Norman Wirzba
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195157161
- eISBN:
- 9780199835270
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195157168.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Jewish and Christian doctrines of creation, when interpreted as accounts of the moral and spiritual character of the world rather than simply its origin, hold the key to addressing a variety of ...
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Jewish and Christian doctrines of creation, when interpreted as accounts of the moral and spiritual character of the world rather than simply its origin, hold the key to addressing a variety of contemporary environmental concerns. They do so by showing how our identities as creatures lead to vocations that promote the care, peace, and celebration of creation. This account is developed through a sustained conversation with contemporary ecological science and agrarian thought. This book develops why the idea of creation has fallen upon hard times in modernity, and how something like a culture of creation might be envisioned that would pair ecologically informed theology with a variety of cultural concerns like education, economics, work, food, design, and built environments. This new interpretation of creation offers the possibility for a culture of justice and peace for humans and non-humans alike.Less
Jewish and Christian doctrines of creation, when interpreted as accounts of the moral and spiritual character of the world rather than simply its origin, hold the key to addressing a variety of contemporary environmental concerns. They do so by showing how our identities as creatures lead to vocations that promote the care, peace, and celebration of creation. This account is developed through a sustained conversation with contemporary ecological science and agrarian thought. This book develops why the idea of creation has fallen upon hard times in modernity, and how something like a culture of creation might be envisioned that would pair ecologically informed theology with a variety of cultural concerns like education, economics, work, food, design, and built environments. This new interpretation of creation offers the possibility for a culture of justice and peace for humans and non-humans alike.
Naghmeh Sohrabi
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199829705
- eISBN:
- 9780199933341
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199829705.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
This book focuses on travelogues by Iranians traveling to Europe in the nineteenth century. It argues for an interpretive framework that moves away from an overemphasis on the destinations of travel ...
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This book focuses on travelogues by Iranians traveling to Europe in the nineteenth century. It argues for an interpretive framework that moves away from an overemphasis on the destinations of travel (particularly in cases where the destination, such as Europe, signifies larger meanings such as modernity) and that historicizes the travelogue itself as a rhetorical text in the service of its origin’s concerns and developments. Within this framework, this book demonstrates the ways in which travel writings from Iran to Europe were used to position Qajar Iran (1794–1925) within a global context—that is, narration of travel to Europe was also narrating the power of the Qajar court even when political events were tipped against it—and relatedly, how both travel to Europe and also translations of travel narratives into Persian should be included in our understanding of the importance of geography and mapping to the Qajars, especially during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In this process, it also reexamines the notion that Iranian modernity was the chief outcome of Iranians traveling in and writing about Europe.Less
This book focuses on travelogues by Iranians traveling to Europe in the nineteenth century. It argues for an interpretive framework that moves away from an overemphasis on the destinations of travel (particularly in cases where the destination, such as Europe, signifies larger meanings such as modernity) and that historicizes the travelogue itself as a rhetorical text in the service of its origin’s concerns and developments. Within this framework, this book demonstrates the ways in which travel writings from Iran to Europe were used to position Qajar Iran (1794–1925) within a global context—that is, narration of travel to Europe was also narrating the power of the Qajar court even when political events were tipped against it—and relatedly, how both travel to Europe and also translations of travel narratives into Persian should be included in our understanding of the importance of geography and mapping to the Qajars, especially during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In this process, it also reexamines the notion that Iranian modernity was the chief outcome of Iranians traveling in and writing about Europe.
Éric Marty
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780197266670
- eISBN:
- 9780191905391
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266670.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
With Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes (1975), Barthes broke with a taboo on the image shared by most Modern thinkers: a Marxist and structuralist puritanism closely associated with a violent ...
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With Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes (1975), Barthes broke with a taboo on the image shared by most Modern thinkers: a Marxist and structuralist puritanism closely associated with a violent critique of mimesis. The break Barthes introduced derived primarily from his uncoupling of mimesis from the regime of visibility particular to the image. The importance of Barthes’s little book will be explored by placing it in the context of Modernity. On the one hand, it will be read in relation to readings of the image associated with Barthes’s contemporaries (for example, Foucault on Velazquez’s Las Meninas); on the other, it will be read alongside his earlier and later proclamations relative to the image, from Mythologies to La Chambre claire. A shift will be traced from the rejection of mimesis in favour of non-figuration, to the emergence of a more fundamental visual paradigm for Barthes of animate/inanimate, initially accounting for his stated preference for photography over cinema, but ultimately neutralised, in the second part of La Chambre claire, through his discussion of the female automaton sequence in Fellini’s Casanova, and its fetishistic relation to the invisible/visible presence of the Winter Garden photo of Barthes’s mother as a child.Less
With Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes (1975), Barthes broke with a taboo on the image shared by most Modern thinkers: a Marxist and structuralist puritanism closely associated with a violent critique of mimesis. The break Barthes introduced derived primarily from his uncoupling of mimesis from the regime of visibility particular to the image. The importance of Barthes’s little book will be explored by placing it in the context of Modernity. On the one hand, it will be read in relation to readings of the image associated with Barthes’s contemporaries (for example, Foucault on Velazquez’s Las Meninas); on the other, it will be read alongside his earlier and later proclamations relative to the image, from Mythologies to La Chambre claire. A shift will be traced from the rejection of mimesis in favour of non-figuration, to the emergence of a more fundamental visual paradigm for Barthes of animate/inanimate, initially accounting for his stated preference for photography over cinema, but ultimately neutralised, in the second part of La Chambre claire, through his discussion of the female automaton sequence in Fellini’s Casanova, and its fetishistic relation to the invisible/visible presence of the Winter Garden photo of Barthes’s mother as a child.
