scholarly journals Rāṅgey Rāghav’s Literary Biographies, Loī kā tānā and Ratnā kī bāt, in the 1950s and the Debates on the Status of Indian Women and Dalits

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Mangraviti
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Literary Biography ◽  
Indian Women ◽  
The Status ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Literary Biographies

The article proposes to investigate the political and ideological uses of Hindi literary biography, with focus on two texts by Rāṅgey Rāghav, Loī kā tānā (“Loi’s Warp’’) and Ratnā kī bāt (“Ratna’s Speech”), based on lives of Kabir and Tulsīdās respectively. The relevance of Rāghav’s biographies goes beyond the merely literary and derives from the ideological and political functions played by these texts in the period they were written. Viewed by Rāghav as complementary works with a didactic and ideological value, they move away from the ‘brahmanical’ interpretations of the early modern Hindi poets by scholars of the 1920s and 1930s. To understand Rāghav’s motives and strategies, one needs to examine the ideological and political context in which he recast values linked to the main figures of the early modern devotional (bhakti) literature. As the 1950s witnessed debates on the status of Indian women and Dalit communities, the same becoming crucial to Hindi literary sphere, special attention needs to be paid to the representation, in Rāghav’s biographies, of Loī and Ratnā—Kabīr’s and Tulsīdās’ wives respectively—who embody some of the politically and ideologically progressive slogans which Rāghav projected on to these poets. The present work, based on recent studies on literary biography (Benton 2005, 2011, Middlebrook 2006, Miller 2001), is also an attempt to investigate some of the intellectual and ideological aporias which seem to have affected Hindi literary progressivism since the first decades of the postcolonial period.

After-Lives

2020 ◽  
pp. 585-598
Author(s):  
Nora Goldschmidt
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Literary Biography ◽  
Classical Scholarship ◽  
Limits Of Knowledge ◽  
Roman Poetry ◽  
Literary Biographies ◽  
Creative Life

This chapter explores biographical receptions of Greek and Roman poets in the twentieth century. Classical scholarship has now begun to recognize ancient biography as a creative mode of reception in Antiquity. In the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, reading the texts of Greek and Roman poetry for the lives of their authors has been an especially rich and multifaceted mode of reception, providing for many readers a means of grappling with the ancient texts within the changing cultural landscape of modernity. Yet, unlike the medieval and early modern traditions of literary biography, in the twentieth century, academic and creative Lives have tended to part company. When it comes to Greek and Roman poets, though a few full-length literary biographies that still attempt to claim factual status have been produced, conventional narrative biographies that aim to set out the ‘facts’ are generally only found in isagogic contexts such as introductions to texts and translations, or textbooks of literary history. Moreover, partly because modern authors are acutely aware that there are few ‘facts’ beyond the poets’ works themselves on which to base their material, and partly as a broader consequence of modern preoccupations with fragmentation and the limits of knowledge, creative life-writing about the ancient poets in this period is found more frequently in ludic snapshots rather than full-blown narrative biographies.

Talking Italian blues: Roberto Leydi, Giovanna Marini and American Influence in the Italian folk revival, 1954–66

Popular Music ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-334
Author(s):  
Rachel E. Love
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Folk Revival ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Musical Traditions ◽  
Postwar Italy

AbstractThis article examines how Roberto Leydi and Giovanna Marini, two important figures of the Italian ‘folk revival’, negotiated diverse American cultural influences and adapted them to the political context of Italy in the 1950s and 1960s. I argue that American musical traditions offered them valuable models even as many Italian intellectuals and artists grew more critical of US society and foreign policy. To explore this phenomenon in greater depth, I take as examples two particular moments of exchange. I first discuss American folklorist Alan Lomax's research in Italy and its impact on Leydi's career. I then examine how Marini employed American talking blues in order to reject US society in her first ballad, Vi parlo dell'America (I Speak to You of America) (1966). These two cases provide specific examples of how American influence worked in postwar Italy and the role of folk music in this process.

