Muriel Blaive and Nicolas Maslowski
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199594627
- eISBN:
- 9780191595738
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199594627.003.0014
- Subject:
- Political Science, European Union, Political Theory
Muriel Blaive and Nicolas Maslowski argue that the Czech heritage has been mobilised in two opposite directions in relation to “Europe”: in an ethnic and isolationist direction which rejects Europe ...
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Muriel Blaive and Nicolas Maslowski argue that the Czech heritage has been mobilised in two opposite directions in relation to “Europe”: in an ethnic and isolationist direction which rejects Europe as a danger (Václav Klaus) and in a humanist direction emphasising individual responsibility, the heritage of the Enlightenment, and dissidence (Václav Havel). Blaive and Maslowski underline that “Central Europe” can be considered as an “intellectual gate” which predetermines attitudes both on Europe as a whole and on domestic issues. Central Europe, Europe, humanism, human rights, civil society, ecology were historically shaped as one and the same weapon against the communist regime, and still go hand in hand today. Conversely, the Klaus trend, despite its professed anti‐communism, appears largely as the heir to pan‐Slavism and former anti‐Western propaganda. In many aspects, Klaus' denunciation of “Europeanism” as a substitute ideology to socialism echoes some part of the Romanian debate.Less
Muriel Blaive and Nicolas Maslowski argue that the Czech heritage has been mobilised in two opposite directions in relation to “Europe”: in an ethnic and isolationist direction which rejects Europe as a danger (Václav Klaus) and in a humanist direction emphasising individual responsibility, the heritage of the Enlightenment, and dissidence (Václav Havel). Blaive and Maslowski underline that “Central Europe” can be considered as an “intellectual gate” which predetermines attitudes both on Europe as a whole and on domestic issues. Central Europe, Europe, humanism, human rights, civil society, ecology were historically shaped as one and the same weapon against the communist regime, and still go hand in hand today. Conversely, the Klaus trend, despite its professed anti‐communism, appears largely as the heir to pan‐Slavism and former anti‐Western propaganda. In many aspects, Klaus' denunciation of “Europeanism” as a substitute ideology to socialism echoes some part of the Romanian debate.
WILLIAM DUSINBERRE
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195326031
- eISBN:
- 9780199868308
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195326031.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
During a nineteen-year period after Beanland had finally been dismissed, more than half of the adult men at the plantation (at least thirteen out of 25 adult males) fled at least once. These ...
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During a nineteen-year period after Beanland had finally been dismissed, more than half of the adult men at the plantation (at least thirteen out of 25 adult males) fled at least once. These fugitives fled, on average, on more than three separate occasions. Thus, the total number of flights was at least forty during the same period. Occasionally a fugitive voluntarily turned himself in to a well-disposed white man who he hoped would protect him from a brutal overseer. Flight was dangerous — one fugitive received buck shot in his thigh when he returned at night to fetch clothes for a comrade; sleeping out in the woods led more than once to serious illness. Recapture was normally punished by a severe whipping. Flight never, apparently, led to permanent escape. Yet it was the principal safety valve that gave Polk's slaves a vent for their discontent.Less
During a nineteen-year period after Beanland had finally been dismissed, more than half of the adult men at the plantation (at least thirteen out of 25 adult males) fled at least once. These fugitives fled, on average, on more than three separate occasions. Thus, the total number of flights was at least forty during the same period. Occasionally a fugitive voluntarily turned himself in to a well-disposed white man who he hoped would protect him from a brutal overseer. Flight was dangerous — one fugitive received buck shot in his thigh when he returned at night to fetch clothes for a comrade; sleeping out in the woods led more than once to serious illness. Recapture was normally punished by a severe whipping. Flight never, apparently, led to permanent escape. Yet it was the principal safety valve that gave Polk's slaves a vent for their discontent.
WILLIAM DUSINBERRE
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195326031
- eISBN:
- 9780199868308
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195326031.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
As early as 1844, Polk extended to his plantation slaves the unusual privilege of raising some cotton of their own, by voluntarily working during their free time, especially on Sundays. This put an ...
