Mona Abaza
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781526145116
- eISBN:
- 9781526152114
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526145123
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Middle Eastern Cultural Anthropology
In Cairo collages, the large-scale political, economic, and social changes in Egypt brought on by the 2011 revolution are set against the declining fortunes of a single apartment building in a ...
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In Cairo collages, the large-scale political, economic, and social changes in Egypt brought on by the 2011 revolution are set against the declining fortunes of a single apartment building in a specific Cairo neighbourhood. The violence in Tahrir Square and Mohamed Mahmud Street; the post-January euphoric moment; the increasing militarisation of urban life; the flourishing of dystopian novels set in Cairo; the neo-liberal imaginaries of Dubai and Singapore as global models; gentrification and evictions in poor neighbourhoods; the forthcoming new administrative capital for Egypt – all are narrated in parallel to the ‘little’ story of the adventures and misfortunes of everyday interactions in a middle-class building in the neighbourhood of Doqi.Less
In Cairo collages, the large-scale political, economic, and social changes in Egypt brought on by the 2011 revolution are set against the declining fortunes of a single apartment building in a specific Cairo neighbourhood. The violence in Tahrir Square and Mohamed Mahmud Street; the post-January euphoric moment; the increasing militarisation of urban life; the flourishing of dystopian novels set in Cairo; the neo-liberal imaginaries of Dubai and Singapore as global models; gentrification and evictions in poor neighbourhoods; the forthcoming new administrative capital for Egypt – all are narrated in parallel to the ‘little’ story of the adventures and misfortunes of everyday interactions in a middle-class building in the neighbourhood of Doqi.
Mahlon Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9789888083862
- eISBN:
- 9789882209091
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888083862.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
The book tells the story of the exodus from China of two million Nationalist loyalists, military and civilians. It depicts the choices faced by millions of families as they were forced to chose which ...
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The book tells the story of the exodus from China of two million Nationalist loyalists, military and civilians. It depicts the choices faced by millions of families as they were forced to chose which child to send ahead to Taiwan, to safety, as they heard the artillery of the advancing communist armies and anticipated certain death. It also shows the creation of a nostalgic community across the Taiwan Strait created by those families divided by the civil war. The argument is that the mainlanders living on Taiwan saw themselves as cursed, exiled people and only found their way, a new identity when they faced a coming-together with their families on the mainland. Though many of the reunions were bittersweet, they did provide the Nationalists and their families a new sense, a reinvention of, the idea of being Chinese.Less
The book tells the story of the exodus from China of two million Nationalist loyalists, military and civilians. It depicts the choices faced by millions of families as they were forced to chose which child to send ahead to Taiwan, to safety, as they heard the artillery of the advancing communist armies and anticipated certain death. It also shows the creation of a nostalgic community across the Taiwan Strait created by those families divided by the civil war. The argument is that the mainlanders living on Taiwan saw themselves as cursed, exiled people and only found their way, a new identity when they faced a coming-together with their families on the mainland. Though many of the reunions were bittersweet, they did provide the Nationalists and their families a new sense, a reinvention of, the idea of being Chinese.
Andrew R. Murphy
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195321289
- eISBN:
- 9780199869855
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195321289.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter attends more closely to the competing ways of constructing and drawing on the past that each type of jeremiad employs. The chapter opens with a consideration of the U. S. Supreme Court's ...
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This chapter attends more closely to the competing ways of constructing and drawing on the past that each type of jeremiad employs. The chapter opens with a consideration of the U. S. Supreme Court's decision in Abington v. Schempp(1963), which outlawed public school prayer. It goes on to explore the uses of the past in traditionalist jeremiads, focusing on traditionalist appeals to nostalgia and an American Golden Age. The progressive jeremiad looks to the past as well, seeking to renarrate founding principles in language appropriate to changing times. Thus the progressive jeremiad is not concerned so much with the way “things really were” in the past, and even less in casting the future into the mold of the past. But the progressive jeremiad's past, containing such a powerful founding promise, is equally constructed, and equally mythic. Both types of jeremiads construct a past in accord with their fundamental political values and agenda, and in doing so call forth critical counternarratives from their political opponents.Less
This chapter attends more closely to the competing ways of constructing and drawing on the past that each type of jeremiad employs. The chapter opens with a consideration of the U. S. Supreme Court's decision in Abington v. Schempp(1963), which outlawed public school prayer. It goes on to explore the uses of the past in traditionalist jeremiads, focusing on traditionalist appeals to nostalgia and an American Golden Age. The progressive jeremiad looks to the past as well, seeking to renarrate founding principles in language appropriate to changing times. Thus the progressive jeremiad is not concerned so much with the way “things really were” in the past, and even less in casting the future into the mold of the past. But the progressive jeremiad's past, containing such a powerful founding promise, is equally constructed, and equally mythic. Both types of jeremiads construct a past in accord with their fundamental political values and agenda, and in doing so call forth critical counternarratives from their political opponents.
