scholarly journals Roundtable on Visuality, Race and Nationhood in Italy

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-80
Author(s):  
Charles Burdett ◽  
Alessandra Ferrini ◽  
Gaia Giuliani ◽  
Marianna Griffini ◽  
Linde Luijnenburg ◽  
...  

This Roundtable on Visuality, Race and Nationhood in Italy brings together scholars from the arts, humanities and social sciences to discuss historical constructions of Italian whiteness and national identity in relation to the current xenophobic discourse on race and migration, stressing their rootedness in as yet unchallenged modern notions of scientific racism. Building on postcolonial historian and anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler’s definition of the colonial archive as a ‘site of knowledge production’ and a ‘repository of codified beliefs’ in Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (2009: 97), the discussants conceive the archive as a multi-layered, collective repository of aspiration, dominance, desire, self-aggrandizement and fear through which the development of society’s self-image can be revealed but also – through a systematic and critical approach to the (visual) archive of coloniality – contested. Based on the analysis of visual cultures (photographs, news footage, advertisements, propaganda, fiction film, etc.) the Roundtable addresses and connects wide-ranging issues such as: the gaze from above and below in colonial-era ethnographic film; the depiction of migration in the Far Right’s rhetoric; representations of fears and fetishisms towards Others in Federico Fellini’s work; and the exploitation of the colonial past in the Italy–Libya Bilateral Agreements on migration. The Roundtable was organized in response to the surge in xenophobic violence sparked by the Italian Parliamentary elections of March 2018 and to mark the publication of Gaia Giuliani’s monograph Race, Nation, and Gender in Modern Italy: Intersectional Representations in Visual Culture (2018).

Author(s):  
Sam Dubal

This chapter investigates how humanity was constructed against animality through the space of the “bush” (lum). Whereas Acholi civilians and others had come to see the lum as a wild, dangerous, and evil space of animals, the rebels occupied the lum and gave it a different meaning. In what became a contestation over an “anthropomoral geography,” the LRA collapsed an analytic separating animality and humanity, unsettling a spatio-moral definition of humanity against animality. They saw their rebellion as gorilla rather than guerrilla warfare. Instead of reinforcing a colonial-era notion of the lum, the LRA found the lum to be a site of life, sacredness, and development. In doing so, they dissolved some of the spatio-moral infrastructure of “humanity” itself.


2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-92
Author(s):  
Susan Jones

This article explores the diversity of British literary responses to Diaghilev's project, emphasising the way in which the subject matter and methodologies of Diaghilev's modernism were sometimes unexpectedly echoed in expressions of contemporary British writing. These discussions emerge both in writing about Diaghilev's work, and, more discretely, when references to the Russian Ballet find their way into the creative writing of the period, serving to anchor the texts in a particular cultural milieu or to suggest contemporary aesthetic problems in the domain of literary aesthetics developing in the period. Figures from disparate fields, including literature, music and the visual arts, brought to their criticism of the Ballets Russes their individual perspectives on its aesthetics, helping to consolidate the sense of its importance in contributing to the inter-disciplinary flavour of modernism across the arts. In the field of literature, not only did British writers evaluate the Ballets Russes in terms of their own poetics, their relationship to experimentation in the novel and in drama, they developed an increasing sense of the company's place in dance history, its choreographic innovations offering material for wider discussions, opening up the potential for literary modernism's interest in impersonality and in the ‘unsayable’, discussions of the body, primitivism and gender.


Author(s):  
Claude Markovits

This chapter deals with the question of innovation in Indian business from a historical perspective. After a brief survey of the literature, emphasizing how divided scholarly opinion was regarding the existence of forms of innovation in Indian business prior to the colonial era, the focus shifts to the British period. It is shown that Schumpeter’s definition of innovation equating it with technological innovation cannot be fruitfully applied to the Indian business scene. Two case studies are then proposed: Tata Iron & Steel, the largest Indian industrial firm, is shown to have been innovative in the specific context of India’s backward industrial scene, while the Sindwork merchants of Hyderabad are an instance of an Indian trading network which extended its range to the entire world. Concluding remarks interrogate post-Independence developments and stress the limits of the innovativeness of Indian business, prior to the recent liberal reforms.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 77-96
Author(s):  
Sujit Sivasundaram

