An Incomplete Journey Away from the Past: The Life and Ideas of Antonius Ameuney (1821–1881)

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 318-338
Author(s):  
Anthony Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
English Speaking

Abstract This article recovers a dissonant voice from the nineteenth-century nahḍa. Antonius Ameuney (1821–1881) was a fervent Protestant and staunch Anglophile. Unlike his Ottoman Syrian contemporaries, who argued for religious diversity and the formation of a civil society based on a shared Arab past, he believed that the only geopolitical Syria viable in the future was one grounded in Protestant virtues and English values. This article examines Ameuney’s complicated journey to become a Protestant Englishman and his inescapable characterization as a son of Syria. It charts his personal life and intellectual career and explores how he interpreted the religious, cultural, political, and linguistic landscape of his birthplace to British audiences. As an English-speaking Ottoman Syrian intellectual residing permanently in London, the case of Antonius Ameuney illustrates England to have been a constitutive site of the nahḍa and underscores the role played by the British public in shaping nahḍa discourses.

The Historyless Heathen and the Stagnating Pagan: History as Non-Native Category?

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Gin Lum
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Core Component ◽  
Change Over Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Religious Perspectives ◽  
Over Time

AbstractThis article asks whether and how J. Z. Smith's contention that religion is a “non-native category” might be applied to the discipline of history. It looks at how nineteenth-century Americans constructed their own understandings of “proper history”—authenticatable, didactic, and progressive—against the supposed historylessness of “heathen” Hawaiians and stagnation of “pagan” Chinese. “True” history, for these nineteenth-century historians, changed in the past and pointed to change in the future. The article asks historians to think about how they might be replicating some of the same assumptions about forward-moving history by focusing on change over time as a core component of historical narration. It urges historians to instead also incorporate the native historical imaginations of our subjects into our own methods, paying attention to when those imaginations are cyclical and reiterative as well as directional, and letting our subjects' assumptions about time and history, often shaped by religious perspectives, orient our own decisions about how to structure the stories we tell.

scholarly journals Decentering the Status Quo : The Rhetorically Sanctioned Political Engagement of Groen van Prinsterer

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-159
Author(s):  
Jan Adriaan Schlebusch
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Narrative Approach ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
Strategic Framework ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Status

Abstract In his strategic political positioning and engagement in the nineteenth century, Groen van Prinsterer looked towards both the past and the future. Rhetorically, he appealed to the past as a vindication of the truth and practicality of his anti-revolutionary position. He also expressed optimism for the success of his convictions and political goals in the future. This optimism was reflected in the confidence with which he engaged politically, despite experiencing numerous setbacks in his career. Relying on the phenomenological-narrative approach of David Carr, I highlight the motives and strategies behind Groen’s political activity, and reveal that the past and the future in Groen’s narrative provide the strategic framework for his rhetoric, and the basis for his activism. I accentuate how the emphasis of his narrative shifts away from the status quo and thus enables a type of political engagement that proved historically significant for the early consolidation of the Dutch constitutional democracy.

“Children of Liberty”: Idealist Historiography in Staël, Shelley, and Sand

PMLA ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 118 (3) ◽  
pp. 502-520 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kari Lokke
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Mary Shelley ◽  
George Sand ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Spirit World ◽  
Historical Agency ◽  
The French Revolution

This essay explores the contributions of a tradition of nineteenth-century Künstlerromane by Germaine de Staël, Mary Shelley, and George Sand to European idealist historiography as exemplified in Kant's writings on perfectibility. Corinne, Valperga, and Consuelo represent the historical agency of the intellectual and artist as communication with a spirit world inhabited by ghosts of the past so that their secrets and wisdom can be transmitted to the future. In canonical Romanticism, contact with these phantasms provokes crippling guilt over the failure of past projects of perfectibility like the French Revolution (doomed by violence and bloodshed), guilt that is figured in the interdependent tropes of the titanic hero and Romantic melancholy. The novels discussed here perform an explicit critique of masculinist individualism in the name of women and humanity as a whole, replacing melancholy with enthusiasm and deploying spirits aesthetically, as sublime signs of future historical potentiality.

The Garden in the Machine: Two American Avant-Garde Films and the Nineteenth-Century Visual Arts

Prospects ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 239-262
Author(s):  
Scott MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Past ◽  
Academic Fields ◽  
The Future ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Logical Extension ◽  
As If

One of the primary reasons I became interested in film studies was the seeming open-endedness of the field. Cinema was new, I reasoned, and would continue to be new, unlike other academic fields, and particularly those devoted to historical periods: as a scholar and a teacher, I would face the future, endlessly enthralled and energized by the transformation of the potential into the actual. That my development as a film scholar/teacher increasingly involved me in avant-garde film seemed quite natural — a logical extension of the attraction of film studies in general: Avant-garde film was the newest of the new, the sharpest edge of the present as it sliced into the promise of the future. Scholars in some fields may empathize with the attitude I describe, but scholars in all fields will smile at its self-defeating implications: of course, I can see now how typically American my assumptions were — as if one could maintain the excitement of youth merely by refusing to acknowledge the past! Obviously, film studies, like any other discipline, is only a field once its history takes, or is given, a recognizable shape.