Muhamad Ali
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781474409209
- eISBN:
- 9781474418799
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474409209.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
This book explores the ways in which Islam and European colonialism shaped modernity in the Indo-Malay world. Focusing on Indonesia and Malaysia, it looks at how European colonial and Islamic ...
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This book explores the ways in which Islam and European colonialism shaped modernity in the Indo-Malay world. Focusing on Indonesia and Malaysia, it looks at how European colonial and Islamic modernising powers operated in the common and parallel domains of organization, government and politics, law and education in the first half of the twentieth century. Through its critical approach to the interplay of Islamic religious rfrom and dynamics of both British and Dutch colonialisms, this work of comparative history illuminates perspective on the rather different shapes that Islam and Muslim societies have taken in the neighboring nation-states of modern Malaysia and Indonesia. It shows that colonialisation was able to co-exist with Islamisation, arguing that Islamic movements were not necessarily antithetical to modernisation, nor that Western modernity was always anathema to Islamic and local custom. Rather, in distinguishing religious from worldly affairs, they were able to adopt and adapt modern ideas and practices that were useful or relevant while maintaining the Islamic faith and ritual that they believed to be essential. Moving beyond binaries such as Orientalist versus Islamic and modernity versus Islam, it offers historical evidence and theoretical engagement with Islamic religious reform and European colonial modernisation in particular, and with religion, modernity, and tradition in general. In developing an understanding of the common ways in which Islam was defined and treated in Indonesia and Malaysia, we can gain a new insight to Muslim politics and culture in Southeast Asia.Less
This book explores the ways in which Islam and European colonialism shaped modernity in the Indo-Malay world. Focusing on Indonesia and Malaysia, it looks at how European colonial and Islamic modernising powers operated in the common and parallel domains of organization, government and politics, law and education in the first half of the twentieth century. Through its critical approach to the interplay of Islamic religious rfrom and dynamics of both British and Dutch colonialisms, this work of comparative history illuminates perspective on the rather different shapes that Islam and Muslim societies have taken in the neighboring nation-states of modern Malaysia and Indonesia. It shows that colonialisation was able to co-exist with Islamisation, arguing that Islamic movements were not necessarily antithetical to modernisation, nor that Western modernity was always anathema to Islamic and local custom. Rather, in distinguishing religious from worldly affairs, they were able to adopt and adapt modern ideas and practices that were useful or relevant while maintaining the Islamic faith and ritual that they believed to be essential. Moving beyond binaries such as Orientalist versus Islamic and modernity versus Islam, it offers historical evidence and theoretical engagement with Islamic religious reform and European colonial modernisation in particular, and with religion, modernity, and tradition in general. In developing an understanding of the common ways in which Islam was defined and treated in Indonesia and Malaysia, we can gain a new insight to Muslim politics and culture in Southeast Asia.
Aziz al-Azmeh
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474447461
- eISBN:
- 9781474480697
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474447461.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
This book provides a study of secularisation and secularism in the Arab World, between middle of the nineteenth century and the end of the twentieth. It approaches the its subject in the modern ...
