Séances in the City: The “Operational Aesthetic” and “Modern Spiritualism” in the Popular Culture of New York City, 1865–1870

This paper will demonstrate that spiritualism became a significant element of popular culture in New York City between 1865 and 1870 because it catered to the “operational aesthetic” so prevalent in urban entertainments. The historian Neil Harris invented the term “operational aesthetic” to denote the spirit of playful inquiry common to the urban culture of mid-nineteenth-century America. By the 1860s, urbanization had undermined the social transparency so integral to the American Republic, causing cultural anxiety about the fraud and deceit, which was thought to thrive on urban anonymity. Several cultural genres, including detective fiction and urban guides, not only reflected, but also invited the investigation into, the divorce between the “superficialities” of the city and the “processes” driving criminal behavior. Spiritualism featured regularly in these genres, particularly the urban guides, as it was appealing to people eager to uncover another instance of urban deceit. Similarly, spiritualists attracted skeptical and agnostic audiences who shared this interest in investigation. Apparent “exposés” of spiritualism, therefore, as well as the mediums themselves, reached out to skeptical audiences, drawn to the “operational aesthetic” inherent in spiritualist demonstrations.     

Plot by Plot: Plotting Urbanism as an Ordinary Process of Urbanisation

With this paper, we analyse an ordinary urban process, which has received little attention so far, and propose a new concept to take account of it: plotting urbanism. It is usually subsumed under terms like “urban informality” or “incremental urbanism” and not studied as a distinct process. In comparing Lagos, Istanbul and Shenzhen we captured four defining features of plotting urbanism: first, it unfolds in a piecemeal fashion with limited comprehensive planning. Second, it emerges from specific territorial compromises often resulting from conflicts between overlapping modes of territorial regulation, land tenure and property rights. Third, plotting is based on commodification of housing and land, which might accentuate socio-economic differentiations between property-owners, who often live in the same area, and their tenants. The term “plotting” highlights the key role of the plot in the process. It also alludes to strategic acts of collaboration for individual and collective benefit.     

太平天国应对社会危机的政略实践及得失——兼谈太平天国的评价问题

江南是太平天国建立较稳定统治并有力推行各项政策方略的地区。太平天国政府作为该区域的政治实体,在应对社会危机和基层社会治理方面均有不同程度的尝试和努力,主要采取了“应变十策”,旨在完成由“打天下”向“坐天下”执政理念的转型。但因主客观条件限制,太平天国应对社会危机的成效不大,调控社会秩序的预期没有实现;但某些地区的太平天国地方当局在内忧外患的非常时期,仍能于社会建设领域有所建树,所以过去认为太平天国“重立不重建”的政权建设惯性也仅是相对而言的。政府调控和应对社会危机的政略实践,还是国家统治技术和社会战略的体现。太平天国的社会战略展现了太平天国时期国家与社会关系的特殊实态。我们发现太平天国的政治权力以较为积极的姿态向乡村社会渗透,不同于该时期绅权扩大的一般势态,占领区的绅权呈现被压缩的另面镜像。太平天国战争之后,清政府在重整社会秩序工作中有意识地继承江南绅权被压制的趋势,在更广范围内限制和约束绅权,激发了国家权力与地方社会的新一轮角逐,并对晚清政局产生了影响。这一视角还为我们客观理性地认知太平天国的历史地位提供了切入点,呈现了太平天国复杂多重的历史面相。     

Brazilian Horrors Past and Present: José Mojica Marins and Politics As Reproductive Futurism

Director José Mojica Marins is both the mastermind and actor behind Zé do Caixão, an icon within Brazilian popular culture and an international cult sensation. Marins encountered numerous conflicts with Brazil’s military dictatorship, and after producing the first two films of an intended trilogy, At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (1964) and This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse (1967), the third film, Embodiment of Evil, was not made until 2008. Throughout this trilogy, Zé do Caixão kidnaps, tortures, and murders scores of victims, effectively mimicking the human rights abuses that occurred under the dictatorship. He advocates liberation from the oppression of traditional morality while reinscribing its rhetorical raison d’être: purpose through procreation. The popular appeal of these films, their political intentionality, and their production during and after the dictatorship allow for an analysis of the rhetorical strategies employed by Marins in his attempt to both shock audiences and instill in them a counterhegemonic consciousness. Despite the radical agenda at work in Marins’s films, I will argue that this trilogy is conservative in its rhetorical framework, serving as an example of Lee Edelman’s reproductive futurism, wherein political legitimacy is contingent upon procreation.     

