John W. Griffith
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198183006
- eISBN:
- 9780191673931
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198183006.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, European Literature
This chapter attempts to contextualize the numerous examples of characters in Conrad’s works who ‘go native’ when faced with a primitive culture; the opposite trend of natives who revert to their ...
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This chapter attempts to contextualize the numerous examples of characters in Conrad’s works who ‘go native’ when faced with a primitive culture; the opposite trend of natives who revert to their previous ‘savagery’ is again seen in a historical context. A corollary theme of acclimatization is also explored.Less
This chapter attempts to contextualize the numerous examples of characters in Conrad’s works who ‘go native’ when faced with a primitive culture; the opposite trend of natives who revert to their previous ‘savagery’ is again seen in a historical context. A corollary theme of acclimatization is also explored.
Ana Carden‐Coyne
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199546466
- eISBN:
- 9780191720659
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546466.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter discusses how the quest for civilization was renegotiated at a level of global peace discourse rather than national conflict. It explores the European and Anglophone context of ...
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This chapter discusses how the quest for civilization was renegotiated at a level of global peace discourse rather than national conflict. It explores the European and Anglophone context of reconstruction, and examines how modernism and classicism were important cultural sources for rebuilding civilization. In war and peace, classical ideals of civilization were mobilized: the chapter examines these longer traditions and the impact of war. Classicism in the Academy is considered, especially classics and anthropology — disciplines that framed debates about civilization during the war and ideals of rebuilding afterwards. The impact on modernism is also explored, especially the affect of ‘cultural nostalgia’ on representations of the body. Together, classics, politics, and medicine set the context whereby classical ideals could be rejuvenating. The longer history of European classicism — and anxieties about civilization — provides important background for why, after 1918, physical perfection, social regeneration, and western cultural renewal were imagined through both the classical and the modern in reconstructing the body.Less
This chapter discusses how the quest for civilization was renegotiated at a level of global peace discourse rather than national conflict. It explores the European and Anglophone context of reconstruction, and examines how modernism and classicism were important cultural sources for rebuilding civilization. In war and peace, classical ideals of civilization were mobilized: the chapter examines these longer traditions and the impact of war. Classicism in the Academy is considered, especially classics and anthropology — disciplines that framed debates about civilization during the war and ideals of rebuilding afterwards. The impact on modernism is also explored, especially the affect of ‘cultural nostalgia’ on representations of the body. Together, classics, politics, and medicine set the context whereby classical ideals could be rejuvenating. The longer history of European classicism — and anxieties about civilization — provides important background for why, after 1918, physical perfection, social regeneration, and western cultural renewal were imagined through both the classical and the modern in reconstructing the body.
Christopher Maginn
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199697151
- eISBN:
- 9780191739262
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199697151.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This chapter probes the intractable and controversial subject of national identity in Tudor Ireland. It offers an analysis of William Cecil's attitudes toward not only Ireland's Irish, or Gaelic, ...
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This chapter probes the intractable and controversial subject of national identity in Tudor Ireland. It offers an analysis of William Cecil's attitudes toward not only Ireland's Irish, or Gaelic, population, but also the two varieties of Englishmen resident in Ireland by the second half of the sixteenth century: the so-called ‘Old English’ and ‘New English’ populations. It argues that though Cecil viewed English culture as an example of ‘civility’ and Irish culture and society as inherently ‘savage’, circumstances compelled the minister to acquire a level of understanding of the latter.Less
This chapter probes the intractable and controversial subject of national identity in Tudor Ireland. It offers an analysis of William Cecil's attitudes toward not only Ireland's Irish, or Gaelic, population, but also the two varieties of Englishmen resident in Ireland by the second half of the sixteenth century: the so-called ‘Old English’ and ‘New English’ populations. It argues that though Cecil viewed English culture as an example of ‘civility’ and Irish culture and society as inherently ‘savage’, circumstances compelled the minister to acquire a level of understanding of the latter.
Anne Dufourmantelle
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780823279586
- eISBN:
- 9780823281459
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823279586.003.0026
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
Dufourmantelle discusses the character Piotr Stepanovich Stavrogin in Dostoevsky’s The Devils as an inverted Christ figure. He embodies a gentleness of extreme savagery to the extent that he moves ...