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As early as 1844, Polk extended to his plantation slaves the unusual privilege of raising some cotton of their own, by voluntarily working during their free time, especially on Sundays. This put an average of just over $6 into the pocket of each overtime worker. The sums were minuscule compared to Polk's own plantation revenues, but the scheme seems for some time to have allayed the slaves' discontent. For several years before 1848, Polk extended to Blacksmith Harry (his most privileged slave) the extraordinary favor of allowing Harry annually to find his own employer, so that he could live near his wife and children, some thirty miles south of the plantation. Harry's satisfaction with this arrangement led him into remarkable demonstrations of fealty to his master. These grants of privilege, however, did not alter the fundamental inhumanity of the slave system for the great mass of Polk's bondpeople.Less
As early as 1844, Polk extended to his plantation slaves the unusual privilege of raising some cotton of their own, by voluntarily working during their free time, especially on Sundays. This put an average of just over $6 into the pocket of each overtime worker. The sums were minuscule compared to Polk's own plantation revenues, but the scheme seems for some time to have allayed the slaves' discontent. For several years before 1848, Polk extended to Blacksmith Harry (his most privileged slave) the extraordinary favor of allowing Harry annually to find his own employer, so that he could live near his wife and children, some thirty miles south of the plantation. Harry's satisfaction with this arrangement led him into remarkable demonstrations of fealty to his master. These grants of privilege, however, did not alter the fundamental inhumanity of the slave system for the great mass of Polk's bondpeople.
Angelica Goodden
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199238095
- eISBN:
- 9780191716669
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199238095.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This introductory chapter sets the scene for Staël's hostility to Napoleon, her daring to write despite periodically suffering from the characteristically female ‘anxiety of authorship’, and the ...
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This introductory chapter sets the scene for Staël's hostility to Napoleon, her daring to write despite periodically suffering from the characteristically female ‘anxiety of authorship’, and the split between public and private life that helped define her existence. It describes how her besetting fear of boredom propels her into the chancy existence of the literary, political, and moral dissident, and situates her exile in the context of others — sexual as well as literary. Does Staël connive at the repression of woman or openly challenge it? Why does such an obvious feminist seem to advocate an acceptance of woman's inferior status? Napoleon, often seen as her greatest foe, grudgingly admires her: ‘She'll last’.Less
This introductory chapter sets the scene for Staël's hostility to Napoleon, her daring to write despite periodically suffering from the characteristically female ‘anxiety of authorship’, and the split between public and private life that helped define her existence. It describes how her besetting fear of boredom propels her into the chancy existence of the literary, political, and moral dissident, and situates her exile in the context of others — sexual as well as literary. Does Staël connive at the repression of woman or openly challenge it? Why does such an obvious feminist seem to advocate an acceptance of woman's inferior status? Napoleon, often seen as her greatest foe, grudgingly admires her: ‘She'll last’.
Sacha Stern
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199589449
- eISBN:
- 9780191746178
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199589449.003.0007
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Asian and Middle Eastern History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter examines how lunar calendars that survived unofficially within the Roman Empire could be used to express subtle political dissidence. These include the Gallic calendar of Coligny, luna ...
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This chapter examines how lunar calendars that survived unofficially within the Roman Empire could be used to express subtle political dissidence. These include the Gallic calendar of Coligny, luna dates in Italian inscriptions and parapegmata, emerging lunar calendar schemes in third–fourth-centuries Rome (e.g., in Christian Easter cycles and in the codex of Philocalus), and a variety of Jewish calendars in Palestine and the Diaspora. These calendars and dating schemes increasingly adopted elements of the dominant Julian calendar, whilst asserting their dissident identity by remaining lunar. They were reflections, in their hybridity, of complex political situations and processes involving subversion, dissidence, and common sub-cultures, which are best interpreted in the light of post-colonial theory.Less
This chapter examines how lunar calendars that survived unofficially within the Roman Empire could be used to express subtle political dissidence. These include the Gallic calendar of Coligny, luna dates in Italian inscriptions and parapegmata, emerging lunar calendar schemes in third–fourth-centuries Rome (e.g., in Christian Easter cycles and in the codex of Philocalus), and a variety of Jewish calendars in Palestine and the Diaspora. These calendars and dating schemes increasingly adopted elements of the dominant Julian calendar, whilst asserting their dissident identity by remaining lunar. They were reflections, in their hybridity, of complex political situations and processes involving subversion, dissidence, and common sub-cultures, which are best interpreted in the light of post-colonial theory.
Stephen Brooke
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198202851
- eISBN:
- 9780191675560
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198202851.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Political History
This chapter discusses the resurgence of old tensions and the emergence of dissidence and faction within the Labour Party alliance. On May 1940, an electoral truce was formed; however, this proved ...
