Athanaric the Visigoth: monarchy or judgeship. A study in comparative history

The decision to risk an attempt at functional comparison between two historical figures over a period of more than four hundred years proceded from etymological considerations of various types, but was first suggested by the contrast between Athanaric and Armimus as they are portrayed in modern historical literature. As in the case of the institutional analogy of the judge of the Goths with the vergobretos of the Celts, there exists no historical relationship between the life histories of the two Germanic chieftains, in the sense that Athanaric cannot have been influenced to act as he did by the story of Arminius, nor can we assume a direct dependence of the later institution on the earlier one, any more than we can accept the possibility of arriving at the name for the Gothic judge from Celtic, in a way in which this is possible for reiks. Such an observation, otherwise trivial in itself, serves to characterize the methods and limits of the functional comparison. This yields historical insights which apply to the individual case in question: along with new considerations concerning rex-reiks, an argument is developed against the opinion that Athanaric's judgeship was one of a lower rank than genuine kingship, before which the Gothic chief — for whatever reason — was supposed to have drawn back in fear. This makes his judgeship look more like an ‘institutionalized magistracy’, exercising royal power for a set term, than a mere ethnic dignity. Further, the comparison establishes that the Celtic, as well as the Gothic, judgeship was possibly held in dual fashion, or could be held that way, before the period under observation; however, the pairs to be dealt with here do not represent any ‘Dioscurian’ double chiefdom but rather pairs of chieftains rivalling each other. The archaic experience may serve in this instance only as a model for shaping the tradition.Finally, it is recognized — and this could well be our most important finding — that the judgeship is limited, not only in time but also in territory: it had valid jurisdiction only inside the tribal territory itself. It follows from this that the judge's duties comprised defense of the fatherland as well as the execution of judgments.Along with the ‘external’ comparison among Goths, Celts, and Cheruscans, an ‘internal’ functional comparison is drawn within fourth-century Gothic constitutional history. In so doing, the possibility is opened for reconstructing the family leadership of the Balts three generations before Alaric. Then, within Gothic tradition, we are able to arrive of the ruling and institutional function of the ‘wisdom’, which both the Gothicized Decaeneus and Theoderic, as well as Athanaric     

Gothic history and historical ethnography

It is difficult, for an Austrian, to pass judgement on the Goths. Anyone concerned with the history of the Goths must be resigned to being misunderstood, falsely praised, or rejected. This is hardly surprising, since the subject is so heavily laden with the ideological burden of an age-old tradition of identification with this people. It is almost impossible to separate Gothic history from the emotions aroused by the process once termed “The decline and fall of the Roman Empire”, and which is not yet universally known as “The transformation of the Roman world”.     

Gothic history and historical ethnography

It is difficult, for an Austrian, to pass judgement on the Goths. Anyone concerned with the history of the Goths must be resigned to being misunderstood, falsely praised, or rejected. This is hardly surprising, since the subject is so heavily laden with the ideological burden of an age-old tradition of identification with this people. It is almost impossible to separate Gothic history from the emotions aroused by the process once termed “The decline and fall of the Roman Empire”, and which is not yet universally known as “The transformation of the Roman world”.     

Royal Agency and State Integration: Ireland,Wales and Scotland in a Monarchical Context, 1840s–1921

This article assesses the utility of the British monarchy as a hegemonic institution consolidating the British state from the mid- nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. It does so by examining its relationship with the ‘Celtic’ regions—Ireland, Wales and Scotland. It was a relationship that fluctuated over this period. While a close personal as well as constitutional relationship existed between the monarchy and Scotland during the reign of Queen Victoria, as against her more distant—even antagonistic at times—relationship with Ireland and Wales, the personal dimension to monarchical allegiance underwent significant change under Edward VII and George V, with Ireland and, to a lesser extent, Wales, a closer focus of royal attention as these regions apparently posed serious threats to state stability in the early twentieth century. The article demonstrates how the monarchy's relationship with the ‘Celtic’ regions was shaped by a variety of interacting factors—historical, socio-economic, constitutional, political and personal—that illustrated its strengths and weaknesses. Thus a combination of reform and royal conciliation could function to unite Ireland with Scotland and Wales in defence of King and country in 1914, while the troubled post-1916 period posed problems royal influence had greater difficulty addressing. Nevertheless, the monarchy was a central institution in the constitutional settlement of 1921, which served to maintain, if in changed circumstances, its relationship with the three ‘Celtic’ regions.     