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Dufourmantelle discusses the character Piotr Stepanovich Stavrogin in Dostoevsky’s The Devils as an inverted Christ figure. He embodies a gentleness of extreme savagery to the extent that he moves forward while exposing himself all the time, such as he is, openly transgressing laws and customs without any of the false pretences held by his contemporaries. Gentleness is the temptation of the executioner. Gentleness has always sheltered horror.Less
Dufourmantelle discusses the character Piotr Stepanovich Stavrogin in Dostoevsky’s The Devils as an inverted Christ figure. He embodies a gentleness of extreme savagery to the extent that he moves forward while exposing himself all the time, such as he is, openly transgressing laws and customs without any of the false pretences held by his contemporaries. Gentleness is the temptation of the executioner. Gentleness has always sheltered horror.
Geoffrey Sanborn
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199751693
- eISBN:
- 9780199894819
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199751693.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature, World Literature
Chapter One reconstructs the life history of Te Ara, a Maori chief who led a massacre of the crew and passengers of the British ship Boyd in 1809 in retaliation for having been whipped by the ship's ...
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Chapter One reconstructs the life history of Te Ara, a Maori chief who led a massacre of the crew and passengers of the British ship Boyd in 1809 in retaliation for having been whipped by the ship's captain. The chapter shows, there was a remarkable effort, beginning around 1815, to represent Te Ara's vengeance as the understandable response of an upper-class man to the intolerable insult of a flogging. The true origin of the incident, according to most of the post-1815 commentators on the event, was not the “savagery” of Te Ara but the “imprudence and temerity” of the captain who whipped him.Less
Chapter One reconstructs the life history of Te Ara, a Maori chief who led a massacre of the crew and passengers of the British ship Boyd in 1809 in retaliation for having been whipped by the ship's captain. The chapter shows, there was a remarkable effort, beginning around 1815, to represent Te Ara's vengeance as the understandable response of an upper-class man to the intolerable insult of a flogging. The true origin of the incident, according to most of the post-1815 commentators on the event, was not the “savagery” of Te Ara but the “imprudence and temerity” of the captain who whipped him.
Kelly L. Watson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814763476
- eISBN:
- 9780814760499
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814763476.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
Cannibalism, for medieval and early modern Europeans, was synonymous with savagery. Humans who ate other humans, they believed, were little better than animals. The European colonizers who ...
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Cannibalism, for medieval and early modern Europeans, was synonymous with savagery. Humans who ate other humans, they believed, were little better than animals. The European colonizers who encountered Native Americans described them as cannibals as a matter of course, and they wrote extensively about the lurid cannibal rituals they claim to have witnessed. This book argues that the persistent rumors of cannibalism surrounding Native Americans served a specific and practical purpose for European settlers. These colonizers had to forge new identities for themselves in the Americas and find ways to not only subdue but also co-exist with native peoples. They established hierarchical categories of European superiority and Indian inferiority upon which imperial power in the Americas was predicated. The book focuses on how gender, race, and imperial power intersect within the figure of the cannibal. It reads cannibalism as a part of a dominant European binary in which civilization is rendered as male and savagery is seen as female, and argues that as Europeans came to dominate the New World, they continually rewrote the cannibal narrative to allow for a story in which the savage, effeminate, cannibalistic natives were overwhelmed by the force of virile European masculinity.Less
Cannibalism, for medieval and early modern Europeans, was synonymous with savagery. Humans who ate other humans, they believed, were little better than animals. The European colonizers who encountered Native Americans described them as cannibals as a matter of course, and they wrote extensively about the lurid cannibal rituals they claim to have witnessed. This book argues that the persistent rumors of cannibalism surrounding Native Americans served a specific and practical purpose for European settlers. These colonizers had to forge new identities for themselves in the Americas and find ways to not only subdue but also co-exist with native peoples. They established hierarchical categories of European superiority and Indian inferiority upon which imperial power in the Americas was predicated. The book focuses on how gender, race, and imperial power intersect within the figure of the cannibal. It reads cannibalism as a part of a dominant European binary in which civilization is rendered as male and savagery is seen as female, and argues that as Europeans came to dominate the New World, they continually rewrote the cannibal narrative to allow for a story in which the savage, effeminate, cannibalistic natives were overwhelmed by the force of virile European masculinity.
Philippa Levine
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719097898
- eISBN:
- 9781526104403
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719097898.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
By the middle of the eighteenth century, and as European colonialism became a dominating political force, the naked body had come to represent the savagery and backwardness of colonized and ...
