On the Colonization of Amerindian Languages and Memories: Renaissance Theories of Writing and the Discontinuity of the Classical Tradition

1992 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter D. Mignolo

When George Balandier proposed his theoretical approach to a colonial situation, the colonization of language was not an issue that piqued the interest of scholars in history, sociology, economics, or anthropology, which were the primary disciplines targeted in his article. When some fifteen years later Michel Foucault underlined the social and historical significance of language (‘l'énoncé*’) and discursive formation, the colonization of language was still not an issue to those attentive to the archaeology of knowledge. Such an archaeology, founded on the paradigmatic example generally understood as the Western tradition, overlooked the case history in which an archaeology of discursive formation would have led to the very root of the massive colonization of language which began in the sixteenth century with the expansion of the Spanish and Portuguese empires.


Author(s):  
Greg Soetomo

Historian has been preserving a historical unity and continuity as a truth. There is an assumption that history has a ‘constant’. This paper explains and proves otherwise. This writing understands history is in fact filled with various ruptures, differences, and deviations. This uncertainty has taken place when ‘language’ becomes a focus of the study of history. In his L’Archeologie du savoir (1969), Michel Foucault (1926-1984) rejected the preconception of history as unity and continuity. He believed the history as a journey with various ruptures, differences, and irregularities that reveal uncertainty. This reversal has taken place when language as the focus’ study in the history of knowledge. Foucault has called this method as the Archaeology of Knowledge. This is the question which this paper is going to respond: “How does Michel Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge, the analytical philosophy of language, elucidate the diversity within Marshall G.S. Hodgson’s history of Islam?” These three below mentioned questions respectively reflect a three-fold dimension of the  diversity in Foucault’s thoughts as explained in his  L’Archeologie du savoir (poststructuralism-structuralism, postmodernism, and philosophy of history). First, how does Hodgson, as a structuralist, write the history of Islam by way of developing system of discourses to reveal meaning; at the same time, as a poststructuralist, he reveals incoherence of discourses and its plurality of meanings? Second, how do we understand that the social structure in the history cannot be simply detached from the chains of power as a constitutive dimension of discourse? Third, how do we comprehend, that in every stages of history, they have its distinctive episteme and diversity of thoughts that support the formation of discourses? This research is essentially to explain the three perspectives of Foucault’s philosophy. At the same time, the three approaches in Hodgson’s writing on the history of Islam are also being explored. Both points of convergence and of divergence have become the whole study of this paper.  



2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-530
Author(s):  
Lökçe Balık

This paper examines theoretical, graphical, and material dimensions of the contemporary print culture of architecture with a focus on one work from a variety of European practices. It regards the contemporary architect's book as a speculative and discursive design object. Michel Foucault, particularly in his works, What is an Author? (1969) and The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), criticises that while constructing an author's body of works, alternative and unclassified genres are omitted from the domain and the texts attached to the single name belong to a system of homogeneity, filiation, and reciprocal explanation. Yet the contemporary architect's book expands the borders of genres by comprising unconventional materials, such as musical notes, artistic photographs, paintings, technical and scientific diagrams, official reports, building regulations, newspaper articles, and advertisements, as well as combining texts and photographs from co-workers, partners, clients, and users, rather than emerging as the product of a single author. The paper interprets the use of various forms of graphical narration and the coalescence of novel terminology and jargon as a contribution to the power of language and discursive formation.



2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Dietrich Jung

Edward Saids Orientalism blev kendt som en anvendt udgave af Michel Foucaults diskursteori. Said hævdede at være inspireret af især Foucaults Archaeology of Knowledge og Discipline and Punish i sine analyser af det essentialiserede islambillede i orientalistikken. Med udgangspunkt i Saids hævdede inspiration fra Foucault kritiserer denne artikel Orientalism’s teoretiske ramme fra et sociologisk perspektiv. Dermed følger artiklen Sadik al-Azm’s argument, at Said ikke havde øje for det fænomen, som al-Azm kaldte ”orientalism in reverse”: Islamistiske og arabisk-nationalistiske tænkeres anvendelse af orientalistiske begreber i deres egne ideologiske konstruktioner. Artiklen argumenterer for, at Said som selv-erklæret foucaultianer burde have været opmærksom på diskursers reciprokke magt. Efterfølgende vises hvordan orientalister og islamister var tæt forbundne i den diskursformation, hvorfra det essentialiserede islambillede opstod. ENGELSK ABSTRACT: Dietrich Jung: Edward Said, Michel Foucault and the Essentialist Image of Islam Edward Said’s Orientalism became known as an applied version of Michel Foucault’s discourse theory. In analyzing the essentialist image of Islam as a core feature in Orientalist scholarship, Said claimed to be inspired by the work of Foucault, in particular by his Archaeology of Knowledge and Discipline and Punish. In using Said’s claim as a point of departure, this article criticizes the theoretical framework of Orientalism from a sociological perspective. Doing so, it examines Sadik al-Azm’s argument that Said had a blind eye to a phenomenon which al-Azm called “Orientalism in reverse”: the self-applications of Orientalist concepts in the ideological constructions of both Islamist and Arab Nationalist thinkers. The article argues that taking Foucault’s theoretical position seriously, Said should have been aware of the reciprocal power of discourses in shaping this essentialist image of Islam. The article then analyzes the phenomenon of “Orientalism in reverse” from a Foucauldian perspective, and shows the ways in which Orientalists and Islamists were closely knit together in a discursive formation from which the essentialist image of Islam emerged. Key words: Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Orientalism in Reverse, Ernest Renan, Islamic Reform.