Emigration,return migration and surprise homecomings in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland

This article explores the cultural and ideological management of mass migration in twenty-first-century Ireland, arguing that narratives of return have come to dominate representations of emigration. The almost universal focus on the moment or experience of return distinguishes the current era from other periods of high emigration in Ireland. The phenomenon of the surprise homecoming video is scrutinised alongside recent cinematic releases, newspaper articles, blogs and cultural events including The Gathering (2013) and the Marriage Equality Referendum (2015). By drawing these sources together, the article exposes how cultural representations of emigration have been shaped to fit with official narratives of a business-friendly nation in recovery. By repeatedly showcasing the emotional pleasures of return these popular culture forms support a fantasy of easy return and mask the real economic and social problems driving the latest wave of emigration.     

Triad Dramas as Commentaries on Revolutionary Disharmony,Totalitarian Nostalgia,and a Yearning for Past Chivalry

In 2007, amateur on-line writer Kong Ergou’s triad novel series, Past Events of the Northeast: Twenty Years of the Triads, became a hit as a piece of network original literature. Five years later, the first volume of the book series was adapted into a network television drama of the same title. Focusing on the television drama, this paper examines three interrelated “dimensions” of the text. The first “dimension” relates to the correspondence between the inception and development of underworld gangs, and the vicissitudes experienced by the Chinese people during the harsh and unprecedented economic and cultural conditions that were introduced during the post-Mao era. A second “dimension” of this dramatic text finds that the nostalgia for and admiration of totalitarian times, together with a postmodern parody and deconstruction of Maoist society and its ideology, are juxtaposed in contemporary popular cultural products such as Past Events, thus demonstrating the complex and obscure emotions of ordinary Chinese people in relation to socialist revolutionary times. The final “dimension” compares the chivalrous spirit espoused by the gangsters with the ever-deteriorating morality and ethical values prevalent in present-day China.     

Something to Compete with ‘Gunsmoke’: ‘The Big Picture’ Television series and selling a ‘modern,progressive and forward thinking’ Army to Cold War America

Airing from 1951 until 1971, ‘The Big Picture’ was the United States Army’s primary means of marketing itself to the U.S. public, particularly between the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Drawing for the first time on archival records concerning the show’s production, this paper documents how information officers sought to escape the stock-footage straightjacket embedded in the show’s origins and showcase an Atomic Age Army standing sentry at the Cold War’s ramparts. Ultimately, they fought dual losing battles against parsimonious budgets and public indifference, while their insistence on content control hampered potential exposure in more appealing prime-time entertainment programmes.     

Mapping a New Kind of European Boundary: The Language Border between Modern France and Germany

ABSTRACT

During the nineteenth century, Europeans became fascinated with the idea of locating and mapping the borders between their languages. The barrier of language offered a new way of seeing, dividing and organizing European land according to cultural differences. The cartographic techniques that Europeans invented to map their language borders involved a combination of linguistic surveys, on-site observations and collaboration with locals. Once printed, language maps found a broad public audience and helped to structure debates over cultural identity in European borderlands. This article explores the nationalist and regionalist motivations behind linguistic map making along the French-German border, one of the most disputed in modern European history.     

从教会事业走向国家事业——英格兰民众教育发展的历史路径探析

英格兰民众教育是随着英格兰教堂的产生而萌芽的。大致可以分为三个阶段,即作为教会事业的阶段、作为慈善事业的阶段和走向国家事业的阶段。历经近1200年的实践,英格兰人认识到"教育和培养"是国家的一件大事,英格兰民众教育最终走向国家事业,具体表现在颁布工厂法、建立教育管理的专门机构等5个方面。英格兰民众教育的发展对现代英国国民教育制度的建立做出了重要的贡献,也孕育了19世纪英格兰民众教育思想。