Matter of Time: Ceramics and Historicity in Medieval South India

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 171-206
Author(s):  
Mannat Johal
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
South India ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
Temporal Relations ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Alternative Framework ◽  
Textual Production ◽  
Present World

This article examines how people formed and negotiated relations to time in routine engagements with materials and places in medieval South India. Questions of history and memory, which have become central to our understanding of precolonial Indian social and political practices, are frequently considered in relation to courtly epigraphical and textual production or monumental building projects. Positing that experiences of time are formed in everyday acts of production, consumption and maintenance, this article problematises the term ‘social memory’ to propose an alternative framework for exploring temporal relations: the concept of historicity. Historicity provides a robust analytical vocabulary for discussing how historical actors inhabited their own present, how they oriented themselves towards pasts and futures, and the kinds of timescales that both framed their actions and were formed in action. Operationalising this framework, I build on an analysis of excavated ceramics from a twelfth- to thirteenth-century settlement at Maski (northern Karnataka) to foreground the diverse ways in which individuals and communities drew upon available pasts and acted with initiative within an intersubjective present world of tasks and activities.

Pictures at a Remove: Seth’s Drawn Photographs

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Marrone
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Relations ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship

This chapter closely examines Seth’s drawn photographs, comparing the ways in which comics and photography relate to their represented realities in terms of time, narrative, duration, and framing. Seth’s drawn photographs synthesize these complicated temporal relations in metapictures that invite the reader to consider the nature of visual mediation. These metapictures are caught between the subjective and objective, the atomized and continuous, the opaque and transparent, the classical and grotesque, the absent and present. At the seat of these tensions is an ambivalent relationship to the (historical) referent, inherent in the photographic perspective and amplified by Seth’s drawing. In their extreme reticence – an uncommon synthesis of photographic and cartoon stillnesses – Seth’s drawn photographs exemplify his method of compelling the reader to take a position between history and memory in order to make sense of images.

scholarly journals Writing Self, Writing Empire

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 106-110
Author(s):  
Aria Fani
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Literary Aesthetics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Textual Production ◽  
Northern India ◽  
Literary Environment

The seventeenth century marks an exciting period in the life of Persian literarycultures in northern India. Established as a language of administration byTurco-Afghans in the early thirteenth century, several centuries later Persianhad extended well beyond its initial administrative strongholds to become animportant medium for literary and religious composition, historiography, andtranslation. In a literary environment that prized both literary aesthetics andfierce rivalries, the massive textual production on vastly diverse subjects, aswell as the presence of literary salons, standalone bookstalls, and mushā‘irahs(poetic assemblies), cumulatively point to a lively Persian literary culture thatechoed across political, religious, and socio-cultural terrains.Unfortunately, most of the scholarship on Persian in the medieval Indiancontext over the past decades has failed to illuminate this dynamic scene.Moreover, most studies seek to highlight Persian’s influence on India or examineIndia’s civilizational impact on Persian. Both paradigms assume a natural(read: Iranian) ecumene for Persian and thus do not critically considerthe slippage between linguistic, ethnic, and geographic designations wh

The Miracles and Decoration of Sainte-Radegonde

2019 ◽  
pp. 170-200
Author(s):  
Jennifer C. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Stained Glass ◽  
Text And Image ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Church Decoration ◽  
The Church

Chapter 5 examines the efforts of the canons of Sainte-Radegonde to enhance their community’s status in the thirteenth century. The canons commissioned new manuscripts, building projects, and church decoration that challenged previous depictions of Saint Radegund controlled by the abbess of Sainte-Croix, and asserted stronger ties between the saint and the canons’ church. Decoration, including a program of stained-glass windows, created a new biography for the saint that shifted Radegund’s power from the monastery to the church; new miracle tales recording healings at Radegund’s tomb demonstrated the power housed within the church. The canons also drew in royal patrons by focusing on Radegund’s royal, rather than monastic, identity. The canons worked subtle challenges in text and image to oppose the nuns’ control of the saint’s cult. Their work resulted in greater patronage and prestige, which placed new pressures on the abbess of Sainte-Croix, and new difficulties in asserting her authority.

A Demon with Ruby Eyes

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-369
Author(s):  
Manan Ahmed Asif
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Religious Difference ◽  
The Past ◽  
Textual Production

This essay takes a longitudinal look at how different communities dealt with political and theological difference in the same space. It examines accounts of Uch Sharif, in contemporary Pakistan, from the thirteenth century to the present. It specifically traces a motif of ‘ruby eyes’ in Arabic and Persian historiography in an effort to delineate how difference was represented and assimilated. It argues that until the late colonial period, religious difference was mutually comprehensible, even if incommensurate. The rupture of meaning in recognising difference continued in different ways in the post-colonial state of Pakistan. The study provides a methodological argument for reshaping the ways in which we look at landscape, built environment and community, in contemporary South Asia. By situating the textual production of the past alongside the material remnants of the past, this essay reads simultaneously ethnographic and textual understandings of difference in Uch Sharif.