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By the middle of the eighteenth century, and as European colonialism became a dominating political force, the naked body had come to represent the savagery and backwardness of colonized and colonisable peoples. Whether depicted as noble savages attuned to the natural world or as wild peoples beyond the remit of civilization, to Britons the state of nakedness increasingly signified distance from civilization and reason. This chapter explores that linkage, firstly through eighteenth-century British representations of Native Americans and Pacific Islanders, and then through an examination of British discourse concerning dance, where an explicit and often alarmed sexualization of the state of undress was paramount well into the twentieth century. This essay proposes, above all, that nakedness is not a simple description nor a state of being but a contested historical marker with very particular and peculiar ties to the generation of ideas regarding the British self and the foreign or colonial other in the British imperial context.Less
By the middle of the eighteenth century, and as European colonialism became a dominating political force, the naked body had come to represent the savagery and backwardness of colonized and colonisable peoples. Whether depicted as noble savages attuned to the natural world or as wild peoples beyond the remit of civilization, to Britons the state of nakedness increasingly signified distance from civilization and reason. This chapter explores that linkage, firstly through eighteenth-century British representations of Native Americans and Pacific Islanders, and then through an examination of British discourse concerning dance, where an explicit and often alarmed sexualization of the state of undress was paramount well into the twentieth century. This essay proposes, above all, that nakedness is not a simple description nor a state of being but a contested historical marker with very particular and peculiar ties to the generation of ideas regarding the British self and the foreign or colonial other in the British imperial context.
Robert Tierney
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520265783
- eISBN:
- 9780520947665
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520265783.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This is a study of the figures and tropes of “savagery” in Japanese colonial culture. Through an analysis of literary works, ethnographic studies, and a variety of other discourses, the book ...
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This is a study of the figures and tropes of “savagery” in Japanese colonial culture. Through an analysis of literary works, ethnographic studies, and a variety of other discourses, the book demonstrates how imperial Japan constructed its own identity in relation both to the West and to the people it colonized. By examining the representations of Taiwanese aborigines and indigenous Micronesians in the works of prominent writers, the book shows that the trope of the savage underwent several metamorphoses over the course of Japan's colonial period—violent headhunter to be subjugated, ethnographic other to be studied, happy primitive to be exoticized, and hybrid colonial subject to be assimilated.Less
This is a study of the figures and tropes of “savagery” in Japanese colonial culture. Through an analysis of literary works, ethnographic studies, and a variety of other discourses, the book demonstrates how imperial Japan constructed its own identity in relation both to the West and to the people it colonized. By examining the representations of Taiwanese aborigines and indigenous Micronesians in the works of prominent writers, the book shows that the trope of the savage underwent several metamorphoses over the course of Japan's colonial period—violent headhunter to be subjugated, ethnographic other to be studied, happy primitive to be exoticized, and hybrid colonial subject to be assimilated.
Joan Dayan
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520089006
- eISBN:
- 9780520920965
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520089006.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter examines how Haiti functioned as the necessary element in early historical constructions. It evaluates how the two-sided nature of Haiti as alternately Black France and African Antilles ...
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This chapter examines how Haiti functioned as the necessary element in early historical constructions. It evaluates how the two-sided nature of Haiti as alternately Black France and African Antilles helped delineate Western constructions of civilization and savagery. The chapter suggests that the business of being Haitian was more complex than most writerly representations of Haiti ever allowed, and also explains that the events in France have long been fixtures in Haiti's own political or literary storytelling.Less
This chapter examines how Haiti functioned as the necessary element in early historical constructions. It evaluates how the two-sided nature of Haiti as alternately Black France and African Antilles helped delineate Western constructions of civilization and savagery. The chapter suggests that the business of being Haitian was more complex than most writerly representations of Haiti ever allowed, and also explains that the events in France have long been fixtures in Haiti's own political or literary storytelling.
J. Peter Brosius
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520227477
- eISBN:
- 9780520935693
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520227477.003.0004
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
Discussing the Penan of Sarawak, this chapter explores cultural citizenship by triangulating among three viewpoints: The national—that of the Sarawak state and the Malaysian federal government; the ...