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This book provides a study of secularisation and secularism in the Arab World, between middle of the nineteenth century and the end of the twentieth. It approaches the its subject in the modern history of the Arab World as a set of historical changes which affected the regulation of social, political, religious and cultural order which permeated the concrete workings of society, rather than as an ideological discussion framed from the outset by the presumed opposition between Islam and secularism. The book traces social, institutional and cultural changes of a secularising character, the emergence and consolidation of a secular political and legal system, the rise of a new type of educational and political arrangements with their complement of a modern intelligentsia, the social and institutional attrition of the Muslim religious institution and the strong reformist current in Islam, the rise of modern cognitive regimes, ideologies and secular culture, and the balances of secular and religious elements in nationalism. The book traces the rise of secularist and anti-religious culture in the variety of its manifestations, and of anti-modernism as well, and the emergence of associated religious and anti-modernist currents in the wake of the 1967 war, the associated strengthening of Islamist politics and its move from the margins to the centre in the last quarter of the twentieth century.Less
This book provides a study of secularisation and secularism in the Arab World, between middle of the nineteenth century and the end of the twentieth. It approaches the its subject in the modern history of the Arab World as a set of historical changes which affected the regulation of social, political, religious and cultural order which permeated the concrete workings of society, rather than as an ideological discussion framed from the outset by the presumed opposition between Islam and secularism. The book traces social, institutional and cultural changes of a secularising character, the emergence and consolidation of a secular political and legal system, the rise of a new type of educational and political arrangements with their complement of a modern intelligentsia, the social and institutional attrition of the Muslim religious institution and the strong reformist current in Islam, the rise of modern cognitive regimes, ideologies and secular culture, and the balances of secular and religious elements in nationalism. The book traces the rise of secularist and anti-religious culture in the variety of its manifestations, and of anti-modernism as well, and the emergence of associated religious and anti-modernist currents in the wake of the 1967 war, the associated strengthening of Islamist politics and its move from the margins to the centre in the last quarter of the twentieth century.
Carlo Accetti
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231170789
- eISBN:
- 9780231540377
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231170789.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Moral relativism is deeply troubling for those who believe that, without a set of moral absolutes, democratic societies will devolve into tyranny or totalitarianism. Carlo Invernizzi Accetti traces ...
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Moral relativism is deeply troubling for those who believe that, without a set of moral absolutes, democratic societies will devolve into tyranny or totalitarianism. Carlo Invernizzi Accetti traces the roots of contemporary anti-relativist fears to the antimodern rhetoric of the Catholic Church and then rescues a form of philosophical relativism for modern, pluralist societies, arguing that this viewpoint provides the firmest foundation for an allegiance to democracy. In his analyses of the relationship between religious arguments and political authority and the implications of philosophical relativism for democratic theory, Accetti makes a far-ranging contribution to contemporary debates over the revival of religion in politics and the conceptual grounds for a commitment to democracy. He presents the first comprehensive genealogy of anti-relativist discourse and reclaims for English-speaking readers the overlooked work of Hans Kelsen on the connection between relativism and democracy. By engaging with contemporary attempts to replace the religious foundation of democratic values with a neo-Kantian conception of reason, Accetti also makes a powerful case for relativism as the best basis for a civic ethos that integrates different perspectives into democratic politics.Less
Moral relativism is deeply troubling for those who believe that, without a set of moral absolutes, democratic societies will devolve into tyranny or totalitarianism. Carlo Invernizzi Accetti traces the roots of contemporary anti-relativist fears to the antimodern rhetoric of the Catholic Church and then rescues a form of philosophical relativism for modern, pluralist societies, arguing that this viewpoint provides the firmest foundation for an allegiance to democracy. In his analyses of the relationship between religious arguments and political authority and the implications of philosophical relativism for democratic theory, Accetti makes a far-ranging contribution to contemporary debates over the revival of religion in politics and the conceptual grounds for a commitment to democracy. He presents the first comprehensive genealogy of anti-relativist discourse and reclaims for English-speaking readers the overlooked work of Hans Kelsen on the connection between relativism and democracy. By engaging with contemporary attempts to replace the religious foundation of democratic values with a neo-Kantian conception of reason, Accetti also makes a powerful case for relativism as the best basis for a civic ethos that integrates different perspectives into democratic politics.
Robert Elder
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469627564
- eISBN:
- 9781469627588
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469627564.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
Most histories of the American South describe the conflict between evangelical religion and honor culture as one of the defining features of southern life before the Civil War. The Sacred Mirror is a ...
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Most histories of the American South describe the conflict between evangelical religion and honor culture as one of the defining features of southern life before the Civil War. The Sacred Mirror is a comprehensive reinterpretation of that relationship that examines how the success of evangelicalism during this period actually depended on its ability to address and draw on this vital part of the traditional culture of the South. Evangelical churches embraced the same understanding of communal authority that nourished a culture of honor in the South, serving as a kind of cultural bridge between old and new ways of understanding the self, and ushering in a southern modernity. Previous accounts of the rise of evangelicalism in the South have told the tale as a tragedy in which evangelicals initially opposed but eventually capitulated to many of the central tenets of southern society in order to win souls and garner influence. But through an examination of evangelical language and practices, The Sacred Mirror shows that evangelicals always shared honor’s most basic assumptions about how to shape individual identity, making it clear that evangelical beginnings and eventualities in the South were more closely linked than we have understood.Less
Most histories of the American South describe the conflict between evangelical religion and honor culture as one of the defining features of southern life before the Civil War. The Sacred Mirror is a comprehensive reinterpretation of that relationship that examines how the success of evangelicalism during this period actually depended on its ability to address and draw on this vital part of the traditional culture of the South. Evangelical churches embraced the same understanding of communal authority that nourished a culture of honor in the South, serving as a kind of cultural bridge between old and new ways of understanding the self, and ushering in a southern modernity. Previous accounts of the rise of evangelicalism in the South have told the tale as a tragedy in which evangelicals initially opposed but eventually capitulated to many of the central tenets of southern society in order to win souls and garner influence. But through an examination of evangelical language and practices, The Sacred Mirror shows that evangelicals always shared honor’s most basic assumptions about how to shape individual identity, making it clear that evangelical beginnings and eventualities in the South were more closely linked than we have understood.