Schütz's Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich? and the Politics of the Thirty Years War

2016 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 355-408
Author(s):  
Derek Stauff
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Persecution ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Devotional Writings

For early modern Lutherans Heinrich Schütz's Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich? would have evoked fears of religious persecution. Its text, from the narrative of Paul's conversion in Acts 9, appears in seventeenth-century devotional writings and confessional polemics about persecution. Moreover, recently uncovered archival evidence shows that Schütz performed his concerto in 1632 at a state-sponsored political festival marking the first anniversary of the Battle of Breitenfeld, a major Protestant victory in the Thirty Years War. Here Schütz's concerto clearly stoked fears of persecution, because the celebrations touted the battle as a victory over Catholic oppression. The political context in 1632 might also explain some of the piece's most notable features. Its unusually brief text and vivid music do not illustrate the whole story of Saul's conversion but solely the moment at which Christ intervened to put a stop to persecution. Schütz's listeners would have heard in Saul's example a parallel to the victory they were celebrating in 1632 and the persecution they feared from their Catholic and imperial adversaries. This performance of Saul, the only one known from Schütz's lifetime, shows how his music partook in a broader campaign of Protestant propaganda designed to reinforce the confessional and political divisions that fueled this phase of the war.

States Reorganization and Accommodation of Ethno-Territorial Cleavages in India

2019 ◽  
pp. 81-98
Author(s):  
Harihar Bhattacharyya
Keyword(s):  
Political Stability ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
State Autonomy ◽  
Institutional Responses ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Constitutional Changes ◽  
State Creation

This chapter examines how the so-called “states reorganization” during the 1950s and 1960s and its accommodation of ethno-territorial cleavages has made ethnic peace and political stability possible in multi-ethnic India. It first sketches the political context that led to state reorganization before discussing the process of constitutional engagement and the constitutional changes associated with the various reorganizations. In particular, it analyzes the nature of the state’s institutional responses to ethno-linguistic cleavages, taking into account the role played by the States Reorganization Commission. It also describes the outcome of these exercises and shows how “subnational autonomy” emerged as major incentives for the regional political elites. Finally, it outlines the comparative lessons that can be learned from India’s approach to progressive staging of state creation, focusing on the effects of ongoing neo-liberal reforms (post-1991) in the country that have posed newer challenges for state autonomy and future territorial changes.

Irom Sharmila’s Struggle against Military Repression: A Critique

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-181
Author(s):  
Nandita Haksar
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Way

This article argues that although Irom Sharmila’s 16-year-old fast from November 2000 to August 2016 has earned her the status of an icon of non-violent protest, yet she did not seek these appellations; her only aim was to put moral pressure on the government to repeal the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958. The article seeks to assess the efficacy of Irom Sharmila’s protest and how far it has helped or hindered in mobilizing public opinion against the Act. It propounds that the publicity around Irom Sharmila put her on a pedestal and trapped her in her own image, made invisible entire histories of sufferings of people in the northeast, including Manipur, and their struggles against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. The gains of many struggles and efforts were wiped out of the collective memory of the nation and the only image of Manipur was this frail woman with a tube hanging from her nose. The article also argues that there is a kind of fetish in the way the media celebrates non-violence without reference to the political context.

scholarly journals State-society nexus in Brazil and Venezuela and its effect on participatory governance efforts in health and other sectors

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Qamar Mahmood ◽  
Carles Muntaner
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Participatory Governance ◽  
The Status ◽  
Health Decision ◽  
Social Empowerment