Hanjo Berressem
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474450751
- eISBN:
- 9781474480833
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474450751.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
Félix Guattari’s Schizoanalytic Ecology argues that Guattari’s ecosophy, which it regards as a ‘schizoanalytic ecology’ or ‘schizoecology’ for short, is the most consistent conceptual spine of ...
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Félix Guattari’s Schizoanalytic Ecology argues that Guattari’s ecosophy, which it regards as a ‘schizoanalytic ecology’ or ‘schizoecology’ for short, is the most consistent conceptual spine of Guattari’s oeuvre. Engaging with the whole spectrum and range of Guattari’s, as well as Guattari and Deleuze’s works, it maintains that underneath Guattari’s staccato style, his hectic speeds and his conceptual acrobatics, lie a number of insistent questions and demands. How to make life on this planet better, more liveable, more in tune with and adequate to the planet’s functioning? How to do this without false romanticism or nostalgia? At the conceptual centre of the book lies the first comprehensive and in-depth analysis and explication of the diagrammatic meta-model that Guattari develops in his book Schizoanalytic Cartographies, his magnum opus and conceptual legacy. It is here that Guattari develops, in an extremely formalized manner, the schizoecological complementarity of what he calls ‘the given’ (the world) and of ‘the giving’ (the world’s creatures). After considering the implications of schizoecology for the fields of literature, the visual arts, architecture, and research, this book, which is the companion volume to Gilles Deleuze’s Luminous Philosophy, culminates in readings of Guattari’s explicitly ecological texts The Three Ecologies and Chaosmosis.Less
Félix Guattari’s Schizoanalytic Ecology argues that Guattari’s ecosophy, which it regards as a ‘schizoanalytic ecology’ or ‘schizoecology’ for short, is the most consistent conceptual spine of Guattari’s oeuvre. Engaging with the whole spectrum and range of Guattari’s, as well as Guattari and Deleuze’s works, it maintains that underneath Guattari’s staccato style, his hectic speeds and his conceptual acrobatics, lie a number of insistent questions and demands. How to make life on this planet better, more liveable, more in tune with and adequate to the planet’s functioning? How to do this without false romanticism or nostalgia? At the conceptual centre of the book lies the first comprehensive and in-depth analysis and explication of the diagrammatic meta-model that Guattari develops in his book Schizoanalytic Cartographies, his magnum opus and conceptual legacy. It is here that Guattari develops, in an extremely formalized manner, the schizoecological complementarity of what he calls ‘the given’ (the world) and of ‘the giving’ (the world’s creatures). After considering the implications of schizoecology for the fields of literature, the visual arts, architecture, and research, this book, which is the companion volume to Gilles Deleuze’s Luminous Philosophy, culminates in readings of Guattari’s explicitly ecological texts The Three Ecologies and Chaosmosis.
Douglas A. Boyd
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813134086
- eISBN:
- 9780813135892
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813134086.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
A small neighborhood in north Frankfort, Kentucky, Crawfish Bottom was located on fifty acres of swampy land along the Kentucky River. “Craw's” reputation for vice, violence, moral corruption, and ...
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A small neighborhood in north Frankfort, Kentucky, Crawfish Bottom was located on fifty acres of swampy land along the Kentucky River. “Craw's” reputation for vice, violence, moral corruption, and unsanitary conditions made it a target for state funded urban renewal projects that replaced the neighborhood with Frankfort's Capital Plaza in the mid 1960s. This book traces the evolution of the controversial, yet close-knit community that saw 400 families ultimately displaced by urban renewal policies. Using oral histories and first-hand memories, this book not only provides a record of a vanished neighborhood and its culture but also exemplifies the ways in which this type of study enhances the historical record. A former Frankfort policeman described Craw's residents by saying, “They were a rough class of people, who didn't mind killing or being killed.” This book challenges history's judgmental stance by understanding how the former residents of Craw, sometimes unified by their memories and nostalgia, re-imagine and frame their community's history and how this process influences their sense of place.Less
A small neighborhood in north Frankfort, Kentucky, Crawfish Bottom was located on fifty acres of swampy land along the Kentucky River. “Craw's” reputation for vice, violence, moral corruption, and unsanitary conditions made it a target for state funded urban renewal projects that replaced the neighborhood with Frankfort's Capital Plaza in the mid 1960s. This book traces the evolution of the controversial, yet close-knit community that saw 400 families ultimately displaced by urban renewal policies. Using oral histories and first-hand memories, this book not only provides a record of a vanished neighborhood and its culture but also exemplifies the ways in which this type of study enhances the historical record. A former Frankfort policeman described Craw's residents by saying, “They were a rough class of people, who didn't mind killing or being killed.” This book challenges history's judgmental stance by understanding how the former residents of Craw, sometimes unified by their memories and nostalgia, re-imagine and frame their community's history and how this process influences their sense of place.