James Greenhalgh
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526114143
- eISBN:
- 9781526136060
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526114143.001.0001
- Subject:
- Architecture, Architectural History
Reconstructing modernity assesses the character of approaches to rebuilding British cities during the decades after the Second World War. It explores the strategies of spatial governance that sought ...
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Reconstructing modernity assesses the character of approaches to rebuilding British cities during the decades after the Second World War. It explores the strategies of spatial governance that sought to restructure society and looks at the cast of characters who shaped these processes. It challenges traditional views of urban modernism as moderate and humanist, shedding new light on the importance of the immediate post-war for the trajectory of urban renewal in the twentieth century. The book shows how local corporations and town planners in Manchester and Hull attempted to create order and functionality through the remaking of their decrepit Victorian cities. It looks at the motivations of national and local governments in the post-war rebuilding process and explores why and how they attempted the schemes they did. What emerges is a picture of local corporations, planners and city engineers as radical reshapers of the urban environment, not through the production of grand examples of architectural modernism, but in mundane attempts to zone cities, produce greener housing estates, control advertising or regulate air quality. Their ambition to control and shape the space of their cities was an attempt to produce urban environments that might be both more orderly and functional, but also held the potential to shape society.Less
Reconstructing modernity assesses the character of approaches to rebuilding British cities during the decades after the Second World War. It explores the strategies of spatial governance that sought to restructure society and looks at the cast of characters who shaped these processes. It challenges traditional views of urban modernism as moderate and humanist, shedding new light on the importance of the immediate post-war for the trajectory of urban renewal in the twentieth century. The book shows how local corporations and town planners in Manchester and Hull attempted to create order and functionality through the remaking of their decrepit Victorian cities. It looks at the motivations of national and local governments in the post-war rebuilding process and explores why and how they attempted the schemes they did. What emerges is a picture of local corporations, planners and city engineers as radical reshapers of the urban environment, not through the production of grand examples of architectural modernism, but in mundane attempts to zone cities, produce greener housing estates, control advertising or regulate air quality. Their ambition to control and shape the space of their cities was an attempt to produce urban environments that might be both more orderly and functional, but also held the potential to shape society.
Olga Taxidou
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748619870
- eISBN:
- 9780748651719
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748619870.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This reinterpretation of Greek tragedy focuses on the performative – the physical and civic – dimension of tragedy. It challenges the idealist, humanist, and universalist approaches that have ...
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This reinterpretation of Greek tragedy focuses on the performative – the physical and civic – dimension of tragedy. It challenges the idealist, humanist, and universalist approaches that have informed our most cherished philosophical, psychoanalytical, and modern interpretations of Greek tragedy and, in so doing, asks us to renew our relation to these works and to our literary and philosophical inheritance. The book reassesses tragic form in relation to Athenian democracy and links it with a performative discourse that both excludes the feminine and relies on civic and private forms of mourning. At the same time, it explores the centrality of tragedy for thinkers of Modernity such as Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Hegel, Freud, Brecht, and Benjamin. Through a persuasive analysis of both classical theorists – Plato and Aristotle – and modern theorists – Benjamin, Lacan, Kristeva, Derrida, and Butler – the book significantly shifts the emphasis from a Sophoclean model of tragedy to a Euripidean one. Close readings of the performative aspects of Greek play texts help illuminate these ideas.Less
This reinterpretation of Greek tragedy focuses on the performative – the physical and civic – dimension of tragedy. It challenges the idealist, humanist, and universalist approaches that have informed our most cherished philosophical, psychoanalytical, and modern interpretations of Greek tragedy and, in so doing, asks us to renew our relation to these works and to our literary and philosophical inheritance. The book reassesses tragic form in relation to Athenian democracy and links it with a performative discourse that both excludes the feminine and relies on civic and private forms of mourning. At the same time, it explores the centrality of tragedy for thinkers of Modernity such as Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Hegel, Freud, Brecht, and Benjamin. Through a persuasive analysis of both classical theorists – Plato and Aristotle – and modern theorists – Benjamin, Lacan, Kristeva, Derrida, and Butler – the book significantly shifts the emphasis from a Sophoclean model of tragedy to a Euripidean one. Close readings of the performative aspects of Greek play texts help illuminate these ideas.