Abstract Introduction Participatory governance is about state and society jointly responsible for political decisions and services. The origins and trajectory of participatory governance initiatives are determined by the socio-political context and specifically the nature of state-society relations. Participation by communities in health interventions has been promoted globally as a strategy to involve citizens in health decision-making but with little success. Such participatory governance in health should be seen not as a strategy alone but as a political project in which organized communities challenge the status-quo in health. Methods This paper deals with the wider socio-political context of participatory governance initiatives. It uses comparative politics literature to analyze socio-political context in Brazil and Venezuela, historically spanning half century prior to 2015, to assess whether it was conducive to participatory governance. The focus of this paper’s analysis particularly is on the socio-political changes that were taking place in Brazil and Venezuela in the decades of the 1980s and 1990s. Those decades formed the bedrock on which the two countries experienced democratization and a socialist transformation that has lasted well into the first decade of the twenty-first century. The situation in the health sector is also described for the two countries showing a parallel trajectory to the wider political context and that reflected the political ideology. For this assessment, we use a contemporary framework called the ‘socialist compass’ which links dynamics of power relations in various ways among three domains of power, namely, state power, economic power, and social power. Socialist compass can be used to assess whether such reforms are moving towards or against social empowerment. Conclusion Our analysis reveals that both Brazil and Venezuela were moving in the direction of social empowerment until at least the year 2015, just before the political turmoil started engulfing the left-leaning regimes in both the countries.

Locating the Fragments of the State and Their Limits: Water Policymaking in Israel during the 1950s

2008 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samer Alatout
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Water Politics ◽  
Water Abundance ◽  
Water Policies ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
The Status ◽  
The 1950S

Three elements dominated scholarship on Israeli water politics and policymaking in the 1950s: (1) the state is often taken to be a fully established actor since its inception in 1948; (2) Israeli water policymaking was dominated by geopolitical and regional concerns over security and access to shared water resources; (3) water was, and continues to be, a scarce resource. This article argues that these elements result in the depoliticization of Israeli water policies and offers three counterarguments. First, the totality of any state is an ever-illusive construct. Second, Israeli water politics had an internal dimension that has to be investigated in its own right. Third, scarcity did not acquire the status of a "fact" until the mid-1950s. In fact, the struggle over the notions of water abundance and scarcity was an essential part of working through the political conflicts over the meaning of Jewish subjectivity, the boundaries of the state, and its right to intervene in civil society.

Reflections on Race and Ethnicity in North Africa Towards a Conceptual Critique of the Arab–Berber Divide

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-288
Author(s):  
Mohamad Amer Meziane
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
French Colonialism ◽  
Cultural Minority ◽  
The Status ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractThis essay argues that the usages of the divide between Berbers and Arabs by the Algerian government and Berber activists alike should be analyzed in light of the transformation of the Imazighen into a cultural minority by the nation-state. The nation-state's definition of the majority as Arab, as well as the very concept of a minority, has shaped both the status and the grammar of the Arab-Berber divide in ways that are irreducible to how this binary functioned under French colonialism. In order to understand the distinct modes by which these categories function in Algeria today, one needs to analyze how the language of the nation-state determines their grammar, namely how they are deployed within this political context. Hence, by focusing primarily on French colonial representations of race such as the Kabyle Myth and by asserting simplified colonial continuities, the literature fails to make sense of the political centrality of the nation-state in the construction of the Amazigh question.

scholarly journals Polityka wyznaniowa w myśli austriackiej Partii Chrześcijańsko-Społecznej w latach 1918−1934

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 35-51
Author(s):  
Piotr Bukowczyk
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Policy ◽  
Italian Fascism ◽  
The Social ◽  
First Republic ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Impact

Religious policy in the thought of the Austrian Christian Social Party 1918−1934In the paper I present the vision of a relation between the state and religious denominations and the status of atheists and free-thinkers delineated in the political thought of the Christian Social Party Christlichsoziale Partei, active in Austria-Hungary and the First Republic of Austria, Christian-democratic, after 1931 influenced by Italian fascism and inclining towards authoritarianism. I infer it from its propaganda materials books, brochures, press articles, leaflets, posters and legislation enacted under its governmentI also show the impact of the social, cultural and political context on the postulates of the Christian Social Party with regard to religious policy.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document