Nicholas Cook
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195170566
- eISBN:
- 9780199871216
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195170566.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
Schenker's sometimes virulently conservative politics have been a major problem for later commentators, who have sought to minimize their relevance to his theory. Taking as its starting point his ...
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Schenker's sometimes virulently conservative politics have been a major problem for later commentators, who have sought to minimize their relevance to his theory. Taking as its starting point his essay “The mission of German genius” (1921), this chapter argues that while prompted by the experience of the First World War, Schenker's politics expressed an underlying cultural conservatism, with roots in the previous century, that is fundamental to his work. In early 20th-century Vienna, the collision between this conservative tradition and processes of modernization resulted in a perniciously binary pattern of thought that is reflected in Schenker's writings, but also prompted a desire for reconciliation heavily coloured by nostalgia. Both the desire and the nostalgia — which are shared with such disparate contemporaries as the piano manufacturer Ludwig Bösendorfer and T. W. Adorno — are central to Schenker's project, for which music is understood as always imbued with social meaning.Less
Schenker's sometimes virulently conservative politics have been a major problem for later commentators, who have sought to minimize their relevance to his theory. Taking as its starting point his essay “The mission of German genius” (1921), this chapter argues that while prompted by the experience of the First World War, Schenker's politics expressed an underlying cultural conservatism, with roots in the previous century, that is fundamental to his work. In early 20th-century Vienna, the collision between this conservative tradition and processes of modernization resulted in a perniciously binary pattern of thought that is reflected in Schenker's writings, but also prompted a desire for reconciliation heavily coloured by nostalgia. Both the desire and the nostalgia — which are shared with such disparate contemporaries as the piano manufacturer Ludwig Bösendorfer and T. W. Adorno — are central to Schenker's project, for which music is understood as always imbued with social meaning.
Priya Satia
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195331417
- eISBN:
- 9780199868070
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331417.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This chapter explains why Britons were particularly drawn to the Ottoman Empire in this period and how intelligence agents' particular cultural motivations disposed them to epistemological ...
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This chapter explains why Britons were particularly drawn to the Ottoman Empire in this period and how intelligence agents' particular cultural motivations disposed them to epistemological experimentation. It describes the agents' central role in cultural production about the region, as famous explorers and authors intimate with Edwardian literary society, with whom they fashioned a new literary cult of the desert, in which the spy novel figured centrally. Many of them had gone to the Middle East looking for literary inspiration, a modernist aesthetic, romantic adventure, and spiritual fulfillment in a time in which social change and modern science had made many Britons anxious about their place in society and the universe. The agents saw their work in the Middle East, particularly during the war, as an opportunity to shape their own lives and Middle Eastern reality in the image of fiction.Less
This chapter explains why Britons were particularly drawn to the Ottoman Empire in this period and how intelligence agents' particular cultural motivations disposed them to epistemological experimentation. It describes the agents' central role in cultural production about the region, as famous explorers and authors intimate with Edwardian literary society, with whom they fashioned a new literary cult of the desert, in which the spy novel figured centrally. Many of them had gone to the Middle East looking for literary inspiration, a modernist aesthetic, romantic adventure, and spiritual fulfillment in a time in which social change and modern science had made many Britons anxious about their place in society and the universe. The agents saw their work in the Middle East, particularly during the war, as an opportunity to shape their own lives and Middle Eastern reality in the image of fiction.
Mattias Kumm
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199585007
- eISBN:
- 9780191723469
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199585007.003.0010
- Subject:
- Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law
The idea of a ‘postnational constellation’ conjures up a world in which globalisation, privatisation, and individualisation have changed the basic configuration of the legal and political world. The ...
