‘From the Congested Districts’

J. M. Synge ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 136-168
Author(s):  
Seán Hewitt

While travelling in the ‘Congested Districts’ of Mayo and Connemara with Jack Yeats in early summer 1905, on commission for The Manchester Guardian, Synge wrote a short vignette which he later added to the fourth part of his as-yet-unpublished prose narrative, The Aran Islands. The vignette in question takes the form of an inserted ‘set piece’ in which a crow is found trying to smash a golf ball. Here, the manuscript reveals the effects of the Guardian commission in confirming Synge’s oppositions to modernization in the west of Ireland and in prompting an increasing irony towards his earlier Romanticism. Taking this ‘set piece’ as its starting point, this chapter mobilizes Synge’s reading in socialism, and his correspondence and drafts for the Guardian commission, to demonstrate the writer’s socialist proclivities and to chart their nuances. Drawing on the earlier chapters of the book, this chapter shows that Synge’s socialism is rooted in nature and mystical experience, and in thought patterns borrowed from Spencerian evolutionism: he opposes modernization when it takes on a homogenizing form which he perceives as anti-nature. By showing that for Synge the aesthetic is politicized, and the political aestheticized, this chapter also registers a recalibrated Synge, evolving a more modernist response to his own notoriety. It concludes by positing the revision of his subsequent article, ‘The People of the Glens’, as a measure of an increasingly ironic sensibility, leading into the elaborate ironical, political structures of his final completed play, The Playboy of the Western World.

1984 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark J. Osiel

A new and curious species of public figure emerged on the international scene after the Second World War, gaining in prominence and conspicuousness in the years that followed. His daily experience is often a trying one, marked by recurrent tension between conflicting commitments. Enjoying from bhth the comforts of the advanced industrial world, he seeks to speak onbehalf of the hungry and impoverished. Educated in the best universities, he lives among countrymen who are predominantly illiterate. He is regarded as an impertinent upstart by the diplomats of wealthier and more powerful nations. At the same time, he is suspected by his own people of compromising himself with the reigning powers of the international arena. He is well-versed and highly articulate in the political vocabulary of the West. Yet he is acutely sensitive to perceived slights against the political traditions of his native land. He is bitter about what the Western presence did to his native society. But the very categories in which he couches his criticisms of that presence—the rights to sovereignty, distributive justice, and national self-determination —are themselves the inheritance of the West. He follows with enthusiasm the latest currents of intellectual life in Europe and America. Yet he is deeply committed, simultaneously, to defending the dignity of his own people's cultural achievements. As a result of his modern education, he cannot help but feel somewhat estranged from the traditional beliefs and practices of his fellow citizens. Yet neither can he feel very comfortable as the mere bearer to them of the colonizer's culture, a culture he rarely regards entirely as his own. Such is the predicament of that loquacious and troublesome child of the post-colonial age, the Third World intellectual.


1990 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-9
Author(s):  
Jennifer Nedelsky

Most Americans take for granted the notion that the powers of government are circumscribed by individual rights. But this commonplace notion is, in fact, very complicated conceptually and poses difficult problems institutionally. This course explored both the conceptual and the institutional problems, from their origins to their contemporary manifestations. We began with the formation of the Constitution: the writing of the document in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, its ratification, the addition of the Bill of Rights in 1789, and the establishment of judicial review. As a starting point, I offered my own perspective through excerpts from my forthcoming book, Private Property and the Limits of American Constitutionalism: The Madisonian Framework and Its Legacy. My central argument is that the Framers' concern with protecting the rights of property distorted both their understanding of constitutionalism and the institutions they designed to implement that understanding. The Framers wanted to design a republican form of government based on the notion of consent by the governed, and thus some form of democratic (as we would call it today) representation. But the Federalists, whose views dominated the convention, also wanted to ensure that civil rights would be secure in the new republic. Property became the focus of their efforts to make the political rights implicit in republican government compatible with the security of civil rights. Unfortunately, their focus on the protection of unequal property, the property of the minority as threatened by the (future) propertyless majority, distorted their vision of the basic problem of protecting individual rights in a democracy. Their fears of the propertyless bred a focus on containing the political power of the people.


