Mirrors of Modernity: Time–Space,the Subaltern,and the Decolonial

This essay is cast as something of a personal narrative. It recounts how I have arrived at inklings and intimations of space and time, particularly pervasive procedures of the spatialization of time and the temporalization of space, in tandem with understandings of disciplines and subjects of modernity. The account begins with my pre-apprentice days in Delhi, moves onto my apprenticeship at Cambridge, covers my journeyman sojourns in Mexico, and extends unto my artisanal concerns in the present. At stake especially are encounters and entanglements with time and space as folded within the creases of subaltern studies and de-colonial understandings (yet also postcolonial perspectives and historical anthropology). On the one hand, I explore how these shifting orientations have drawn upon hegemonic representations as well as non-certified imaginations of time and space, to now press familiar associations and now unravel unusual enunciations of these concepts and processes. On the other hand, I track the active construal, the exact production, of space and time within the epistemic practice of these critical perspectives. At stake throughout are wider issues of meaning and power, alterity and authority, difference and disciplines.     

Gandhi and le gandhisme: Writing Indian Decolonisation and the Appropriation of Gandhi 1919–48

This article considers developments in French sport in the period 1998-2002, with particular emphasis on the social representation of performances by the nation's elite athletes in international competitions. It opens with the victory of the home side in the France 98 football World Cup and closes with the defeat of the national team in the 2002 edition of that same competition. The various attempts made both before and after France 98 to use sport as a means of promoting social inclusion and national solidarity, particularly as regards hitherto alienated young males from ethnic minorities (especially those of North African origin), are considered against this background. In order to place such developments in context, attention is also given to changes in patterns of sports participation and spending among the general French population. The article concludes with a brief survey of some recent intellectual critiques of this newfound national enthusiasm for sports.     

Decolonisation and Wildlife Conservation in Kenya, 1958–68

Several of Kenya's wildlife conservation areas were established from the late 1950s through efforts by the international conservationist lobby to decolonise African conservation programmes initiated by colonial administrations from the late nineteenth century. The prospect of African independence induced conservationists to look for ways to give Africans a stake in their own wildlife, with a view to securing the future of conservation under independent governments. Kenya's internal politics shaped these efforts on the ground, giving birth to community-controlled wildlife conservation projects such as game reserves. Although the government of independent Kenya had started to transform the conservation programme in favour of state-controlled wildlife areas by the late 1960s, the legacy of the community game reserves persists today. This paper analyses the impact of the internal politics of decolonisation on Kenya's wildlife conservation programme.     

Empire and Globalisation: from ‘High Imperialism’ to Decolonisation

Reviewing the expansion and ultimate demise of the British and French empires, this article takes a long view of globalisation as an integral part of Europe's recent imperial past. The authors’ argument is that these empires were not simply a global phenomenon. Rather, the processes that built and destroyed them were more actively ‘globalising’. In this context, they argue that the rise and fall of the two pre-eminent overseas empires had several globalising effects. These globalising effects include distinct patterns of migration and communication, critical shifts in the movement of goods and capital, new forms of transnational connection, changing conceptualisations of community and individual rights, and discrete forms of violence and conflict that outlasted the ‘formal’ end of empires.     

‘Cultivating the African’: Barclays DCO and the Decolonisation of Business Strategy in Kenya, 1950–78

While there is a great deal of recent research on the response of British business to decolonisation and a wide range of literature examining the alleged ‘neo-colonial’ relations between business and state in the post-colonial period, few studies of business attempt to straddle the awkward periodisation defined by the official hand-over of political responsibility. Barclays Bank DCO embarked on its decolonisation strategy in Kenya in anticipation of political and economic change and continued to follow that same strategy after the formal transfer of power from London to Nairobi. The article demonstrates the precise nexus of political and commercial reasons for Barclays’ approach in Kenya and outlines its successes and failures in responding to political and economic change in a newly emerging nation. In so doing, it emphasises that this particular British business, while not always in complete control of events on the ground, was more than a victim or beneficiary of circumstances about which it knew little and could do less. Rather, Barclays was an active participant in the process of decolonisation, reorganising and adapting its business model and employment structure to suit the times in Kenya.     

Space agents: anti‐racist feminism and the politics of scale in Turin,Italy

This article discusses racialized politics among women in Turin, Italy, utilizing and expanding Neil Smith's concept of the spatial politics of scale specifically in relation to an anti‐racist organization, Alma Mater, that emerged during the early 1990s. International migration is relatively recent in Italy, and popular responses over the past decade have been both supportive and hostile. Overt and implicit expressions of racism and intolerance toward migrants have become apparent throughout the country. Migrant and Italian women have retaliated by engaging in a politics of space and scale to effect local and national labor and cultural practices. Through an examination of every day cultural–ideological practices and their links to broad political and economic processes I examine the relative success of Alma Mater in its ability to challenge scales and add to an understanding of the social production and reproduction of power relations at all scales.     

The Return of Mess O’Potamia: Time,Space, and Politics in Modern Uses of Ancient Mesopotamia†

Taking its cue from Jon Stewart's satire on the Da'esh insurgence, the essay explores how the term ‘Mesopotamia’ is used in contemporary discourse on Iraqi conflict, and particularly, how the term is used to construct a complex set of temporal and spatial differences and identities.

Building on the seminal work of Zainab Bahrani, Rune Rattenborg, and Sara Pursley, the essay explores different aspects of the term ‘Mesopotamia’ and their various political consequences. It is argued that the idea of a single ‘Mesopotamian’ culture both effaces the internal differences between the various cultures of ancient Iraq, and constructs an external difference from subsequent Iraqi history. It is further shown that ‘Mesopotamia’ only came to refer to the land ‘between the rivers’ in comparatively recent times, and only definitively so during World War I. Lastly, it is argued that the attempt to base the modern unity of Iraq on ancient Mesopotamia is misguided, and sidesteps the complex history of how Iraq came to have its current form.

These various temporal and spatial threads are brought together in a final analysis of the reactions to the destruction of the ancient Iraqi past by Da'esh in 2015 and during the US occupation in 2003.     

‘Between my Brow and the Stars ...’: Linkages Between the Categories of Subject,Space, and Time in Jan Zahradníček’s Verse of the Second Half of the 1930s

The study enquires how the functional relationship between the broader framework of Czech poet Jan Zahradní?ek’s vision of the world and the narrower, governing principle shaped by his declared adoption of a fixed, ideologically unambiguous (confessional) model for viewing life and the world is realized. The present author’s deliberation is based on an analysis of the categories of lyrical subject, space and time as rendered artistically in two collections of verse by Jan Zahradní?ek: ?íznivé léto (Thirsty Summer, 1935) and Pozdravení slunci (A Salute to the Sun, 1937). It is found that, rather than speaking of the mutually contingent effect of these two planes of reality, it would be better to think in terms of a colliding of fragments, each of which represents a part of its own reality — poetic truth and truth sprung from an ideology. The literary text becomes a specific locus that makes this intersection possible, and it expresses an entirely new form of reality. Motivated on the one hand by the experience of creative freedom and on the other by having voluntarily accepted certain external ideological considerations which perforce refine poetic freedom, or poetic output, with regard to the appreciation of its meaning, thereby giving it added force and depth, the poet fashions — with various degrees of success — the sundry fragments of this and that layer of reality into a two-way correlation that is reinforced by the dominant effect of the aesthetic function. He thus creates a specific, imaginary whole that opens man up to the world and adumbrates for the reader the idea of unity in diversity. However, at the same time he does not veil the sense of disillusionment that lies at the root of all modern poetry, arising from the notion that neither life, nor the world can be integrated into some ideal, harmonious form.