SPACE, POWER AND HEALING IN EQUATORIAL AFRICA Colonial Rule and Crisis in Equatorial Africa: Southern Gabon ca. 1850–1940. CHRISTOPHER GRAY. Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press, 2002. Pp. xxii+275. $65 (ISBN 1-58046-048-8).

2005 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-143
Author(s):  
FLORENCE BERNAULT
Keyword(s):  
Physical Environment ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Anglophone Literature ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Equatorial Africa ◽  
Political Resources ◽  
Land Disputes ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Ideological Construction

THE Anglophone literature has conceptualized the history of the African ‘space’ through two major approaches. Fine-grained reconstructions of land disputes have helped to illuminate colonial changes in the political and economic control over residential and productive units, and to assess the local (im)possibilities for Africans of accumulating landed property and/or penetrating the new plantation and market economy. More recently, environmental studies have encouraged historians to uncover how fundamental alterations in the relationships between communities and their physical environment have been shaping ancient and recent struggles for identities and socio-political resources. Meanwhile, renewed attention to cognitive notions of space by anthropologists on the one hand, and literary critics on the other, has delineated deep structuring principles in the ideological construction of space among Africans and colonizers. Few historians have followed through, however, and historicized such imaginaries. Among those who have done so, and have traced people's conceptual, commemorative and moral visions of land, fewer still have ventured beyond the boundaries of specific locales and societies. By reconstructing a longue durée history of the disruptions in both the physical and cognitive spaces of the Gabonese rainforest, Chris Gray's book stands as a major attempt to bridge these gaps.

scholarly journals Fatores associados ao fraco acesso das meninas ao Ensino Primário em Moçambique

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 237
Author(s):  
Octavio Jose Zimbico
Keyword(s):  
Primary Education ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Education History ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Poor Access ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Social And Cultural Factors

O fraco acesso das meninas à escola primária em Moçambique está no centro da questão deste texto, que tem como problema o fato de não se saber as razões por que, historicamente, as meninas têm estado em desvantagem numérica, na escola primária, comparativamente com os meninos. O objetivo é identificar e tipificar as possíveis fatores associados a este fenômeno desde o período anterior a 1975, ano em que o país alcançou a sua independência do domínio colonial português. Do ponto de vista metodológico, a revisão bibliográfica, o estudo da legislação, a análise dos dados estatísticos (primários e secundários) constituem a base de sustentação das ideias deste trabalho, de natureza histórica. A análise desse material revela que, por um lado, fatores socioculturais conjugados com os de natureza política têm estado na origem do fraco acesso das meninas à escola primária em Moçambique, desde a segunda metade do século XIX. Por outro, esses fatores e o modo de organização e funcionamento da sociedade moçambicana influenciam-se mutuamente.Factors associated with girls’ poor access to Primary Education in Mozambique. The poor access of girls to Primary Education in Mozambique is at the heart of this text, which has as the problem of not knowing the reasons why, historically, girls have been numerically disadvantaged in Primary Education, when compared to Boys. The aim is to identify and typify the possible factors associated with this phenomenon, from the period prior to 1975, the year in which the country reached its independence from Portuguese colonial rule. From the methodological point of view, the bibliographic review, the study of legislation, and the analysis of statistical data (primary and secondary) are the basis for sustaining the ideas of this historical work. The analysis of this material reveals that, on the one hand, social and cultural factors linked with those of a political nature have been the origin of the poor access of girls to primary school in Mozambique, since the second half of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, these factors and the way of organization and functioning of Mozambican society influence each other. Keywords: Gender; Girls; Access to Primary Education; History of Education in Mozambique.

scholarly journals Postcolonial Political Theory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Busbridge
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Political Modernity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
The One ◽  
Dynamics Problems ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
The Relationship

