scholarly journals The Exemplification Theory of History: Narrativist Philosophy and the Autonomy of History

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiel van den Akker
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
The Past ◽  
Exemplification Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
Arthur Danto ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract The “exemplification theory of history” is proposed to account for the relationship between the past and historical narratives. The theory states that what belongs to the past according to some narrative does so in order to exemplify the historical thesis of that narrative. As such the theory explains how the past receives its meaning. This implies that the past has no intrinsic historical meaning itself. Moreover, it follows that historical narratives possess an autonomy of their own with regard to the past. It is argued that the exemplification theory of history goes to the heart of narrativist philosophy of history. This claim is supported by the key arguments of three narrativist philosophers: Arthur Danto, Louis Mink and Frank Ankersmit. The distinction between the history of social individuals (“states”, “poverty”, “Thirty Years War”) and the identification of such individuals turns out to be fundamental in this respect. The article concludes by distinguishing between a Platonic and an Aristotelian view on narrative and by explaining why we ought to prefer the former to the latter.

scholarly journals The Unpredictable Lightness of History in Nicolas Cavaillès’ Novellas on the Mauritius Islands

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 65-76
Author(s):  
Fevronia Novac
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Western History ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Mauritius Island

Nicolas Cavaillès ponders on a philosophy of history mixed with humour and irony in his historical narratives of remote islands in the Indian Ocean in two of his novellas: Life of Mr. Legaut (the story of a Huguenot who is forced to leave his native France and travels to these islands) and The Dead on the Donkey, where the wanderings of un unfortunate donkey across the Mauritius Island allow the narrator to relate the history of the island and its tragic trajectory to modernity. The idea of Western history as progressive evolution is rolled upside down with irony in Cavaillès's philosophical reflection on the circumstances leading to colonial expeditions in Life of Mr. Leguat (2013) and in the successive destruction of the Mauritius Island in the novella The Dead on the Donkey (2018). If Cavaillès builds his books hermeneutically, he also defies hermeneutics by denying all forms of possible understanding of the events described. The actions of his protagonists, human or animal, are the result of circumstances that are well known, but so absurd that they cannot form a historical narrative. If they did, this narrative would look like a hybrid of Beckett's absurd and Cioran's despair. Anti-Hegelian, since history here does not lead to individual freedom, Cavaillès's conception of history equally challenges Nietzsche's representation of unhistorical temporality in an attempt to solve humanity’s relation to the past for enacting a more desirable future. In far away Edenic islands, colonized by powerful states and inhabited by human and animal slaves, no philosophy could make sense of history.

Exhibition History and the Institution as a Medium

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Collicelli Cagol
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Art History ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
The Past ◽  
Exhibition History ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Recent Debate ◽  
The Relationship

The recent debate on the relationship between histories of exhibition and art history tends to consider the former as supplementary to the latter. While it is certainly not the case that art history of the second half of the twentieth century should be reduced to a history of exhibitions—given the variety of contexts in which artists have operated—exhibition histories should likewise not be addressed only to enrich art historical narratives, or be selected according to their relationship to an art historical canon. In fact, exhibition histories provide critical tools to approach history in itself: by revealing cultural debates of the past, they help retracing histories of ideas; their expanded field highlights the connections between art and other realms, such as commerce, and they reveal politics and policies of an institution, stressing the latter in order to create a narrative to understand the present and imagine the future.

Wisdom and Wisdom Literature

2021 ◽  
pp. xxii-14
Author(s):  
Will Kynes
Keyword(s):  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter introduces the volume by arguing that the study of biblical wisdom is in the midst of a potential paradigm shift, as interpreters are beginning to reconsider the relationship between the concept of wisdom in the Bible and the category Wisdom Literature. This offers an opportunity to explore how the two have been related in the past, in the history of Jewish and Christian interpretation, how they are connected in the present, as three competing primary approaches to Wisdom study have developed, and how they could be treated in the future, as new possibilities for understanding wisdom with insight from before and beyond the development of the Wisdom Literature category are emerging.

