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Intersections: Taste, Slavery, and the Modern Self

Simon Gikandi

in Slavery and the Culture of Taste

This chapter moves beyond the critical debates raised in Chapter 1 to provide a more concrete narrative of the coexistence of taste and slavery as aesthetic objects and products of everyday life in ... More

This chapter moves beyond the critical debates raised in Chapter 1 to provide a more concrete narrative of the coexistence of taste and slavery as aesthetic objects and products of everyday life in the modern world. It explores the link between slavery, consumption, and the culture of taste, all-important conduits for understanding modern identity. With a particular emphasis on changing theories of taste in eighteenth-century Britain, it provides an analysis or reading of the troubled relation between race, ideologies of taste, and the culture of consumption. It examines how slavery enabled the moment of taste; led to fundamental transformations in the self-understanding of modern subjects; and, consequently, resulted in a redefinition of notions of freedom, selfhood, and representation.Less

“Inevitable Discovery”: Searches, Narrative, Identity

Peter Brooks

in Enigmas of Identity

This chapter explores how the question of searches and seizures in the law, and the legal doctrines both protecting the individual and providing for his or her capture by social institutions, images ... More

This chapter explores how the question of searches and seizures in the law, and the legal doctrines both protecting the individual and providing for his or her capture by social institutions, images a kind of standoff between the self and knowledge of it. To the extent that individual identity is bound up with the notion of privacy, the issue of searches and seizures very much reflects central tenets of modern identity. There must be rules laid down to protect the individual's inner sense of identity against the state's need to know, classify, and inventory that identity. If courts often interpret this as a balancing act, attempting to draw lines and establish rules about where and what can be searched and seized and in what manner, fundamentally it represents a conflict and a clash, in which the internal sense of “inviolate personality” and the state's external need to know persons are at a standoff.Less

Spinoza’s Jewish Modernities

Daniel B. Schwartz

in The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image

This introductory chapter considers why the hallmark of modern Jewish identity is its resistance to—and, at the same time, obsession with—definition. Like battles over national identity in the modern ... More

This introductory chapter considers why the hallmark of modern Jewish identity is its resistance to—and, at the same time, obsession with—definition. Like battles over national identity in the modern state, clashes over the nature and limits of Jewishness have frequently taken the shape of controversies over the status—and stature—of marginal Jews past and present. The Jewish rehabilitation of historical heretics and apostates with a vexed relationship to Judaism has become so much a part of contemporary discourse that it is difficult to imagine secular Jewish culture without it. Yet this tendency has a beginning as well as a template in modern Jewish history, which the chapter introduces in the figure of Baruch (or Benedictus) Spinoza (1632–1677)—“the first great culture-hero of modern secular Jews,” and still the most oft-mentioned candidate for the title of first modern secular Jew.Less

Introduction

Margaret Litvin

in Hamlet's Arab Journey: Shakespeare's Prince and Nasser's Ghost

This introductory chapter summarizes the journey of Shakespeare's Hamlet through the post-1952 Arab world and discusses this study's contributions to Arab politics and literary studies in general. ... More

This introductory chapter summarizes the journey of Shakespeare's Hamlet through the post-1952 Arab world and discusses this study's contributions to Arab politics and literary studies in general. Here, the chapter shows how the character Hamlet's central concern is the problem of historical agency. He asks what it means “to be” rather than “not to be” in a world where “the time is out of joint” and one's very existence as a historical actor is threatened. He thus encapsulates a debate coeval with and largely constitutive of modern Arab identity: the problem of self-determination and authenticity. Following Hamlet's Arab journey, the chapter attempts to clarify one of the most central and widely misunderstood preoccupations of modern Arab politics.Less

A short history of two hundred years of Hong Kong migration and identity

Nan M. Sussman

in Return Migration and Identity: A Global Phenomenon, A Hong Kong Case

This chapter examines the origins of the Hong Kong identity, starting with the indigenous inhabitants from southern China, and continuing through the nineteenth-century imposition of British ... More

This chapter examines the origins of the Hong Kong identity, starting with the indigenous inhabitants from southern China, and continuing through the nineteenth-century imposition of British sovereignty, modern identity, and finally the late twentieth-century handover to China. It notes that residents of Hong Kong have developed complex identities and learned how to negotiate these identities within the Hong Kong regional and global context. The large-scale movement of people from and back to Hong Kong allows us not only to understand the psychological consequences of Hong Kong return migration but also to illuminate an emerging worldwide phenomenon.Less

Nasser’s Dramatic Imagination, 1952–64

Margaret Litvin

in Hamlet's Arab Journey: Shakespeare's Prince and Nasser's Ghost

This chapter explains that much of what matters for Arab Hamlet appropriation in the postcolonial period—the international sources, the way they were absorbed, and the concerns they help express—was ... More