scholarly journals Fifteenth Century Saints, Nineteenth Century Neurologists, and Twentieth Century Immunotherapy: The Eccentric History of Multiple Sclerosis

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Paul J Maglione
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Sclerosis ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of

Multiple sclerosis has a long, fascinating, serendipi- tous, and well-documented history. The first recorded mention of the disease can be dated back to the fifteenth century, while a truly exhaustive investigation of the disorder began with the nineteenth century’s burgeoning neurologists. These records reveal a fascinating story of meticulous science aimed at comprehending a truly perplexing illness, one that even today is not completely understood. The great nineteenth century French neurologist Jean-Marie Charcot became very interested in studying this disease, and through his celebrity garnered much attention to a previously unknown affliction. Here we review a story of pioneering research that grants brief tribute to some of the more remarkable experiments, wondering if ideas born in the past may help develop solutions in the future. 

scholarly journals R v Hall and the changing perceptions of the crime of bigamy

Legal Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Rebecca Probert
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Over Time

AbstractIn 1845, the conviction of Thomas Hall for bigamy was reported as an example of the unequal way in which the law operated, with great play being made of the steps that Hall could have taken to free himself from his first wife by a divorce, were it not for the cost involved. Since then, virtually every account of nineteenth-century bigamy or divorce has included some version of the judge's apparently ‘brilliantly sarcastic’ speech.But what the judge was reported as saying at the time differs in a number of crucial particulars from what later commentators have reported him as saying. Later accounts have played up the misconduct of the first wife, inflated the cost of obtaining a divorce, and exaggerated the poverty and lowly status of Hall, while playing down the sentence he received and ignoring his deception of his second wife.This paper traces the evolution of the account over time, and identifies the timing of the various changes that were made. It illustrates how history is used – by politicians, reformers, and scholars – to support both a particular view of the past and to bolster claims as to how the law should change for the future.

Who makes the world? Academics and (un)cancelling the future

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-427
Author(s):  
Leonie Holthaus ◽  
Nils Stockmann
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Policy Advice ◽  
Homogenous Group ◽  
The Past ◽  
Long Line ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future

In this essay, we consider the role of academics as change-makers. There is a long line of reflection about academics’ sociopolitical role(s) in international relations (IR). Yet, our attempt differs from available considerations in two regards. First, we emphasize that academics are not a homogenous group. While some keep their distance from policymakers, others frequently provide policy advice. Hence, positions and possibilities of influence differ. Second, our argument is not oriented towards the past but the future. That is, we develop our reflections on academics as change-makers by outlining the vision of a ‘FutureLab’, an innovative, future forum that brings together different world-makers who are united in their attempt to improve ‘the world'. Our vision accounts for current, perhaps alarming trends in academia, such as debates about the (in)ability to confront post-truth politics. Still, it is a (critically) optimistic one and can be read as an invitation for experimentation. Finally, we sympathize with voices demanding the democratization of academia and find that further cross-disciplinary dialogues within academia and dialogues between different academics, civil society activists and policymakers may help in finding creditable solutions to problems such as climate change and populism.

Re-Visioning the Past and Re-Sourcing the Future: The Unresolved Historiographical Struggle in Roman Catholic Scholarship and Authoritative Teaching

2013 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 389-416
Author(s):  
Kenneth L. Parker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Unresolved Problem ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Historical Theology ◽  
Roman Catholics ◽  
Catholic Theological

During twenty years of teaching at a Jesuit university in an ecumenical Ph.D. programme focused on historical theology, I have observed a profound unresolved problem in Roman Catholic theological scholarship. Framed very simply, it is this: since the rise of historical consciousness among Roman Catholics during the nineteenth century, conflicting historiographical assumptions about the Christian past have led to tensions and divisions among Roman Catholic scholars and church authorities. My purpose here is to diagnose this unresolved challenge and propose a mode of analysis for intra-ecclesial dialogue.

Is the societal dialogue at the local level the future of social dialogue?

2005 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 439-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Yves Boulin ◽  
Ulrich Mückenberger
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Local Time ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Regional Level ◽  
Network Society ◽  
Social Dialogue ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Supranational Level

The modern ‘network society’ restructures the system of ‘voice’ as it has come down from the past. Decision-making is drifting away from particular plants, organisations and institutions, and is becoming fluid — whereas voice remains fixed to plants, organisations and institutions. The tentative thesis put forward in this article is that only both regional/local and global ‘voice networking’ may be capable of coping with the decision-making character of the network society. This leads to efforts to integrate, into the bargaining processes, also representatives of civil society — NGOs on a European and supranational level, various ‘stakeholders' on a local and regional level. This gives two new roles to social dialogue: it has to take place not only on a sectoral, but also on a territorial level (‘la négociation sociale territorialisée’); and it has to ‘open up’ towards the territorial stakeholders (‘le dialogue sociétal’). Local time policies are taken as an example for such a new function of territorial social dialogue.

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