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Introduction

Sherman A. Jackson

in Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking toward the Third Resurrection

This chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about ideological encounter between Islam and African Americans. The book traces the history of the proto-Islamic black-nationalist spin-off ... More

This chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about ideological encounter between Islam and African Americans. The book traces the history of the proto-Islamic black-nationalist spin-off movements of the early twentieth century through the rise and preponderance of orthodox Sunni Islam by the century's end. It attempts to explain the ideological dislocations and attempted adjustments that accompanied the shift in the basis of religious authority which followed the influx of Muslims from the Middle East and Asia after the repeal of the National Origins Act and the Asiatic Barred Zone in 1965.Less

Afterword

Martin Bernal

in African Athena: New Agendas

This afterword is an autobiographical survey or analysis of the background to the three volume series Black Athena. It treats the author's earlier concerns with cultural contacts between Europe and ... More

This afterword is an autobiographical survey or analysis of the background to the three volume series Black Athena. It treats the author's earlier concerns with cultural contacts between Europe and China and colonialism in Central Africa. It also considers the extent to which these interests prefigured the Black Athena project. There is a short description of his work linking the disappearance of Phoenicians to the appearance of Jews, in which the argument is made that the genetic component of the Jewish community has been exaggerated and the importance of conversion underplayed. The piece concludes with an investigation of the precipitation or provocation of the project by the author's close associations with student and faculty followers of the conservative philosopher Leo Strauss.Less

The Portable Rousseau: Principle of Selection

Martin McQuillan

in The Paul De Man Notebooks

The principle of selection for Paul de Man's volume The Portable Rousseau is presented. The selection combines the theoretical side of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's thought with the more purely literary ... More

The principle of selection for Paul de Man's volume The Portable Rousseau is presented. The selection combines the theoretical side of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's thought with the more purely literary components of the works. It includes such texts as the ‘Essay on the Origins of Language,’ in which the link between Rousseau's reflections on language and his political theory becomes manifest. The book could therefore be used in courses in European civilisation, political theory, the history of the Enlightenment, the European novel, romanticism, or even in linguistics. The two main theoretical texts, The Second Discourse on The Origins of Inequality and Social Contract, are included in unabridged form.Less

The Panama Syndrome and the Origins of Deep Contradictions

Yue Chim Richard Wong

in Diversity and Occasional Anarchy: On Deep Economic and Social Contradictions in Hong Kong

In a 2010 press conference, Premier Wen Jiabao said that Hong Kong has a number of deep contradictions that had to be tackled. He spoke of five principal issues that Hong Kong had to face in the ... More

In a 2010 press conference, Premier Wen Jiabao said that Hong Kong has a number of deep contradictions that had to be tackled. He spoke of five principal issues that Hong Kong had to face in the process of dual integration (the integration with both mainland China and the world economy). Hong Kong's deep contradictions spring from the broader phenomenon of the mushrooming of emerging economies around the globe, and this brings forth opportunities and challenges.Less

Embodiment: Spirit, Material– Maternal Dependence, and the Problem of the in utero

Wes Furlotte

in The Problem of Nature in Hegel's Final System

Chapter six, in turn, begins to critically read Hegel against Hegel. It reads his notion of spirit (beginning with finite subjectivity) in terms of the concept of nature established in Part I. The ... More

Chapter six, in turn, begins to critically read Hegel against Hegel. It reads his notion of spirit (beginning with finite subjectivity) in terms of the concept of nature established in Part I. The chapter argues that the problem nature poses for subjective spirit presents itself in two ‘symptomatic’ moments of Hegel’s anthropology. First, in his analysis of subjectivity’s embodiment, its “primordial grasp on the world.” Second, in his analysis of the fetus-mother dynamic. Reconstructing both analyses, the chapter argues that they reveal spirit as over-immersed in exterior determinations and unable to assert itself as an autarkic center, as subject. Over-immersion in its environmental milieu, the chapter argues, is the problem of spirit’s origins, i.e. the problem of nature. It must move beyond this displacement in externality. However, there are no facile guarantees that this will transpire in the concrete actuality of life. Therefore, the origin of spirit is a developmental confrontation with nature and a protracted attempt to break with it.Less

Why Do People Build Monuments? Late Archaic Platform Mounds in the Norte Chico

Jonathan Haas and Winifred Creamer

in Early New World Monumentality

The Norte Chico region witnessed an early florescence of mound construction at more than 30 Late Archaic (3000 to 1800 B.C.) sites in an area of only 1800 sq km. Each of these sites has from 1 to 7 ... More