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Discussing the Penan of Sarawak, this chapter explores cultural citizenship by triangulating among three viewpoints: The national—that of the Sarawak state and the Malaysian federal government; the local—that of the indigenous Penan; and the transnational—that of the Northern (European and American) environmentalists. The study delineates the asymmetrical perceptions and power relations among the three groups. Government officials hope to convert the Penan from what they see as their present state of savagery into citizens of the national community like themselves. They view the Penan as a remnant of the past and argue for strategies to transform, improve, and update them rather than, as they say, attempting to preserve Penan lifeways as if the Penan belonged in a museum.Less
Discussing the Penan of Sarawak, this chapter explores cultural citizenship by triangulating among three viewpoints: The national—that of the Sarawak state and the Malaysian federal government; the local—that of the indigenous Penan; and the transnational—that of the Northern (European and American) environmentalists. The study delineates the asymmetrical perceptions and power relations among the three groups. Government officials hope to convert the Penan from what they see as their present state of savagery into citizens of the national community like themselves. They view the Penan as a remnant of the past and argue for strategies to transform, improve, and update them rather than, as they say, attempting to preserve Penan lifeways as if the Penan belonged in a museum.
Jeff Mielke
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520265783
- eISBN:
- 9780520947665
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520265783.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to understand Japanese colonial culture by analyzing the tropes of savagery in literary works and exploring links between ...
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This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to understand Japanese colonial culture by analyzing the tropes of savagery in literary works and exploring links between them and wider social discourses. An ancillary aim of the book is to place the Japanese empire within the comparative context of global imperial discourses and to initiate a dialogue with current postcolonial theory, which is so deeply informed by the study of European empire. The chapter then discusses the following: allegories of the self, violent savages and children of paradise, Japan in postcolonial studies, colonial mimicry and mimetic imperialism, the ambivalences of colored imperialism, the triangle of Japanese colonial discourse, and the rhetoric of sameness/similarity. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less
This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to understand Japanese colonial culture by analyzing the tropes of savagery in literary works and exploring links between them and wider social discourses. An ancillary aim of the book is to place the Japanese empire within the comparative context of global imperial discourses and to initiate a dialogue with current postcolonial theory, which is so deeply informed by the study of European empire. The chapter then discusses the following: allegories of the self, violent savages and children of paradise, Japan in postcolonial studies, colonial mimicry and mimetic imperialism, the ambivalences of colored imperialism, the triangle of Japanese colonial discourse, and the rhetoric of sameness/similarity. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
Jeff Mielke
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520265783
- eISBN:
- 9780520947665
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520265783.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This concluding chapter examines tropes of savagery in the literature of the postwar period. Cannibalism features as a major theme in three prominent pacifist and humanistic novels that were ...
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This concluding chapter examines tropes of savagery in the literature of the postwar period. Cannibalism features as a major theme in three prominent pacifist and humanistic novels that were published within ten years of Japan's defeat and the loss of its empire. By focusing on this theme, it examines continuities and discontinuities between tropes of savagery in the colonial era and in the immediate postcolonial period.Less
This concluding chapter examines tropes of savagery in the literature of the postwar period. Cannibalism features as a major theme in three prominent pacifist and humanistic novels that were published within ten years of Japan's defeat and the loss of its empire. By focusing on this theme, it examines continuities and discontinuities between tropes of savagery in the colonial era and in the immediate postcolonial period.
Albert H. Tricomi
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813035451
- eISBN:
- 9780813039640
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813035451.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Oak Openings is examined thoroughly in this chapter. The novel looks at the fictional missionary life of Parson Amen. The novel, which was written during the Mexican ...
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James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Oak Openings is examined thoroughly in this chapter. The novel looks at the fictional missionary life of Parson Amen. The novel, which was written during the Mexican War, rejuvenates the Puritan myth of American exceptionalism by illustrating an expansionist nation untrammeled by Europe's vices. The novel mainly explores the theme of beneficial Christianity in the conversion of the American Indian. The basic binary leading The Oak Openings is that of savagery versus civilization.Less
James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Oak Openings is examined thoroughly in this chapter. The novel looks at the fictional missionary life of Parson Amen. The novel, which was written during the Mexican War, rejuvenates the Puritan myth of American exceptionalism by illustrating an expansionist nation untrammeled by Europe's vices. The novel mainly explores the theme of beneficial Christianity in the conversion of the American Indian. The basic binary leading The Oak Openings is that of savagery versus civilization.
Robert Launay
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226575254
- eISBN:
- 9780226575421
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226575421.003.0010
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Theory and Practice
French Enlightenment writing about savagery, centered on America and Oceania, was centrally concerned with the relationship between property and inequality, while writing about despotism in Asia ...
