“Men Buy Their Slaves, Women Buy Their Masters”: Theories of Liberty in Thomas Middleton’s City Tragedy

2020 ◽  
pp. 174387212091117
Author(s):  
Natalie Suzelis

This paper provides a feminist critique of theories of liberty in two of Thomas Middleton’s city tragedies. Expanding on the neo-Roman theories of liberty presented by Quentin Skinner in Liberty Before Liberalism, I connect Middleton’s city tragedies to feminist critiques from Mary Nyquist and Ellen Mieksins Wood. Close readings of Women Beware Women and The Revenger’s Tragedy reveal connections between Middleton’s radical critiques of tyranny in later theories of liberty of the English Civil War. Because Middleton’s critiques are explored through both the state and marriage relations, I argue that Middleton exposes the same contradictions of liberty in the institution of the family, providing insight into notions of slavery, servitude, and coercion under the public rule of the sovereign and in the privacy of the home. Reading such contradictions back through Middleton, can, I argue, allow for a better understanding of feminist critiques of such theories of liberty.

1993 ◽  
Vol 18 (03) ◽  
pp. 453-478
Author(s):  
Linda C. A. Przybyszewski

While legal papers and case decisions have been the traditional focus of judicial biography, the family papers of Justice John Marshall Harlan the Elder demonstrate the importance for understanding a judge's conception of the polity of shifting our sights to the household. Historians of the 19th century have overestimated the distance between the private and the public spheres. The memoirs of Harlan's wife Malvina offer us unparalleled, and hitherto neglected, testimony. Her depiction of the antebellum Harlan household shows its two hierarchies based on assumptions of fundamental differences—those of gender and of race—and both positing a benevolent white male paternalist at their apex. Malvina Harlan's memoirs indicate the lifelong persistence of this paternalism in her own relationship with Justice Harlan and in his relationship with a black servant. These patterns of hierachy, separation, and mutual devotion were essential to Harlan's understanding of his family identity and personal duty. His famous dissents in favor of black civil rights protections and his lapses from his color-blind rule have their roots in this paternalism even as Harlan came to embrace the racial egalitarianism of the Civil War amendments.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ambros Leonangung Edu ◽  
Richard A Nelwan

This paper background describes about democratic values such as equality, honesty, openness, freedom due to the intervention of digital technology. The basic assumption of this paper is that democracy which is known to the public is accepted and has strong roots in the family lives. Family is the first place a person gets to know democracy. Home is a space for the seeds of democracy to grow. Democracy in the family matures the democratic process in society and the state. A democraticperson in  family is a democratic cittizen in state life. The purpose of this paper is to explore democratic values in the family as a place for the development of democracy at the state level, and how the shift in democracy at the family level occurs due to the presence of digital technology which distorts communication, relationships, and the value of equality. The description in this paper comes to the conclusion that there is a good side to democracy in a family that grows above physical and emotional relationships, direct and face-to-face relationships. The facts that occur in today's families, the breakdown, estrangement, and disharmony in today's families, one of which is triggered by the lack of direct communication due to excessive entry of digital technology.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 342-357
Author(s):  
Sumiati