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The idea of a ‘postnational constellation’ conjures up a world in which globalisation, privatisation, and individualisation have changed the basic configuration of the legal and political world. The state has become disaggregated as regulatory authority has shifted towards transnational governance structures and devolved to subnational public authorities or private actors. There are a number of questions one might ask about these changes. Have they strengthened human rights and have they furthered peace, justice, and prosperity within and across societies? Or have they created new inequities and new dangers? The literature on these questions, either generally, or addressing specific policy issues, is endless. This chapter focuses on the more limited question of how these changes can best be described and assessed in constitutional terms. Specifically the question is: How are these changes affecting the tradition of modern constitutionalism? It provides a deeper understanding of the nature of the dispute between triumphalists and nostalgists.Less
The idea of a ‘postnational constellation’ conjures up a world in which globalisation, privatisation, and individualisation have changed the basic configuration of the legal and political world. The state has become disaggregated as regulatory authority has shifted towards transnational governance structures and devolved to subnational public authorities or private actors. There are a number of questions one might ask about these changes. Have they strengthened human rights and have they furthered peace, justice, and prosperity within and across societies? Or have they created new inequities and new dangers? The literature on these questions, either generally, or addressing specific policy issues, is endless. This chapter focuses on the more limited question of how these changes can best be described and assessed in constitutional terms. Specifically the question is: How are these changes affecting the tradition of modern constitutionalism? It provides a deeper understanding of the nature of the dispute between triumphalists and nostalgists.
Elizabeth Outka
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195372694
- eISBN:
- 9780199871704
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372694.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This book investigates a critically important development in the history of modernity: the unprecedented marketing of various forms of authenticity in late 19th and early 20th-century Britain. The ...
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This book investigates a critically important development in the history of modernity: the unprecedented marketing of various forms of authenticity in late 19th and early 20th-century Britain. The selling of objects and places allegedly free of commercial taint—what the book terms the “commodified authentic”—marks a crucial but overlooked turn in modern culture and offers a new way to understand literary modernism and its complex negotiation of tradition and novelty. Writers, marketers, town planners, and architects simultaneously began to draw on the commodified authentic in creating novels, houses, model communities, and commercial displays. The book examines how, in these disparate works, new objects and places were packaged as mini-representations of theoretically noncommercial values; the book explores nostalgic versions of the commodified authentic (such as evocations of an authentic rural past); originary versions (such as appeals to an original, genuine article); and aesthetic versions (involving images of a purified aesthetic free from any taint of the mass market). The chapters draw on literary, commercial, and architectural examples, considering two significant clusters of activity in differing locations. The first cluster (part I, “Commodified Nostalgia and the Country Aesthetic”) focuses on the country, investigating how both rural villages and houses—well-established repositories of authentic meaning—became new sites for intense commercialization that were explicitly produced through modern industry and factory work. The second cluster (part II, “Urban Authenticities”) shifts the focus to the city, arguing that authenticity-often considered antithetical to the urban setting-was translated into malleable images developed within urban spaces. The simultaneous moves to create “authentic” spaces or objects that were supposedly outside the marketplace and also to embrace commerce as the best way to make such spaces and objects controllable and accessible in fact represented a powerful way to balance the contradictions of modernity, as well as an innovative tool to sustain the paradoxes of literary modernism.Less
This book investigates a critically important development in the history of modernity: the unprecedented marketing of various forms of authenticity in late 19th and early 20th-century Britain. The selling of objects and places allegedly free of commercial taint—what the book terms the “commodified authentic”—marks a crucial but overlooked turn in modern culture and offers a new way to understand literary modernism and its complex negotiation of tradition and novelty. Writers, marketers, town planners, and architects simultaneously began to draw on the commodified authentic in creating novels, houses, model communities, and commercial displays. The book examines how, in these disparate works, new objects and places were packaged as mini-representations of theoretically noncommercial values; the book explores nostalgic versions of the commodified authentic (such as evocations of an authentic rural past); originary versions (such as appeals to an original, genuine article); and aesthetic versions (involving images of a purified aesthetic free from any taint of the mass market). The chapters draw on literary, commercial, and architectural examples, considering two significant clusters of activity in differing locations. The first cluster (part I, “Commodified Nostalgia and the Country Aesthetic”) focuses on the country, investigating how both rural villages and houses—well-established repositories of authentic meaning—became new sites for intense commercialization that were explicitly produced through modern industry and factory work. The second cluster (part II, “Urban Authenticities”) shifts the focus to the city, arguing that authenticity-often considered antithetical to the urban setting-was translated into malleable images developed within urban spaces. The simultaneous moves to create “authentic” spaces or objects that were supposedly outside the marketplace and also to embrace commerce as the best way to make such spaces and objects controllable and accessible in fact represented a powerful way to balance the contradictions of modernity, as well as an innovative tool to sustain the paradoxes of literary modernism.