Author(s):  
Koji Yamamoto

Projects began to emerge during the sixteenth century en masse by promising to relieve the poor, improve the balance of trade, raise money for the Crown, and thereby push England’s imperial ambitions abroad. Yet such promises were often too good to be true. This chapter explores how the ‘reformation of abuses’—a fateful slogan associated with England’s break from Rome—came to be used widely in economic contexts, and undermined promised public service under Elizabeth and the early Stuarts. The negative image of the projector soon emerged in response, reaching both upper and lower echelons of society. The chapter reconstructs the social circulation of distrust under Charles, and considers its repercussions. To do this it brings conceptual tools developed in social psychology and sociology to bear upon sources conventionally studied in literary and political history.



Author(s):  
Claire Taylor

This chapter lays out the theoretical approach for the book and discusses the methodological problems of writing about poverty and the poor in the ancient world. Whilst studying the lives of the poor in the ancient world is to some extent elusive, it argues that historians can do more than simply imagine this group of people back into the gaps left by other evidence. As well as reviewing previous scholarship on poverty in the ancient world, it suggests a way forward which is more in line with contemporary poverty research within the social sciences.



1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 593-606
Author(s):  
John Villiers

The numerous and voluminous reports and letters which the Jesuits wrote on the Moro mission, as on all their missions in Asia, are perhaps of less interest to us now for what they reveal of the methods adopted by the Society of Jesus in this remote corner of their mission field or the details they contain about the successes and failures of individual missionaries, than for the wealth of information they provide on the islands where the Jesuits lived and the indigenous societies with which they came into contact through their work of evangelization. In other words, it is not theprimary purpose of this essay to analyse the Jesuit documents with a view to reconstructing the history of the Moro mission in narrative form but rather to glean from them some of the informationthey contain about the social and political conditions in Moro during the forty years or so in the sixteenth century when both the Jesuit missionaries and the Portuguese were active in the regio Because the Jesuits were often in close touch with local rulers and notables, whether or not they succeeded in converting them to Christianity, and because they lived among their subjects for long periods, depending upon them for the necessities of life and sharing their hardships, their letters and reports often show a deeper understanding of the social, economic and political conditions of the indigenous societies and, one suspects, give a more accurate and measured account of events and personalities than do the official chroniclers and historians of the time, most of whom never ventured further east than Malacca and who in any case were chiefly concerned to glorify the deeds of the Portuguese and justify their actions to the world.



2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Mosebo Simonsen

Abstract This article focuses on YouTube mashups and how we can understand them as a specific subgenre on YouTube. The Mashups are analysed as audiovisual recontextualizations that are given new meaning, e.g., via collaborative social communities or for individual promotional purposes. This is elaborated on throughout a discussion on Mashups as a mode of everyday bricolages, which are moreover discussed through a theoretical approach to Mashups as exponents of what has been called “Vernacular Creativity”. The article also argues that the novelty of Mashups is not be found in its formal characteristic, but rather in its social and communicative abilities within the YouTube community. This leads to the article’s overall argument that the main characteristic of the YouTube Mashup can be explained in terms of connectivity. It is argued that Mashups reveal a double articulation of connectivity; one that involves the social mechanisms of the Mashups, and another mode, which concerns the explicit embedding of structural connectivity that accentuates the medium-specific infrastructure of YouTube. This double articulation of connectivity is furthermore elaborated on by including Grusin and Bolter’s concept of remediation. Methodologically, the article draws on empirical observations and examples of Mashups are included to demonstrate the article’s main arguments.



2001 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-175
Author(s):  
NIMROD HURVITZ ◽  
EDWARD FRAM

Professional jurists are often inquisitive about the subject matter of their calling and in the course of their careers may well develop fascinating insights into the law and those who interpret it. Their employers, however, be they governments, corporations, firms, or private clients, rarely show similar enthusiasm for such insights unless the hours spent pondering the social or historical significance of this or that legal view have a contemporary value that justifies the lawyer's fee.Thankfully, other members of society are rewarded for mining the legal records of the past. For legal historians, the search often focuses on the changing legal ideas and how legal doctrine develops over time to meet the changing needs of societies. Yet because the law generally deals with concrete matters – again, because jurists are paid by people who are unlikely to remunerate those who simply while away their hours making up legal cases – it offers a reservoir of information that can be used, albeit with caution, in fields other than just the history of the law.A partial reconstruction of the law of any given time and place is among the more obvious historical uses of legal documents but statutes, practical decisions, and even theoretical texts can be used to advance other forms of the historical endeavour. Legal works often reflect the values both of jurists and society-at-large, for while the law creates social values it is not immune to changes in these very values.



2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 239-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHILIP WITHINGTON

This review reconsiders the place and importance of urban political culture in England between c. 1550 and c. 1750. Relating recent work on urban political culture to trends in political, social, and cultural historiography, it argues that England's towns and boroughs underwent two ‘renaissances’ over the course of the period: a ‘civic renaissance’ and the better-known ‘urban renaissance’. The former was fashioned in the sixteenth century; however, its legacy continued to inform political thought and practice over 150 years later. Similarly, although the latter is generally associated with ‘the long eighteenth century’, its attributes can be traced to at least the Elizabethan era. While central to broader transitions in post-Reformation political culture, these ‘renaissances’ were crucial in restructuring the social relations and social identity of townsmen and women. They also constituted an important but generally neglected dynamic of England's seventeenth-century ‘troubles’.



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