INTENTION AND IRONY: THE MISSED ENCOUNTER BETWEEN HAYDEN WHITE AND QUENTIN SKINNER

No contemporary intellectual historian has produced more influential reflections on the historian's craft than Hayden White and Quentin Skinner, yet their legacy has never been meaningfully compared. Doing so reveals a surprising complementarity in their approach, at least to the extent that Skinner's stress on recovering the intentionality of authors fits well with White's observation that irony is the dominant rhetorical mode of historical narrative in our day. Irony itself, to be sure, has to be divided broadly speaking into its dramatic or Socratic variants and the unstable and paradoxical alternative defended by poststructuralist critics. The latter produced in White an anxiety about the anarchistic implications of an allegedly inherent undecidability in historical interpretation and narration, which threatened to conflate history entirely with fiction. By recovering the necessary role of intentionality as a prerequisite for a more moderate version of Socratic and dramatic irony—in which hindsight provides some purchase on a truth denied actors at the time history is made—it is possible to rescue an ironic attitude that can register the frequency of unintended consequences without surrendering to the conclusion that no explanation or interpretation is superior to another. Against yet a third alternative, which tries to reconstruct the past rationally as a prelude to the present, acknowledging the ironic undermining of intentions avoids giving all the power to the contemporary historian and restores a dialogic balance between actors in the past and their present‐day interpreters.     

Reviews of books

The publication in July 1998 of the Government's White Papers on integrated transport marked the most comprehensive review of transport policy for 30 years. In spite of this, the measures brought forward by the Government are timid and are unlikely in their present form to tackle the underlying problems of increasing car dependence. This paper reviews the Government's Scottish document, Travel Choices for Scotland, and highlights key policy debates in which the voices of geographers should be better heard.     

OPACITY AND TRANSPARENCY IN HISTORICAL REPRESENTATIONS

In his latest book Frank Ankersmit develops a comprehensive philosophical perspective on the problem of the truth and reference of historical representations. The approach and the wider perspective of the book largely belong to what could be called the postmodernist paradigm, in spite of some recent attempts to interpret Ankersmit's recent work differently. Since his 1983 Narrative Logic Ankersmit has propounded the view that individual statements that constitute historical representations may have reference, but that representations themselves do not. His most recent book remains faithful to this position and elaborates it further. This essay examines Ankersmit's arguments as well as the assumptions and implications of this view.     

Petrographic Characterization and Provenance Determination of the Crystalline Marbles Used in the Roman City of Banasa (Morocco): New Data on the Import of Iberian Marble in Roman North Africa

This paper reports the results of an archaeometric study of the crystalline marbles used in the Roman city of Banasa (Morocco). On‐site surveys allowed a detailed inspection of the monuments of the ancient city and sampling of the different marble lithotypes used for architectural purposes and sculptures. The inventory was completed by the study of both the grey‐and‐white streaked or spotted marble items stored in the warehouse of the archaeological site and of those currently exhibited at the National Archaeological Museum of Rabat. Provenance determination of 28 samples was carried out by means of a multi‐method approach combining mineralogical–petrographic data and C–O stable isotope analyses as the first step, and cathodoluminescence microscopy as a complementary technique to verify possible unusual alternative origins of some marbles. The analytical results obtained were compared with both the most reliable international databases and the few available studies dealing with the use of marble in other Roman towns in Morocco (e.g., Volubilis, Thamusida and Sala‐Chellah). They point to a variety of classical marble sources such as Carrara, Mount Penteli, Paros, Marmara and probably Mount Filfila (Algeria), and prove a significant import of Iberian lithotypes.     

韩国粉青沙器的白化妆土工艺及其与中国陶瓷的关系

本文的主题是研究粉青沙器的化妆土工艺出现的历史背景,旨在探讨中韩陶瓷交流对粉青沙器制作的影响。在韩国陶瓷历史上,朝鲜时期(1392-1896)的粉青沙器是具有独特工艺特征的陶瓷样式,即在胎上用白化妆土粉妆,然后采用多样装饰技法,和磁州窑瓷器相似。关于朝鲜王朝制瓷业开始使用化妆土装饰技法的突然性和白瓷生产需求的背景,作者从中韩陶瓷交流史的角度,提出了两个论点:首先,高丽(918-1392)末朝鲜初期制瓷业衰退,在原料和工艺技术恶劣化的情况下,通过借鉴高丽时期已传入的中国磁州窑瓷器的化妆土工艺;应用于粉青沙器的生产。其次,中国陶瓷文化由青瓷转移到白地花纹的青花瓷器的发展趋势,直接影响到朝鲜制瓷业追求白瓷或白地瓷的状况,而在当时朝鲜制瓷业条件的限制下,只能以化妆土工艺表现白色地。这一现象也反映了当时中国先进陶瓷文化及陶瓷审美观念的变化。     