This chapter explains that much of what matters for Arab Hamlet appropriation in the postcolonial period—the international sources, the way they were absorbed, and the concerns they help express—was shaped by the legacy of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser's geopolitical and cultural priorities made a range of Hamlets available and conditioned how intellectuals received them. Beyond this, from the moment in 1954 when he declared to his people, “All of you are Gamal Abdel Nasser,” the Egyptian leader personally embodied his country's identity and acted out its drama of historical agency. Beyond Egypt's borders, he became (like his radio station) “the voice of the Arabs.”Less

Acoustic Space, Modern Interiority, and Korngold’s Cities

Sherry Lee and Sadie Menicanin

in Korngold and His World

This chapter considers Erich Korngold's multifaceted creative engagement with the delineation of distinctive acoustic spaces. It describes an “Age of Noise” in Vienna, within a modernizing ... More

This chapter considers Erich Korngold's multifaceted creative engagement with the delineation of distinctive acoustic spaces. It describes an “Age of Noise” in Vienna, within a modernizing environment which would influence a young Korngold. Indeed, Korngold lived his whole life in modern urban environments. His aesthetic output, and indeed, the listening experience of his audiences who lived and heard within those same spaces, have been shaped in many ways by the conditions of twentieth-century metropolitan life in all its acoustic complexity. This facet of Korngold's world, the inevitable resonance of sonic modernity within the spaces of modern identity, compounds the critical challenge to both the composer's own ostensible naïveté and his music's apparent political neutrality.Less

Histories of Modern Selfhood

John D. Caputo

in On Becoming God: Late Medieval Mysticism and the Modern Western Self

The fourth chapter discusses existing models for writing the history of forms of identity, in particular the work of Michel Foucault, Charles Taylor, Peter and Christa Bürger and Jerrold Seigel. The ... More

The fourth chapter discusses existing models for writing the history of forms of identity, in particular the work of Michel Foucault, Charles Taylor, Peter and Christa Bürger and Jerrold Seigel. The limits of their positions are discussed, but at the same time they all contribute to the project of a defamiliarizing history of forms of modern identity. Foucault's works is shown to be useful for the attention it gives to the practices through which identities are fashioned. Charles Taylor insists on the shared nature of these practices, and the ethical impulses which underpin them. He also points out that the practices underpinning modern identity have evolved historically and don't fit together to form a unified package. Peter and Christa Bürger remind us that male and female identities cannot be considered in isolation from each other, while Jerrold Seigel draws attention to the importance of giving an account of identity that includes what it feels like to live that identity from the inside. The chapter closes by showing how the prereflexive awareness to which Seigel's argument appeals must be radically rethought for it is inseparable from an involvement in the world that connects it to history and shared social practices.Less

Introduction

James Loeffler

in The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this book, which is about the Jews' search for modern identity through music, in the late Russian Empire. It explains that the first hints of a ... More

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this book, which is about the Jews' search for modern identity through music, in the late Russian Empire. It explains that the first hints of a broader new relationship between Jews and music in eastern Europe appeared in mid-nineteenth-century Odessa, and that the fabled connection between Jews and music in Odessa was solidified through decades of Russian and Yiddish popular songs and the later writings of Isaac Babel, Alexander Kuprin, and others. The chapter also highlights the role of composer Anton Rubinstein in creating the conditions for the rise of Jewish musicians in Russian society.Less

Religion as the Site of the Colonial Encounter

in The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon

This chapter reconstructs the history of modern sectarian identity in Ottoman Mount Lebanon, which provided the stage on which cataclysmic violence in 1860 was enacted. It notes that the story begins ... More

This chapter reconstructs the history of modern sectarian identity in Ottoman Mount Lebanon, which provided the stage on which cataclysmic violence in 1860 was enacted. It notes that the story begins many years earlier, when local Lebanese society was opened to Ottoman and European discourses of reform which made religion the site of colonial encounter between a self-styled “Christian” West and what it saw as its perennial adversary, an “Islamic” Ottoman Empire. The chapter explains that this encounter profoundly altered the meaning of religion in the multiconfessional society of Mount Lebanon because it emphasized sectarian identity as the only viable marker of political reform and the only authentic basis for political claims. It further explains that the story is one of the symbiosis between indigenous traditions and practices and Ottoman modernization, which became paramount in reshaping the political self-definition of each community along religious lines.Less

The Return of the Juhhal

in The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon

This chapter tells the story of the most sustained popular mobilization in nineteenth-century Mount Lebanon, recognizing from the outset that it is implicated in another tale of the unfolding of the ... More

