity. Literary technique,authorial provocations and dog whistles in Michel Houellebecq’s fiction

ABSTRACT

In 2002, following an interview with the magazine Lire where he described Islam as ‘la religion la plus con’, Michel Houellebecq was prosecuted, and eventually acquitted, for ‘injure raciale et incitation à la haine religieuse’. In discussions of Houellebecq’s case, supporters were quick to invoke the ‘special value’ of the literary space for the free discussion of ideas, however provocative or unpalatable. Houellebecq’s acquittal, and support from figures such as Salman Rushdie, have afforded the writer an unprecedented degree of literary freedom. Subsequent novels such as La Possibilité d’une île (2005) and Soumission (2015) show the author fully inhabiting this freedom in order to undertake a provocative critique of Islam. This article explores how both literary technique and authorial presence endorses the controversial ideas of his texts within Houellebecq’s writing and demonstrates how a movement from ambiguously undermining towards reinforcing those ideas can be observed. In particular, the framing of provocative ideas and assertions expounded in his fiction has become less robust throughout his career. This leads to, I suggest, a greater porosity between Houellebecq’s fiction and that of contemporary right-wing essayists such as Alain Finkielkraut and Renaud Camus.     

Organizing the ‘people’s community’: the NSDAP and the ‘ethnic Germans’ in Nazi-occupied territories

ABSTRACT

This article refers to recent scholarly debates on the term ‘people’s community’ (Volksgemeinschaft), which throughout the Third Reich remained rather vague and encompassed often contradictory purposes. It deals with the relations between the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) and some of the ‘ethnic German’ (volksdeutsche) organizations to exemplify how German society should be transformed into a ‘people’s community’ after 1933. Thus, it is necessary to analyse the ‘people’s community’ not by asking whether or not its different purposes were realized, but by examining its functions in the Nazi regime. This functional analysis of the ‘people’s community’ focuses on the NSDAP and its relations with ‘ethnic German’ organizations after 1933, primarily in Nazi-occupied territories during the Second World War. First, the article describes the NSDAP’s efforts to align the ‘Germans abroad’ (Auslandsdeutsche) after the seizure of power and to organize the German Front (Deutsche Front) in the Saar territories in 1934/35—an experience serving as a blueprint for the relations between the NSDAP and ‘ethnic German’ organizations during the Second World War. Second, it evaluates the creation of the Ethnic German Community (Volksdeutsche Gemeinschaft) in the General Government and its efforts to organize ‘ethnic Germans’. Third, it interprets the foundation of the German People’s Community (Deutsche Volksgemeinschaft) in Lorraine and its ongoing attempts to establish a racial hierarchy of ‘ethnic Germans’ over the autochthonous French population. Fourth, it looks at the connection between the Germanization of Lower Styria and the launch of the Styrian Homeland Union (Steirischer Heimatbund) as an ‘ethnic German’ movement. The article argues that the NSDAP’s operational routines regarding both the German population and the ‘ethnic Germans’ living in the occupied territories shaped the ‘people’s community’.     

Priestley and Kant on materialism

ABSTRACT

Kant maintains in the Critique of Pure Reason that both materialism and spiritualism cannot explain our existence. This paper argues that Kant’s relation to (psychological) materialism is more complex than this rejection suggests and is usually thought, and it evaluates this relation in a new and more positive light. The paper shows that Priestley anticipates some of Kant’s arguments against rationalist psychology, and that Kant’s rejection of materialism does not commit him to an immaterialist metaphysics of the soul. These arguments involve a discussion of the problem of the unity of consciousness and of notions such as simplicity and identity.     

Circean transformation and the poetics of Milton’s Masque

ABSTRACT

Circe’s presence in A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle (Comus) invites readers to read both Milton’s Circe and Milton’s own poetic activity through long and intertwined traditions of theology and literary commentary. Stretching from Augustine and Aquinas to the commentaries and translations of Homer and Ovid by Sponde, Sandys, and Chapman, these traditions use Circe to explore and conflate the possibility, the permanence, and the experience of both human and literary transformation. Taken up by Townshend and Jones in their Caroline court masque Tempe Restored, they become essential intertexts for Milton’s Masque. Milton embeds this discourse in his masque – a genre that places metamorphosis at the heart of its poetics – to examine the nature of Renaissance intertextuality and the authorial self and interrogate his own use of Renaissance practices of imitatio and aemulatio. In Comus’ wood, Circean transformation becomes a touchstone for the virtuous soul and the virtuous poet alike.     

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.     

Non-domination and the libera res publica in Cicero's Republicanism

ABSTRACT

This paper assesses to what extent the neo-Republican accounts of Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit adequately capture the nature of political liberty at Rome by focusing on Cicero's analysis of the libera res publica. Cicero's analysis in De Republica suggests that the rule of law and a modest menu of individual citizens’ rights guard against citizens being controlled by a master's arbitrary will, thereby ensuring the status of non-domination that constitutes freedom according to the neo-Republican view. He also shows the difficulty of anchoring an argument for citizens’ full political participation in the value of non-domination. While Cicero believed such full participation (by elite citizens) was essential for a libera res publica, he, like other elite Romans, argued for participation on the basis of liberty conceived as the space to contend for and enhance one's social status. The sufficiency of the rule of law and citizens’ rights for securing a status of non-domination taken together with their insufficiency for ensuring a libera res publica suggests that neo-Republican accounts of liberty do not fully capture the idea as articulated in Cicero's Republicanism.     

Protestantism and liberty: Catharine Macaulay’s politics of religion as a response to David Hume

ABSTRACT

Catharine Macaulay’s History of England from the Accession of James I (1763–1783) was intended by its author and received by its audience as, in part, a response to David Hume’s History of England. Macaulay’s writing has been read as a Whig counter to Hume’s Tory interpretation of England’s seventeenth-century history; more recent work has explored whether Macaulay or Hume has a better claim to be considered an “enlightenment historian”. This article will suggest that Macaulay’s views on the role of England’s Protestant belief and practice in the development and maintenance of the nation’s liberties contained, in the earlier volumes of her History, some of her substantive and important refutations of Hume’s arguments, and, further, that Macaulay’s well-argued claim that Protestantism was instrumental in the formation of England’s national character and potential enjoyment of political liberties was received by her readers as a particularly valuable part of her historical argument. Her accounts of Roman Catholic violence against Protestant victims at the Siege of La Rochelle and in the Irish Massacre of 1641 became some of the most quoted parts of her historical writing.