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This chapter discusses the resurgence of old tensions and the emergence of dissidence and faction within the Labour Party alliance. On May 1940, an electoral truce was formed; however, this proved only tenable for a short period, as it fostered division between the constituencies and the Transport House. Although the party offered actual benefits of coalition, this did little to discourage left-wing criticism. Controversy and bickering dominated the Labour Party during the war. Although the two sides of the party started off with the same perception of the important character of wartime alliance, the differences in the interpretation of the alliance, including the controversy in leadership and partisanship, led to a division and the emergence of discontentment within the party. The truce of 1940, which aimed for national unity, never met the expectations of the leftists, hence precipitating arguments, criticism, and defiance. Dissent became the chronic symptom of coalition for the Labour Party. While the Coalition marked the triumph of high politics, it nevertheless caused the resurgence of low politics within the Labour Party.Less
This chapter discusses the resurgence of old tensions and the emergence of dissidence and faction within the Labour Party alliance. On May 1940, an electoral truce was formed; however, this proved only tenable for a short period, as it fostered division between the constituencies and the Transport House. Although the party offered actual benefits of coalition, this did little to discourage left-wing criticism. Controversy and bickering dominated the Labour Party during the war. Although the two sides of the party started off with the same perception of the important character of wartime alliance, the differences in the interpretation of the alliance, including the controversy in leadership and partisanship, led to a division and the emergence of discontentment within the party. The truce of 1940, which aimed for national unity, never met the expectations of the leftists, hence precipitating arguments, criticism, and defiance. Dissent became the chronic symptom of coalition for the Labour Party. While the Coalition marked the triumph of high politics, it nevertheless caused the resurgence of low politics within the Labour Party.
Francesca CanadÉ Sautman
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195093032
- eISBN:
- 9780199854493
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195093032.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter examines the history of lesbian working class culture in France during the period from 1880 to 1930. It aims to make visible those women who had every reason to ensure survival by making ...
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This chapter examines the history of lesbian working class culture in France during the period from 1880 to 1930. It aims to make visible those women who had every reason to ensure survival by making themselves invisible and to speak of, but not for, the voices that have been traditionally ignored, silenced, or distorted from all sides because they were at the same time the voices of women, lesbians, and working-class people. This period illuminates the intersection of gender and class in relation to sexual dissidence because of broad developments that tie the experiences and perceptions of women and the working class together.Less
This chapter examines the history of lesbian working class culture in France during the period from 1880 to 1930. It aims to make visible those women who had every reason to ensure survival by making themselves invisible and to speak of, but not for, the voices that have been traditionally ignored, silenced, or distorted from all sides because they were at the same time the voices of women, lesbians, and working-class people. This period illuminates the intersection of gender and class in relation to sexual dissidence because of broad developments that tie the experiences and perceptions of women and the working class together.
Ross McKibbin
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198206729
- eISBN:
- 9780191677298
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198206729.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Social History
This chapter discusses the relationship between religion and sexuality and how far it affected marital sexuality, marriage guidance, and divorce. It considers the extent to which family limitation ...
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This chapter discusses the relationship between religion and sexuality and how far it affected marital sexuality, marriage guidance, and divorce. It considers the extent to which family limitation was practised, the movement for family planning, and the role of the churches in promoting or hindering it. It looks at sexual knowledge and how it was acquired, homosexuality, the way sexual dissidence was policed, and the wider consequences of English attitudes to sexuality. It argues that politics, religion, and morality intersected with much friction in attitudes to sexuality. Throughout the period, religion and morality were closely related in people's minds. This was a result both of training and the repeated interventions of the churches in matters of morals at a time when the definition of ‘morality’ had been so narrowed that it was almost synonymous with sexuality.Less
This chapter discusses the relationship between religion and sexuality and how far it affected marital sexuality, marriage guidance, and divorce. It considers the extent to which family limitation was practised, the movement for family planning, and the role of the churches in promoting or hindering it. It looks at sexual knowledge and how it was acquired, homosexuality, the way sexual dissidence was policed, and the wider consequences of English attitudes to sexuality. It argues that politics, religion, and morality intersected with much friction in attitudes to sexuality. Throughout the period, religion and morality were closely related in people's minds. This was a result both of training and the repeated interventions of the churches in matters of morals at a time when the definition of ‘morality’ had been so narrowed that it was almost synonymous with sexuality.
