‘Genuine Invariants’: The Origins of Regional Modernity in Twentieth-Century Spain

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 299-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brett Tippey

During the decades that followed the loss in 1898 of Spain's last colony, Spanish architecture languished in a turbulent search for identity. In this search, some architects argued for a return to the historic architecture of the Spanish colonial empire, while others followed the progressive ideas of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM). Finally, in the mid-1940s, Spain's architects began to progress towards a successful reconciliation of these two seemingly opposed camps. A critical moment occurred in 1947 with the publication of Fernando Chueca Goitia's watershed textInvariantes Castizos de la Arquitectura Española (Genuine Invariants of Spanish Architecture).In this text, which Chueca conceived as a pocket reference for Spain's Modern architects, he described Spain as a unique place where the diverse architecture of Christian Europe and Islamic North Africa coalesced into a new — and essentially Spanish — whole. In it, he called on Spain's architects to move beyond superficial considerations of both history and modernity, and to arrive at a genuine, self-critical identity for Spanish architecture.

Author(s):  
Matthew Hobson

This chapter provides a brief introduction to how the historiographical development of Roman studies, since mid-twentieth century decolonization, has altered our understanding of the developments which took place in North Africa following the destruction of Carthage in 146 bce. The reader is introduced to literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources of evidence, which have traditionally been used to argue for either cultural change or continuity. After an initial examination of the immediate aftermath of the Third Punic War, Roman land appropriation and taxation, the focus is on sources of evidence usually described as “Punic,” “neo-Punic” or “Late Punic,” covering the spheres of municipal institutions, language use, and religious and funerary rituals. The vibrant multiculturalism and regional diversity of the Mediterranean and especially North Africa, both before and after the Roman conquest, is the dominant theme. This is used to shift emphasis away from grand explanatory paradigms based on essentialist identity categories, and toward a more nuanced picture of the complex and multivariate processes of cultural development and integration.


1956 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Tudisco

Twentieth-Century historians accept the fact that history can no longer be viewed merely as past politics; it must now embrace all aspects of national life and thought—total history. In the study of a colonial empire, the social scientist must seek his sources not only in the colony but also in the mother country. The enumeration and analysis of American themes in the literature of imagination of eighteenth-century Spain can open new panoramas to the student of history since these themes reflect the ideas of the peninsular Spaniard and might help explain the reactions which they caused in the colonies.


2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Maria Bidegain

AbstractThis article analyzes aspects of the complex process that led to independence in the Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada. It focuses on the role of religion and of social actors that have not been sufficiently taken into account in traditional historiography. The latter has paid much attention to political and economic aspects, but has disregarded other important changes that propelled the independence process, profound socio-cultural transformations and events that indicate the complexity of the process. First of all, this was not just a revolution from above and the historical periodization has to be reworked as a result of the Borbonic Reforms, with their leaning toward enlightenment. We must not consider the military uprisings as the starting point of the emancipation from the Spanish crown. Even though the colonial societies did not follow the same path as the European bourgeois revolutions with their proposed liberal perspectives, important changes did indeed happen, in which all social groups were implicated. From both the religious and particularly the women's historical perspective we can see the important transformations that took place. Examples are provided of how women of the popular classes triggered the process. Likewise, women amongst the educated elite, large sectors of the Creole clergy and some educational institutions were important agents of the ideological changes, by propagating new ideas. All these, in turn, paved the way for the further diversification of the ideological and religious landscape of Latin America during the independence period.


1945 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 188-200
Author(s):  
Mervin Monroe Deems

Augustine lived at a critical moment in western European history. On the last day of the year 406, many Vandals, Alani, Suevi crossed the Rhine and, having defeated the Franks, settled for a time in Gaul and finally reached the Pyrenees. Four years later Rome itself fell to Alaric and his Visigoths. In addition to these outward catastrophes, the church's inner life suffered from the assaults of heretic and schismatic. Arianism persisted in Gaul, Montanism and Manichaeism were rife in North Africa. Puritanic Donatism laid claim to being genuine Christianity, a claim which the doughty Bishop of Hippo could not countenance.


Author(s):  
Iulia Sprinceana

The Spanish dramatist, novelist, and poet Ramón del Valle-Inclán was a major figure of the Generation of 1898, a group of writers that reinvigorated Spanish letters in the wake of the Spanish-American War of 1898, which marked the end of Spain’s colonial empire. Valle-Inclán was one of the most radical dramatists of the early twentieth century and worked to subvert the traditionalism of Spanish drama. Influenced by French modernism and Symbolism, he later moved to more experimental styles and is known for the creation of the ‘esperento,’ an absurd and grotesquely satirical mix of comedy and tragedy. This style expresses the tragic meaning of Spanish life, which Valle considered to be a ‘grotesque deformation’ of European civilization. He held several administrative and teaching appointments, which allowed him to dedicate his life to writing while providing for his wife and five children.