Robert Wuthnow
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691146119
- eISBN:
- 9781400836246
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691146119.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
This chapter reflects on the idea of an American heartland now beset with problems and how it intertwines with nostalgic visions of a better past. Both perceptions play well to the insiders who live ...
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This chapter reflects on the idea of an American heartland now beset with problems and how it intertwines with nostalgic visions of a better past. Both perceptions play well to the insiders who live in declining rural communities and to audiences who have long since pursued more glamorous lifestyles elsewhere. The chapter considers the case of Smith County, situated at the exact geographic middle of the United States: the heart of America's heartland. That America's heartland is a thing of the past is a long-standing refrain in treatments of the region. The reigning motif is nostalgia for a pastoral village-based America. The other common perspective on middle America sees the region as a social problem. The chapter argues that neither nostalgia nor an emphasis on social problems adequately captures the complexity of the social transformations that took place in America's heartland.Less
This chapter reflects on the idea of an American heartland now beset with problems and how it intertwines with nostalgic visions of a better past. Both perceptions play well to the insiders who live in declining rural communities and to audiences who have long since pursued more glamorous lifestyles elsewhere. The chapter considers the case of Smith County, situated at the exact geographic middle of the United States: the heart of America's heartland. That America's heartland is a thing of the past is a long-standing refrain in treatments of the region. The reigning motif is nostalgia for a pastoral village-based America. The other common perspective on middle America sees the region as a social problem. The chapter argues that neither nostalgia nor an emphasis on social problems adequately captures the complexity of the social transformations that took place in America's heartland.
Richard S. Weiss
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195335231
- eISBN:
- 9780199868803
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195335231.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
In Tamil-speaking south India, and in South Asia more generally, secrecy as a mode of disseminating knowledge has undergone a radical change in value, from its consideration as a moral duty that ...
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In Tamil-speaking south India, and in South Asia more generally, secrecy as a mode of disseminating knowledge has undergone a radical change in value, from its consideration as a moral duty that keeps powerful knowledge in the hands of the good, to its regard as a selfish act that has led to the disintegration of a unified Tamil community. This chapter documents the historical trajectory of obfuscation in siddha medicine, a history that is just one instance of more general debates in South Asia about whether the proper locus of knowledge is in public or private spheres, in the archive or in the home. It argues that the function of secrecy as a strategy for garnering prestige is now served by another form of concealed knowledge—that is, Tamil medical knowledge that has been lost in the ravages of time.Less
In Tamil-speaking south India, and in South Asia more generally, secrecy as a mode of disseminating knowledge has undergone a radical change in value, from its consideration as a moral duty that keeps powerful knowledge in the hands of the good, to its regard as a selfish act that has led to the disintegration of a unified Tamil community. This chapter documents the historical trajectory of obfuscation in siddha medicine, a history that is just one instance of more general debates in South Asia about whether the proper locus of knowledge is in public or private spheres, in the archive or in the home. It argues that the function of secrecy as a strategy for garnering prestige is now served by another form of concealed knowledge—that is, Tamil medical knowledge that has been lost in the ravages of time.
Edward Larrissy
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748632817
- eISBN:
- 9780748651696
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748632817.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This book examines the philosophical and literary background to representations of blindness and the blind in the Romantic period. In detailed studies of literary works the author shows how the topic ...
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This book examines the philosophical and literary background to representations of blindness and the blind in the Romantic period. In detailed studies of literary works the author shows how the topic is central to an understanding of British and Irish Romantic literature. While he considers the influence of Milton and the ‘Ossian’ poems, as well as of philosophers including Locke, Diderot, Berkeley and Thomas Reid, much of the book is taken up with new readings of writers of the period. These include canonical authors such as Blake, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron, Keats and Percy and Mary Shelley, as well as less-well-known writers such as Charlotte Brooke and Ann Batten Cristall. There is also a chapter on the popular genre of improving tales for children by writers such as Barbara Hofland and Mary Sherwood. The author finds that, despite the nostalgia for a bardic age of inward vision, the chief emphasis in the period is on the compensations of enhanced sensitivity to music and words. This compensation becomes associated with the loss and gain involved in the modernity of a post-bardic age. Representations of blindness and the blind are found to elucidate a tension at the heart of the Romantic period, between the desire for immediacy of vision on the one hand and, on the other, the historical self-consciousness that always attends it.Less
This book examines the philosophical and literary background to representations of blindness and the blind in the Romantic period. In detailed studies of literary works the author shows how the topic is central to an understanding of British and Irish Romantic literature. While he considers the influence of Milton and the ‘Ossian’ poems, as well as of philosophers including Locke, Diderot, Berkeley and Thomas Reid, much of the book is taken up with new readings of writers of the period. These include canonical authors such as Blake, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron, Keats and Percy and Mary Shelley, as well as less-well-known writers such as Charlotte Brooke and Ann Batten Cristall. There is also a chapter on the popular genre of improving tales for children by writers such as Barbara Hofland and Mary Sherwood. The author finds that, despite the nostalgia for a bardic age of inward vision, the chief emphasis in the period is on the compensations of enhanced sensitivity to music and words. This compensation becomes associated with the loss and gain involved in the modernity of a post-bardic age. Representations of blindness and the blind are found to elucidate a tension at the heart of the Romantic period, between the desire for immediacy of vision on the one hand and, on the other, the historical self-consciousness that always attends it.