AbstractThe Pacific has often been invisible in global histories written in the UK. Yet it has consistently been a site for contemplating the past and the future, even among Britons cast on its shores. In this lecture, I reconsider a critical moment of globalisation and empire, the ‘age of revolutions’ at the end of the eighteenth century and the start of the nineteenth century, by journeying with European voyagers to the Pacific Ocean. The lecture will point to what this age meant for Pacific islanders, in social, political and cultural terms. It works with a definition of the Pacific's age of revolutions as a surge of indigeneity met by a counter-revolutionary imperialism. What was involved in undertaking a European voyage changed in this era, even as one important expedition was interrupted by news from revolutionary Europe. Yet more fundamentally vocabularies and practices of monarchy were consolidated by islanders across the Pacific. This was followed by the outworkings of counter-revolutionary imperialism through agreements of alliance and alleged cessation. Such an argument allows me, for instance, to place the 1806 wreck of the Port-au-Prince within the Pacific's age of revolutions. This was an English ship used to raid French and Spanish targets in the Pacific, but which was stripped of its guns, iron, gunpowder and carronades by Tongans. To chart the trajectory from revolution and islander agency on to violence and empire is to appreciate the unsettled paths that gave rise to our modern world. This view foregrounds people who inhabited and travelled through the earth's oceanic frontiers. It is a global history from a specific place in the oceanic south, on the opposite side of the planet to Europe.


Africa ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 91 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-269
Author(s):  
Sarah C. White ◽  
Shreya Jha

AbstractThis article explores the movement of children between households in Zambia as a site of ‘moral navigation’. Moral navigation extends Henrik Vigh's concept of social navigation from contexts of conflict and migration to more socially stable contexts in which well-being depends critically on people's ability to manage relationships. The live, dynamic and mobile character of these relationships means that they require active, real-time cultivation and response. While having practical objectives, these negotiations are also moral, articulated with ideas of what ought to be, and seeking to fulfil sometimes competing ethical projects. Life history interviews present three main perspectives: recollections of times in childhood spent away from birth parents; birth parents’ reflections on having a child living with others; and adults’ accounts of taking in other people's children. Strong norms of kinship unity and solidarity notwithstanding, in practice terms of engagement are differentiated through gender, marital, social and economic status, plus relational and geographical proximity. The pursuit of personal benefit contains the seeds of both contradiction and convergence with the collective good, as a relational understanding of moral selves sees one's own gain as proper, rightful and virtuous when it is realized in and through providing for others.


2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 289-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Nicolay

THOMAS CARLYLE’S CONTEMPTUOUS DESCRIPTION of the dandy as “a Clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office, and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes” (313) has survived as the best-known definition of dandyism, which is generally equated with the foppery of eighteenth-century beaux and late nineteenth-century aesthetes. Actually, however, George Brummell (1778–1840), the primary architect of dandyism, developed not only a style of dress, but also a mode of behavior and style of wit that opposed ostentation. Brummell insisted that he was completely self-made, and his audacious self-transformation served as an example for both parvenus and dissatisfied nobles: the bourgeois might achieve upward mobility by distinguishing himself from his peers, and the noble could bolster his faltering status while retaining illusions of exclusivity. Aristocrats like Byron, Bulwer, and Wellington might effortlessly cultivate themselves and indulge their taste for luxury, while at the same time ambitious social climbers like Brummell, Disraeli, and Dickens might employ the codes of dandyism in order to establish places for themselves in the urban world. Thus, dandyism served as a nexus for the declining aristocratic elite and the rising middle class, a site where each was transformed by the dialectic interplay of aristocratic and individualistic ideals.