The Norte Chico region witnessed an early florescence of mound construction at more than 30 Late Archaic (3000 to 1800 B.C.) sites in an area of only 1800 sq km. Each of these sites has from 1 to 7 mounds ranging from 3000 to 100,000 cu m in volume. In looking at the emergence of this complex cultural system, a critical question is how and why these mounds were constructed over many generations. This chapter will examine evidence for the scale of labor involved in mound construction and for (or against) centralized organization of labor.Less

Prologue: The Promised Land and the Devil’s Sanctum: The Risings of the Chicago Police Department and Black Chicago

Simon Balto

in Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power

The book’s prologue briefly sketches the colonization of Indigenous land that led to Chicago’s founding and rapid urbanization, and then focuses on two important phenomena within that larger story: ... More

The book’s prologue briefly sketches the colonization of Indigenous land that led to Chicago’s founding and rapid urbanization, and then focuses on two important phenomena within that larger story: the origins of policing in the city and the Great Migration of Black Americans that produced the city’s famed “Black Metropolis.” It shows how the Chicago Police Department’s origins lay not in some vague interest in public safety, but rather in controlling labor radicalism and the behavior of European immigrants. It also documents how the promise of Chicago for migrating Black Southerners was often quite different than the reality that they found within the city.Less

Republicans and Race: 1921–1932

Jonathan Bean

in Race and Liberty in America: The Essential Reader

In the 1920s, lynching and mob violence still existed, terrorizing African Americans in the South, and occasionally the North and West. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) revived in a new form, attacking not ... More

In the 1920s, lynching and mob violence still existed, terrorizing African Americans in the South, and occasionally the North and West. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) revived in a new form, attacking not only blacks but also Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. By the mid-1920s, the KKK reached millions in membership, before disintegrating in the midst of scandal and counterattacks by opponents. Republicans passed an anti-lynching bill but weakened when a Democratic filibuster thwarted all other issues on the congressional agenda. President Warren Harding spoke courageously against southern racism, but Democratic victories in Congress restrained his power to do more. The National Origins Quota Act of 1924, signed by President Calvin Coolidge, shut down immigration for decades to come. Hebert Hoover, the secretary of commerce, desegregated his agency's workforce and won the support of the majority of black voters for his GOP ticket.Less

Americanization versus Restriction: Immigrant Social Welfare Policy in New York, California, and Massachusetts, 1919–1929

Christina A. Ziegler-McPherson

in Americanization in the States: Immigrant Social Welfare Policy, Citizenship, and National Identity in the United States, 19081929

In the 1920s, as the national obsession about immigrant loyalty and the meaning of American citizenship peaked and then ebbed in favor of immigration restriction, pro-immigration progressives ... More

In the 1920s, as the national obsession about immigrant loyalty and the meaning of American citizenship peaked and then ebbed in favor of immigration restriction, pro-immigration progressives suffered attacks on their policies of Americanization. As the country became more politically conservative, immigrant social welfare agencies in New York, California, and Massachusetts struggled to maintain programs designed to reform the social environment to facilitate immigrants' adoption of a more “American” way of life. Instead, the United States reversed 100 years of immigration policy, adopted a policy that dramatically reduced the number of southern and eastern Europeans admitted, and totally barred Asian immigrants. This new immigration policy defined American citizenship and national identity in racial terms that progressive Americanizers had rarely used. By the time of passage of the 1929 National Origins Act, Americanization as an expression of immigrant social welfare policy was politically dead in most states.Less

A Lying World Order: Political Deception and The Threat of Totalitarianism

Peg Birmingham

in Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics

This chapter addresses the question whether totalitarianism is a threat today. It considers one element of totalitarianism that Hannah Arendt was herself very concerned ... More

This chapter addresses the question whether totalitarianism is a threat today. It considers one element of totalitarianism that Hannah Arendt was herself very concerned about—a “lying world order.” At the outset of Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt raises the issue of political deception, considering the difference between the ancient and modern sophists and their relation to truth and reality. She argues that while the ancient sophists were satisfied with “a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth”, modern sophists want a great deal more, namely, “a lasting victory at the expense of reality itself”. Arendt claims that the characteristic that sets totalitarianism apart from tyrannical and dictatorial regimes is precisely the modern sophistic victory at the expense of reality, a victory that, she argues, institutes a lying world order. Indeed, her discussion of radical evil in the Origins of Totalitarianism cannot be understood apart from her continuing preoccupation with the problem of this particular kind of political deception.Less