Postcolonial political theory is an emerging subfield of political theory, although its parameters and particular meanings are less than clearly defined and subject to contestation. Related to a more general critique of political theory’s traditional Eurocentric bias, postcolonial political theory is motivated by three key issues: first, how colonialism shaped the traditional Western canon; second, the broad silence on colonialism and its legacies in mainstream political theorizing; and third, the tensions, particularly within liberal political theory, between its universal pretentions and culturally specific Western location of articulation. The scope of inquiry in postcolonial political theory is broadly responsive to postcolonialism, a body of thought concerned with tracing, engaging, and responding to the cultural, political, social, and economic legacies of Western colonialism, particularly the period of European colonial rule between the 18th and mid-20th centuries. With a particular emphasis on the relationship between power and knowledge, postcolonial theories and approaches take the development of modernity as coterminous with European colonial and imperial projects, and therefore examine the ways in which modern systems of knowledge are implicated in colonial relations of power. Postcolonial political theory similarly treats political modernity as imprinted by Western colonialism and imperialism, making for distinct political dynamics, problems, and forms of injustice, on the one hand, and shaping the history of European political thought, on the other. In this regard, postcolonial political theory does not just call for a widening of the remit of political theory beyond the traditional European canon to include non-Western texts, voices, and perspectives. It also raises profound questions about the ways in which the categories, ideas, and assumptions of political theory have been complicit in and served to legitimize the domination of colonized peoples and indigenous, non-Western, and subaltern minorities. Postcolonial political theory seeks to articulate alternative modes of theorizing that can better speak to the concerns of justice for the formerly colonized, indigenous peoples, and those affected by the neo-imperial features of the current global order. An important element of this is concerned with methodology, in particular the use of multidisciplinary insights from history, cultural studies, and anthropology, among others, as well as thinkers and texts that would not conventionally be considered “political” according to dominant Western conceptions of politics.

From Colonisation to Avénement: Henri Brunschwig and the History of Afrique Noire

1990 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hargreaves
Keyword(s):  
World History ◽  
African Studies ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Equatorial Africa ◽  
Original Works ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Colonial

Henri Brunschwig (1904–1989) began his career as a notable historian of Germany but became an influential pioneer of African studies in France, first at the Ecole Nationale de la France d'Outre-Mer (1948–60) and thereafter at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. His own research ranged from Brazza's role in the French occupation of equatorial Africa to the part played by Africans in establishing and sustaining French colonial rule. His lucid and original works of synthesis helped greatly to bring an evolving body of knowledge about the African past into the frame of modern world history. His emphasis both on rigorous standards of source-criticism and on the need for broad horizons in time and space continues to exercise authority over historians in France, Africa, and beyond.

scholarly journals Empire and Elites after the Muslim Conquest

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-140
Author(s):  
Asma Barlas
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
The One ◽  
The Middle Ages

Perhaps one would not expect a history of “Islamic rule” in the seventh andeighth centuries in what is now the Middle East to illuminate any contemporarydebate on Islam, in particular about whether there is an innate civilizationalclash between it and the (Christian) West. And yet this modeststudy manages to do that, if only tangentially and coincidentally, and if readwith some reservations.Cambridge historians are renowned for their preoccupation with elites,generally of provinces far removed from the centers of power, and hencetheir single-minded focus on the “politics of notables” of relatively minorlocalities. From such provincial concerns, however, emerge more universalclaims about, for instance, the nature of British colonial rule in India or ofIslamic rule in the Middle Ages. Chase Robinson, following this tradition,assesses – as “critic and architect” – the changing status of Christian andMuslim elites following the Muslim conquest of northern Mesopotamia.Three themes are implicit: the interrelationship of history and historiography,the effects of the Muslim conquest, and the nature of Islam. Thus, Iwill review it thematically as well. I should point out that I engage his workas a generalist, not as a historian, and that I am interested not so much in hisretelling of events as in the political meanings with which he endows them.(Re)writing History. To reconstruct a past about which there is such adearth of primary period sources is at best hazardous. For one, where documentssuch as conquest treaties exist, they have little truth-value, saysRobinson. He thus specifies that he is concerned less with their accuracythan with how they were perceived to have governed relations between localMuslims/imperial authorities, on the one hand, and Christians on the other.For another, conquest history in fact “describes post-conquest history.” Thusthe “conquest past” is a re-presentation of events from a post-conquest present,an exercise in which Christians and Muslims had an equal stake sincethe “conquest past could serve to underpin [their] authority alike.”Historians then must disentangle events from their own narration, or at leastrecognize the ways in which recording events also reframes them.Fortunately for him, says Robinson, his work was enabled by that of al-Azdi, a tenth-century Muslim historian. However, even as he admits that ...