Cora Kaplan
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748611478
- eISBN:
- 9780748651627
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748611478.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This book is a series of astute critical reflections on our enduring fascination with all things Victorian. The author looks at the politics of ‘Victoriana’ from the 1970s to the present, a politics ...
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This book is a series of astute critical reflections on our enduring fascination with all things Victorian. The author looks at the politics of ‘Victoriana’ from the 1970s to the present, a politics that emerges from the alternation between nostalgia and critique in fiction, film, biography and literary studies. She asks how Jane Eyre can still evoke tears and rage, as well as inspiring imitation and high art, and why Henry James has become fiction's favourite late Victorian character in the new millennium. ‘Victoriana’, the book argues, has developed a modern history of its own in which we can trace the shifting social and cultural concerns of the last few decades. Through the constant interrogation of ‘history’ in such innovative works as John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman, A.S. Byatt's Possession, David Lodge's Nice Work, Peter Ackroyd's Dickens, Jane Campion's The Piano, Colm Tóibín's The Master, Sarah Waters' Fingersmith, Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty and Julian Barnes' Arthur and George, ‘Victoriana’ maps out a very particular postmodern temporality.Less
This book is a series of astute critical reflections on our enduring fascination with all things Victorian. The author looks at the politics of ‘Victoriana’ from the 1970s to the present, a politics that emerges from the alternation between nostalgia and critique in fiction, film, biography and literary studies. She asks how Jane Eyre can still evoke tears and rage, as well as inspiring imitation and high art, and why Henry James has become fiction's favourite late Victorian character in the new millennium. ‘Victoriana’, the book argues, has developed a modern history of its own in which we can trace the shifting social and cultural concerns of the last few decades. Through the constant interrogation of ‘history’ in such innovative works as John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman, A.S. Byatt's Possession, David Lodge's Nice Work, Peter Ackroyd's Dickens, Jane Campion's The Piano, Colm Tóibín's The Master, Sarah Waters' Fingersmith, Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty and Julian Barnes' Arthur and George, ‘Victoriana’ maps out a very particular postmodern temporality.
Peter J. Schmelz
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195341935
- eISBN:
- 9780199866854
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195341935.003.0009
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter begins by discussing Wolfgang Becker's 2003 film Goodbye Lenin! and its reflection of contemporary German nostalgia for the German Democratic Republic. This chapter then addresses the ...
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This chapter begins by discussing Wolfgang Becker's 2003 film Goodbye Lenin! and its reflection of contemporary German nostalgia for the German Democratic Republic. This chapter then addresses the various manifestations of such nostalgia in the author's interviews with Soviet musicians in the late 1990s, especially in interactions with Rodion Shchedrin, Boris Tishchenko, and Lidiya Davïdova. The post‐Soviet nostalgia reflected in these oral history interviews and its affects on contemporary Soviet memories of the Thaw is also considered. Goodbye Lenin! Rodion Shchedrin Boris Tishchenko Lidiya Davïdova nostalgia memory interviews oral historyLess
This chapter begins by discussing Wolfgang Becker's 2003 film Goodbye Lenin! and its reflection of contemporary German nostalgia for the German Democratic Republic. This chapter then addresses the various manifestations of such nostalgia in the author's interviews with Soviet musicians in the late 1990s, especially in interactions with Rodion Shchedrin, Boris Tishchenko, and Lidiya Davïdova. The post‐Soviet nostalgia reflected in these oral history interviews and its affects on contemporary Soviet memories of the Thaw is also considered. Goodbye Lenin! Rodion Shchedrin Boris Tishchenko Lidiya Davïdova nostalgia memory interviews oral history
Elizabeth Outka
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195372694
- eISBN:
- 9780199871704
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372694.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter introduces the concept of the “commodified authentic” and the nostalgic, originary, and aesthetic forms of such marketing, examining the explosive growth of efforts to sell these various ...