‘We Refugees’: Hannah Arendt and the Perplexities of Human Rights

Lyndsey Stonebridge

in The Judicial Imagination: Writing After Nuremberg

Hannah Arendt later adopted Arthur Koestler's uncompromising title in her description of Europe's refugee population in The Origins of Totalitarianism. In Origins, she developed one of the most ... More

Hannah Arendt later adopted Arthur Koestler's uncompromising title in her description of Europe's refugee population in The Origins of Totalitarianism. In Origins, she developed one of the most subtle and complex critiques of how the twentieth century ruptured historical fantasies about the inalienable sanctity of rights to emerge out of the war. Arendt's irony in ‘We Refugees’ both gives vent to the rage of a ‘we’ torn brutally from its language, occupation and memory and, through a subtle ventriloquism, protests against attempts to normalise the position of the refugee. The problem of the refugee for political life, Arendt later argued in Origins, is that her very non-political existence illuminates ‘the dark background of mere givenness’: that is, a life before rights, a non-political existence – the ‘background formed by our unchangeable and unique nature’, which is governed not by law, but by difference.Less

The genesis

Wacks Raymond

in Privacy and Media Freedom

The origins of the right of privacy are traced from Warren and Brandeis’s celebrated 1890 essay, through the development of Prosser’s four privacy torts in US law, and the constitutional application ... More

The origins of the right of privacy are traced from Warren and Brandeis’s celebrated 1890 essay, through the development of Prosser’s four privacy torts in US law, and the constitutional application of ‘privacy’ to a variety of matters including abortion and contraception, such as in Roe v Wade. The law in England, and other common law and European jurisdictions, as well as the international dimension, are described, with a particular emphasis on the law of breach of confidence which, as the progenitor to the contemporary approach to the protection of private information, is analysed in some detail. The chapter also considers Article 8 and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.Less

“The Odium of Doubtfulness”: Or the Vicissitudes of Arendt’s Metaphorical Thinking

Martin Blumenthal-Barby

in Inconceivable Effects: Ethics through Twentieth-Century German Literature, Thought, and Film

This chapter focuses on Hannah Arendt’s study of the question of “style” in historiographical narration. It analyzes Arendt’s book, Origins of Totalitarianism, and determines her own style, while ... More

This chapter focuses on Hannah Arendt’s study of the question of “style” in historiographical narration. It analyzes Arendt’s book, Origins of Totalitarianism, and determines her own style, while questioning how its efficacy relates to the problem of understanding totalitarianism. In response to political philosopher Eric Voegelin, a reviewer of Origins, Arendt elaborates on her decision to allocate more historiographical legitimacy to metaphorical thinking than to statistical science. She treats the merits of metaphorical thinking on the basis of a metaphor employed in Origins—that of the Nazi concentration camp as a place of “Hell.” Arendt feels that a heavy reliance on the explanatory power of quantitative material means prolonging the logic of Nazism or, more generally, the biopolitical logic of totalitarian politics.Less

A Break in the Storm

Peter J. Westwick

in Into the Black: JPL and the American Space Program, 1976-2004

This chapter focuses on the discovery in 1996 of a meteorite on Earth—one with possible traces of Martian microbes—that sparked a new program, called Origins. This program laid out transcendent goals ... More

This chapter focuses on the discovery in 1996 of a meteorite on Earth—one with possible traces of Martian microbes—that sparked a new program, called Origins. This program laid out transcendent goals for the post-cold war space program, namely, discovering the origins and fate of the cosmos and of life itself. The new program, together with faster-better-cheaper, provided a flurry of new projects, in astronomy as well as planetary science, and lab managers began to realize that the new programs would provide more eggs for the lab's basket. The big-mission mode, however, persisted in the Cassini mission to Saturn and induced schizophrenia in JPL engineers trying to pursue faster-better-cheaper while still undertaking a flagship mission. Meanwhile, the lab's first faster-better-cheaper mission, Pathfinder, seemed to confirm that JPL had adapted to the new mode and that technical creativity could thrive even when money was lacking.Less

Island Lives

Andrew Pearson

in Distant freedom: "St Helena and the abolition of the slave trade, 1840-1872"

This chapter narrates the later lives and experiences of the few hundred liberated Africans who settled permanently on St Helena. Although some left of their own accord during the early 1870s others ... More