Athena Athanasiou
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474420143
- eISBN:
- 9781474434904
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474420143.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
Drawing on a wide range of contemporary social and political thought, the book engages with a feminist dissident movement: namely, former Yugoslavia’s “Women in Black” (Žene u Crnom orŽuC) and its ...
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Drawing on a wide range of contemporary social and political thought, the book engages with a feminist dissident movement: namely, former Yugoslavia’s “Women in Black” (Žene u Crnom orŽuC) and its practices of performative mourning for the abjected other. This agonistic mourning involves standing still in public, wearing black, and holding vigils to acknowledge the victims of the “other side.” In performatively occupying the position of the internal enemy, these political actors respond to those estranged as external enemies. By re-positioning their political bodies at the centre of the polis as a means of embodying their own and others’ ambivalent and precarious belonging vis-à-vis its demarcation lines, the activists bring intolerable memories into public view. Hence, they actualize the multilayered modalities of stasis as standing still but also taking the stand as embodied traces of those who had been stripped of their capacity to testify within the nationalist and militarist banality that led to ethno-nationalist violence in what has become the former Yugoslavia. In commemorating those socially instituted as impossible to commemorate, and in upsetting the grounds of mourning as a founding scene of maternal properness in nationalism, these dissident political subjects contest the idealized mourning inscribed in the genealogies of biopolitical normalization and ethno-national militarism. The book addresses agonistic mourning as a critical practice of contesting the power assemblage of sovereignty, biopolitics and nationalism.Less
Drawing on a wide range of contemporary social and political thought, the book engages with a feminist dissident movement: namely, former Yugoslavia’s “Women in Black” (Žene u Crnom orŽuC) and its practices of performative mourning for the abjected other. This agonistic mourning involves standing still in public, wearing black, and holding vigils to acknowledge the victims of the “other side.” In performatively occupying the position of the internal enemy, these political actors respond to those estranged as external enemies. By re-positioning their political bodies at the centre of the polis as a means of embodying their own and others’ ambivalent and precarious belonging vis-à-vis its demarcation lines, the activists bring intolerable memories into public view. Hence, they actualize the multilayered modalities of stasis as standing still but also taking the stand as embodied traces of those who had been stripped of their capacity to testify within the nationalist and militarist banality that led to ethno-nationalist violence in what has become the former Yugoslavia. In commemorating those socially instituted as impossible to commemorate, and in upsetting the grounds of mourning as a founding scene of maternal properness in nationalism, these dissident political subjects contest the idealized mourning inscribed in the genealogies of biopolitical normalization and ethno-national militarism. The book addresses agonistic mourning as a critical practice of contesting the power assemblage of sovereignty, biopolitics and nationalism.
Larbi Sadiki
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199562985
- eISBN:
- 9780191721182
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199562985.003.0007
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics, Democratization
What role do al-Jazeerah and the Internet play in strengthening ‘Arab opinion’ and democratic struggles in the Arab World? This chapter attempts to answer this question by placing emphasis, as in the ...
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What role do al-Jazeerah and the Internet play in strengthening ‘Arab opinion’ and democratic struggles in the Arab World? This chapter attempts to answer this question by placing emphasis, as in the preceding chapter, on the importance of the widening of anti-authoritarian struggles. It focuses on the role played by the new information and communication technologies in empowering vocalization of dissidence, and the implications of this for state-society relations. The chapter assesses the value of blogs and online opinion polling, looking at their roles in the rise of Arab public opinion and the framing of the moment of democratic struggles from below. It attempts to make a case for how the rise of blogs and online opinion polling has reinvigorated Arab societies' response to the stalled top-down or controlled democratization, and their contests to state authority.Less
What role do al-Jazeerah and the Internet play in strengthening ‘Arab opinion’ and democratic struggles in the Arab World? This chapter attempts to answer this question by placing emphasis, as in the preceding chapter, on the importance of the widening of anti-authoritarian struggles. It focuses on the role played by the new information and communication technologies in empowering vocalization of dissidence, and the implications of this for state-society relations. The chapter assesses the value of blogs and online opinion polling, looking at their roles in the rise of Arab public opinion and the framing of the moment of democratic struggles from below. It attempts to make a case for how the rise of blogs and online opinion polling has reinvigorated Arab societies' response to the stalled top-down or controlled democratization, and their contests to state authority.
Mark Kukis
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231156929
- eISBN:
- 9780231527569
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231156929.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
In this chapter, Omar Yousef Hussein talks about his experience during the Iraq war. A Sunni born in Baghdad, Omar Yousef Hussein had served roughly eight years in prison for political dissidence but ...