Steven B. Smith
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780300198393
- eISBN:
- 9780300220988
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300198393.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
In this book, Steven Smith examines modernity as the site of a unique type of human being entirely unknown to the ancient and medieval worlds that is called the bourgeois. The characteristics and ...
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In this book, Steven Smith examines modernity as the site of a unique type of human being entirely unknown to the ancient and medieval worlds that is called the bourgeois. The characteristics and qualities attributed to this new kind of individual by writers like Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Franklin, and Kant included the desire for autonomy, to live independently of custom, habit, and tradition, and to be the ultimate locus of moral responsibility. This kind of bourgeois culture that has become most fully associated with America and the American way of life was accompanied by doubts and fears. Bourgeois society was rejected by some of its leading critics as domineering and tyrannical (Marx), as tepid and cowardly (Nietzsche), and as lacking in taste and culture (Flaubert). The concept of the bourgeois slowly became the locus of scorn and as the cause of our manifold discontents. How did modernity that was once considered the locus of the free and responsible individual become associated with low-minded materialism, moral cowardice, and philistinism? This provocative book explores some of reasons for these anxieties in the works of Rousseau, Tocqueville, Flaubert, Leo Strauss, Isaiah Berlin, and Saul Bellow. The work offers a novel perspective of what it means to be modern by showing what is most characteristic of modernity are the self-criticisms and doubts that have accompanied political progress and why some of these discontents have produced movements of radical rejection.Less
In this book, Steven Smith examines modernity as the site of a unique type of human being entirely unknown to the ancient and medieval worlds that is called the bourgeois. The characteristics and qualities attributed to this new kind of individual by writers like Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Franklin, and Kant included the desire for autonomy, to live independently of custom, habit, and tradition, and to be the ultimate locus of moral responsibility. This kind of bourgeois culture that has become most fully associated with America and the American way of life was accompanied by doubts and fears. Bourgeois society was rejected by some of its leading critics as domineering and tyrannical (Marx), as tepid and cowardly (Nietzsche), and as lacking in taste and culture (Flaubert). The concept of the bourgeois slowly became the locus of scorn and as the cause of our manifold discontents. How did modernity that was once considered the locus of the free and responsible individual become associated with low-minded materialism, moral cowardice, and philistinism? This provocative book explores some of reasons for these anxieties in the works of Rousseau, Tocqueville, Flaubert, Leo Strauss, Isaiah Berlin, and Saul Bellow. The work offers a novel perspective of what it means to be modern by showing what is most characteristic of modernity are the self-criticisms and doubts that have accompanied political progress and why some of these discontents have produced movements of radical rejection.
Thomas Prendergast and Stephanie Trigg
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526126863
- eISBN:
- 9781526142009
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526126863.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This book destabilises the customary disciplinary and epistemological oppositions between medieval studies and modern medievalism. It argues that the twinned concepts of “the medieval” and ...
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This book destabilises the customary disciplinary and epistemological oppositions between medieval studies and modern medievalism. It argues that the twinned concepts of “the medieval” and post-medieval “medievalism” are mutually though unevenly constitutive, not just in the contemporary era, but from the medieval period on. Medieval and medievalist culture share similar concerns about the nature of temporality, and the means by which we approach or “touch” the past, whether through textual or material culture, or the conceptual frames through which we approach those artefacts. Those approaches are often affective ones, often structured around love, abjection and discontent. Medieval writers offer powerful models for the ways in which contemporary desire determines the constitution of the past. This desire can not only connect us with the past but can reconnect present readers with the lost history of what we call the medievalism of the medievals. In other words, to come to terms with the history of the medieval is to understand that it already offers us a model of how to relate to the past. The book ranges across literary and historical texts, but is equally attentive to material culture and its problematic witness to the reality of the historical past.Less
This book destabilises the customary disciplinary and epistemological oppositions between medieval studies and modern medievalism. It argues that the twinned concepts of “the medieval” and post-medieval “medievalism” are mutually though unevenly constitutive, not just in the contemporary era, but from the medieval period on. Medieval and medievalist culture share similar concerns about the nature of temporality, and the means by which we approach or “touch” the past, whether through textual or material culture, or the conceptual frames through which we approach those artefacts. Those approaches are often affective ones, often structured around love, abjection and discontent. Medieval writers offer powerful models for the ways in which contemporary desire determines the constitution of the past. This desire can not only connect us with the past but can reconnect present readers with the lost history of what we call the medievalism of the medievals. In other words, to come to terms with the history of the medieval is to understand that it already offers us a model of how to relate to the past. The book ranges across literary and historical texts, but is equally attentive to material culture and its problematic witness to the reality of the historical past.