This chapter narrates the later lives and experiences of the few hundred liberated Africans who settled permanently on St Helena. Although some left of their own accord during the early 1870s others stayed there for life. These Africans came to form a substantial part of St Helena’s community but were, for many years, considered as a separate and inferior part of its society. Their origins, physical appearance, retention of African culture and the failure of many to embrace Christianity all contributed to this situation. Religious and secular education was sporadically in place from the 1840s, and permanently from the 1860s, but most of the former recaptives remained in the lowest tiers of island society. The records about them become increasingly scant as, during the later nineteenth century, the majority intermarried with ‘native’ St Helenians and merged into its general population. Some nevertheless remained apart, retaining a distinct identity through into the 1900s.Less

Toward Bioprosperity

Abena Dove Osseo-Asare

in Bitter Roots: The Search for Healing Plants in Africa

This history of African bioprospecting strengthens understandings of priority, locality, appropriation and benefits. The book indicates herbal preparations and pharmaceuticals have coexisted, as not ... More

This history of African bioprospecting strengthens understandings of priority, locality, appropriation and benefits. The book indicates herbal preparations and pharmaceuticals have coexisted, as not all efforts to supplant plants with pills since the 1880s were successful. Depending on how widely the plants and related information spread across the world, controversies emerged when multiple parties told overlapping narratives of ownership. Periwinkle, pennywort, and grains of paradise indicate relatively widely distributed plants with many competing popular medicinal recipes within open networks of exchange. This is why it was difficult for activists to get Eli Lilly to redistribute benefits from periwinkle drugs, or even La Roche and Ratsimanaga to pass on profits with respect to pennywort. Strophanthus and Cryptolepis were less widely known, but they did not lead to a discourse of benefit-sharing along ethnic lines in Ghana. After apartheid, Hoodia shows South Africans hoped to close access to information on plants.Less

The origins of the BBC in Northern Ireland

Robert J. Savage

in The BBC's Irish troubles: Television, conflict and Northern Ireland

This chapter traces the origins of the BBC in Northern Ireland, addressing how the radio service developed and maintained a close relationship with the unionist government at Stormont. The chapter ... More

This chapter traces the origins of the BBC in Northern Ireland, addressing how the radio service developed and maintained a close relationship with the unionist government at Stormont. The chapter provides context that enables an understanding of how television developed in the province and followed the pattern of radio. When BBC television first came to Northern Ireland its senior management was remarkably deferential to unionist elites and careful not to upset a government that had longed governed without consensus. Unionists did not want to see Northern Ireland defined as ‘Irish’ and programming that featured Irish or Gaelic music or culture provoked controversy. BBC crews that came from ‘mainland Britain’ were not welcomed because their programmes were increasingly viewed as problematic by a regional government that grew uncomfortable with broadcasts that addressed divisions in society and the widespread discrimination that disadvantaged Catholics in local elections, housing and employment. The chapter addresses the critical role television played for the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association in addressing the need for reforms in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s. The chapter concludes by addressing the evolution of BBC television up to the resignation of reforming Prime Minister Terence O’Neill in the spring of 1969 and the outbreak of violence that summer.Less

Boundaries of Inclusion and Exclusion in Postwar America

Danielle Battisti

in Whom We Shall Welcome: Italian Americans and Immigration Reform, 1945-1965

The introduction comments on the nature of campaigns to reform American immigration laws after World War II, Italian American identity, and the political and social position of white ethnic groups.

From Refugee Relief to Family Reunification

Danielle Battisti

in Whom We Shall Welcome: Italian Americans and Immigration Reform, 1945-1965

This chapter examines ACIM’s attempts to continue to circumvent National Origins quotas through lobbying for further refugee legislation after the expiration of the Refugee Relief Act. The Refugee ... More

This chapter examines ACIM’s attempts to continue to circumvent National Origins quotas through lobbying for further refugee legislation after the expiration of the Refugee Relief Act. The Refugee Relief Program proved to be a politically palatable way to both increase Italian immigration opportunities and to whittle away at the effectiveness of the National Origins System. This chapter looks at the varying degrees of success Italian Americans had with these campaigns, the eventual unsustainable nature of their arguments, and their turn toward advancing arguments to regulate immigration on the basis of family unification by the turn of the decade. That pivot was part of a broader shift among liberals who similarly had begun to advance family reunification legislation as a more egalitarian and moral way to regulate immigration than the National Origins System. This chapter shows that Italian American immigration reformers took part in this shift because of a combination of genuine ideological convictions but also did so opportunistically when previous strategies for achieving immigration opportunities via special legislation for Italians failed. It argues for the self-interested nature of Italian American lobbying and suggests the limitations of white ethnic liberalism.Less