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In this chapter, Omar Yousef Hussein talks about his experience during the Iraq war. A Sunni born in Baghdad, Omar Yousef Hussein had served roughly eight years in prison for political dissidence but was released toward the end of 2002, when he began pursuing a career as an academic and historian in Baghdad. As the U.S. invasion grew imminent, however, he began mingling with some of the earliest figures of a nascent resistance movement that was taking shape in Baghdad even before U.S. forces reached the city. None of them figured Saddam Hussein's regime would survive the American invasion. The only question on their minds was what to do after the collapse. Omar Yousef Hussein's first connection to the insurgency was through writers and intellectuals who, like him, had spoken out through published articles before the collapse about what was to come and what should be done.Less
In this chapter, Omar Yousef Hussein talks about his experience during the Iraq war. A Sunni born in Baghdad, Omar Yousef Hussein had served roughly eight years in prison for political dissidence but was released toward the end of 2002, when he began pursuing a career as an academic and historian in Baghdad. As the U.S. invasion grew imminent, however, he began mingling with some of the earliest figures of a nascent resistance movement that was taking shape in Baghdad even before U.S. forces reached the city. None of them figured Saddam Hussein's regime would survive the American invasion. The only question on their minds was what to do after the collapse. Omar Yousef Hussein's first connection to the insurgency was through writers and intellectuals who, like him, had spoken out through published articles before the collapse about what was to come and what should be done.
Michael Hutt
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195670608
- eISBN:
- 9780199081806
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195670608.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Migration Studies (including Refugee Studies)
This book recounts the plight of some hundred thousand refugees of Nepali ethnic origin (also known as the Lhotshampa or ‘Southern Borderlander’) who claim to have been wrongfully evicted from ...
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This book recounts the plight of some hundred thousand refugees of Nepali ethnic origin (also known as the Lhotshampa or ‘Southern Borderlander’) who claim to have been wrongfully evicted from Bhutan. None of them have returned to Bhutan after their eviction in the early 1990s. The author begins his examination of their plight by discussing the history of Bhutan as it appears in British colonial archives and in current standard national narratives. He then discusses the history of Bhutan from the point of view of ‘Bhutanese’ refugees (housed in camps in Nepal) presented to him as a foreign researcher. After reviewing Lhotshampa society in Bhutan during the first half of the twentieth century, the book presents the encounter between the culturally Nepali southern part of Bhutan and the Bhutanese state. In its drive towards modernization and development after Indian independence and the Chinese invasion of Tibet, new legislation on citizenships and a homogenizing nationalism lead to Lhotshampa dissidence and the ‘demotion’ of the Nepali in Bhutan. The book then elaborates how the Lhotshampa became refugees, and why they continue to live in camps in Nepal even at the beginning of the twenty-first century.Less
This book recounts the plight of some hundred thousand refugees of Nepali ethnic origin (also known as the Lhotshampa or ‘Southern Borderlander’) who claim to have been wrongfully evicted from Bhutan. None of them have returned to Bhutan after their eviction in the early 1990s. The author begins his examination of their plight by discussing the history of Bhutan as it appears in British colonial archives and in current standard national narratives. He then discusses the history of Bhutan from the point of view of ‘Bhutanese’ refugees (housed in camps in Nepal) presented to him as a foreign researcher. After reviewing Lhotshampa society in Bhutan during the first half of the twentieth century, the book presents the encounter between the culturally Nepali southern part of Bhutan and the Bhutanese state. In its drive towards modernization and development after Indian independence and the Chinese invasion of Tibet, new legislation on citizenships and a homogenizing nationalism lead to Lhotshampa dissidence and the ‘demotion’ of the Nepali in Bhutan. The book then elaborates how the Lhotshampa became refugees, and why they continue to live in camps in Nepal even at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Bruce Lincoln
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780226140926
- eISBN:
- 9780226141084
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226141084.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History
All groups tell stories about their beginnings. Such tales are oft-repeated, finely wrought, and usually much beloved. Among those institutions most in need of an impressive creation account is the ...
