Slave Spectacles and Tragic Octoroons: A Cultural Genealogy of Antebellum Performance

1992 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph R. Roach

In recent critical theory, the word performance has undergone a significant expansion, some would say an inflation. As the Editor's Note to the May issue of PMLA (“Special Topic: Performance”) observes, “What once was an event has become a critical category, now applied to everything from a play to a war to a meal. The performative … is a cultural act, a critical perspective, a political intervention.” Theatre historians will perhaps greet such pronouncements with mixed emotions. On one hand, they may welcome the acknowledgment by the principal organ of the Modern Language Association that performance (as opposed to drama merely) can count for so much. On the other hand, they may wonder what exactly is intended by the conceptual leap that takes performance beyond the established theatrical genres to encompass armed conflict and comestibles.

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 646-660
Author(s):  
Max Beck

Abstract Theodor W. Adorno’s Jargon of Authenticity (1964) is one of the bestknown, but also most controversial works of Critical Theory. Many philosophers, writers and editorialists have attacked the text in recent decades and accused Adorno of cultivating his own “jargon”. In his book, Adorno develops a critique of metaphysical and theological language, which he observed in Germany from the 1920s up to the 1960s. In my paper, I argue that the mode of critique Adorno deploys is still relevant today, even if its object has largely disappeared. This becomes clear in comparison to the language criticism of the analytical tradition, namely logical empiricism or Harry G. Frankfurt’s critique of “bullshit,” which are comparably more widespread today in academic debates. While Adorno examines linguistic expressions in terms of their social content and places them in a historical constellation, the critique of “bullshit” following Frankfurt remains constrained to a personal approach. In the language criticism of logical empiricism, on the other hand, the possibility of understanding linguistic phenomena as expressions of social conditions is still present. From this comparison, much can be learned for an up-to-date language criticism.


(an)ecdótica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Javier Caresani ◽  

Hand in hand with recent theoretical and empirical developments related to the notion of archive, the field of Spanish American Modernism Studies is currently undergoing a stage of profound transformation. The validity in Literary Studies of a “new” philology not only highlights problems in the editions of classical texts from the fin de siècle period, but also invites researchers to review the clichés associated with this movement. In this sense, the case of Rubén Darío (1867-1916), whose texts remain in a state of notable precariousness, is exemplary. This article comments and recovers two unknown chronicles published in El Orden, a local newspaper in the Argentine province of Tucumán, that were written by this author. Besides their evident documental value, these texts, which were conceived at the farewell to his residence in Buenos Aires in 1898, acquire relevance if they are connected to the concerns that Darío will cultivate on his imminent trip to Europe. On one hand, they can be read as yet another episode of Buenosairean “calibanism”; on the other hand, they can be understood as an anticipation of a critical perspective towards the mythification of the concept of progress in the Parisian Universal Exhibition of 1900.


2016 ◽  
pp. 307-328
Author(s):  
Sinthya Rubio Escolar

Violence against children and youth in war causes severe damage to individuals, communities and societies. This chapter aims to demonstrate the importance of reparations for children and youth as a peacebuilding mechanism in the context of transitional justice. On one hand, the chapter seeks to address reparations for children and youth understood as a political project, with a transformative and participatory potential for rebuilding societies and healing the wounds of those who have been affected by armed conflict. On the other hand, the paper attempts to overcome the conception of children and youth as passive victims, providing them with agency to become engaged political members in building peaceful societies. Thus, reparations should position them as subjects of rights, giving them voice as contributors in peacebuilding processes.


1926 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-256
Author(s):  
Charles Cheney Hyde

Naval fleets are maintained by development and replacement because their possessors dare not fail to make provision for a maritime war in which they may be participants. No means yet devised and accepted for the amicable adjustment of international differences have removed from responsible statesmen a sense of the necessity of anticipating such a contingency. Despite increasing efforts in every quarter to cultivate wills for peace and abhorrence of armed conflict, as well as a desire to adjust grave differences by judicial process or through commissions of conciliation, war is still regarded as a contingency which must be reckoned with, and as one which is as dangerous as it is seemingly remote. In making provision as against a contingency which none would welcome or hasten, the governments of maritime states do not necessarily encourage war or indicate approval of recourse to it. A particular conference of maritime states may in fact uplift the hopes of prospective belligerents which resent and oppose agreements restricting recourse to measures and instrumentalities on which they expect to rely. On the other hand, general arrangements respecting belligerent activities may serve to lessen a zeal for war and to remove its very approach further from the horizon. Everything depends upon the ambitions of the states which consent to confer. The point to be observed is that agreements for the regulation of maritime war in so far as they purport to proscribe or check the use of particular instrumentalities or recourse to particular measures, are not to be deemed bellicose in design or effect. Such regulatory agreements are advocates of peace rather than of war. Moreover, as will be seen, they may be the means of encouraging states to reduce armaments which would otherwise be maintained.