The Marriage Guidance and Conservation Advisory Board (BP4) is a semi-official body or institution whose task is to assist the Ministry of Religion in improving the quality of marriage by developing a sakinah family movement and religious education in the family environment. The Marriage Guidance and Conservation Advisory Board (BP4) is one of the institutions that provide guidance and insight into marital issues to the public. By paying attention to the duties of the Marriage Guidance and Conservation Advisory Board (BP4), information on the role of the advisory body in contributing to marital matters will be obtained. As explained in Article 1 of the Marriage Law No. 1 of 1974 stated that marriage is an inner bond between a man and a woman as a husband and wife with the aim of forming a happy family (eternal) based on the Godhead of God Almighty, so that the purpose of the law is not enough to just bond , but must include both. Therefore, marriage is carried out bysomeone who is old enough no matter the profession, ethnicity, wealth, place of residence and so on. Everyone who is going to get married doesn't all understand the nature of marriage and the purpose of marriage is to get true happiness in the household. Marriage is not just a gathering of two people on one roof then gets offspring, not for a while but for a lifetime. To realize a prosperous and peaceful society, it must begin with family coaching first. If all families who are members of the community are prosperous, then the community will be happy. The family is the smallest element of a society, while a family is formed through marriage. Marriage is a means to form a household as a bond that is recognized by the community where they live as a legitimate husband and wife.   Abstrak Badan Penasehat Pembinaan dan Pelestarian Perkawinan (BP4) merupakan badan atau lembaga semi resmi yang bertugas membantu Departemen Agama dalam meningkatkan mutu perkawinan dengan mengembangkan gerakan keluarga sakinah dan pendidikan agama di lingkungan keluarga. Badan Penasehat Pembinaan dan Pelestarian Perkawinan  (BP4) ini adalah salah satu lembaga yang memberikan bimbingan dan penasihatan tentang masalah perkawinan kepada masyarakat. Dengan memperhatikan tugas-tugas Badan Penasehat Pembinaan dan Pelestarian Perkawinan (BP4) akan diperoleh keterangan seberapa besar peranan badan penasihat ini dalam ikut menangani masalah perkawinan. Sebagaimana dijelaskan dalam pasal 1 Undang-Undang Perkawinan No. 1 Tahun 1974 dinyatakan bahwa perkawinan adalah ikatan lahir batin diantara seorang pria dengan seorang wanita sebagai suami istri dengan tujuan membentuk keluarga (rumah tangga) yang bahagia, kekal berdasarkan Ketuhanan Yang Maha Esa, sehingga maksud dari UU tersebut tidaklah cukup hanya ikatan lahir/batin saja, akan tetapi harus mencakup kedua-duanya. Oleh sebab itu, Perkawinan dilaksanakan oleh seseorang yang sudah cukup umur tidak peduli profesi, suku bangsa, kekayaan, tempat tinggal dan lain sebagainya. Setiap orang yang akan melangsungkan perkawinan tidak semuanya dapat memahami hakikat perkawinan dan tujuan perkawinan yaitu mendapatkan kebahagiaan sejati dalam rumah tangga. Perkawinan bukan sekedar berkumpulnya dua orang manusia dalam satu atap kemudian mendapat keturunan, bukan pula untuk sementara waktu tapi untuk seumur hidup. Untuk mewujudkan masyarakat yang sejahtera dan damai harus dimulai dari pembinaan keluarga terlebih dahulu. Jika semua keluarga yang merupakan anggota masyarakat sejahtera, maka akan sejahteralah masyarakat. Keluarga adalah unsur terkecil dari suatu masyarakat, sedangkan keluarga terbentuk harus melalui perkawinan. Perkawinan merupakan sarana untuk membentuk rumah tangga sebagai sebuah ikatan yang diakui oleh masyarakat di mana mereka tinggal sebagai suami istri yang sah. Kata Kunci : Badan, Penasihat, Pembinaan, dan Pelestarian, Perkawinan,  Penataran, Bimbingan


Author(s):  
Dirk van Miert

Chapter 2 gives an example of how historiography has hitherto been skewed in favour of aligning philology with latitudinarian readings of the Bible. Philology was not the prerogative of the more libertine faction in the Reformed Orthodox Church; on the contrary, it was the orthodox Franciscus Gomarus who excelled in biblical scholarship. Philology was only of marginal concern in the highly public theological discussion in the decade following the death of Scaliger in 1609: the ‘Troubles’ over predestination and the relation between the State and the Church, which brought the nascent Dutch state to the brink of civil war. Arminius professed to value philological methods in his letters and showed an insight into recent developments, but this was of no consequence for his dogmatic position. His adversary Franciscus Gomarus proved a far more accomplished philologist than Arminius, but his philological work postdates the Troubles and has therefore been largely ignored.


2016 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 402-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Birch

AbstractAlthough there is considerable documentation of women preachers during the English Civil War period and the Interregnum, it is clear that such activities were not encouraged among English Calvinistic Baptists, and most especially among Particular Baptists. Yet there was a tension in even the most restrictive Baptist teaching on this subject. For since Baptists had opened the door to congregational participation in the public ministry of the church, they were faced with the problem of partially closing that door in order to restrict the ministry of women to that ofdiakonia, and good works. Nevertheless, a small number of women have been identified as both prophets and Particular Baptists, and the nature and context of their ministry illustrates the role of women in early Baptist communities.


Author(s):  
Paul Gordon Kramer

Millions of people across Turkey protested police violence, state totalitarianism, urban gentrification, and a host of other concerns during the Gezi Park protests in late May 2013. The protests merged with Gay Pride Istanbul and fundamentally changed queer and trans peoples’ relationships with the Turkish public. This chapter establishes “the queer common” as the sexualized lines of flight which destabilise the normal ways queers are governed – a concept for understanding queer resistance against the state. The chapter argues that the state and other institutions manipulate the public to assert one acceptable model of heteronormative belonging. This assemblage (which brings together the police, the family, Sunni Islam, media and other institutions) naturalises Turkish citizenship. The chapter draws on interviews with queer activists to explore queer resistance at Gezi, challenges to ‘normalised’ Turkish identity, and the renegotiation of the state’s production of violence against queer and trans people.


2008 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Dungey

AbstractThomas Hobbes sought a reconstruction of philosophy, ethics, and politics that would end, once and for all, the bitter disputes that led to the English Civil War. This reconstruction begins with the first principles of matter and motion and extends to a unique account of consent and political obligation. Hobbes intended to produce a unified philosophical system linking his materialist account of human nature to his moral and political theory. However, his materialism gives rise to a set of perceptions, imagination, and desires that contribute to the chaos of the state of nature. The sort of person that emerges from Hobbes's materialist anthropology is unlikely to be able to make the necessary agreements about common meaning and language that constitute the ground of the social contract. Therefore, Hobbes's materialism frustrates the very purpose for which it is conceived.


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