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All groups tell stories about their beginnings. Such tales are oft-repeated, finely wrought, and usually much beloved. Among those institutions most in need of an impressive creation account is the state: it’s one of the primary ways states attempt to legitimate themselves. But such founding narratives invite revisionist retellings that modify details of the story in ways that undercut, ironize, and even ridicule the state’s ideal self-representation. Medieval accounts of how Norway was unified by its first king provide a lively, revealing, and wonderfully entertaining example of this process. Taking the story of how Harald Fairhair unified Norway in the ninth century as its central example, this book illuminates the way a state’s foundation story blurs the distinction between history and myth and how variant tellings of origin stories provide opportunities for dissidence and subversion as subtle—or not so subtle—modifications are introduced through details of character, incident, and plot structure. The book reveals a pattern whereby texts written in Iceland were more critical and infinitely more subtle than those produced in Norway, reflecting the fact that the former had a dual audience: not just the Norwegian court, but also Icelanders of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whose ancestors had fled from Harald and founded the only non-monarchic, indeed anti-monarchic, state in medieval Europe.Less
All groups tell stories about their beginnings. Such tales are oft-repeated, finely wrought, and usually much beloved. Among those institutions most in need of an impressive creation account is the state: it’s one of the primary ways states attempt to legitimate themselves. But such founding narratives invite revisionist retellings that modify details of the story in ways that undercut, ironize, and even ridicule the state’s ideal self-representation. Medieval accounts of how Norway was unified by its first king provide a lively, revealing, and wonderfully entertaining example of this process. Taking the story of how Harald Fairhair unified Norway in the ninth century as its central example, this book illuminates the way a state’s foundation story blurs the distinction between history and myth and how variant tellings of origin stories provide opportunities for dissidence and subversion as subtle—or not so subtle—modifications are introduced through details of character, incident, and plot structure. The book reveals a pattern whereby texts written in Iceland were more critical and infinitely more subtle than those produced in Norway, reflecting the fact that the former had a dual audience: not just the Norwegian court, but also Icelanders of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whose ancestors had fled from Harald and founded the only non-monarchic, indeed anti-monarchic, state in medieval Europe.
Jonathan Dollimore
- Published in print:
- 1991
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112259
- eISBN:
- 9780191670732
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112259.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Why is homosexuality socially marginal yet symbolically central? Why, in other words, is it so strangely integral to the very societies which obsessively denounce it, and why is it history, rather ...
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Why is homosexuality socially marginal yet symbolically central? Why, in other words, is it so strangely integral to the very societies which obsessively denounce it, and why is it history, rather than human nature, which has produced this paradoxical position? These are just some of the questions explored in this wide-ranging study of sexual dissidence which returns to the early modern period in order to focus, question, and develop issues of postmodernity. In the process, it links writers as diverse as William Shakespeare, André Gide, Oscar Wilde, and Jean Genet, and cultural critics as different as St. Augustine, Sigmund Freud, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, and Monique Wittig. Freud's theory of perversion is discovered to be more challenging than either his critics or his advocates usually allow, especially when approached via the earlier period's archetypal perverts, the religious heretic and the wayward woman, Satan and Eve. The book further shows how the literature, histories, and sub-cultures of sexual and gender dissidence prove remarkably illuminating for current debates in literary theory, psychoanalysis, and cultural materialism. It includes chapters on transgression and its containment, contemporary theories of sexual difference, homophobia, the gay sensibility, transvestite literature in the culture and theatre of Renaissance England, homosexuality, and race.Less
Why is homosexuality socially marginal yet symbolically central? Why, in other words, is it so strangely integral to the very societies which obsessively denounce it, and why is it history, rather than human nature, which has produced this paradoxical position? These are just some of the questions explored in this wide-ranging study of sexual dissidence which returns to the early modern period in order to focus, question, and develop issues of postmodernity. In the process, it links writers as diverse as William Shakespeare, André Gide, Oscar Wilde, and Jean Genet, and cultural critics as different as St. Augustine, Sigmund Freud, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, and Monique Wittig. Freud's theory of perversion is discovered to be more challenging than either his critics or his advocates usually allow, especially when approached via the earlier period's archetypal perverts, the religious heretic and the wayward woman, Satan and Eve. The book further shows how the literature, histories, and sub-cultures of sexual and gender dissidence prove remarkably illuminating for current debates in literary theory, psychoanalysis, and cultural materialism. It includes chapters on transgression and its containment, contemporary theories of sexual difference, homophobia, the gay sensibility, transvestite literature in the culture and theatre of Renaissance England, homosexuality, and race.
Larry Eugene Rivers
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036910
- eISBN:
- 9780252094033
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036910.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter examines the various forms of conservative resistance used by slaves in Florida and often elsewhere within the slave empire of the United States. William Dusinberre called these types of ...