European developments in strategic spatial planning

Strategic spatial planning which takes an integrated approach to the development of a territory seemed to go out of fashion, but now there are signs that it is being re‐established. This paper explores these developments using case studies from 10 European countries. The analysis uses an ‘institutionalist’ approach, which examines how the ‘agency’ of spatial planning practices responds to the ‘structure’ of contextual forces, at the same time influencing that structure. The ‘driving forces’ which are influencing strategic spatial planning are investigated, as are two aspects of the changes in spatial planning: institutional relations and policy agendas. The conclusions are that—at least in the case studies—there is a movement in the institutional relations towards horizontal articulation, territorial logic, and negotiative forms. Policy agendas too are changing, becoming more selective and using new conceptions of space and place. Those institutional developments, however, are not necessarily being translated into territorially‐integrated policy (as distinct from functional/sectoral policy). That translation appears to require simultaneous re‐framing of relational resources (trust, social capital), knowledge resources (intellectual capital), linked to strong mobilization efforts (political capital). The cases considered varied significantly in how far that had been done. Where it had, strategic spatial plan‐making practices were playing a key role in developing institutional territorial integration and re‐invigorating territorial identities.     

The Choir of Auxerre Cathedral and the Question of a Burgundian Gothic Architecture

Despite criticisms, the classification of the choir of Auxerre Cathedral as Burgundian persists in recent literature. Yet the cathedral’s choir, begun c. 1215, demonstrates the problematic nature of the existing regional categories for French medieval architecture. Based on the 19th-century idea of progress, the conceptual model that conceives Gothic France as consisting of ‘centre and periphery’ and notions such as regional styles or period styles are deeply at odds with medieval concepts of innovation as inclusive of tradition, as evidenced in the biography of Bishop William of Auxerre (1207–20). Indeed, 20th-century studies in support of the classification are contradicted by recent archaeological findings, and neither the historical evidence nor the architectural evidence support a Burgundian label for the choir. The architecture’s distinctly trans-regional character with a mixture of both traditional and up-to-date architectural elements as well as the fact that patronal identities were strongly based on local affiliations and not attached to the duchy of Burgundy, invite a profound reconsideration not only of the position of the choir in the architectural landscape of the early 13th century but also of Gothic architecture of north-eastern France in more general terms.     

Reading Kafka Visually: Gothic Ornament and the Motion of Writing in Kafka’s Der Process

Through close examination of the chapter ‘Im Dom’ in Kafka’s novel Der Process, this articles explores how a particular visual mode can shape the writing of a text. The mode analysed here inheres in the setting of Kafka’s chapter: the architecture of the Gothic cathedral, which the art historian Wilhelm Worringer, a contemporary of Kafka’s, saw embodied in the figure of ornament. This encounter between literary language and Gothic space as two phenomena mutually engendering each other opens a perspective onto the ‘motion of writing’ within the text, and onto its visuality and resonance with space. A dynamic and complex current; a chaotic tangle of lines; expression prevailing over meaning; an absent centre; vertigo and pathos — these are the principles shared by Worringer’s Gothic and Kafka’s writing.     

Mercosur: A Failing Development Project?