2009 ◽  
Vol 91 (875) ◽  
pp. 547-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Willms

AbstractAt first glance, merely the ‘ordering’ of displacement seems to be prohibited in non-international armed conflict. However, after interpreting Article 17(1) AP II and Rule 129(B) of the ICRC Customary Law Study with particular regard to State practice and opinio juris, the author concludes that these norms prohibit forced displacement regardless of whether it is ordered or not. On the other hand, the ICC Elements of Crimes for the crime of forced displacement under Article 8(2)(e)(viii) ICC Statute require an order. It remains to be seen whether the ICC adopts that interpretation in its jurisprudence.


PMLA ◽  
1891 ◽  
Vol 6 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 171-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Calvin S. Brown

The subject of this paper as announced some time ago in the programme of this convention, is not exactly the one which it should bear. In a former paper, published in the Modern Language Notes, I tried to trace back a number of our peculiar words and speech usages to an earlier period of the language, using Shakespeare as a basis. In the present paper this method of procedure has been attempted only incidentally. In other words, I invite your attention to a study of a few of the peculiarities of the language as found in Tennessee, regardless of their origin and history. It is not to be supposed, however, that the forms pointed out are limited to one particular state or to a small territory. On the other hand, most of them are found throughout the larger portion of the South, and many of them are common over the whole country. Nothing like a complete survey of the field, or a strict classification of the material gathered, has been attempted, and many of the words treated have been discussed by others. A few cases of bad pronunciation have been noticed, rather as an index of characteristic custom than as showing anything new.


2008 ◽  
Vol 38 (151) ◽  
pp. 255-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Kappeler

In its first part, the article deals with Michel Foucaults "discourse analysis", as developed in his "Archaeology of knowledge". The second part considers the concept of discourse in relation to Foucaults "analytic of power" and to a critical theory of society inspired by Karl Marx, especially Louis Althussers notion of ideology. Thus, on the one hand, some propositions for a methodology of discourse analysis are being made, and, on the other hand, its position within a project of critical social theory is discussed.


Author(s):  
Sinthya Rubio Escolar

Violence against children and youth in war causes severe damage to individuals, communities and societies. This chapter aims to demonstrate the importance of reparations for children and youth as a peacebuilding mechanism in the context of transitional justice. On one hand, the chapter seeks to address reparations for children and youth understood as a political project, with a transformative and participatory potential for rebuilding societies and healing the wounds of those who have been affected by armed conflict. On the other hand, the paper attempts to overcome the conception of children and youth as passive victims, providing them with agency to become engaged political members in building peaceful societies. Thus, reparations should position them as subjects of rights, giving them voice as contributors in peacebuilding processes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. e58909
Author(s):  
Flávia Foresto Porto da Costa

Criadas em 1994 como uma confederação de exércitos privados colombianos, as Autodefesas Unidas da Colômbia (AUC) marcaram uma expansão do paramilitarismo e um recrudescimento do conflito armado naquele país, tendo sido atuantes até seu processo de desmobilização, em 2002. Buscando compreender as origens, a organização e os discursos desse fenômeno paramilitar, o presente trabalho realiza uma pesquisa bibliográfica e documental que inclui, entre outros, os documentos originais das AUC e entrevistas com suas principais lideranças. Verifica-se que as AUC constituíram, por um lado, uma continuidade em relação ao paramilitarismo das doutrinas contrainsurgentes da Guerra Fria e aos grupos de civis armados financiados por narcotraficantes e proprietários de terra do final dos anos 70, e, por outro, um ponto de inflexão da estratégia paramilitar na Colômbia, quando esses exércitos buscam se projetar como atores políticos e independentes diante da opinião pública, buscando imitar pelo avesso a retórica e as estruturas guerrilheiras.Palavras-Chave: Paramilitarismo; Contrainsurgência; Colômbia.ABSTRACTCreated in 1994 as a confederation of Colombian private armies, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) marked an expansion of paramilitary and a renewed armed conflict in that country, having been active until its demobilization process in 2002. Seeking to understand the origins, the organization and the speeches of this paramilitary phenomenon, the present work conducts a bibliographic and documentary research that includes, among others, the original documents of the AUC and interviews with its main leaders. It appears that the AUC constituted, on the one hand, a continuity in relation to the paramilitarism of counterinsurgent Cold War doctrines and groups of armed civilians financed by drug traffickers and landowners in the late 1970s, and, on the other hand, a point inflection of the paramilitary strategy in Colombia, when these armies seek to project themselves as political and independent actors before the public opinion, trying to imitate the rhetoric and guerrilla structures inside out.Keywords: Paramilitarism; Counterinsurgency; Colombia. Recebido em: 04/04/2021 | Aceito em: 09/06/2021. 


2020 ◽  
pp. 296-302
Author(s):  
Raf Van Rooy

Chapter 24 surveys the book’s main arguments, which include especially the emergence of the modern language / dialect distinction during the early sixteenth century and the subsequent formulation of its main interpretations. Above all, however, this chapter emphasizes that the language / dialect distinction unmistakably has a history, for too long neglected, and that it is not a timeless and self-evident given. Having established its historicity, Chapter 24 fields the question of whether the conceptual pair has a future, to which an answer, both tentative and brief, is offered. On the one hand, it is suggested that a reconceptualization of the distinction can be a viable option. On the other hand, the fact that the conceptual pair has become common knowledge gives linguists not only the opportunity but also, and especially, the responsibility to take on a more prominent societal role in language / dialect disputes.


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