HIDDEN DEBATES OVER THE STATUS OF THE CASAMANCE DURING THE DECOLONIZATION PROCESS IN SENEGAL: REGIONALISM, TERRITORIALISM, AND FEDERALISM AT A CROSSROADS, 1946–62

2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
SÉVERINE AWENENGO DALBERTO

AbstractThe article studies the contexts in which the idea of a separation of the Casamance from the rest of Senegal arose during the process of decolonization. The idea was an outgrowth of colonial representations forged since the end of the nineteenth century. It was first formulated by the French authorities in secret discussions with the representatives of the Casamance in the context of the 1958 referendum. It was taken over by local political leaders who saw it as a possible answer to the debates over representation that arose in the post-war process of democratization, and later by proponents of political mobilization at the sub-regional level after independence. By examining this little-known moment of possibility, the article shows that the claims of the current armed independence movement are in fact part of a longer, more ambivalent history in which a separatist imaginary of the Casamance took shape.

Author(s):  
Rachel Ablow

The nineteenth century introduced developments in science and medicine that made the eradication of pain conceivable for the first time. This new understanding of pain brought with it a complex set of moral and philosophical dilemmas. If pain serves no obvious purpose, how do we reconcile its existence with a well-ordered universe? Examining how writers of the day engaged with such questions, this book offers a compelling new literary and philosophical history of modern pain. The book provides close readings of novelists Charlotte Brontë and Thomas Hardy and political and natural philosophers John Stuart Mill, Harriet Martineau, and Charles Darwin, as well as a variety of medical, scientific, and popular writers of the Victorian age. The book explores how discussions of pain served as investigations into the status of persons and the nature and parameters of social life. No longer conceivable as divine trial or punishment, pain in the nineteenth century came to seem instead like a historical accident suggesting little or nothing about the individual who suffers. A landmark study of Victorian literature and the history of pain, the book shows how these writers came to see pain as a social as well as a personal problem. Rather than simply self-evident to the sufferer and unknowable to anyone else, pain was also understood to be produced between persons—and even, perhaps, by the fictions they read.


Author(s):  
Manju Dhariwal ◽  

Written almost half a century apart, Rajmohan’s Wife (1864) and The Home and the World (1916) can be read as women centric texts written in colonial India. The plot of both the texts is set in Bengal, the cultural and political centre of colonial India. Rajmohan’s Wife, arguably the first Indian English novel, is one of the first novels to realistically represent ‘Woman’ in the nineteenth century. Set in a newly emerging society of India, it provides an insight into the status of women, their susceptibility and dependence on men. The Home and the World, written at the height of Swadeshi movement in Bengal, presents its woman protagonist in a much progressive space. The paper closely examines these two texts and argues that women enact their agency in relational spaces which leads to the process of their ‘becoming’. The paper analyses this journey of the progress of the self, which starts with Matangini and culminates in Bimala. The paper concludes that women’s journey to emancipation is symbolic of the journey of the nation to independence.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Evanthis Hatzivassiliou

The departure of the greater part of the Greek community from Egypt is one of the many sad stories of the post-war Mediterranean. This article focuses upon the reports of the Greek Consul-General in Alexandria, Byron Theodoropoulos, regarding the Egyptian ‘Socialist Laws’ of summer 1961, which gave the coup de grâce to the Greek community. It argues that the expulsion of the Greeks was part of a wider redistribution of power in the region. This episode, together with similar experiences in other parts of the Mediterranean, evidently cemented the determination of a younger generation of political leaders and diplomats to seek Greece's future in the cosmopolitan, post-nationalist West, rather than in a ‘Near East’ rife with nationalism and economic failure.


Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
Marianna Charitonidou

The article examines an ensemble of gender and migrant roles in post-war Neorealist and New Migrant Italian films. Its main objective is to analyze gender and placemaking practices in an ensemble of films, addressing these practices on a symbolic level. The main argument of the article is that the way gender and migrant roles were conceived in the Italian Neorealist and New Migrant Cinema was based on the intention to challenge certain stereotypes characterizing the understanding of national identity and ‘otherness’. The article presents how the roles of borgatari and women function as devices of reconceptualization of Italy’s identity, providing a fertile terrain for problematizing the relationship between migration studies, urban studies and gender studies. Special attention is paid to how migrants are related to the reconceptualization of Italy’s national narrations. The Neorealist model is understood here as a precursor of the narrative strategies that one encounters in numerous films belonging to the New Migrant cinema in Italy. The article also explores how certain aspects of more contemporary studies of migrant cinema in Italy could illuminate our understanding of Neorealist cinema and its relation to national narratives. To connect gender representation and migrant roles in Italian cinema, the article focuses on the analysis of the status of certain roles of women, paying particular attention to Anna Magnagi’s roles.