Latin America is a developing region. Although it is different from other such regions it shares with them ‘the challenge of change’, particularly as a result of globalization. Its response has been to embrace democracy, neoliberal restructuring and ‘new (open) regionalism’. The ‘Common Market of the South’—Mercosur—was an important regional initiative involving Argentina and Brazil, and included in its various aims was the acceleration of ‘economic development with social justice’. This article explores to what extent development aims have been achieved and whether Mercosur is little more than a loose confederation of states unable to build institutional structures that could help development. To what extent is this the result of traditions that have entrenched elites and prevented a more egalitarian approach? Has the law generally failed its citizens? Or does it have a place in development? The article begins by briefly considering the concept of ‘development’ and seeks to place Latin America within the ‘developmental framework’ and questions whether there is a distinct Latin American development tradition. Within that tradition, and in the context of the ‘inter‐American system’ and globalization, the development of Mercosur is assessed both in terms of institution building and legal traditions. Finally, some preliminary conclusions are drawn about Mercosur's future and the extent to which institutional and other constraints have contributed to Mercosur falling short of its devleopmental potential.     

Memory,history and the classical tradition

‘Memory’ is often confused and mistaken for myth; this is in turn connected with the widespread use of mistaking collective mythology and common myth for the idea of a ‘collective memory’. This essay discusses memory and history terminology in the context of the generic concept ‘classical tradition’. The case study explored here – the nineteenth-century Walhalla ‘temple’ near Regensburg in Southern Germany – is an attempt to discuss the classical tradition, focusing on archaeology and architecture rather than philology), within the parameters of the memory and history debate in contemporary historiography. The essay aims to develop the position of the iconic and symbolic importance of antiquity and the classical tradition in the memory and history debate as well as in historical writing. The concluding remarks emphasise the necessity of historicising tradition and its genealogies, conceptualised here as a tradition of legacies.     

Institutionalizing the democratic party-state: political parties as ‘public utilities’ in Italy and West Germany, 1945–75

This article argues that the rise of parties as ‘public utilities’, that is, semi-state organs crucial in the functioning of democracy, which is currently observed by political scientists, has long historical roots. It looks from an institutionalist perspective to the development of party–state relations in Germany and Italy since the Second World War, paying specific attention to how institutional reform corresponded to changing normative assumptions about the position of political parties in twentieth-century democracy. The first notions on the ‘statist’ dimension of parties were put forward as an answer to the challenges of mass politics in the interwar era. After 1945, politicians and constitutional judges drew upon this tradition in their efforts to stabilize mass democracy. They deliberately constructed ‘party-state democracies’, in which parties influenced the state and the state managed individual parties and the party system. This became visible in the constitutionalization of political parties, as well as in the enactment and normative justification of party (finance) laws in the 1960s and 1970s. The advent of parties as public utilities, even though fiercely criticized today, was therefore embedded in an ideological tradition that sanctioned the ‘party-state’ as crucial for the stability of modern democracy.     

‘Dark cognition’: W.B. Yeats,J.G. Herder and the imperfection of tradition

In this article I connect Revivalist politics in nineteenth-century Ireland to Enlightenment epistemology by exploring how the ideal of the Irish – or Celtic – folk tradition is embroiled in the problematic of theoretical modernity. I dispute Seamus Deane's ideological characterisation of the Irish tradition, emerging from his encounters with the work of Edmund Burke and Matthew Arnold, and propose an alternative characterisation using Johann Gottfried Herder's theories of the Volk and the origin of language. I show how, at a crucial point in European history, the folk tradition modelled a view of cognition and modernity, which stood apart from analytic rationalism and based itself upon a positive evaluation of the obscurity of sensation. Finally, I read this literary-aesthetic model of what Herder called ‘dark’ cognition into Yeats's early folkloric works of the 1890s, especially The Celtic Twilight; and I make the argument that this often-neglected text does not represent a degeneration of folkloric integrity into Celtic mysticism but a comedic trait of folk modernity.     

Nationalism and Historicity

Abstract. In this article the nation is shown to be a historical subject. As such, it is constructed and constantly reconstructed by discursive practices of power and knowledge. The author argues that the symbiotic interlinkage between nationalism and the organising knowledge principle of historicity, is an example of a power practice in the modern state. Throughout the article, it is shown that this practice is produced by interaction between the institutionally represented, sovereign or objective state and intellectual knowledge and its institutionalisation within the state as an academy, which acquires sovereignty in the production of objective truth. This peculiar discursive representation of making what really is personal interactions and struggles into official institutions has managed to produce the subject of the historical nation. The empirical case of Sweden is briefly discussed. During the age of great power, an exclusivist discourse of noble genealogical distinction of the ‘Goths’ was established. In modem Sweden, this genealogical myth is transformed to a popular national myth of exclusivity, a myth with great power potentials in the ‘national projects’ of modem politics.     