Misreading Egypt

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Schotter
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
Tower Of Babel ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Sergei Eisenstein ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Modern Technologies

The first chapter of Hieroglyphic Modernisms exposes the complex history of Western misconceptions of Egyptian writing from antiquity to the present. Hieroglyphs bridge the gap between modern technologies and the ancient past, looking forward to the rise of new media and backward to the dispersal of languages in the mythical moment of the Tower of Babel. The contradictory ways in which hieroglyphs were interpreted in the West come to shape the differing ways that modernist writers and filmmakers understood the relationship between writing, film, and other new media. On the one hand, poets like Ezra Pound and film theorists like Vachel Lindsay and Sergei Eisenstein use the visual languages of China and of Egypt as a more primal or direct alternative to written words. But Freud, Proust, and the later Eisenstein conversely emphasize the phonetic qualities of Egyptian writing, its similarity to alphabetical scripts. The chapter concludes by arguing that even avant-garde invocations of hieroglyphics depend on narrative form through an examination of Hollis Frampton’s experimental film Zorns Lemma.

Theodor W. Adorno

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colby Dickinson
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
History Of Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

In his somewhat controversial book Remnants of Auschwitz, Agamben makes brief reference to Theodor Adorno’s apparently contradictory remarks on perceptions of death post-Auschwitz, positions that Adorno had taken concerning Nazi genocidal actions that had seemed also to reflect something horribly errant in the history of thought itself. There was within such murderous acts, he had claimed, a particular degradation of death itself, a perpetration of our humanity bound in some way to affect our perception of reason itself. The contradictions regarding Auschwitz that Agamben senses to be latent within Adorno’s remarks involve the intuition ‘on the one hand, of having realized the unconditional triumph of death against life; on the other, of having degraded and debased death. Neither of these charges – perhaps like every charge, which is always a genuinely legal gesture – succeed in exhausting Auschwitz’s offense, in defining its case in point’ (RA 81). And this is the stance that Agamben wishes to hammer home quite emphatically vis-à-vis Adorno’s limitations, ones that, I would only add, seem to linger within Agamben’s own formulations in ways that he has still not come to reckon with entirely: ‘This oscillation’, he affirms, ‘betrays reason’s incapacity to identify the specific crime of Auschwitz with certainty’ (RA 81).

Sea Urchins and Circuses: The Modernist Natural Histories of Jean Painlevé and Alexander Calder

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-211
Author(s):  
Patricia E. Chu
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Sea Urchins ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Machine Age ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Historian

The Paris avant-garde milieu from which both Cirque Calder/Calder's Circus and Painlevé’s early films emerged was a cultural intersection of art and the twentieth-century life sciences. In turning to the style of current scientific journals, the Paris surrealists can be understood as engaging the (life) sciences not simply as a provider of normative categories of materiality to be dismissed, but as a companion in apprehending the “reality” of a world beneath the surface just as real as the one visible to the naked eye. I will focus in this essay on two modernist practices in new media in the context of the history of the life sciences: Jean Painlevé’s (1902–1989) science films and Alexander Calder's (1898–1976) work in three-dimensional moving art and performance—the Circus. In analyzing Painlevé’s work, I discuss it as exemplary of a moment when life sciences and avant-garde technical methods and philosophies created each other rather than being classified as separate categories of epistemological work. In moving from Painlevé’s films to Alexander Calder's Circus, Painlevé’s cinematography remains at the forefront; I use his film of one of Calder's performances of the Circus, a collaboration the men had taken two decades to complete. Painlevé’s depiction allows us to see the elements of Calder's work that mark it as akin to Painlevé’s own interest in a modern experimental organicism as central to the so-called machine-age. Calder's work can be understood as similarly developing an avant-garde practice along the line between the bestiary of the natural historian and the bestiary of the modern life scientist.