2020 ◽  
Vol 97 ◽  
pp. 81-108
Author(s):  
Yahya Araz ◽  
İrfan Kokdaş

AbstractThis article focuses on children taken by Istanbulite families for upbringing and employment in the Ottoman capital during the 1800–1900 period. It suggests that domestic child labor which was shaped by the concept of ‘charity’ and economic interests during the first half of the nineteenth century progressively turned into wage labor during the second half of the century. The study claims that the nineteenth century witnessed a transformation of labor relations in the domestic service market, implying the transition from reciprocal to commodified labor. The labor of children employed in domestic services underwent a monetization process throughout the nineteenth century. Parallel to this monetization, the status of children under foster care or in domestic service came to be determined by standardized legal contracts.


2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 1065-1082 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mila Dragojević

This article examines the role of the intergenerational memory of the Second World War (WWII) in identity formation and political mobilization. An existing explanation in the ethnic-conflict literature is that strategic political leaders play a crucial role in constructing and mobilizing ethnic identities. However, based on 114 open-ended interviews with individuals born in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia, conducted in Serbia during 2008–2011, nearly a third of the respondents make spontaneous references to WWII in their statements, usually drawing parallels between the cycle of violence in the 1990s and that in the 1940s. The question this article asks, then, is why some respondents make references to WWII spontaneously while others do not. It is argued that intergenerational narratives of past cycles of violence also constitute a process of identity formation, in addition to, or apart from, other processes of identity formation. The respondents mention WWII violence in the context of the 1990s events because they “recognize” elements, such as symbols, discourse or patterns of violence, similar to those in the intergenerational narratives and interpret them as warning signs. Hence, individuals who had previously been exposed to intergenerational narratives may be subsequently more susceptible to political mobilization efforts.


2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 342-358
Author(s):  
Giovanna Faleschini Lerner

This article examines Visconti's subversive use of Francesco Hayez's 1859 iconic painting, Il bacio, in Senso as an essential element of the director's critique of Risorgimento history. In particular, the article proposes that through the recontextualization of Hayez's most recognizable work, which played a fundamental role in shaping the Italian patriotic imagination in the nineteenth century, Visconti problematizes cultural and artistic representations of Risorgimento history, as well as historiographical accounts of the unification process. By juxtaposing artistic accounts of a heroic Risorgimento and his characters' story of passion and betrayal, Visconti denounces traditional representations of the independence movement as historically false and politically biased, and uncovers the discrepancies between individual actions and motivations and uncomplicated representations of the Risorgimento. Gramscian perspective on the Risorgimento. By using art as an instrument of ideological critique he also traces a new direction for Italian intellectuals and artists, by attempting to bridge the gap between aesthetics and ideology and reclaiming for “Poetry” an active role in history.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 440-463
Author(s):  
Raffaella Sarti

What did early-modern and nineteenth-century Italians mean when they used the expressions tener casa aperta or aver casa aperta, literally to keep open house and to have an open house? In this article I will try to answer this question, which is far less trivial than one might imagine. Before tackling the topic, a premise is necessary. In some previous works, I used an etic category of ‘open houses’, i.e. a category I elaborated to interpret the implications of the presence, in many households, of domestic staff from different classes, places, races than their masters/employers. Such a presence made those houses open. The border between different peoples and cultures was inside the houses themselves that were places of exchanges, confrontations and clashes. In this article, I will develop a different approach: I will map the emic uses of the ‘open-house’ category, i.e. I will analyse how early-modern and nineteenth-century Italians used the expressions tener casa aperta or aver casa aperta. While some uses had to do with hospitality and sociability, others had legal meanings, referring to citizenship rights and privileges, the status of aristocrats, the differences between foreigners and local people and taxpaying. I will pay particular attention to the latter, also suggesting possible geographical differences and changes over time. This will present an opportunity to delve into the cultural and legal world of early-modern and nineteenth-century Italians, and to unveil the importance of houses for one's status.


2012 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shinjini Das

AbstractThe historiography of medicine in South Asia often assumes the presence of preordained, homogenous, coherent and clearly-bound medical systems. They also tend to take the existence of a medical ‘mainstream’ for granted. This article argues that the idea of an ‘orthodox’, ‘mainstream’ named allopathy and one of its ‘alternatives’ homoeopathy were co-produced in Bengal. It emphasises the role of the supposed ‘fringe’, ie. homoeopathy, in identifying and organising the ‘orthodoxy’ of the time. The shared market for medicine and print provided a crucial platform where such binary identities such as ‘homoeopaths’ and ‘allopaths’ were constituted and reinforced. This article focuses on a range of polemical writings by physicians in the Bengali print market since the 1860s. Published mostly in late nineteenth-century popular medical journals, these concerned the nature, definition and scope of ‘scientific’ medicine. The article highlights these published disputes and critical correspondence among physicians as instrumental in simultaneously shaping the categories ‘allopathy’ and ‘homoeopathy’ in Bengali print. It unravels how contemporary understandings of race, culture and nationalism informed these medical discussions. It further explores the status of these medical contestations, often self-consciously termed ‘debates’, as an essential contemporary trope in discussing ‘science’ in the vernacular.


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