Matatu ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 373-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammed Inuwa Umar–Buratai

The discourses of nationhood and nation-building in the developed Western world have been facilitated by the prevalent cultures of writing and documentation. The situation in the developing world has remained largely fragmented because of the absence of such coherent, broadcast, and comprehensive forums for a discourse on 'nationhood'. Different societies articulate their perception of the priorities of nationhood in a range of forms – manifest in ritual visual displays, entertainment and formal rhetoric such as poetry, religious sayings and quotations – which were not dependent on literacy, including the ceremony of durbar. The ordinary people construe the durbar as a spectacle, perhaps because it encompasses a wide range of performance artists drawn from the many groupings within society. However, durbar functions, through its display of martial strength, to reinforce the political and religious power of the ruling elite: durbar within society. The focus in this essay is to examine political undertones of durbar, specifically the ways in which localized participation in the reinforcing ritual of relationships of power provides the people with an opportunity for the public exhibition of individual skills and for the elites an avenue for containing any nascent – or potential – articulation of resistance in society.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Marie Line J. Charles-Galley

Togo, this small West African nation, is still relatively unknown, even in today's jet set world. The western world is only now discovering the numerous advances Togo has made in its social and economic policies, but most of all in its political conjectures. After its Independence on April 27, 1960, Togo had barely begun its journey to democracy when the dictatorship of Gnassingbe Eyadema became the yoke of the people for over thirty-one years, on April 14th, 1967. The consequences of the stranglehold exercised by Gnassingbe was to shut the nation's cultural growth and cause the people to close in onto themselves and build a protective barrier between themselves and the rest of the world. Yet, Togo had great beginnings. It was one of the pioneers of Sub-Saharan literature, publishing in 1929 one of the first true African novels still read today. In 1929, native son Felix Couchoro, was among the first Sub-Saharan authors to write a novel which gave agency to an African protagonist in a story set in Africa, with an African-themed plot, and with a conclusion that aimed at rethinking African society. Couchoro was the first to look deeply into his culture and the social identity of his nation. He brought forth suggestions that would help in Togo's growth and insure its successful battle for Independence. In doing so, however, Couchoro also created great controversy around a subject which continues to plague not only Togolese people, but all Africans who feel pulled in two directions: preserving their authentic traditional customs while taking an active part in the modern world, through economic improvements as well as technological advances. In this dissertation, I will first study Couchoro's flagship novel which was the starting point of this quest for a modern identity, then analyze how subsequent Togolese writers have taken up Couchoro's legacy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-108
Author(s):  
A. Т. Sikharulidze

Georgia’s turn to the West signifi cantly aff ected its geopolitical and foreign policies. The author shares the view expressed by Georgian scholars that the country’s continued commitment to the Western vector is a direct consequence of ideas expressed by political elites (constructivist theory) and their self-identifi cation as “European,” coupled with Western-style liberal democracy as a social order preference (liberal theory). Georgia’s political elites are driven by the concept of “Europeanness” and thus focus primarily on the state’s aspirations to be integrated into the “Western world,” which is pushing the state towards European and North-Atlantic integration. Georgian elites believe that institutional reunifi cation with “European family” under the NATO defence shield will not only deter Moscow but will fi nally put an end to Moscow’s attempts to bring the post-soviet state under its control. Moreover, due to the tensions between the generalized West and Russian Federation, the Kremlin’s aspirations to stop what it perceives as a geopolitical expansion of the West to the east, Georgia’s approach has become even more radical. The paper argues that the concept of “Europeanness” has been transformed into “radical Europeanness,” meaning that the political elites maintain economic cooperation with non-Western countries, but there is no proactive foreign policy beyond that, even with its most important strategic partners, namely Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey. In spite Tbilisi enjoys trade relations with these countries, the existing level of political and military cooperation between them conceals signifi cant bilateral challenges. Additionally, this approach is perfectly refl ected in Georgia’s relations with China, when the country’s political elites pushed for free trade, without attention to the political and geopolitical aspects of economic cooperation. Thus, Georgia – China relations are also the part of research interest in this paper, as the free trade regime between the two countries is subject to serious scrutiny after the Donald Trump administration made it clear that Washington would not welcome Chinese economic and geopolitical expansion in Georgia.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 95-109
Author(s):  
Ewa Matkowska