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French Enlightenment writing about savagery, centered on America and Oceania, was centrally concerned with the relationship between property and inequality, while writing about despotism in Asia revolved around political centralization. The two literatures did not tend to intersect until they were synthesized by British, and especially Scottish, thinkers. Adam Ferguson, following the lead of Adam Smith, identified the division of labor as the motor of an ambivalent progress, expanding the horizons of the few while limiting those of the majority, imperiling democratic institutions and personal liberties. John Millar, his younger contemporary, developed his arguments even more systematically if somewhat more optimistically. In England, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire pitted Roman civilization as delicately poised between the savagery of the Germans and the Oriental despotism of the Persians, liberty without order as opposed to order without liberty. His account was in many ways a metaphor for the predicament of modern Europe as he understood it.Less
French Enlightenment writing about savagery, centered on America and Oceania, was centrally concerned with the relationship between property and inequality, while writing about despotism in Asia revolved around political centralization. The two literatures did not tend to intersect until they were synthesized by British, and especially Scottish, thinkers. Adam Ferguson, following the lead of Adam Smith, identified the division of labor as the motor of an ambivalent progress, expanding the horizons of the few while limiting those of the majority, imperiling democratic institutions and personal liberties. John Millar, his younger contemporary, developed his arguments even more systematically if somewhat more optimistically. In England, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire pitted Roman civilization as delicately poised between the savagery of the Germans and the Oriental despotism of the Persians, liberty without order as opposed to order without liberty. His account was in many ways a metaphor for the predicament of modern Europe as he understood it.
Stein Tønnesson
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520256026
- eISBN:
- 9780520944602
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520256026.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
In the units of the French civilians, for many, many hours, their electricity and water supply were cut off, and then the Vietnamese assaulted the French civilians in their private houses and took ...
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In the units of the French civilians, for many, many hours, their electricity and water supply were cut off, and then the Vietnamese assaulted the French civilians in their private houses and took some 200 hostages. Many civilians had been armed by the Sûreté, and some of them are burned or harmed in horrible ways. These extremes were exploited to the maximum by French propaganda, which depicted Ho and Giap as directly responsible for the murder of French citizens. The Hanoi killings pushed the French myth of a generic Far Eastern racist savagery, which had found expression in the Japanese execution of all the French survivors after the battle for Langson on March 11, 1945, the rampage at the Cité Héraud in Saigon on September 24, 1945, where 120 Frenchmen were killed, and now the atrocities in Hanoi.Less
In the units of the French civilians, for many, many hours, their electricity and water supply were cut off, and then the Vietnamese assaulted the French civilians in their private houses and took some 200 hostages. Many civilians had been armed by the Sûreté, and some of them are burned or harmed in horrible ways. These extremes were exploited to the maximum by French propaganda, which depicted Ho and Giap as directly responsible for the murder of French citizens. The Hanoi killings pushed the French myth of a generic Far Eastern racist savagery, which had found expression in the Japanese execution of all the French survivors after the battle for Langson on March 11, 1945, the rampage at the Cité Héraud in Saigon on September 24, 1945, where 120 Frenchmen were killed, and now the atrocities in Hanoi.
Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520232396
- eISBN:
- 9780520928176
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520232396.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
Since the beginnings of Western scholarship in India, the figure of the blood-thirsty, violent, and explicitly sexual goddess Kālī appears to have held an especially central, but also ambivalent and ...
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Since the beginnings of Western scholarship in India, the figure of the blood-thirsty, violent, and explicitly sexual goddess Kālī appears to have held an especially central, but also ambivalent and disturbing, place in the colonial imagination. In the eyes of the early British colonial authorities, missionaries, and scholars, Kālī was identified as the most depraved of all forms of modern popular Hinduism, the quintessence of the licentiousness and idolatry that had destroyed the noble, monotheistic spirit of the Vedas and Vedānta. This chapter argues that Kālī was conceived by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century colonialists as the worst example of irrational Indian savagery. Such a reading of Kālī as the quintessential Other and the “extreme Orient” influenced Britons' dealings with the “Thugs” and led to the creation of a genre of Victorian novels centered on the lurid East. The chapter also discusses the strategies of appropriation and subversion used by Indian nationalists, who turned this Orientalist Kālī against her colonial creators in their own literatures and actions.Less
Since the beginnings of Western scholarship in India, the figure of the blood-thirsty, violent, and explicitly sexual goddess Kālī appears to have held an especially central, but also ambivalent and disturbing, place in the colonial imagination. In the eyes of the early British colonial authorities, missionaries, and scholars, Kālī was identified as the most depraved of all forms of modern popular Hinduism, the quintessence of the licentiousness and idolatry that had destroyed the noble, monotheistic spirit of the Vedas and Vedānta. This chapter argues that Kālī was conceived by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century colonialists as the worst example of irrational Indian savagery. Such a reading of Kālī as the quintessential Other and the “extreme Orient” influenced Britons' dealings with the “Thugs” and led to the creation of a genre of Victorian novels centered on the lurid East. The chapter also discusses the strategies of appropriation and subversion used by Indian nationalists, who turned this Orientalist Kālī against her colonial creators in their own literatures and actions.
