African American Folklore, Folklife, and Race

2018 ◽  
pp. 719-740
Author(s):  
Anand Prahlad
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black People ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
American Folklore ◽  
The Creation

The study of African American folklore has been grounded from its beginnings in the colonial period in discourses and power dynamics of race. This chapter posits that these beginnings have given rise to two folkloristic traditions, with differing agendas, methodologies, aesthetics, relationships to black communities, and investments in race. The mainstream tradition has been aligned with scholarly trends within academe and has seldom focused explicitly on the most pressing concerns of black people, or on the most obvious influence on the creation and expression of black folklore, namely race. The other tradition has been more aligned with the political interests, racial histories, and day-to-day needs of African American communities. This chapter critically examines these two tributaries, relative to issues of race, arguing for an African American folklore and folklife studies that embraces an African American–centered political focus while encompassing the unique intellectual contributions of both.

scholarly journals Racism and Representation of Racialized Beauty in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 164-174
Author(s):  
Dr. Nirjharini Tripathy
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Identity ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
Racial Oppression ◽  
Bluest Eye ◽  
The Impact

The American novelist Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye portrays black society and deals with the themes of black victimization and racial oppression. It presents a prolonged representation of the means in which the standards of internalized white beauty contort the life and existence of black women. This paper explores and elucidates the impact of race, racial oppression and representation in The Bluest Eye. And how racism also edifices the hatredness between Blackand White communities. This paper will discuss various issues and concepts such as Race, Race in the Colonial Period, Racializing the Other and Stereotyping. The paper also deals with understanding Representation through the ideas of Saussure, Barthes, Levi-Strauss, Foucault, Geertz, and Said. Racism is primarily a belief in the supremacy and dominance of one race upon another that consequences in the differences, discrimination and prejudice of people towards one another rooted and established on their race or ethnicity. Racism has deeply affected the African-American coloured people making them feel inferior. The Bluest Eye reflects the appalling effect on blacks individualising the values of a white culture that rejects them both immediately and incidentally. Even after abolition of slavery legally still the African-Americans faces the cruelty of racial discrimination and never considered equal to the whites. The Black people struggles to ascertain themselves with the white and their ethnic ways. Toni Morrison propounds on black cultural heritage and seeks the African-Americans to be gratified and proud of their black colour as well black identity. This paper conveys the essence of the coloured people’s fight for their race, and  also its continuance and forbearance in a principally multicultural White dominated  America.  

Pax and the Politics of Peace

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Cornwell
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Roman Imperialism ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Pax Romana ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Insight Into

This book examines the two generations that spanned the collapse of the Republic and the Augustan period to understand how the concept of pax Romana, as a central ideology of Roman imperialism, evolved. The author argues for the integral nature of pax in understanding the changing dynamics of the Roman state through civil war to the creation of a new political system and world-rule. The period of the late Republic to the early Principate involved changes in the notion of imperialism. This is the story of how peace acquired a central role within imperial discourse over the course of the collapse of the Republican framework to become deployed in the legitimization of the Augustan regime. It is an examination of the movement from the debates over the content of the concept, in the dying Republic, to the creation of an authorized version controlled by the princeps, through an examination of a series of conceptions about peace, culminating with the pax augusta as the first crystallization of an imperial concept of peace. Just as there existed not one but a series of ideas concerning Roman imperialism, so too were there numerous different meanings, applications, and contexts within which Romans talked about ‘peace’. Examining these different nuances allows us insight into the ways they understood power dynamics, and how these were contingent on the political structures of the day. Roman discourses on peace were part of the wider discussion on the way in which Rome conceptualized her Empire and ideas of imperialism.