The Outbreak of Nationalism on Former Yugoslav Territory: A Historical Perspective on the Problem of Supranational Identity

Abstract. In the text some questions about the genesis of radical nationalism on the former Yugoslav territory are discussed. The author's main thesis is that what happened during the outburst of nationalism was an alteration in the status of national identification, particularly in its relation to ‘supranational’ Yugoslav identification; that is, the eruption of radical nationalism was the result of reorganisation within an identification matrix. This thesis is first clarified by a short historical survey of the status of national identification before the outburst of nationalism, and secondly by an analysis of the main changes in the identification matrix during the outbreak of nationalism. Additionally, some of the main characteristics of political socialisation in the Yugoslav socialist state (especially the function of the value ‘brotherhood and unity’), as well as the possibility for future non-conflictual relations between the nations of former socialist Yugoslavia are discussed.     

The Australian ballot: Not the secret ballot

Australian historical and political science academic accounts of the ‘secret ballot’ often describe it as being designed in Australia and first applied in Victoria in 1856. Narratives often focus on Chartists and radicals finding fertile ground in the New World for ideas that had met insurmountable resistance in the Mother Country. But this concentration on the ‘British story’ has led to a misconception in this country: that the secret ballot was first tried in Australia. This comes from conflating the ‘Australian ballot’ with the ‘secret ballot’. Voting by ballot, in ‘secret’—that is, not by a show of hands, on the voices or signed voting paper—was in use in America and Europe well before being implemented in Australia. This was the secret ballot many demanded for Australia, but they got something else: the Australian ballot, wholly original, with identifying features—such as the government printed ballot paper—previously unimagined. The Australian ballot was not the world's first secret ballot; it was much more important than that.     

The Death of Beauty: Goya's Etchings and Black Paintings through the Eyes of André Malraux

Modern critics often regard Goya's etchings and black paintings as satirical observations on the social and political conditions of the time. In a study of Goya first published in 1950, which seldom receives the attention it merits, the French author and art theorist André Malraux contends that these works have a significance of a much deeper kind. The etchings and black paintings, Malraux argues, represent a fundamental challenge to the European artistic tradition that began with the Renaissance, an essentially humanist tradition founded on the pursuit of a transcendent world of nobility, harmony and beauty—an ideal world outside of which, as Malraux writes, ‘man did not fully merit the name man’. Following the illness that left him deaf for life—an encounter with ‘the irremediable’, to borrow Malraux's term—Goya developed an art of a fundamentally different kind—an art, Malraux writes, ruled by ‘the unity of the prison house’, which replaced transcendence with a pervasive ‘feeling of dependence’ and from which all trace of humanism has been erased. Foreshadowing modern art's abandonment of the Renaissance ideal, and created semi-clandestinely, the etchings and black paintings are an early announcement of the death of beauty in Western art.     

Tourism and cross-border regional development: insights in European contexts

This paper aims to structurally analyse the role of tourism in regional development processes in European cross-border regions with different historical development paths. Departing from an institutional perspective, the research is based on comparison of the position of tourism in region-building processes in the newly developing German–Czech cross-border region and the more ‘mature’ German–Belgian borderlands. Results indicate that the development of local cross-border tourism projects is no guarantee for positive destination-wide regional development impacts. In some cases, these projects may even reinforce asymmetrical socio-economic development directions of neighbouring borderlands. Rather, the socio-spatially equitable distribution of tourism benefits in cross-border contexts depends on several process-based aspects. These include the presence of ‘thick’ (cross-border) institutional arrangements, multi-scalar representation of tourism stakeholders in decision-making processes and a transversal position of tourism in regional development strategies. However, both with cross-border institutional ‘under-mobilization’ (Germany–Czech Republic) and with institutional ‘over-mobilization’ (Germany–Belgium), the informal network position of institutional brokers proved key for safeguarding the integrative character of tourism in the inevitably complex cross-border region-building process.     