MARCIA STEPHENSON
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813032641
- eISBN:
- 9780813038230
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813032641.003.0008
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This chapter examines efforts in Bolivia by writers and activists who deliberately invoked and reappropriated “savagery” as a means of disrupting dominant forms of representation that naturalize the ...
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This chapter examines efforts in Bolivia by writers and activists who deliberately invoked and reappropriated “savagery” as a means of disrupting dominant forms of representation that naturalize the continuing violence of colonial social relations. It focuses on the period when Aymara intellectuals asserted themselves in the public sphere as activist reading and writing subjects dedicated to articulating alternative histories and identities. The chapter highlights the work of Fausto Reinaga, whose works were considered to be a form of lettered savagery.Less
This chapter examines efforts in Bolivia by writers and activists who deliberately invoked and reappropriated “savagery” as a means of disrupting dominant forms of representation that naturalize the continuing violence of colonial social relations. It focuses on the period when Aymara intellectuals asserted themselves in the public sphere as activist reading and writing subjects dedicated to articulating alternative histories and identities. The chapter highlights the work of Fausto Reinaga, whose works were considered to be a form of lettered savagery.
John Donoghue
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226157658
- eISBN:
- 9780226072869
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226072869.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
In order to advance the Reformation through economic gain in a West Indian plantation colony, Providence Island evolved into the first slave society in the English Atlantic. New England’s development ...
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In order to advance the Reformation through economic gain in a West Indian plantation colony, Providence Island evolved into the first slave society in the English Atlantic. New England’s development in the 1630s proved very different, as it opened up a new theater of conflict, most notably in the Antinomian Controversy, between the proponents of radical and magisterial reformation. But religious controversy here devolved quickly into a political crisis that revealed how the saints disagreed about how to apply the fundamental tenet of their faith, the golden rule or “royal law,” both within their own community and in relation to their native American neighbors. Supporters of the magisterial reformation ultimately refused their radical opponents Christian charity, exiling them as a heretical and seditious fifth column that weakened the bonds of a patriarchal community of saints as it began racializing a “savage” enemy, the Pequot Indians, on the colonial frontier. The colonial creation of the interdependent foils of sedition and savagery thus guided the magisterial faction’s first foray into defining puritan orthodoxy in America, an attempt that made the preservation of the patriarchal sensibilities of early modern English society indispensable to advancing the Kingdom of God beyond the seas.Less
In order to advance the Reformation through economic gain in a West Indian plantation colony, Providence Island evolved into the first slave society in the English Atlantic. New England’s development in the 1630s proved very different, as it opened up a new theater of conflict, most notably in the Antinomian Controversy, between the proponents of radical and magisterial reformation. But religious controversy here devolved quickly into a political crisis that revealed how the saints disagreed about how to apply the fundamental tenet of their faith, the golden rule or “royal law,” both within their own community and in relation to their native American neighbors. Supporters of the magisterial reformation ultimately refused their radical opponents Christian charity, exiling them as a heretical and seditious fifth column that weakened the bonds of a patriarchal community of saints as it began racializing a “savage” enemy, the Pequot Indians, on the colonial frontier. The colonial creation of the interdependent foils of sedition and savagery thus guided the magisterial faction’s first foray into defining puritan orthodoxy in America, an attempt that made the preservation of the patriarchal sensibilities of early modern English society indispensable to advancing the Kingdom of God beyond the seas.
Christopher F. Loar
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823256914
- eISBN:
- 9780823261437
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823256914.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Political Magic examines British fictions of exploration and colonialism from 1650 to 1750, arguing that narratives of intercultural contact reimagine political categories such as sovereignty and ...