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This chapter examines the various forms of conservative resistance used by slaves in Florida and often elsewhere within the slave empire of the United States. William Dusinberre called these types of actions or inactions nonviolent “dissidence.” Indeed, bondservants actively, though discreetly, resisted their owners on a day-to-day basis. In doing so, many slaves believed that they could either get away with their recalcitrance or use it to negotiate concessions from their masters. Since enslaved blacks knew that violent attacks could mean immediate death, they naturally and intelligently sought other means of expressing their discontent concerning plantation or farm regimens. Sometimes they made life uncomfortable for their masters, and sometimes, in the process, they made life uncomfortable for themselves.Less
This chapter examines the various forms of conservative resistance used by slaves in Florida and often elsewhere within the slave empire of the United States. William Dusinberre called these types of actions or inactions nonviolent “dissidence.” Indeed, bondservants actively, though discreetly, resisted their owners on a day-to-day basis. In doing so, many slaves believed that they could either get away with their recalcitrance or use it to negotiate concessions from their masters. Since enslaved blacks knew that violent attacks could mean immediate death, they naturally and intelligently sought other means of expressing their discontent concerning plantation or farm regimens. Sometimes they made life uncomfortable for their masters, and sometimes, in the process, they made life uncomfortable for themselves.
Laure Murat
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780226025735
- eISBN:
- 9780226025872
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226025872.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter sheds light on the ambiguity between prison and hospital. After the French Revolution, many clinics were transformed into prisons, while continuing to practice medicine, and it is ...
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This chapter sheds light on the ambiguity between prison and hospital. After the French Revolution, many clinics were transformed into prisons, while continuing to practice medicine, and it is occasionally difficult to differentiate between care and detention. What are the criteria for madness when politics is involved? There is sometimes a fine line between political insurgents and people declared insane and institutionalized by governments. The most famous of the cases studied in this chapter is the Marquis de Sade, institutionalized because of his writings and put in the lunatic asylum of Charenton. His doctor acknowledged that Sade was not clinically “insane” but guilty of “moral indecency.” Another memorable example is General Malet who tried to overthrow Napoleon and was diagnosed as a maniac.Less
This chapter sheds light on the ambiguity between prison and hospital. After the French Revolution, many clinics were transformed into prisons, while continuing to practice medicine, and it is occasionally difficult to differentiate between care and detention. What are the criteria for madness when politics is involved? There is sometimes a fine line between political insurgents and people declared insane and institutionalized by governments. The most famous of the cases studied in this chapter is the Marquis de Sade, institutionalized because of his writings and put in the lunatic asylum of Charenton. His doctor acknowledged that Sade was not clinically “insane” but guilty of “moral indecency.” Another memorable example is General Malet who tried to overthrow Napoleon and was diagnosed as a maniac.
Jonathan Dollimore
- Published in print:
- 1991
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112259
- eISBN:
- 9780191670732
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112259.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This book emerges at the intersection of diverse perspectives, including biography, literary and cultural theory, theodicy, social history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, feminism, and the emerging ...
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This book emerges at the intersection of diverse perspectives, including biography, literary and cultural theory, theodicy, social history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, feminism, and the emerging field of lesbian and gay studies. Several interrelated issues recur, two especially: one is the complex, often violent, sometimes murderous dialectic between dominant cultures and subordinate cultures, groups, and identities; the other concerns those conceptions of self, desire, and transgression which figure in the language, ideologies, and cultures of domination, and in the diverse kinds of resistance to it. One kind of resistance, operating in terms of gender, repeatedly unsettles the very opposition between the dominant and the subordinate. The book calls this sexual dissidence. Equally illuminating is the history of the early modern period, to which the book repeatedly turns. More exactly, it moves between the post-modern and the early modern.Less
This book emerges at the intersection of diverse perspectives, including biography, literary and cultural theory, theodicy, social history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, feminism, and the emerging field of lesbian and gay studies. Several interrelated issues recur, two especially: one is the complex, often violent, sometimes murderous dialectic between dominant cultures and subordinate cultures, groups, and identities; the other concerns those conceptions of self, desire, and transgression which figure in the language, ideologies, and cultures of domination, and in the diverse kinds of resistance to it. One kind of resistance, operating in terms of gender, repeatedly unsettles the very opposition between the dominant and the subordinate. The book calls this sexual dissidence. Equally illuminating is the history of the early modern period, to which the book repeatedly turns. More exactly, it moves between the post-modern and the early modern.
