scholarly journals The dynamics of ‘civilised’ sovereignty: colonial frontiers and performative discourses of civilisation and savagery

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 468-487
Author(s):  
Xavier Mathieu

Critical and post-colonial scholars have argued that a more complete account of sovereignty necessitates an exploration of the colonial experiences through which Western civilised identity was forged. But the way these ‘distant’ encounters were used in (and interacted with) the process of claiming sovereignty domestically has received less attention. This is surprising as critical scholars have revealed the existence of strong similarities between the domestic and international constructions of sovereignty (and in particular the necessary performance of a savage Other) and have emphasised how sovereignty transcends the domestic/international frontier and provides a crucial link between the two. As a response, this article develops an analysis of the construction of sovereignty that combines both the domestic and international colonial frontiers on which ‘civilised’ sovereignty relies. I use a large set of primary archives about France in the sixteenth century in order to explore how sovereignty depends on unstable colonial frontiers, that is, differentiations between the civilised and the savage, that are constantly contested and re-established. Combining the domestic and international colonial frontiers reveals how they interact and are used in order to reinforce the civilised identity of the Western ruler.

2009 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-19
Author(s):  
Donald Beecher

This is a study of a Renaissance artist and his patrons, but with an added complication, insofar as Leone de' Sommi, the gifted academician and playwright in the employ of the dukes of Mantua in the second half of the sixteenth century, was Jewish and a lifelong promoter and protector of his community. The article deals with the complex relationship between the court and the Jewish "università" concerning the drama and the way in which dramatic performances also became part of the political, judicial and social negotiations between the two parties, as well as a study of Leone's role as playwright and negotiator during a period that was arguably one of the best of times for the Jews of Mantua.


Author(s):  
Antonio Urquízar-Herrera

Chapter 3 approaches the notion of trophy through historical accounts of the Christianization of the Córdoba and Seville Islamic temples in the thirteenth-century and the late-fifteenth-century conquest of Granada. The first two examples on Córdoba and Seville are relevant to explore the way in which medieval chronicles (mainly Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and his entourage) turned the narrative of the Christianization of mosques into one of the central topics of the restoration myth. The sixteenth-century narratives about the taking of the Alhambra in Granada explain the continuity of this triumphal reading within the humanist model of chorography and urban eulogy (Lucius Marineus Siculus, Luis de Mármol Carvajal, and Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza).


Author(s):  
Rembert Lutjeharms

This chapter introduces the main themes of the book—Kavikarṇapūra, theology, Sanskrit poetry, and Sanskrit poetics—and provides an overview of each chapter. It briefly highlights the importance of the practice of poetry for the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava tradition, places Kavikarṇapūra in the (political) history of sixteenth‐century Bengal and Orissa as well as sketches his place in the early developments of the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava tradition (a topic more fully explored in Chapter 1). The chapter also reflects more generally on the nature of both his poetry and poetics, and highlights the way Kavikarṇapūra has so far been studied in modern scholarship.


Author(s):  
Joan Burbick

Joan Burbick reads Jay Harjo from a queering as well as post-colonial perspective, analyzing the way in which normative discourses of social cohesion are questioned and re-formulated from the vantage point of Native American categories such as the berdache. Harjo's vision promotes radical contingency and a seemingly spiritual notion of transference.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Lei Sun ◽  
Xiangyong Kong

With the detection from the post-colonial perspective, there is a certain amount of truth in the statement that Alice Walker’s The Color Purple sometimes reveals Eurocentric ideology, even though she overtly makes efforts for Africa and Africans. The way in which she delineates Nettie’s missionary job in Olinka, confirms habitual Western suspicions about equality between Europe and Africa. With the reexamination of the depiction about the African continent Nettie sketches out, additionally, we might notice Walker’s intention of setting up Africa as a foil to Europe, to some extent, echoes Said’s orientalist discourse.


Author(s):  
GUIDO BELTRAMINI

This chapter is dedicated to a particular culture relating to the way one might ideally lead one's life in line with ancient practices and views. The trend in question, which developed in Padua in the first half of the Cinquecento, was promoted by such humanists as Pietro Bembo, Alvise Cornaro and Marco Mantova Benavides. Exceptional connoisseurs of the mores and values of antiquity, these intellectuals personally supervised and directed the building of their homes. Following the model of Hadrian's villa at Tivoli, the complexes of these Paduan residences comprised dwelling areas, pavilions, large gardens and the installation of fountains, statues and rare plants. Inspired by literary sources, the ideal of recreating the ‘ancient’ way of life, in which music played a crucial role, was revived.


Exterranean ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 41-56
Author(s):  
Phillip John Usher

This chapter turns to a mid-sixteenth-century poetic text, the “Hymne de l’or” (Hymn to Gold) by French author Pierre de Ronsard. The poem is read here—recuperating in particular its “vision” of Terre that generations of critics have written off as a mere aside—as a poem ever conscious about gold’s exterranean origins and as a kind of poetic counterpart to nonpoetic texts about mining such as Georgius Agricola’s Bermannus (1500) and Vannoccio Biringuccio’s metallurgical treatise De la Pirotechnia (1540). After analyzing the “vision” of Terre in some detail, especially the way that Terre is described as always already containing not just gold, but mines, the chapter explores how Ronsard juxtaposes (in somewhat problematic ways) specific sites of extraction.


2021 ◽  
pp. 6-33
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim

This chapter and the next one cover the way in which geology came to be a science in its own right, spanning the early centuries of geology. Lives of crucial individual scientists from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century are discussed by relating the stories and discoveries of each, commencing with Leonardo da Vinci and continuing with the European geologists, including Nicholaus Steno, Abraham Werner, James Hutton, Charles Lyell, and early fossilists such as Etheldred Benet. Steno, Werner, Hutton and Lyell, and other early geologists revealed and wrote about the basic principles of geology, painstakingly untangling and piecing together the threads of the Earth’s vast history. They made sense of jumbled sequences of rocks, which had undergone dramatic changes since they were formed, and discerned the significance of fossils, found in environments seemingly incongruous to where the creatures once lived, as ancient forms of life. They set the stage for further research on the nature of the Earth and life on it, providing subsequent generations of geologists and those who study the Earth the basis on which to refine and flesh out the biography of the Earth.


Author(s):  
E.P. Bos

The theological and philosophical works of Marsilius of Inghen are characterized by a logico-semantical approach in which he followed John Buridan, combined with an eclectic use of older theories, often dating from the thirteenth century. These were sometimes more Aristotelian and sometimes more Neoplatonist. The label ‘Ockhamist’, which is often applied to Marsilius, has therefore limited value. He was influential on Central European philosophy of later centuries, both through his own philosophy and by the way he stimulated reform of university programmes. In the sixteenth century there were still references to a ‘Marsilian way’ in logic and physics.


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