Michela Coletta
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786941312
- eISBN:
- 9781789629040
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941312.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
How did Latin Americans represent their own countries as modern? By treating modernity as a ubiquitous category in which ideas of progress and decadence are far from being mutually exclusive, this ...
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How did Latin Americans represent their own countries as modern? By treating modernity as a ubiquitous category in which ideas of progress and decadence are far from being mutually exclusive, this book explores how different groups of intellectuals, between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, drew from European sociological and medical theories to produce a series of cultural representations based on notions of degeneration. Through a comparative analysis of three country case studies − Argentina, Uruguay and Chile − the book investigates four themes that were central to definitions of Latin American modernity at the turn of the century: race and the nation, the search for the autochthonous, education, and aesthetic values. It takes a transnational approach to show how civilisational constructs were adopted and adapted in a postcolonial context where cultural modernism foreshadowed economic modernisation. In doing this, this work sheds new light on the complex discursive negotiations through which the idea of ‘Latin America’ became gradually established in the region.Less
How did Latin Americans represent their own countries as modern? By treating modernity as a ubiquitous category in which ideas of progress and decadence are far from being mutually exclusive, this book explores how different groups of intellectuals, between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, drew from European sociological and medical theories to produce a series of cultural representations based on notions of degeneration. Through a comparative analysis of three country case studies − Argentina, Uruguay and Chile − the book investigates four themes that were central to definitions of Latin American modernity at the turn of the century: race and the nation, the search for the autochthonous, education, and aesthetic values. It takes a transnational approach to show how civilisational constructs were adopted and adapted in a postcolonial context where cultural modernism foreshadowed economic modernisation. In doing this, this work sheds new light on the complex discursive negotiations through which the idea of ‘Latin America’ became gradually established in the region.
Norman Wirzba
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195157161
- eISBN:
- 9780199835270
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195157168.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
The new science, as well as modern developments in culture such as urbanization, industrialization, technology, consumerism, and the philosophical “turn to the self,” have made it much more difficult ...
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The new science, as well as modern developments in culture such as urbanization, industrialization, technology, consumerism, and the philosophical “turn to the self,” have made it much more difficult for us to appreciate and live out the moral significance of creaturely life. The result is an imbalanced society and an abstract culture in which human ambitions are paramount and the existence of God, though not necessarily denied, is irrelevant.Less
The new science, as well as modern developments in culture such as urbanization, industrialization, technology, consumerism, and the philosophical “turn to the self,” have made it much more difficult for us to appreciate and live out the moral significance of creaturely life. The result is an imbalanced society and an abstract culture in which human ambitions are paramount and the existence of God, though not necessarily denied, is irrelevant.
Anna Cottrell
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474425643
- eISBN:
- 9781474438704
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474425643.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Exploring London's literary identity during the 1930s Anna Cottrell shows how vital writing was to the capital’s booming leisure scene on the eve of the Second World War. The book explores London and ...
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Exploring London's literary identity during the 1930s Anna Cottrell shows how vital writing was to the capital’s booming leisure scene on the eve of the Second World War. The book explores London and Londoners, with a focus on the way in which London's lower-middle-class citizens became inseparable from central London’s leisure scene in the period’s imagination. In contrast with Modernism’s flâneurs and flâneuses, the key figures of 1930s London literature were shop girls, clerks, dance hostesses, and financially insecure journalists whose leisure hours were spent in London’s cinemas, bars, and glittering teashops. Writing about this type of Londoner and her milieus was at the heart of the decade’s experiments in revitalising the British novel, which to many of the period’s writers and intellectuals appeared to lack energy and authenticity. Meticulous description was central to this project of re-energising British writing, and it is in passages describing London milieus such as the teashop and the Soho nightclub that this book locates the decade’s most original and astute meditations on modernity, mass culture, and the value of ordinary lives.Less
Exploring London's literary identity during the 1930s Anna Cottrell shows how vital writing was to the capital’s booming leisure scene on the eve of the Second World War. The book explores London and Londoners, with a focus on the way in which London's lower-middle-class citizens became inseparable from central London’s leisure scene in the period’s imagination. In contrast with Modernism’s flâneurs and flâneuses, the key figures of 1930s London literature were shop girls, clerks, dance hostesses, and financially insecure journalists whose leisure hours were spent in London’s cinemas, bars, and glittering teashops. Writing about this type of Londoner and her milieus was at the heart of the decade’s experiments in revitalising the British novel, which to many of the period’s writers and intellectuals appeared to lack energy and authenticity. Meticulous description was central to this project of re-energising British writing, and it is in passages describing London milieus such as the teashop and the Soho nightclub that this book locates the decade’s most original and astute meditations on modernity, mass culture, and the value of ordinary lives.