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This chapter introduces the concept of the “commodified authentic” and the nostalgic, originary, and aesthetic forms of such marketing, examining the explosive growth of efforts to sell these various forms in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century. The chapter traces the interdisciplinary expressions of the commodified authentic and explores how such a strategy eased for consumers the abrupt transition from the Victorian age to the modern era. The chapter further analyzes the importance of the commodified authentic in the history of modernity and for the development of literary modernism. Tracing some of the central debates in modernist criticism—such Huyssen’s concept of “the great divide,” and the relations between modernism and material culture—the chapter argues that the commodified authentic offers a new way to explore two critical but missing parts of the equation: how commercial ventures in fact deployed and dismantled the vexed relationship between high and low culture, and how literary modernism developed not through a reliance on the great divide or its dismantling but on the uneasy movement between the two impulses, a movement intimately connected to the paradoxical impulse to construct authenticity. The chapter concludes with a detailed summary of the chapters that follow.Less
This chapter introduces the concept of the “commodified authentic” and the nostalgic, originary, and aesthetic forms of such marketing, examining the explosive growth of efforts to sell these various forms in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century. The chapter traces the interdisciplinary expressions of the commodified authentic and explores how such a strategy eased for consumers the abrupt transition from the Victorian age to the modern era. The chapter further analyzes the importance of the commodified authentic in the history of modernity and for the development of literary modernism. Tracing some of the central debates in modernist criticism—such Huyssen’s concept of “the great divide,” and the relations between modernism and material culture—the chapter argues that the commodified authentic offers a new way to explore two critical but missing parts of the equation: how commercial ventures in fact deployed and dismantled the vexed relationship between high and low culture, and how literary modernism developed not through a reliance on the great divide or its dismantling but on the uneasy movement between the two impulses, a movement intimately connected to the paradoxical impulse to construct authenticity. The chapter concludes with a detailed summary of the chapters that follow.
Elizabeth Outka
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195372694
- eISBN:
- 9780199871704
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372694.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The conclusion argues that the history and development of the commodified authentic are key to understanding later works of high modernism, as well as our contemporary moment, with its strangely ...
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The conclusion argues that the history and development of the commodified authentic are key to understanding later works of high modernism, as well as our contemporary moment, with its strangely hybridized blend of nostalgia and modernity. The chapter investigates how the commodified authentic became a critical modernist tool, analyzing key moments concerning advertising, authenticity, and shopping in works by D. H. Lawrence (Women in Love), James Joyce (Ulysses), and Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse). The chapter concludes by exploring how the commodified authentic remains a powerful marketing technique and cultural strategy.Less
The conclusion argues that the history and development of the commodified authentic are key to understanding later works of high modernism, as well as our contemporary moment, with its strangely hybridized blend of nostalgia and modernity. The chapter investigates how the commodified authentic became a critical modernist tool, analyzing key moments concerning advertising, authenticity, and shopping in works by D. H. Lawrence (Women in Love), James Joyce (Ulysses), and Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse). The chapter concludes by exploring how the commodified authentic remains a powerful marketing technique and cultural strategy.
Robert Hemmings
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748633067
- eISBN:
- 9780748651887
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748633067.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This book explores Siegfried Sassoon’s writing of the twenties, thirties and forties, demonstrating the connections between trauma and nostalgia in a culture saturated with the anxieties of war. ...
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This book explores Siegfried Sassoon’s writing of the twenties, thirties and forties, demonstrating the connections between trauma and nostalgia in a culture saturated with the anxieties of war. Informed by the texts of Freud, W.H.R. Rivers and other psychological writers of the early twentieth century, as well as contemporary theorists of nostalgia and trauma, it examines the pathology of nostalgia conveyed in Sassoon’s unpublished poems, letters and journals, together with his published work. The book situates Sassoon’s ongoing anxiety about ‘Englishness’, modernity and his relation to modernist aesthetics within the context of other literary responses to the legacy of war, and the threat of war’s return, by writers including Edmund Blunden, Robert Graves and T. E. Lawrence. This study teases out the relationship between nostalgia, trauma and autobiography, and forges connections between the literatures of the two world wars. As a case study of modern nostalgia, the book offers an alternative to the perception that Sassoon’s historical and cultural relevance touches the First World War only.Less
This book explores Siegfried Sassoon’s writing of the twenties, thirties and forties, demonstrating the connections between trauma and nostalgia in a culture saturated with the anxieties of war. Informed by the texts of Freud, W.H.R. Rivers and other psychological writers of the early twentieth century, as well as contemporary theorists of nostalgia and trauma, it examines the pathology of nostalgia conveyed in Sassoon’s unpublished poems, letters and journals, together with his published work. The book situates Sassoon’s ongoing anxiety about ‘Englishness’, modernity and his relation to modernist aesthetics within the context of other literary responses to the legacy of war, and the threat of war’s return, by writers including Edmund Blunden, Robert Graves and T. E. Lawrence. This study teases out the relationship between nostalgia, trauma and autobiography, and forges connections between the literatures of the two world wars. As a case study of modern nostalgia, the book offers an alternative to the perception that Sassoon’s historical and cultural relevance touches the First World War only.