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Political Magic examines British fictions of exploration and colonialism from 1650 to 1750, arguing that narratives of intercultural contact reimagine political categories such as sovereignty and popular power. These fictions refigure the commoner as a superstitious savage encountering Britons as civilizing sovereigns. Authors of these narratives use the colonial scene as a political allegory; just as the sovereign is in some sense exterior to the legal order, so is the colonist exterior to the colonized. These fictions reveal aspects of political thought in this period that official discourse shunted aside-particularly the status of common folk as political subjects, whose “liberty” was proclaimed even as it was undermined in theory and in practice. Political Magic traces fictional efforts to manage these tensions. These texts repeatedly focalize moments of savage wonder, in which “uncivilized” people stand astonished when first witnessing European displays of technological prowess, particularly gunpowder. This repeated motif--the “first gunshot topos”--performs important conceptual work on ideas of consent and political legitimacy. Wonder induces admiration, and admiration transforms the unruly savage into a docile subject. However, as manifestations of force held in abeyance, these technologies also signal the reliance of sovereigns on extreme violence as the foundation of their authority. By examining works by Margaret Cavendish, Daniel Defoe, Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, and Eliza Haywood in conjunction with political writing and travelogues, Political Magic locates a subterranean discourse of sovereignty in the century after Hobbes, finding surprising affinities between the government of “savages” and of Britons.Less
Political Magic examines British fictions of exploration and colonialism from 1650 to 1750, arguing that narratives of intercultural contact reimagine political categories such as sovereignty and popular power. These fictions refigure the commoner as a superstitious savage encountering Britons as civilizing sovereigns. Authors of these narratives use the colonial scene as a political allegory; just as the sovereign is in some sense exterior to the legal order, so is the colonist exterior to the colonized. These fictions reveal aspects of political thought in this period that official discourse shunted aside-particularly the status of common folk as political subjects, whose “liberty” was proclaimed even as it was undermined in theory and in practice. Political Magic traces fictional efforts to manage these tensions. These texts repeatedly focalize moments of savage wonder, in which “uncivilized” people stand astonished when first witnessing European displays of technological prowess, particularly gunpowder. This repeated motif--the “first gunshot topos”--performs important conceptual work on ideas of consent and political legitimacy. Wonder induces admiration, and admiration transforms the unruly savage into a docile subject. However, as manifestations of force held in abeyance, these technologies also signal the reliance of sovereigns on extreme violence as the foundation of their authority. By examining works by Margaret Cavendish, Daniel Defoe, Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, and Eliza Haywood in conjunction with political writing and travelogues, Political Magic locates a subterranean discourse of sovereignty in the century after Hobbes, finding surprising affinities between the government of “savages” and of Britons.
Edin Hajdarpasic
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801453717
- eISBN:
- 9781501701115
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801453717.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This epilogue maintains that while “the Bosnian savagery” is quintessentially modern, it still partakes of a discrete kind of modernity that sets it apart from Western “liberal nationalism” and thus ...
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This epilogue maintains that while “the Bosnian savagery” is quintessentially modern, it still partakes of a discrete kind of modernity that sets it apart from Western “liberal nationalism” and thus requires special explanation. It argues that scholars should suggest “solutions” to the situation in contemporary Bosnia, generally by establishing a consensus on conflicting historical claims, presenting proposals for reconciling Serb–Croat–Muslim parties, or creating a more stable political framework for the country. These solutions “stabilize the situation” in the long term and provide a relatively satisfactory answer to seething tensions in various multiethnic areas. Nation-making in this sense appears like a jigsaw puzzle. In this model, thousands of pieces, interlocking shapes, and particular physical constraints limit possibilities for movement and change.Less
This epilogue maintains that while “the Bosnian savagery” is quintessentially modern, it still partakes of a discrete kind of modernity that sets it apart from Western “liberal nationalism” and thus requires special explanation. It argues that scholars should suggest “solutions” to the situation in contemporary Bosnia, generally by establishing a consensus on conflicting historical claims, presenting proposals for reconciling Serb–Croat–Muslim parties, or creating a more stable political framework for the country. These solutions “stabilize the situation” in the long term and provide a relatively satisfactory answer to seething tensions in various multiethnic areas. Nation-making in this sense appears like a jigsaw puzzle. In this model, thousands of pieces, interlocking shapes, and particular physical constraints limit possibilities for movement and change.