Propaganda campaigns and strategies accompanying the construction of the Berlin Wall The article deals with propaganda campaigns connected with the construction of the Berlin Wall. Propaganda activities assisted the police operations which were aimed at the separation of the east sector from the west sectors of Berlin. These activities took place before, during and after the operation 13, August 1961. In the first part of the paper I describe the prior campaign on the basis of daily newspaper „Neues Deutschland”, the main press organ of the political party SED. The two dominating topics are related: „the human trafficking” and the people regularly crossing the sector border. Refugees became the main topic of the campaign due to the constant mass outflow of people from 100 to even 300 thousand people fled through West Berlin annually. The fake story, common in the soviet Stalin era, tells about western agents recruiting and trading citizens of the GDR to the West. They were denominated by the propaganda as „head hunters” or „human traffickers”. The people regularly crossing the sector border became the inner enemy. They lived in the eastern sector and worked in the western sectors which resulted in higher revenue. By manipulating the aroused feeling of jealousy the propagandists turn the group into a scapegoat. They accuse them of lack of merchandise and of offences. To put an end to these activities the border had to be closed. The closer to the day of the operation, the more aggressive and hysteric becomes the campaign. The culminant events are the „show trials” at the end of July 1961 during which the assumed „human traffickers” are sentenced to prison. The second part of the article deals with post campaigns which aimed at integration of the citizens within the borders of the DDR.


Author(s):  
Can Diker ◽  
Esma Koç

The myth of modern culture's superiority to other cultures is instilled as a norm to the masses through the media. The myth of the cultural superiority of the West not only formed with the economic possibilities of the West but was also supported by the non-Western world by self-orientalism, thus becoming sustainable. While themes such as modernity, development, and technological superiority are watched within the scope of Hollywood films, several platforms have been created for non-US countries to watch alternative films. Although films known as European and World Cinema have the chance to show themselves at film festivals rather than film theatres, non-Western directors face a cultural challenge in these festivals due to the sociocultural structure of Western-based film festivals. In this study, by examining how non-Western directors are directed towards self-orientalism indirectly through festivals and funds, the relationship between the creation of sustainable orientalism in cinema and the political economy of the film industry will be revealed.


Legal Studies ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Rackley

The story of the woman judge as one of exclusion and isolation plagued with allegations of bias is well documented. Interestingly, despite significant differences in time and place, a common theme unites these tales: the woman judge is a dangerous outsider, a threat to the aesthetic norm. The judicial climate, at least in most of the common law world, is somewhat chilly: reactions to her presence on the bench vary from the largely indifferent to the downright hostile. Why is this? After all, most people, perhaps acknowledging the political and democratic gains underlying calls for a more representative judiciary, would wish to encourage – or at least not discourage – judicial diversity.Taking the stories of the woman judge as its starting point, this paper contends that underlying these tales is an image of the judge that is as much intuitive as it is reasoned; that our understanding of the judge and judging is as much derived from the imagination as from what is conventionally considered as rational thought. Thus, the paper deploys the narrative strategies of fairy tales in an attempt to disrupt the imaginative hold of familiar yet particular images that infuse and distort current discourses on adjudication. It suggests that despite the Department for Constitutional Affairs’ ongoing quest to increase diversity within the judiciary, current initiatives do not confront fully these instinctive images. As a result, their narrative of inclusiveness and difference fails. In response, the paper appeals to the imagination as a route toward engendering new conceptions on the judge and judging, the possibility of truly diverse judiciaries and, perhaps, a fairy tale ending to the woman judge’s story.


Author(s):  
Tomasz Szczepanek

“Close Enough”: Images of the Failure of the 1990s’ Political Transformation in Poland as Exemplified by Władysław Pasikowski’s Psy [Pigs] and Andrzej Żuławski’s Szamanka [She-Shaman]This article problematizes the Polish cinema of the 1990s by analyzing it in terms of the aesthetic of failure. Of crucial importance for that interpretation is the postcolonial perspective. Seen from this perspective, Poland of the political transformation period appears a land of unfulfilled dreams of being-like-the-West. One of the spheres where this is visible is the Polish cinematography of that time.Close enough – obrazy porażki transformacji ustrojowej w Polsce lat dziewięćdziesiątych XX wieku na przykładzie Psów Władysława Pasikowskiego i Szamanki Andrzeja ŻuławskiegoNiniejszy tekst problematyzuje kwestię polskiego kina lat dziewięćdziesiątych XX wieku w kategoriach estetyki porażki. Kluczowe znaczenie dla tego rozpoznania ma perspektywa postkolonialna, w której Polska czasów transformacji jawi się jako kraina niespełnionych marzeń o byciu-jak-Zachód, co widać m.in. w kinematografii tamtego okresu.


2014 ◽  
Vol 644-650 ◽  
pp. 2652-2655
Author(s):  
Hui Ke Li ◽  
Fei Li

The pencil sharpener and can not fully meet people's aesthetic needs and functional requirements. Through analysis, with the characteristics of the times and traditional culture can meet the aesthetic requirements of the people. Through brainstorming, find the Tai Chi logo as the design starting point, and, research and design pencil sharpener’s color system, human factors and modeling. Finally, we get the design scheme and make the design assessment.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document