Jews as pagans? Polemical definitions of identity in Visigothic Spain

A conciliar canon from Visigothic Spain relates that Jewish parents, who had been baptized by force, were trying to save their children from baptism, relying on the help of Christian neighbours, who lent them their own children for a second baptism. According to the wording of the canon, Jewish parents thereby illicitly retained their children as 'pagans'. This very peculiar, 'extremist' terminology served as a rhetorical tool to denigrate Judaism, putting it on a par with idolatry, superstition, supposedly primitive religion and backward, rural culture. This rhetorical strategy was used to construct a negative Jewish identity, which in turn served to strengthen a new concept of Gothic identity propagated ever since the conversion of the Visigoths to catholicism. Catholic Goths are presented both as the heirs of christianized Roman culture (which included the acceptance and transformation of catholic anti-Judaism), and as the champions of historical progress, allegedly overcoming different kinds of pre-Christian, 'barbarian' religion.     

Psychoanalysis,Fantasy, Postcoloniality: Turkish Nationalism and Historiography in Post-Ottoman Turkey

In this article, I investigate the surge of scholarly interest in Ottoman minorities since 1980s - a surge that acts in defense of a national culture. What distinguishes the nationalist-cum-Ottomanist historiography of the Turkish historians under study here is the heavy emphasis on notions of tolerance and multiculturalism with direct reference to the imperial era of 15th and 17th centuries. This emerging discourse has been striving to rebut the Orientalist stigmas attributed to Turkish-Ottoman culture and civilization—such as barbaric, despotic and authoritarian—and construct its own tolerant and multicultural historical imagery. Drawing upon the urgent lessons of postcolonial experience, theory and history, I analyze the pitfalls of uncritically clinging to such an imaginary. The emergence of this new Turkish-Ottoman imaginary and its discourse of a Turkish nativism and Occidentalism that emphasizes minority rights, tolerance and the harmonious coexistence of a plurality remains an under-explored territory for postcolonial criticism. The analysis of nostalgic Ottoman literature can illuminate how the ‘Occident/Western’ and ‘Oriental/Derivative’ (i.e. the Ottoman and Turkish) formations of the national imaginary are constructed, remembered and contested in the contemporary global order.     

Uses of Gypsum in Spanish architectural heritage: Typologies and some unique construction techniques

ABSTRACT

In Spain, gypsum and its many typologies play an important role as a construction material in Spanish architectural heritage. Its historical use is mainly a direct consequence of the abundance of gypsum deposits and a constructive tradition which began in ancient times. In addition to being a sign of constructive identity, gypsum is a clear example of the strong link between traditional architecture and the natural resources of the territory. The aim of this article is after to identify gypsum deposits and gypsum architectural heritage found in different parts of Spain and to explain the different gypsum typologies—other than powdered gypsum—used. Finally, the most unique construction techniques are described, differentiating between structural elements, partitions, and enclosures, as well as architectural elements and surface finishes.     

An Experimental Act: Formations of Wildness and Indigeneity in Far North Queensland

In this article, I focus upon the recent Wild Rivers Act controversy in Queensland, Australia, as an ‘experimental event’ that drew together a diverse cast of actors – including Indigenous traditional owners, state politicians, bureaucrats, environmentalists, mining companies, the late Steve Irwin, and waterways – to contest the future of a region historically (over)coded as ‘wild’. In attending to these actors, and the discourses and arguments mobilised, I argue that this controversy reveals emergent trends in the imaginaries of wildness and indigeneity surrounding indigenous lands and waters in contemporary settler colonial nations. Critical insight into such issues, I show, requires reconceptualising the static ‘matters of being’ through which indigenous territory is often captured – such as tradition and development – as contingent and contested ‘matters of becoming’. It is precisely in events such as the Act controversy that the contemporary politics of indigenous territory, and its contingent and contested foundations, becomes visible.