Chong Chon-Smith
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628462050
- eISBN:
- 9781626745292
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462050.003.0006
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This conclusion introduces Corporal Edward Chin, the American soldier who tied the noose around Saddam Houssein’s statue in Iraq. It interrogates the parable of racial magnetism within the context of ...
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This conclusion introduces Corporal Edward Chin, the American soldier who tied the noose around Saddam Houssein’s statue in Iraq. It interrogates the parable of racial magnetism within the context of U.S. empire, the story of where Asian Americans fit into the logic of white supremacy in relation to class relations within and between racial minorities, and how it constitutes the subjectification and denial of Black liberation. This condition, in and of itself, constitutes the whole system of hegemony that relies upon racial hierarchy, in such a form as racial magnetism, in order to maintain cross-racial hostilities and cross-racial alienation and ultimately the “pains of modernity”—the alienation of modernity’s underbelly—the working-class peoples and peasants who show the social death associated with poverty, dispossession, and invisibility.Less
This conclusion introduces Corporal Edward Chin, the American soldier who tied the noose around Saddam Houssein’s statue in Iraq. It interrogates the parable of racial magnetism within the context of U.S. empire, the story of where Asian Americans fit into the logic of white supremacy in relation to class relations within and between racial minorities, and how it constitutes the subjectification and denial of Black liberation. This condition, in and of itself, constitutes the whole system of hegemony that relies upon racial hierarchy, in such a form as racial magnetism, in order to maintain cross-racial hostilities and cross-racial alienation and ultimately the “pains of modernity”—the alienation of modernity’s underbelly—the working-class peoples and peasants who show the social death associated with poverty, dispossession, and invisibility.
Kory Olson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786940964
- eISBN:
- 9781789629033
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786940964.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
Following Napoleon III’s fall, the Third Republic looked to create a Republican capital city, one that broke from Haussmann’s urban ideals. As successive governments hoped to create a republican ...
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Following Napoleon III’s fall, the Third Republic looked to create a Republican capital city, one that broke from Haussmann’s urban ideals. As successive governments hoped to create a republican capital city, they believed it plausible for the new regime to take the best of the imperial city and make it republican; highlighting modernity, security, and growth. This introductory chapter establishes these aims and relates my work with current research on the development of Paris and French cartography.Less
Following Napoleon III’s fall, the Third Republic looked to create a Republican capital city, one that broke from Haussmann’s urban ideals. As successive governments hoped to create a republican capital city, they believed it plausible for the new regime to take the best of the imperial city and make it republican; highlighting modernity, security, and growth. This introductory chapter establishes these aims and relates my work with current research on the development of Paris and French cartography.
Kory Olson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786940964
- eISBN:
- 9781789629033
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786940964.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
This chapter examines Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand’s Travaux de Paris, an atlas containing a series of maps that present the spatial and technical organization and amelioration of the city from 1789 ...
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This chapter examines Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand’s Travaux de Paris, an atlas containing a series of maps that present the spatial and technical organization and amelioration of the city from 1789 to 1889. I focus specifically on planche (map sheet) XIII documenting ‘Paris en 1889: Les Opérations de voiries exécutées entre 1871 et 1889’ (‘Opérations de voiries’) as it documents the government’s ambitious Parisian road-building drive. Alphand’s ‘Opérations de voiries’ employs bright yellows and reds to celebrate the city and reaffirms the importance of an effective road network to Paris. By planning and building these streets and avenues and then publishing a map documenting its progress, the government proved its commitment to bettering all of the city’s neighbourhoods. In addition to demonstrating a more egalitarian approach to Paris betterment, chapter two argues Alphand’s work here also conveys authority and stability in the early republic. Perhaps more important is its presentation of the city. Here, the government’s definition of ‘Paris’ ends at the Thiers’ 1840s wall. By limiting his time and efforts to this space, Alphand reinforces a bourgeois view of the capital, and suggests that any existing development beyond that line does not merit cartographic representation in a map representing Paris.Less
This chapter examines Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand’s Travaux de Paris, an atlas containing a series of maps that present the spatial and technical organization and amelioration of the city from 1789 to 1889. I focus specifically on planche (map sheet) XIII documenting ‘Paris en 1889: Les Opérations de voiries exécutées entre 1871 et 1889’ (‘Opérations de voiries’) as it documents the government’s ambitious Parisian road-building drive. Alphand’s ‘Opérations de voiries’ employs bright yellows and reds to celebrate the city and reaffirms the importance of an effective road network to Paris. By planning and building these streets and avenues and then publishing a map documenting its progress, the government proved its commitment to bettering all of the city’s neighbourhoods. In addition to demonstrating a more egalitarian approach to Paris betterment, chapter two argues Alphand’s work here also conveys authority and stability in the early republic. Perhaps more important is its presentation of the city. Here, the government’s definition of ‘Paris’ ends at the Thiers’ 1840s wall. By limiting his time and efforts to this space, Alphand reinforces a bourgeois view of the capital, and suggests that any existing development beyond that line does not merit cartographic representation in a map representing Paris.