Past and recent biodiversity profiling in ancient Lake Chalco Mexico by a metagenomics analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bárbara Moguel ◽  
Liseth Pérez ◽  
Luis David Alcaraz ◽  
Socorro Lozano-García ◽  
Luis Herrera-Estrella ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Volcanic Belt ◽  
Environmental Dna ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
The Past ◽  
Mexican Volcanic Belt ◽  
History Of ◽  
High Throughput Dna Sequencing ◽  
High Altitude Lake ◽  
Taxonomic Groups ◽  
The Relationship

<p>For decades, paleoecological studies in lake sediments have focused on reconstructing the environments of the past and explaining phenomena linked to climatic variations. Recent advances in high-throughput DNA sequencing have allowed access to environmental DNA (eDNA) and ancient sedimentary DNA (sedaDNA) as a new and efficient proxy for past and present biodiversity. The basin of Mexico (BM) is located in the central part of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt at 2,200 m a.s.l.; with the southern portion harboring the Chalco sub-basin. Lake Chalco is one of the last remaining natural aquatic ecosystems within the ever-expanding urban area surrounding Mexico City. The paleoenvironmental history of this lake has been previously characterized using sedimentological and geochemical proxies, as well as preserved microfossils (diatoms, pollen) with a temporal framework based on multiple radiocarbon dates. However, information for the remaining taxonomic groups and metabolic pathways remained unexplored. Here, we present the first metagenomics-based study for the Holocene in a high-altitude lake in Central Mexico –Lake Chalco. We explored the relationship between the lake’s paleoenvironmental condition and estimations of taxonomic and metabolic profiles across the sedimentary sequence (2.5 meters long). Multiple biological and abiotic variables revealed three main environmental phases: 1) a cool freshwater lake (FW1: 11,500-11,000 cal years BP), 2) a warm hyposaline lake (HS2: 11,000-6,000 cal years BP), and 3) a temperate, subsaline lake (SS3, <6,000 cal years BP). We describe the structure of the microbiota community and taxonomy richness turnover in the three Holocene paleoenvironmental phases. During the past 12 000 years BP the most abundant domains in Lake Chalco sediments were Bacteria, followed by Archaea, and Eukarya (36,722 genera). The analysis of functional proteins showed high biodiversity with a total of 27,636,243 proteins identified, but it was only possible to annotate 3,227,398 of them. Also, we identified several genes associated with some relevant pathways, such as methanogenesis. Altogether, this study allowed us to reconstruct the natural history of lake Chalco and its surroundings.</p>

scholarly journals ‘A Kind of Sensory, Strange Thing to Experience’: Speaking Environmental Disaster in the Sea Empress Project Archive

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Environmental Disaster ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
Sensory Event ◽  
Modern Britain ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

This article explores embodied encounters with the Sea Empress oil spill of 1996 and their representation in oral narratives. Through a close reading of the personal testimonies collected in the Sea Empress Project archive, I examine the relationship between intense sensory experiences of environmental change and everyday interpretations of the disaster and its legacy. The art­icle first outlines the ways in which this collection of voices reveals sensory memories, embodied affects and narrative choices to be deeply entwined in oral representations of the spill, disclosing a ‘sensory event’ that created a powerful awareness of both environmental surroundings and their relationship to everyday social processes. Then, reading these narratives against-the-grain, I argue that narrators’ accounts tell a paradoxical story of a disaster that most now wish to forget, and reveal an ambivalent legacy of environmental change that is similarly consigned to the past. Finally, I relate this social forgetting of the Sea Empress to the wider history of environmental consciousness in modern Britain.

scholarly journals History and Historiography in Early Christian Ireland

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (33) ◽  
pp. 197-227
Author(s):  
Dominique Santos
Keyword(s):  
Early Christian ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
Bilingual Literacy

Despite modern writers noticing the importance of Premodern historiographical phenomena for a deeper comprehension of both Theory of History and History of Historiography, the Irish contribution to the subject is often left aside. Topics such as the Seanchas Tradition and Medieval Irish Classicism are not well integrated into such historiographical narrative. The Seanchaidh, the Irish Artifex of the Past, for example, is broadly mentioned as not a historian, but a chronicler, antiquary, genealogist, hagiographer or pedigree systematizer. This article addresses these issues and, more specifically, we focus on two Irish narratives produced in 7th century by Muirchú and Tírechán. Since they belong to the world of orality and bilingual literacy of Early Christian Ireland, perhaps their works could be understood as bounded by the Seanchas Tradition and Medieval Irish Classicism, hence, both could be considered as great examples of the producers of History and Historiography at the time.

From Reproductive Rights to Reproductive Justice

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Ziegler
Keyword(s):  
Reproductive Health ◽  
Reproductive Rights ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reproductive Justice ◽  
Reproductive Health Services ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
The Past ◽  
Women's Equality ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

This article illuminates potential obstacles facing the reproductive justice movement and the way those obstacles might be overcome. Since 2010, reproductive justice—an agenda that fuses access to reproductive health services and demands for social justice—has energized feminist scholars and activists and captured broader public attention. Abortion rights advocates in the past dismissed reproductive justice claims as risky and unlikely to appeal to a broad enough audience. These obstacles are not as daunting as they first appear. Reframing the abortion right as a matter of women’s equality may eliminate some of the constitutional hurdles facing a reproductive justice approach. The political obstacles may be just as surmountable. Understanding the history of the constitutional discourse concerning reproductive justice and reproductive rights may allow us to move beyond the impasse that has defined the relationship between the two for too long.