NURTURING OF CHILDREN THROUGH DRAMA AND THEATRE: THE CASE OF INTWASA KOBULAWAYO PERFORMANCES

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-99
Author(s):  
Vimbai Moreblessing Matiza
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Children And Youth ◽  
Main Task ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Theatrical Performances ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

Dramatic and theatrical performances have a long history of being used as tools to enhance development in children and youth. In pre-colonial times there were some forms of drama and theatre used by different communities in the socialisation of children. It is in the same vein that this article, through the Intwasa koBulawayo performances, seeks to evaluate how drama and theatre are used to nurture children and youth into different developmental facets of their lives. The only difference which this article will take into cognisance is that the performances are done in a different environment, which is not the one used in the pre-colonial times. Although these performances were like this, the most important factor is the idea that children and youth are socialised through these performances. It is also against this backdrop that children and youth are growing up in a globalised environment, hence the performances should accommodate people from all walks of life and teach them relevant issues pertaining to life as they live it now. Thus the main task of the article is to spell out the role of drama and theatre in the nurturing of children and youth through socio economic and political development in Intwasa koBulawayo festivals.

Responsive Architecture and the Problem of Obsolescence

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Meagher
Keyword(s):  
Computer Science ◽  
Digital Information ◽  
Material Response ◽  
Responsive Architecture ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

Responsive architecture, a design field that has arisen in recent decades at the intersection of architecture and computer science, invokes a material response to digital information and implies the capacity of the building to respond dynamically to changing stimuli. The question I will address in the paper is whether it is possible for the responsive components of architecture to become a poetically expressive part of the building, and if so why this result has so rarely been achieved in contemporary and recent built work. The history of attitudes to- ward obsolescence in buildings is investigated as one explanation for the rarity of examples like the one considered here that successfully overcomes the rapid obsolescence of responsive components and makes these elements an integral part of the work of architecture. In conclusion I identify strategies for the design of responsive components as poetically expressive elements of architecture.

‘I Fight Anyone Who Doesn’t Act as a Communist Should...’ Letter of F. A. Zemit to N.N. Krestinsky on Financial Work in Siberia. January 5, 1920.

2018 ◽  
pp. 1137-1148
Author(s):  
Dmitrii I. Petin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Difficult Situation ◽  
Professional Activities ◽  
Regional Finance ◽  
Difficult Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
Source Study ◽  
The One ◽  
Major Impediment

The article offers a source study of the letter of the head of the Financial Department at the Siberian Revolutionary Committee F. A. Zemit to the People's Commissar of Finance of the RSFSR N. N. Krestinsky. Its text analysis clears up the issue of creation of Soviet regional governing bodies in the financial–economical sphere in Siberia at the final stage of the Civil War. The published source allows to outline major impediment to restoration of the Soviet finance system in Siberia after the Civil War: shortage of financial workers, their low professional qualifications, lack of regulatory documentation for organizing activities, etc. Key methods used in the study are biographical and problematic/chronological. Biographical method allows to interpret the document and to link it with professional activities of F. A. Zemit in Omsk. The problematic/chronological method allows to trace the developments in regional finance and to understand their causes by placing them into historical framework. The letter was written by F. A. Zemit in early January 1920 – at a most difficult time in his career in Siberia. The author considers this ego-document unique and revealing in its way. On the one hand, it is an official appeal of an inferior financial manager to the head of the People's Commissariat of Finance; its content is practical and no-nonsense. On the other hand, its style indicates a warm friendly and trusting relationship between the sender and the addressee; F. A. Zemit was, apparently, able to report personally to the People's Commissar of Finance of the RSFSR on the difficult situation in the region and to do so with great frankness. This publication may be of interest to scholars in history of Russian finance, Russia Civil War, Soviet society, and Siberia of the period.

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