Author(s):  
Ricardo René Larémont

During much of the twentieth century, practitioners of Sufism faced extensive criticism from both the jihadist and the anticolonial Salafi communities, who claimed that Sufi beliefs and practices were heterodox, if not heretical. Even though Sufism had been an indigenous and popular form of religious expression within the region for years, their consistent and heated denunciations of Sufism eventually led to the decline in its practice in the Maghreb. Following this decline, at the end of the twentieth century, political leaders (particularly in Morocco and Algeria) attempted to revive Sufism as a pacifist alternative to jihadi-Salafi beliefs and practices, which they believed encouraged political militancy and threatened the state. This chapter examines societal and state efforts first to discourage Sufism and encourage Salafism during most of the twentieth century, and then to reverse course and try to revive Sufism during the twenty-first century, as an attempt to counter the threat of jihadi Salafism. While there are many Sufi orders in North Africa, this chapter focuses on the larger and more influential orders, including the Shadhiliyya, the Shadhiliyya-Jazuliyya, the Shadhiliyya-Darqawiyya, the Qadiriyya, the Tijaniyya, the Sanusiyya, and the Qadiriyya-Boutchichiyya.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 582-585
Author(s):  
Leslie Hakim-Dowek

As in Marianne Hirsch’s (2008) notion of ‘devoir de memoire’, this poem-piece, from a new series, uses the role of creation and imagination to strive to ‘re-activate and re-embody’ distant family/historical transcultural spaces and memories within the perspective of a dispersed history of a Middle-Eastern minority, the Sephardi/Jewish community. There is little awareness that Sephardi/Jewish communities were an integral part of the Middle East and North Africa for many centuries before they were driven out of their homes in the second half of the twentieth century. Using a multi-modal approach combining photography and poetry, this photo-poem series has for focus my female lineage. This piece evokes in particular the memory of my grandmother, encapsulating many points in history where persecution and displacement occurred across many social, political and linguistic borders.


2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
J.H. Van Wyk

Praxis pietatis: reflections on aspects of the spirituality of AugustineEspecially since the rise of postmodernism by the end of the twentieth century – with its sharp criticism on the frigidity of the rationalism of modernism – theology is much more concerned with what is called spirituality and “praxis pietatis”, also within reformed circles. In this article the author investigates the contribution of the great church father from North Africa, Augustine,particularly because the reformed tradition (via Calvin) feels such a strong affinity with the theology of Augustine. It is intriguing to investigate how Augustine tried to unite in his person the polar opposites of rationality and spirituality, contemplation and action and to bring them into a synthesis. Not for nothing was Augustine described by A. von Harnack as “the first modern man."


2019 ◽  
pp. 22-39
Author(s):  
Corinna Mullin ◽  
Nada Trigui ◽  
Azadeh Shahshahani

Building on decades of struggle, the January 2011 Tunisian uprising triggered a wave of popular revolt that spread across North Africa and West Asia. After the uprising, Tunisia became the focus of a celebrated project of transitional justice, which is now the globally mandated method of reconciling victims and perpetrators following a nonrevolutionary regime change. However, Tunisia's process of transitional justice must be critically examined. The very paradigm employed—that is, the rule of law that transitional justice consistently seeks to impose—is skewed in favor of imperial interests, which can be traced to the paradigm's origins in the mid–twentieth century victory of European powers over Nazi Germany and its allies. There are other models of justice, however, that are not rooted in this Eurocentric victor's history, but instead derive from revolutionary traditions. A key one is the People's Tribunal, used since the late 1960s. The convening of a People's Tribunal in Tunisia could help amplify and extend the popular-justice claims that surfaced during the country's recent transitional-justice process. Establishing such a tribunal might help build a symbolic reservoir and organizational force that could ultimately contribute to substantial revolutionary change in the country.


Author(s):  
Barbara Sellers-Young

Solo improvisational dance forms from North Africa and the Middle East, most commonly referred to as belly dance, have their roots in community celebrations in which dancers improvise to the accompaniment of a diverse set of local instruments. The movement vocabulary of these forms became part of popular global discourse in the twentieth century through the inclusion of the dances at transnational fairs. Later belly dance was adopted as part of dance studios and recreational centres in small towns and major urban centres on all continents. Despite its global transmission and performance, belly dance has maintained improvisation as a core aesthetic principle.


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