Malcolm Andrews
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199651597
- eISBN:
- 9780191757075
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199651597.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This short Afterword considers the status of laughter in Victorian culture. Dickens' subversive humour, his low-life mischief, was deployed to challenge the prevailing spirit of what he once referred ...
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This short Afterword considers the status of laughter in Victorian culture. Dickens' subversive humour, his low-life mischief, was deployed to challenge the prevailing spirit of what he once referred to as ‘a kind of popular dark age’ through which he felt England was living in the middle years of the nineteenth century. It speculates on how ‘respectability’ was constructed in that period, and develops a sense of how Dickens' dissident sense of humour went to work in that context.Less
This short Afterword considers the status of laughter in Victorian culture. Dickens' subversive humour, his low-life mischief, was deployed to challenge the prevailing spirit of what he once referred to as ‘a kind of popular dark age’ through which he felt England was living in the middle years of the nineteenth century. It speculates on how ‘respectability’ was constructed in that period, and develops a sense of how Dickens' dissident sense of humour went to work in that context.
Lisa Downing
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226003405
- eISBN:
- 9780226003689
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226003689.003.0009
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
In conclusion, this book makes an observation about the project of writing about murderers. Such subject matter seems, almost inevitably, to spawn textual hybridity, creative license, and narrative ...
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In conclusion, this book makes an observation about the project of writing about murderers. Such subject matter seems, almost inevitably, to spawn textual hybridity, creative license, and narrative dissidence in the texts it inspires. It encourages a blending of myth, “reality,” and imagination. Obvious examples of this are the fictionalized literary reconstructions of murders. The appearance of thinly disguised real-life killers as the protagonists of novels is another facet of this phenomenon. Also striking is the fact that scholars of literature—particularly of French literature—are some of the most prolific commentators on murder cases. This book, quite obviously, is part of this tradition, as the author is currently employed as a professor of French and also publishes on Decadent French literature, among other subjects.Less
In conclusion, this book makes an observation about the project of writing about murderers. Such subject matter seems, almost inevitably, to spawn textual hybridity, creative license, and narrative dissidence in the texts it inspires. It encourages a blending of myth, “reality,” and imagination. Obvious examples of this are the fictionalized literary reconstructions of murders. The appearance of thinly disguised real-life killers as the protagonists of novels is another facet of this phenomenon. Also striking is the fact that scholars of literature—particularly of French literature—are some of the most prolific commentators on murder cases. This book, quite obviously, is part of this tradition, as the author is currently employed as a professor of French and also publishes on Decadent French literature, among other subjects.
Cécile Chich
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039683
- eISBN:
- 9780252097775
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039683.003.0009
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines the centrality of the work of artistic duo Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki to the project of writing a feminist women's film history by focusing on the aesthetic and ...
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This chapter examines the centrality of the work of artistic duo Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki to the project of writing a feminist women's film history by focusing on the aesthetic and conceptual choices they made and on their thought-provoking contributions to feminist film practice. In particular, it considers Klonaris and Thomadaki's Cinéma corporel (Cinema of the Body). The chapter suggests that the female avant-garde film has, paradoxically, been marginalized by feminist film theory's focus on mainstream cinema as a site of patriarchal representation and spectatorship. It shows that Klonaris and Thomadaki's Cinéma corporel represents, for women's cinema, a strategy of dissidence. In form, content, concept, and approach, it calls for a revisitation of “film” outside the canon established in traditional film history. The chapter underscores the need to “heighten the visibility of women's contributions to traditions of formal innovation and explore how formal innovation enables women to enlarge discourses about women's subjectivity” and art.Less
This chapter examines the centrality of the work of artistic duo Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki to the project of writing a feminist women's film history by focusing on the aesthetic and conceptual choices they made and on their thought-provoking contributions to feminist film practice. In particular, it considers Klonaris and Thomadaki's Cinéma corporel (Cinema of the Body). The chapter suggests that the female avant-garde film has, paradoxically, been marginalized by feminist film theory's focus on mainstream cinema as a site of patriarchal representation and spectatorship. It shows that Klonaris and Thomadaki's Cinéma corporel represents, for women's cinema, a strategy of dissidence. In form, content, concept, and approach, it calls for a revisitation of “film” outside the canon established in traditional film history. The chapter underscores the need to “heighten the visibility of women's contributions to traditions of formal innovation and explore how formal innovation enables women to enlarge discourses about women's subjectivity” and art.