This chapter tells the story of the most sustained popular mobilization in nineteenth-century Mount Lebanon, recognizing from the outset that it is implicated in another tale of the unfolding of the Tanzimat. It begins with a discussion of a crisis in local representation that was sparked by the revolt, by examining rebel demands and the Khazin reaction to the rebellion. The chapter elaborates on the implications of Shahin's movement for modern Ottoman subjecthood (and citizenship) by analyzing Ottoman responses to the rebellion. It aims to depict the overlapping social and religious layers and the limits inherent in modern sectarian identity.Less

Chanel: The Order of Things

Catherine Driscoll

in Modernist Cultural Studies

Fashion is modern. The gradual conversion of “fashion” into a field encompassing all clothing practices and thus all modern subjects opens a space in which we might ask about whether modernist ... More

Fashion is modern. The gradual conversion of “fashion” into a field encompassing all clothing practices and thus all modern subjects opens a space in which we might ask about whether modernist fashion exists. This chapter focuses on one of the fashion “breaks” of the modernist period, captured in Ernest Hemingway's image of the fashionable woman as an avant-garde artist and revolutionary leader. We could also call this image “Chanel.” The position of groundbreaking innovator in the field of women's fashion that is widely assigned to Chanel is one form of the modernist break. This chapter explores the modernism of both fashion and style through the figure of Chanel and demonstrates how expertly modernist commentary on these subjects foreshadows contemporary cultural studies. For a cultural studies approach to modernism, there is no question that the Chanel brand and “Coco Chanel” (her star status during her lifetime and her iconic status after it) together form a key figure in renovating relations between art, industry, leisure, consumer culture, and modern identity.Less

Conclusion

James Loeffler

in The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the history of Jewish musicians in late Russian Empire. It considers the broader Jewish musical legacy in one of the most important ... More

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the history of Jewish musicians in late Russian Empire. It considers the broader Jewish musical legacy in one of the most important Russian–Jewish cultural encounters of the twentieth century: the post-World War II friendship of composers Dmitri Shostakovich and Mieczyslaw Weinberg. The chapter also discusses the lives of actual Russian Jewish musicians who looked past conventional politics and religion to culture as the foundation of modern Jewish identity.Less

Indian Ocean Dubai: The Identity Politics of South Asian Immigrants

Ahmed Kanna

in Dubai, the City as Corporation

This chapter discusses the South Asian experience within the Gulf, as well as the politics of inclusion and exclusion that deny the expatriates within the scope of a modern Emirati identity. The ... More

This chapter discusses the South Asian experience within the Gulf, as well as the politics of inclusion and exclusion that deny the expatriates within the scope of a modern Emirati identity. The South Asian diaspora had arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) during the country’s oil boom, as their labor had made up for the lack of manpower in the state. However, in more recent times there came a desire for the elite class to establish themselves as the legitimate ruling class, and their efforts in doing so have alienated the South Asian identity from a chance at citizenship within a neoliberal regime. There is, however, a deeper undercurrent of fear that causes the divide and the complacency thereof between Emiratis and immigrants alike—that the promises of capitalism may fail them one day.Less

Space

Pantelis Michelakis

in Greek Tragedy on Screen

This chapter considers spatial configurations of Greek tragedy on screen. Michael Cacoyannis' Iphigenia, Jean–Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet's Antigone, Ivan Kavaleridze's Prometheus, and Toshio ... More

This chapter considers spatial configurations of Greek tragedy on screen. Michael Cacoyannis' Iphigenia, Jean–Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet's Antigone, Ivan Kavaleridze's Prometheus, and Toshio Matsumoto's Funeral Parade of Roses provide the primary examples for how Greek tragedy is involved in a spatialization of debates around alienation, exile, and the shaping of modern identities. Being away from home is a prevalent trope in films of Greek tragedy. Lamenting the impossibility of returning home and searching anxiously for something that resembles home is another trope that casts travelling in search of identity as an experience which is not only alienating but also potentially empowering.Less

“Unmanly Passion”: Sodomitical Self-Fashioning in John Ford’s The Lover’s Melancholy and Perkin Warbeck

Nicholas F. Radel

in Sex before Sex: Figuring the Act in Early Modern England

This chapter analyzes the connection of homoerotic desires and practices with social markers, as represented in John Ford’s The Lover’s Melancholy and Perkin Warbeck. Ford’s plays emphasize the ... More

This chapter analyzes the connection of homoerotic desires and practices with social markers, as represented in John Ford’s The Lover’s Melancholy and Perkin Warbeck. Ford’s plays emphasize the sodomitical potential of all early modern male homosocial relations and interpret sex as a practice indexed by speech, claiming that status-based prohibitions on expressions of desire between men helped to arrange and distinguish between authorized and unauthorized homoeroticism in the early modern period. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Ford’s perception of a modern sexual identity who seeks to gain control of unauthorized expressions of sexual desires.Less