Debbora Battalgia
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520087989
- eISBN:
- 9780520915251
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520087989.003.0005
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Global
This chapter deals with nostalgia and its relation to the postcolonial rhetorics of identity. In part, it is an outgrowth of the author's discomfort with the place nostalgia has come to occupy in the ...
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This chapter deals with nostalgia and its relation to the postcolonial rhetorics of identity. In part, it is an outgrowth of the author's discomfort with the place nostalgia has come to occupy in the literatures of anthropology and cultural studies. While recognizing how “nativistic nostalgia” may obscure or deny issues of social inequality, and that Euro-American nostalgia for “tradition” and “otherness” is a dangerous motivator of scholarly quests, this chapter examines the assumption that nostalgia has a categorically negative social value for indigenous actors.Less
This chapter deals with nostalgia and its relation to the postcolonial rhetorics of identity. In part, it is an outgrowth of the author's discomfort with the place nostalgia has come to occupy in the literatures of anthropology and cultural studies. While recognizing how “nativistic nostalgia” may obscure or deny issues of social inequality, and that Euro-American nostalgia for “tradition” and “otherness” is a dangerous motivator of scholarly quests, this chapter examines the assumption that nostalgia has a categorically negative social value for indigenous actors.
Theodore Zeldin
- Published in print:
- 1977
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198221258
- eISBN:
- 9780191678424
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198221258.003.0022
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
Nostalgia was more widespread than optimism. The forces resisting change were more powerful than those which accepted or welcomed it. The years after 1914 therefore need to be looked at also from the ...
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Nostalgia was more widespread than optimism. The forces resisting change were more powerful than those which accepted or welcomed it. The years after 1914 therefore need to be looked at also from the point of view of those popular reactions which were fundamentally conservative, even when they assumed apparently revolutionary stances. It has been suggested that the division of French politics into left and right was ultimately more confusing than useful, and at no time was this more obviously revealed than in this period. The men who opposed change, or who continued to repeat traditional gestures, were to be found in almost all parties, both left and right. Nostalgia was not the only form of conservatism. Another kind of resistance to change came from ignorance about the changes that were taking place, and the inability to understand them. What people thought was happening was, in some ways, as important as what actually did happen.Less
Nostalgia was more widespread than optimism. The forces resisting change were more powerful than those which accepted or welcomed it. The years after 1914 therefore need to be looked at also from the point of view of those popular reactions which were fundamentally conservative, even when they assumed apparently revolutionary stances. It has been suggested that the division of French politics into left and right was ultimately more confusing than useful, and at no time was this more obviously revealed than in this period. The men who opposed change, or who continued to repeat traditional gestures, were to be found in almost all parties, both left and right. Nostalgia was not the only form of conservatism. Another kind of resistance to change came from ignorance about the changes that were taking place, and the inability to understand them. What people thought was happening was, in some ways, as important as what actually did happen.
George Pattison
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780199279777
- eISBN:
- 9780191603464
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199279772.003.0010
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Since early modern times, art has paralleled religion in its response to technology as illustrated by Ruskin’s thoughts on the colour purple. Heidegger also turned to art, especially the poetry of ...
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Since early modern times, art has paralleled religion in its response to technology as illustrated by Ruskin’s thoughts on the colour purple. Heidegger also turned to art, especially the poetry of Hölderlin, as an alternative to technology. Against the background of Benjamin’s essay on ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproducibility’, the question is asked whether the thoroughly technicized art of film can become a focus for such creative counter-technological thinking. A positive answer is developed with reference to Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Nostalgia.Less
Since early modern times, art has paralleled religion in its response to technology as illustrated by Ruskin’s thoughts on the colour purple. Heidegger also turned to art, especially the poetry of Hölderlin, as an alternative to technology. Against the background of Benjamin’s essay on ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproducibility’, the question is asked whether the thoroughly technicized art of film can become a focus for such creative counter-technological thinking. A positive answer is developed with reference to Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Nostalgia.