Making Space for Youth Culture History: Berlin’sArchiv der Jugendkulturen

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-418
Author(s):  
Christine Feldman-Barrett
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Youth Culture ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Youth Studies ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Youth Cultures ◽  
Culture History ◽  
Physical Manifestation

Berlin’s Archiv der Jugendkulturen (Archive of Youth Cultures) was opened in 1998 to provide scholars, journalists, students, and other interested parties with a dedicated space to research youth culture topics. Founder and journalist Klaus Farin, frustrated with the often negative depictions of young people in the mainstream media, hoped the archive’s materials would act as a corrective to such stereotypes. However, the archive has come to mean much more. This article argues that this unique space not only provides invaluable and rare resources but is both a symbolic and physical manifestation of Germany’s youth culture history. As such, it is an innovative site for the nation’s social memory. Since the archive is located in Kreuzberg, the city’s historic heart of bohemian culture, special attention is paid to Berlin’s long-standing reputation as an “alternative city” popular with young people interested in underground culture. Furthermore, this essay stresses the importance of this history- and memory-oriented space in connection with a recent “historic turn” in youth studies.

Liberating Methodologies and Nakba Studies: Palestinian History and Memory from below as Sites of Lifelong Learning

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nur Masalha
Keyword(s):  
Lifelong Learning ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
Trauma Studies ◽  
Positive Role ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Marginalised Groups ◽  
Economic Elites ◽  
A Site

Historians too often construct frameworks and methodologies which obfuscate social, economic and political oppression. This article explores new historical methodologies that can represent oppressed and marginalised groups in Palestine. In particular the article focuses on the role of indigenous history and memory in critical learning and shaping individual and collective identity in Palestine. It further argues that Palestinian memories ‘from below’ since the Nakba have played a major positive role in the recovery from the traumatic catastrophe and the reconstruction of Palestinian identity. The article critiques the manipulation of collective memory by social, political and economic elites and top-down nationalist approaches. It argues that reconfigured popular memories can be liberating and empowering for embattled Palestinians. The article also calls for the establishment of an interdisciplinary subfield of Nakba Studies that would bring together historians, social memory and cultural theorists, postcolonial scholars and scholars of trauma studies with the aim of documenting and studying the embattled social memory of Palestine as a site of lifelong learning and empowerment.

FRAYED AT THE EDGES: COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND HISTORY ON THE BORDERS OF CLASSIC MAYA POLITIES

2010 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Golden
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
Classic Maya ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Classic Period ◽  
Late Classic ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Piedras Negras ◽  
Political Act ◽  
And Control

AbstractThis article explores social memory and history as they pertain particularly to secondary political centers on the edges of the Classic Maya kingdoms of Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan. Over the course of the Late Classic period (a.d. 600–900) the rulers of Maya polities in the Usumacinta River basin increasingly relied on the subordinate lords who governed these secondary centers to patrol and control the boundaries of their territories. For the rulers of any state, formulating an appropriate and coherent history to guide social memory is a critical political act for maintaining the cohesion of the political community. But as the Classic period progressed, client lords were increasingly permitted a formerly royal prerogative; they were accorded their own inscribed monuments. The monuments, together with associated ritual performances, were an integral part of the construction of history and collective memory in local communities and allowed secondary nobles to restructure social memory for their own interests. This trend, in turn, increased the potential for royal history and authority to be contested throughout the kingdom. Through several case studies this paper examines the ways that subordinate nobles could contest social memory and history sanctioned by primary rulers and the ways in which kings acted to maintain the reins of history and memory.

scholarly journals SOCIAL CONDITION OF HOLY PLACE IN WEST INDIA: ACCUMULATION FROM SIGNATURE (C. 11TH TO THIRTEENTH CENTURY CE)

2021 ◽  
Vol 02 (05) ◽  
pp. 23-25
Author(s):  
Narayana Swami G. ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
South India ◽  
Social Condition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Social Part ◽  
North And South ◽  
Holy Place

The sanctuary means one's convictions. Its primary highlights have likewise stood out for one. George Michell, Stella Kramrisch, Krishna Deva and some different researchers have examined the 'which means and structures', expressive, strict and otherworldly meaning of the sanctuary. We additionally discover the sanctuary being referenced regarding a comprehension of early Indian political, monetary and socio-strict exercises in north and south India. Furthermore, the sanctuary is additionally known to have been related with social exhibitions like dramatization and so on Luckily, in such manner we have various epigraphic records from west India, especially from Rajasthan and Gujarat, which point out the social part of the sanctuary during the c. 11th to thirteenth century CE. The current article looks to consider this part of the sanctuary.

scholarly journals Considerations About Traditions Influential in the Ahirbudhnyasaṃhitā

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 421-443
Author(s):  
Marion Rastelli
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
South India ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Two Sides

Abstract The Ahirbudhnyasaṃhitā, probably compiled in South India in the twelfth/thirteenth century, is one of the most interesting texts of the Vaiṣṇava Pāñcarātra tradition. Its most important deity is Sudarśana, the anthropomorphic discus of Viṣṇu, who is ritually worshipped by personal priests (purohita, purodhas) for the sake of the king. In contrast to other Pāñcarātra Saṃhitās, the Ahirbudhnyasaṃhitā contains extensive theological and cosmological chapters. It also shows traces of several other religious traditions. The paper is mainly devoted to this second characteristic and presents examples of influences from two sides, namely, from Śaivas on one hand and Atharvavedins on the other, and tries to give a possible explanation for their presence.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document