‘There shall be no musical servitude’: Towards a Multitudinous Shostakovich in the West

2020 ◽  
Vol 145 (2) ◽  
pp. 495-505
Author(s):  
EIRINI DIAMANTOULI
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

Ideologically motivated attempts to elucidate Shostakovich’s political views and to determine whether and how they may be coded into his compositions have come to characterize the Western reception of the composer’s works since his death in 1975. Fuelled by the political oppositions of the cold war, Shostakovich’s posthumous reputation in the West has been largely shaped by two conflicting perspectives. These have positioned him on the one hand as a secret dissident, bent and broken under the unbearable strain of totalitarianism, made heroic through his veiled musical resistance to Communism; and on the other hand as a composer compromised by his capitulation to the regime – represented in an anachronistic musical style. Both perspectives surrender Shostakovich and his music to a crude oversimplification driven by vested political interests. Western listeners thus conditioned are primed to hear either the coded dissidence of a tragic victim of Communist brutality or the sinister submission of a ‘loyal son of the Communist Party’.1 For those prepared to accept Shostakovich as a ‘tragic victim’, the publication of his purported memoirs in 1979, ‘as related to and edited by’ the author Solomon Volkov, presents a tantalizing conclusion: bitterly yet discreetly scornful of the Stalinist regime, Shostakovich was indeed a secret dissident and this dissidence was made tangible in his music.

I Love You with an Asterisk: African-American Experimental Composers and the French Jazz Press, 1970-1980

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen H. Lehman
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Experimental Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Improvised Music ◽  
The Impact

Beginning in the 1970s, the French jazz press became the first community of critics seriously to consider the new African-American experimental music being put forth by musicians such as Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton and other members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). More than any other aspect of their music, the incorporation of instrumentations, concepts, and musical forms normally associated with Western art music challenged assumptions within both the European and the American jazz communities. The response to these musicians in publications like Jazz Magazine and Jazz Hot was complex and multi-dimensional. A genuine fascination with this new music was nevertheless tempered by received notions about race and musical idiom. The political climate in France after the student demonstrations of 1968 provided a context which also may have been important for at least some French jazz critics. The impact of the French jazz press on the field of improvised music in France in the 1970s was only one component of a transactional process of resistance by critics and conscious counter-resistance by key musicians/composers who wanted to expand notions of what jazz could encompass. Based on archival research and interviews with both musicians and French critics and scholars I intend to examine this dialogue between the French jazz press and the musicians themselves, in an effort to better understand how each community affected the other in France from 1970 to 1980.

Criminal Interests within Political Insurgencies

2016 ◽  
pp. 421-443
Author(s):  
Oscar Palma
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Foreign Intervention ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Ideal Framework ◽  
Political Character

Insurgencies are progressive and systematic insurrections with political aims. They are usually aimed at the creation of a new state, the liberation of a nation from foreign intervention, the transformation of the political system, or the imposition of a certain way of life. Whereas this political character sets them apart from common criminals, whose main objective is personal profit; in practice, most insurgencies are a combination of criminal and political interests. Solutions that address political grievances or criminal motivations separately, leaving one of them aside, are highly likely to fail, perpetuating violence. Development-centred counterinsurgency seems to be an ideal framework to confront this type of insurgencies. The case of Colombia is examined to observe achievements, failures and challenges.

Archaeological investigations in the Northern Highlands of Ecuador at Hacienda Zuleta

Antiquity ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 74 (284) ◽  
pp. 273-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth J. Currie
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Intensification ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Period ◽  
Population Densities ◽  
Chronological Sequence ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Northern Highlands

Hacienda Zuleta in the northern sierra province of Imbabura, Ecuador is the location of the largest 'ramp-mound' site of the Caranqui culture dated to the Late Period in the highlands chronological sequence (c. AD 1250-1525) and also of a large 17th-century Colonial period hacienda of Jesuit foundation. The Late Period is characterised by the construction of very large hemispherical or quadrilateral 'pyramid tolos, sometimes with a ramp or a long 'walkway' and up to 22 of these ramp-tola sites have been identified in the northern sierra provinces of northern Pichincha and Imbabura (Gondard & L6pez 1983; Knapp 1992). They are thought to have been the political centres of the region's paramount chiefs and the ceremonial foci for their scattered communities (Salomon 1986). Studies suggest they are contemporary with one another, originating from about the 8th to loth centuries AD (Athens 1978; 1992; Oberem 1975), although the phases of occupation associated with the creation of the large quadrilateral ramp mounds seem to be later, linked to socio-economic and political trends of agricultural intensification and increasing population densities which are also taken to characterize the Late Period.

