Performing Nationhood

Author(s):  
Mimasha Pandit

The book Performing Nationhood serves as a corridor to one’s ‘self’. It began as a humble attempt to interrogate the performance history of Swadeshi Bengal. The burgeoning public space and the audibility of voices hitherto unheard presented a two-way problem, for the colonisers as well as for the colonised. The thinking mind that hid behind a facade of obedience suddenly appeared before all. The transparent veil separating the hidden from the manifest was torn apart. In the context of the swadeshi and boycott agitation, performative spaces such as theatre, jatra, and songs did not just serve as a forum for disseminating the notions of nationhood put forward by the intellectuals; the ideas gained a life of their own once they were placed in the performative space. Encompassing both the performer and the audience/recipient of the ideas, the notion underwent changes at various planes of consciousness. The notion of the nation, as disseminated by the performances, acquired a different meaning at the level of enactment, and attained an entirely new substance when received by the audience. None of these exchanges occurred in complete passivity of any one party present in the performative space. Consequently, the emergent emotion of nationhood developed as a nuanced image of the ‘self’. This book has tried to locate the beginning of that emotion of the national ‘self’.

2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander C. Y. Huang

The curtain rose at the King's Theatre, Edinburgh, on 14 August 2011 to reveal a richly textured production ofThe Tempeston a bare stage with minimal props. As the lights came up, a group of white-robed sailors were caught in a meticulously choreographed storm, dancing to the mesmerizing beats of the master drummer upstage. The performers’ costumes echoed traditional Koreanhanbokattire and their acting style incorporatedt'alch'ummask-dance drama techniques. Their long white sleeves flapped and swayed in sync with their movements. Engulfed in stagewide sapphire and then crimson lighting, their sleeves were transformed from symbols of violent wind and waves to raging fire on board a ship approaching a world where, as Gonzalo aptly summarized, “no man was his own” (5.1.211). With Prospero (King Zilzi) as the drummer upstage and Ariel dancing in the midst of the unfortunate sailors, the storm scene—one of the longest renditions of the “direful spectacle” (1.2.26) in the performance history ofThe Tempest—served as an anchor to the tragicomic narrative about the self and the other. For a fleeting moment, Prospero gave the impression of being a drillmaster at the helm.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 234-250
Author(s):  
Stephen Cheeke

This article argues for the centrality of notions of personality and persons in the work of Walter Pater and asks how this fits in with his critical reception. Pater's writing is grounded in ideas of personality and persons, of personification, of personal gods and personalised history, of contending voices, and of the possibility of an interior conversation with the logos. Artworks move us as personalities do in life; the principle epistemological analogy is with the knowledge of persons – indeed, ideas are only grasped through the form they take in the individuals in whom they are manifested. The conscience is outwardly embodied in other persons, but also experienced as a conversation with a person inhabiting the most intimate and sovereign dimension of the self. Even when personality is conceived as the walls of a prison-house, it remains a powerful force, able to modify others. This article explores the ways in which these questions are ultimately connected to the paradoxes of Pater's own person and personality, and to the matter of his ‘style’.


Transfers ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikkel Thelle

The article approaches mobility through a cultural history of urban conflict. Using a case of “The Copenhagen Trouble,“ a series of riots in the Danish capital around 1900, a space of subversive mobilities is delineated. These turn-of-the-century riots points to a new pattern of mobile gathering, the swarm; to a new aspect of public action, the staging; and to new ways of configuring public space. These different components indicate an urban assemblage of subversion, and a new characterization of the “throwntogetherness“ of the modern public.


Author(s):  
Daniel R. Melamed

Every performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’'s Mass in B Minor makes choices. The work’s compositional history and the nature of the sources that transmit it require performers to make decisions about its musical text and about the performing forces used in its realization. The Mass’s editorial history reflects deeply ideological views about Bach’s composition and how it should sound, not just objective reporting on the piece, with consequences for performances that follow specific editions. Things left unspecified by the composer need to be filled in, and every decision—including the choice to add nothing to Bach’s text—represents an interpretation. And the long performance history of the Mass offers a range of possibilities, reflecting a tension between the performance of a work like the Mass in Bach’s time and the tradition inherited from the nineteenth century. Every performance thus represents a point of view about the piece; —there are no neutral performances.


Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 236
Author(s):  
Lucía Martín López ◽  
Rodrigo Durán López

While several women’s movements that aimed to modify their relationship with public space were taking place across the world, in 1956, the Mexican Social Security Institute founded the program Casa de la Asegurada, the subject of this study, as a tool for improving the social security of Mexican families through the input of cultural, social, artistic, and hygienic knowledge for women. The program’s facilities, Casas de la Asegurada, are located in the large Mexican housing complexes, articulating themselves to the existing city. Despite the impact on the lives of Mexican families, these have been ignored throughout the history of Mexican architecture. The main objective of this paper is to show the state of the art of Casa de la Asegurada and its facilities located in Mexico City. To achieve this, the greatest number available of primary sources on the topic was compiled through archive and document research. Sources were classified identifying information gaps to explain, in three different scales (program, facilities, and a case study), how they work through their objectives, performed activities, and evolved through time, so that the gathered information is analyzed with an urbanistic, architectural, and gender approach to contribute new ideas in the building of facilities that allow women empowerment.


1999 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-37
Author(s):  
T. KAUFMAN

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 519
Author(s):  
Monika Spivak

The article focuses on R. Steiner’s perception of the Gospels and the impact of that view on Bely’s works. The latter had always valued Steiner’s lectures on Christ and the Fifth Gospel, the “Anthroposophic” (relating to the philosophy of human genesis, existence, and outcome) Gospel, the knowledge of which had been received in a visionary way. In addition, Bely was an esoteric follower of Steiner and often quoted from Apostle Paul’s 2 Corinthians, “Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men”. The citation occurs in Bely’s philosophical works (The History of the Formation of the Self-Conscious Soul, “Crisis of Consciousness”), autobiographic prose (Reminiscences of Steiner), the essay “Why I Became a Symbolist…”, and letters (to Ivanov-Razumnik and Fedor Gladkov). Bely’s own anthroposophic and esoteric ideas relating to the gospel sayings are also examined. The aim of the research is to show through the example of one quotation the specifics of Bely the Anthroposophist’s perception of Christian texts in general. This provides a methodological meaning for understanding other Biblical quotations and images in the works of Bely because anthroposophical Christology is also the key to their deciphering.


Histories ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 108-121
Author(s):  
Satoshi Murayama ◽  
Hiroko Nakamura

Jan de Vries revised Akira Hayami’s original theory of the “Industrious Revolution” to make the idea more applicable to early modern commercialization in Europe, showcasing the development of the rural proletariat and especially the consumer revolution and women’s emancipation on the way toward an “Industrial Revolution.” However, Japanese villages followed a different path from the Western trajectory of the “Industrious Revolution,” which is recognized as the first step to industrialization. This article will explore how a different form of “industriousness” developed in Japan, covering medieval, early modern, and modern times. It will first describe why the communal village system was established in Japan and how this unique institution, the self-reliance system of a village, affected commercialization and industrialization and was sustained until modern times. Then, the local history of Kuta Village in Kyô-Otagi, a former county located close to Kyoto, is considered over the long term, from medieval through modern times. Kuta was not directly affected by the siting of new industrial production bases and the changes brought to villages located nearer to Kyoto. A variety of diligent interactions with living spaces is introduced to demonstrate that the industriousness of local women was characterized by conscience-driven perseverance.


2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 793-806 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduard Bonet

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how the boundaries of rhetoric have excluded important theoretical and practical subjects and how these subjects are recuperated and extended since the twentieth century. Its purpose is to foster the awareness on emerging new trends of rhetoric. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology is based on an interpretation of the history of rhetoric and on the construction of a conceptual framework of the rhetoric of judgment, which is introduced in this paper. Findings – On the subject of the extension of rhetoric from public speeches to any kinds of persuasive situations, the paper emphasizes some stimulating relationships between the theory of communication and rhetoric. On the exclusion and recuperation of the subject of rhetorical arguments, it presents the changing relationships between rhetoric and dialectics and emphasizes the role of rhetoric in scientific research. On the introduction of rhetoric of judgment and meanings it creates a conceptual framework based on a re-examination of the concept of judgment and the phenomenological foundations of the interpretative methods of social sciences by Alfred Schutz, relating them to symbolic interactionism and theories of the self. Originality/value – The study on the changing boundaries of rhetoric and the introduction of the rhetoric of judgment offers a new view on the present theoretical and practical development of rhetoric, which opens new subjects of research and new fields of applications.


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