2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
EMILIA MARÍA DURÁN-ALMARZA

The Dominican American community in New York is perhaps one of the best examples of how processes of transculturation are affecting traditional definitions of ethnic identification. Given the intense economic, social and cultural transnational exchanges between the island and the USA from the 1960s, Dominicanyorks have been challenging the illusion of homogeneity in the definition of Americanness for decades, creating transnational social networks that transcend traditional national and ethnographic boundaries. The theatrical works of Josefina Báez, a Dominican American performer living in New York, and Sherezada (Chiqui) Vicioso, a Dominican poet and playwright who lived and worked in the US metropolis for decades before moving back to the Dominican Republic, lyrically explore issues of diaspora, identity and migration and the impact these phenomena might have in the lives of migrant Dominican women. Presenting diasporic experiences from two differing but interconnected locales – New York and the Dominican Republic – these plays offer two complementary views on the ways in which ethnicity, race, social class, age and geopolitical location interact in the formation of transcultural identities, thus contributing to develop a hemispheric approach to the study of identity formation in the Americas.


2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 457-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Maniglio

To examine the relationship between bullying and other forms of peer victimization in adolescence and alcohol use or misuse, all the pertinent studies were reviewed. Fourteen databases were searched. Blind assessments of study eligibility and quality were performed by two independent researchers. Seventy-four studies including 2,066,131 participants across 56 countries all over the world and meeting minimum quality criteria that were enough to ensure objectivity and to not invalidate results were analyzed. Across studies, evidence for a significant association between peer victimization and alcohol use or misuse was conflicting. Results were affected by sample size, definition of victim status, specific forms of peer victimization, and specific types of alcohol consumption. There was some evidence for a number of mediating or moderating variables, such as depression, coping, drinking motives, attachment to school, social support, and gender. Findings are discussed according to stress-coping and self-medication hypotheses. Alternative etiological mechanisms are also considered.


1985 ◽  
Vol 5 (11) ◽  
pp. 2975-2983 ◽  
Author(s):  
R P Hart ◽  
M A McDevitt ◽  
H Ali ◽  
J R Nevins

In addition to the highly conserved AATAAA sequence, there is a requirement for specific sequences downstream of polyadenylic acid [poly(A)] cleavage sites to generate correct mRNA 3' termini. Previous experiments demonstrated that 35 nucleotides downstream of the E2A poly(A) site were sufficient but 20 nucleotides were not. The construction and assay of bidirectional deletion mutants in the adenovirus E2A poly(A) site indicates that there may be redundant multiple sequence elements that affect poly(A) site usage. Sequences between the poly(A) site and 31 nucleotides downstream were not essential for efficient cleavage. Further deletion downstream (3' to +31) abolished efficient cleavage in certain constructions but not all. Between +20 and +38 the sequence T(A/G)TTTTT was duplicated. Function was retained when one copy of the sequence was present, suggesting that this sequence represents an essential element. There may also be additional sequences distal to +43 that can function. To establish common features of poly(A) sites, we also analyzed the early simian virus 40 (SV40) poly(A) site for essential sequences. An SV40 poly(A) site deletion that retained 18 nucleotides downstream of the cleavage site was fully functional while one that retained 5 nucleotides downstream was not, thus defining sequences required for cleavage. Comparison of the SV40 sequences with those from E2A did not reveal significant homologies. Nevertheless, normal cleavage and polyadenylation could be restored at the early SV40 poly(A) site by the addition of downstream sequences from the adenovirus E2A poly(A) site to the SV40 +5 mutant. The same sequences that were required in the E2A site for efficient cleavage also restored activity to the SV40 poly(A) site.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Babette Hellemans

This pioneering textbook explores the theoretical background of cultural variety, both in past and present. How is it possible to study 'culture' when the topic covers the arts, literature, movies, history, sociology, anthropology and gender studies? Understanding Culture examines the evolution of a concept with varying meanings depending on changing norms. Offering a long-duration analysis of the relationship between culture and nature, this book looks at the origins of studying culture from an international perspective. Using examples from the several scholarly traditions in the practice of studying culture, Understanding Culture is a key introduction to the area. It identifies the history of interpreting culture as a meeting point between the long-standing historical investigation of 'humanism' and 'postmodernism' and is a comprehensive resource for those who wish to further their engagement with culture as both a historical and contemporary phenomenon.


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