On the Modernity of the Dutch Republic

1973 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan deVries
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Institutions ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
European State ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Republic

The political and economic institutions of the Dutch Republic puzzle the historian. Closely juxtaposed are elements suggesting a tantalizing precociousness and elements which hearken to the medieval past. The Republic was the creation of a revolution; it can be identified as the first European state to throw off a monarchical regime and bring a bourgeois social class to full political power. On the other hand, the foremost motive behind this rebellion was the resistance of medieval, municipal particularism to governmental centralization—to modernization, if you will.

scholarly journals AKAR-AKAR TRADISI POLITIK SUNNI DI INDONESIA

ALQALAM ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 171
Author(s):  
Muhammad Iqbal
Keyword(s):  
Great Influence ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Great Role ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Government ◽  
The One ◽  
Dutch Colonial

The Sunni doctrine plays an important role in the government. Its accommodative characteristic is something important that makes Sunni doctrine to be a device of the legitimation of the authority. The Muslim thinkers of classical Sunni such as al-Mawardi (975-1058 M), al-Ghazali (1058-1111 M) and lbn Taimiyah(1263-1329 M) have a great role in formulating the political doctrine of Sunni. In spite of the different nuance, all of these three classical Sunni thinkers develop the moderate political doctrine of Sunni. On the one hand, it is, of course, significant in situating the harmonious relation between the ruler and community. Therefore, the social and political stabilities will be well-maintained On the other hand, such a thought for a certain extent evokes stagnancy. Because there is no radical thought which is critical and opposite against the authority, the Sunni idea is frequently made use for the instantaneous interests of power. On evenlttally, the mutual interrelationship between the Sunni ulama and the ruler often happens. While ulama feel obtaining the patronage from the authority, the ruler gains religious justification from ulama. In this context, Indonesia as the country with the majority of Sunni Muslims, as a matter of fact, applies the political doctrine of Sunni. It is because Sunni has had a long and establishei root since. the period of Islamic kingdoms in the archipelago, before Dutch-Colonial period. The archipelago ulama also formulated the harmonious relation between Islam and authority as formulated by the ulama of classical Sunni. The polotical tradition of Sunni was becoming stronger in line with the great influence of ulama in the archipelago kingdoms. This article tries to elaborate the relation between the Sunni ulama with the power of the kings in the archipelago and the patronage of the archipelago rulers toward them.

scholarly journals ISYU KETUANAN MELAYU DI MALAYSIA

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Amri Marzali
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
Dutch Language ◽  
Malaysian Chinese ◽  
Member Of Parliament

Ketuanan Melayu” is a conception of Malay political hegemony in Malaysia. The terminology was firstly introduced by a member of Parliament of Malaysia from the United Malay National Organization, namely Dato’ Abdullah Ahmad, in a speech offered at the Institute of Intenational Affairs, Singapura, Agustus 30, 1986. The speech was originally  aimed at countering the negative propaganda proposed by the Malaysian Indian and the Malaysian Chinese, who accused that the special socio-political privileges given to the indigenous Malaysian peoples in the Malaysia’s Constitution (partaicularly in article 153) and the affirmative discriminative New Economic Policy of 1971 have been a servere strategy to condemn the Indian and Chinese Malaysians. On the other hand, the Malays in Malaysia traced the idea of Malay political hegemony from the political situation in the period of Malay kingdom of Melaka in the 15th century. They considered the period of Melaka as the golden age of Malay political sovereignty in Selat Melaka. When Melaka was occupied by the Portuegese in the 16th century, and followed by the Dutch in the 17-18th centuries, the political sovereignty of the Malays in the Malaysian Peninsula was carried on by the newly subsequent Malay kingdoms, such as Johor, Kedah, Kelantan, and others. In this article, I proposed that what is now called Malay political hegemony could be compared to what was called beschikkingsrecht in Dutch language, in the colonial period of Indonesia. This terminology was introduced by an adat law scholar, van Vollenhoven, in 1905, referring to the sovereignty of the native peoples in Malay Archipelago over their land and political state. Lastly I find the debate on the Malay political hegemony in Malaysia recently, whether between the natives versus the immigrants, or between the ruling Malays versus the opposition Malays, are pertaining with 6 articles in the Constitution and Act of Malaysian Armforce of 1972. This set of rules is knownly called Wasiat Raja-raja Melayu (The Wasiat of the Malay Sultans). Therefore, I conclude, the Malay political hegemony is constitutionalized, thus it is unnecessary for the Malays to boasting it anymore. The real problems of the Malay political hegemony now in Malaysia rests on the way it has been implemented by the Malaysian government.