Brian R. Jacobson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231172813
- eISBN:
- 9780231539661
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231172813.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter analyzes the expansion of film studios into mass production centers in major Western cities, focusing on Gaumont and Pathé’s studios in Paris. As these studios began to look and operate ...
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This chapter analyzes the expansion of film studios into mass production centers in major Western cities, focusing on Gaumont and Pathé’s studios in Paris. As these studios began to look and operate more like the industrial centers of the later Hollywood “dream factory system,” their architectural spaces shaped concurrent (or “convergent”) practices of cinematic, artistic, and industrial production, all while adapting to the changing infrastructure of modernizing Paris.Less
This chapter analyzes the expansion of film studios into mass production centers in major Western cities, focusing on Gaumont and Pathé’s studios in Paris. As these studios began to look and operate more like the industrial centers of the later Hollywood “dream factory system,” their architectural spaces shaped concurrent (or “convergent”) practices of cinematic, artistic, and industrial production, all while adapting to the changing infrastructure of modernizing Paris.
Jesse Matz
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780231164061
- eISBN:
- 9780231543057
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231164061.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Impressionism captured the world's imagination in the late nineteenth century and remains with us today. Portraying the dynamic effects of modernity, impressionist artists revolutionized the arts and ...
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Impressionism captured the world's imagination in the late nineteenth century and remains with us today. Portraying the dynamic effects of modernity, impressionist artists revolutionized the arts and the wider culture. Impressionism transformed the very pattern of reality, introducing new ways to look at and think about the world and our experience of it. Its legacy has been felt in many major contributions to popular and high culture, from cubism and early cinema to the works of Zadie Smith and W. G. Sebald, from advertisements for Pepsi to the observations of Oliver Sacks and Malcolm Gladwell. Yet impressionism's persistence has also been a problem, a matter of inauthenticity, superficiality, and complicity in what is merely “impressionistic” about culture today. Jesse Matz considers these two legacies—the positive and the negative—to explain impressionism's true contemporary significance. As Lasting Impressions moves through contemporary literature, painting, and popular culture, Matz explains how the perceptual role, cultural effects, and social implications of impressionism continue to generate meaning and foster new forms of creativity, understanding, and public engagement.Less
Impressionism captured the world's imagination in the late nineteenth century and remains with us today. Portraying the dynamic effects of modernity, impressionist artists revolutionized the arts and the wider culture. Impressionism transformed the very pattern of reality, introducing new ways to look at and think about the world and our experience of it. Its legacy has been felt in many major contributions to popular and high culture, from cubism and early cinema to the works of Zadie Smith and W. G. Sebald, from advertisements for Pepsi to the observations of Oliver Sacks and Malcolm Gladwell. Yet impressionism's persistence has also been a problem, a matter of inauthenticity, superficiality, and complicity in what is merely “impressionistic” about culture today. Jesse Matz considers these two legacies—the positive and the negative—to explain impressionism's true contemporary significance. As Lasting Impressions moves through contemporary literature, painting, and popular culture, Matz explains how the perceptual role, cultural effects, and social implications of impressionism continue to generate meaning and foster new forms of creativity, understanding, and public engagement.
Jessica Milner Davis and Jocelyn Chey (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9789888139231
- eISBN:
- 9789888180837
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888139231.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This volume covers modern and contemporary forms of humour in China's public and private spheres, including comic films and novels, cartooning, pop songs, internet jokes, and advertising and ...
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This volume covers modern and contemporary forms of humour in China's public and private spheres, including comic films and novels, cartooning, pop songs, internet jokes, and advertising and educational humour. The second of two multidisciplinary volumes on humour in Chinese life and letters, this text also explores the relationship between the political control and popular expression of humour, such as China and Japan's exchange of comic stereotypes. It advances the methodology of cross-cultural and psychological studies of humour and underlines the economic and personal significance of humour in modern times.Less
This volume covers modern and contemporary forms of humour in China's public and private spheres, including comic films and novels, cartooning, pop songs, internet jokes, and advertising and educational humour. The second of two multidisciplinary volumes on humour in Chinese life and letters, this text also explores the relationship between the political control and popular expression of humour, such as China and Japan's exchange of comic stereotypes. It advances the methodology of cross-cultural and psychological studies of humour and underlines the economic and personal significance of humour in modern times.