日本"有事法制"议案和新版《防卫白皮书》评析

“有事法制”议案赋予了日本自卫队以“国家军队”的职能,赋予了日本政府使用武力乃至“先发制人”解决可能发生的争端的权力,开辟了日本在海外行使武力的道路;《2003年防卫白皮书》则重新阐述了日本关于战争的认识,重新确立了日本的军事防卫重点,重新确认了日本自卫队的主要任务。这表明日本的“专守防卫”政策发生了重大变化。军国主义思想始终没有彻底清算,社会政治生态右倾化进一步加深,冷战后政治大国欲望的加速膨胀,以及迫于“美日同盟”的压力等,是日本防卫政策变化的主要原因。日本社会政治发展趋势和国家发展方向都将受到防卫政策变化的巨大影响。     

Black Belonging,White Belonging: Primitive Accumulation in South Africa's Private Nature Reserves

Evictions have been shown to be a mechanism of primitive accumulation in nature conservation. This paper adds an historical analysis to the discussion on primitive accumulation in conservation by exploring the seemingly innocuous mechanism of White belonging to land in South Africa's private nature reserves. Contemporary articulations of White belonging are replete with stories and images of White male “pioneers” from the colonial era who, upon arrival in “empty lands”, were able to create economies out of nothing. Such representations of history on private nature reserve websites and other promotional material invisibilise Black belonging and legitimise private conservation. By illuminating the inconsistencies in the empty lands narrative and the legacies of three championed conservation pioneers from the 19^th century, this paper argues that White belonging is a mechanism of primitive accumulation, while Black belonging continues to be expressed in various ways in contemporary South Africa.     

The New Frontier Meets the White Revolution: The Peace Corps in Iran, 1962‒76

The Peace Corps brought an estimated 1,800 Americans to Iran from 1962 to 1976, coinciding with the unfolding of Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi’s Enqelāb-e Sefid, or White Revolution. This article surveys Peace Corps Iran’s fourteen-year history by dividing it into three distinct moments defined by changing social and political conditions in Iran and shifting US?Iranian relations. Initially, the Peace Corps Iran experiment built on earlier American foreign assistance programs, while coinciding with the roll-out of the White Revolution. Second, during its heyday in the mid-1960s, the Peace Corps inevitably became entangled with the White Revolution’s unfolding, both experiencing a phase of expansion and apparent success. Finally, as Iranian social and political conditions moved toward instability by the 1970s, Peace Corps Iran also seemed to have lost its direction and purpose, which ultimately led to a vote by volunteers to terminate the program. Based on accounts by US Peace Corps volunteers and the Iranians with whom they worked, the Peace Corps Agency, and the US State Department, this article argues that, ultimately, the Peace Corps Iran experience left a more lasting legacy on individuals than institutions.     

白伞盖佛母：汉藏佛教的互动

迄今为止,在1267元世祖忽必烈以佑国所举行的白伞盖佛母仪轨仍然被认为是汉地白伞盖佛母崇拜的起源。但是查阅《大藏经》和敦煌汉文写本可以看出,白伞盖佛母崇拜之主要经典在8世纪已经在中国广为人知。由于白伞盖佛母具有特大的保护力量,类似于忽必烈汗14世纪举办的仪式在8—10世纪的敦煌地区已曾在汉人中流传,但这种传统随后在汉地衰落下去了。由于《白伞盖陀罗尼经》组成了《大佛顶首楞严经》第七卷的核心部分主旨也发生了改变。到元代和清代,白伞盖佛母护国的传统在汉地再次得到恢复。     

殷墟西北冈大墓出土大理石雕及相关问题

本文通过对西北冈大墓出土大理石雕的整理,讨论了殷墟大理石雕的风格与传统,相同母题造型语言在材质、功能、大小不同器物间的灵活转换,以及商人对于材质、颜色选择上的使用观念,以此探讨晚商王室白色大理石雕的创作及其背后的文化内涵。