Thinking differently about leadership: a critical history of the form and formation of leadership studies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Suze Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Modern Science ◽  
Leadership Studies ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Past ◽  
Critical History ◽  
Form Function ◽  
History Of ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Thinking Differently ◽  
The Relationship

<p>We have come to live in an age where leadership is the solution, regardless of the problem. Today, managers are called on to provide leadership which is ‘visionary’, ‘charismatic’, ‘transformational’ and ‘authentic’ in nature. This is what ‘followers’ are said to need to perform to their potential. The efforts of the academy in promoting these ideas means they are typically understood as modern, enlightened and grounded in scientific research. Taking a critical step back, this study examines why we have come to understand leadership in this way.  Adopting a Foucauldian methodology, the study comprises three case studies which examine Classical Greek, 16th century European and modern scholarly discourses on leadership. The analysis foregrounds change and continuity in leadership thought and examines the underpinning assumptions, problematizations and processes of formation which gave rise to these truth claims. The relationship and subjectivity effects produced by these discourses along with their wider social function are also considered.  What the study reveals is that our current understanding of leadership is not grounded in an approach more enlightened and truthful than anything that has come before. Rather, just as at other times in the past, it is contemporary problematizations, politically-informed processes of formation and the epistemological and methodological preferences of our age which profoundly shape what is understood to constitute the truth about leadership.  Through showing how leadership has been thought of at different points in time, this thesis argues that far from being a stable enduring fact of human nature now revealed to us by modern science, as is typically assumed, leadership is most usefully understood as an unstable social invention, morphing in form, function and effect in response to changing norms, values and circumstances. Consistent with this understanding, a new approach to theory-building for organizational leadership studies is offered. This study shows, then, why we ought to think differently about leadership and offers a means by which this can occur.</p>

Thinking differently about leadership: a critical history of the form and formation of leadership studies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Suze Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Modern Science ◽  
Leadership Studies ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Past ◽  
Critical History ◽  
Form Function ◽  
History Of ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Thinking Differently ◽  
The Relationship

<p>We have come to live in an age where leadership is the solution, regardless of the problem. Today, managers are called on to provide leadership which is ‘visionary’, ‘charismatic’, ‘transformational’ and ‘authentic’ in nature. This is what ‘followers’ are said to need to perform to their potential. The efforts of the academy in promoting these ideas means they are typically understood as modern, enlightened and grounded in scientific research. Taking a critical step back, this study examines why we have come to understand leadership in this way.  Adopting a Foucauldian methodology, the study comprises three case studies which examine Classical Greek, 16th century European and modern scholarly discourses on leadership. The analysis foregrounds change and continuity in leadership thought and examines the underpinning assumptions, problematizations and processes of formation which gave rise to these truth claims. The relationship and subjectivity effects produced by these discourses along with their wider social function are also considered.  What the study reveals is that our current understanding of leadership is not grounded in an approach more enlightened and truthful than anything that has come before. Rather, just as at other times in the past, it is contemporary problematizations, politically-informed processes of formation and the epistemological and methodological preferences of our age which profoundly shape what is understood to constitute the truth about leadership.  Through showing how leadership has been thought of at different points in time, this thesis argues that far from being a stable enduring fact of human nature now revealed to us by modern science, as is typically assumed, leadership is most usefully understood as an unstable social invention, morphing in form, function and effect in response to changing norms, values and circumstances. Consistent with this understanding, a new approach to theory-building for organizational leadership studies is offered. This study shows, then, why we ought to think differently about leadership and offers a means by which this can occur.</p>

‘Even If You Don’t Want to Drink, You Still Have to Drink’

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Invented Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter considers the history of alcohol in Nuosu Yi society in relation to the formal codification of a Yi heritage of alcohol-related culture, and the question of alcohol in Yi health. The relationship of newly invented tradition to older practice and thought is often obscure in studies that lack historical perspective. Examining the historical narratives associated with the exposition of a Yi heritage of alcohol, this study reveals that those narratives are woven from a tapestry of threads with histories of their own, and they therefore shape present-day heritage work. After a brief overview of ideas about alcohol in contemporary discourses on Yi heritage, the chapter then analyses historical texts to argue that many of these ideas are remarkably similar to ones that emerged in the context of nineteenth and early twentieth century contact between Yi and Han communities.

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