scholarly journals Archaeology in the Making of Nations: The Juxtaposition of Postcolonial Archaeological Study

AMERTA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Hendri Asyhari Fajrian Kaharudin ◽  
Muhammad Asyrafi
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Archaeological Theory ◽  
Historical Legacy ◽  
Political Propaganda ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Neutral Field ◽  
Archaeological Objects

The development of archaeological theory is inseparable from the evolution of cultural thinking in global society. This two-way relationship can develop both synchronically and diachronically. Archaeological sites and artefacts are often used to legitimize various opinions and beliefs. In the colonial period, the interpretation of archaeological objects was often biased by racial, religious, and ethnic perspectives. The postcolonial paradigm emerged in criticism of white supremacy hegemony. However, even in the era of post-colonialism, prejudice practices continue to occur. The perspective of neo-colonialism can still be found today. Archaeology, and the sciences generally, are considered a neutral field however, it regularly plays a central role in symbolic personifications of identity, pride, and political propaganda. Similar controversies can also be seen in the museum field. The discourse of repatriation between ex-colonies and 'universal museums' often devolves into extensive controversy. Resolution for many of these disputes remains out of reach due to the lack of equal cooperation and communication between respective parties. On the other hand, there are a number of countries that impose very strict regulations on foreign research (or ban it altogether) to protect their historical legacy. This policy unfortunately, often hampers the development of research and collaborations in the country. In effect, archaeology will never be completely separated from its various interested parties, and so efforts to harmonise academic, ethical, and political interests must be pursued.Perkembangan teori arkeologi tidak terlepas dari evolusi budaya berpikir masyarakat global. Hubungan yang saling mempengaruhi secara dua arah ini dapat dilihat secara sinkronik maupun diakronik. Situs dan artefak arkeologi kerap digunakan untuk meligitimasi berbagai macam kepentingan. Pada masa kolonial, interpretasi terhadap benda arkeologi kerap diselimuti oleh bias ras, agama, dan kesukuan. Paradigma postkolonialisme hadir sebagai kritik terhadap hegemoni berpikir supremasi kulit putih tersebut. Namun kenyataannya, bahkan di era pasca kolonialisme, praktik serupa masih kerap terjadi. Cara pandang neo-kolonialisme masih dapat ditemui hingga saat ini. Arkeologi tidak hanya ditempatkan sebagai bidang ilmu yang netral, namun masih menjadi salah satu isu sentral sebagai simbol personifikasi jati diri, harga diri, maupun propaganda politik. Kontroversi serupa juga dapat dilihat di ranah permuseuman. Wacana repatriasi antara negara ex- koloni dengan ‘universal museums’ selalu menuai perdebatan yang panjang. Perselisihan ini kerap kali tidak berujung pada suatu solusi karena salah satu pihak cenderung menutup pintu dialog. Di sisi lain, tidak sedikit pula negara-negara yang menutup atau memberlakukan regulasi yang sangat ketat (atau bahkan melarang sepenuhnya) terhadap penelitian asing demi melindungi kekayaan sejarah mereka. Kebijakan ini tidak jarang menghambat berkembangnya penelitian di negara tersebut. Kenyataannya, arkeologi tidak akan pernah sepenuhnya lepas dari berbagai kepentingan, namun usaha untuk menyelaraskan kepentingan akademik, etik, dan politik harus terus dilakukan.

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