Tācippeṇ, The Dancing Girl: Entangled questions of social and aesthetic reform in a Tamil drama by Pammal Campanta Mutaliyār (1873–1964)

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davesh Soneji
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
New Vision ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Mixed Gender ◽  
Legal Interventions ◽  
Do So

Pammal Campanta Mutaliyār (1873–1964) is generally regarded as the ‘father of the modern Tamil theatre’. In this article I examine how Pammal’s non-mythological and non-Shakespearean dramas – that is, what he termed his ‘social dramas’ – were woven into different domains and constituencies that saw themselves as agents for social change. I argue that his engagement with projects of civic and social reform ran parallel to his ideas about the aesthetic reform of the Tamil drama itself. Beginning in the first decade of the twentieth century, Pammal’s dramas self-consciously attempt to rid themselves of what Pammal understands as the aesthetic excesses of the Parsi-inflected Tamil theatre, including its densely musical nature and its increasingly mixed-gender cast. Tācippeṇ, The Dancing Girl (1928), a drama that deals with devadāsī reform, perhaps best exemplifies the simultaneity and intertwined nature of Pammal’s programmes. It was composed on the eve of reformer Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy’s earliest legal interventions towards the abolishment of devadāsī lifestyles and is a deeply self-reflexive work. Not only does it stage well-established tropes about devadāsī reform, but it deploys the idiom of Pammal’s new vision of the modern Tamil theatre – bereft of its musical temperament and performed exclusively by men – to do so.

Visual Music after Cage: Robert Breer, expanded cinema and Stockhausen's Originals (1964)

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-169
Author(s):  
Andrew V. Uroskie
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Museum Of Modern Art ◽  
New Materials ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Visual Music ◽  
Expanded Cinema ◽  
New Vision ◽  
The Aesthetic

Within William Seitz's 1961 exhibition The Art of Assemblage for the New York Museum of Modern Art, the question of framing – of art's exhibitionary situation within and against a given environment – had emerged as perhaps the major issue of postwar avant-garde practice. Beyond the familiar paintings of Johns and Rauschenberg, a strategy of radical juxtaposition in this time extended well beyond the use of new materials, to the very institutions of aesthetic exhibition and spectatorship. Perhaps the most significant example of this disciplinary juxtaposition can be found in the intermingling of the static and the temporal arts. Like many artists of the twentieth century, Robert Breer was fascinated by the aesthetic and philosophical character of movement. Trained as a painter, he turned to cinematic animation as a way of extending his inquiry into modernist abstraction. While the success of his initial Form Phases spurred what would be a lifelong commitment to film, Breer quickly grew frustrated with the kind of abstract animation that might be said to characterise the dominant tradition of visual music. Starting in 1955, his Image by Images inaugurated a radical new vision of hyperkinetic montage that would paradoxically function at the threshold of movement and stasis. As such, Breer's film ‘accompaniment’ to the 1964 production of Stockhausen's Originals has a curious status. While untethered from the musical performance, Breer's three-part ‘film performance’ extended Stockhausen's aesthetic and conceptual framework in rich and surprising ways. It might thus be understood as a ‘post-Cagean’ form of visual music, one in which the sonic and visual components function in a relation of autonomous complementarity within an overarching intermedia assemblage.

Art and the Social Work Profession: Shall Ever the Twain Meet?

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 687-692
Author(s):  
Marilyn L. Flynn
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Professional Practice ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Academic Environments ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Vision ◽  
Work Education

Despite evidence of widespread increasing interest in the arts as mechanisms for personal and social change, social work is conspicuous for its lack of organized conceptual attention to this area. This article argues that there are four potential perspectives that might be adopted as a means of expanding social work science and professional practice: the arts as adjunct to clinical treatment and healing, the arts as the “work” in social work, the arts as tool for social investment, and the arts as driver of political and ideological commitment. An argument is presented for a new vision of the profession in academic environments in which the arts are defined as one of the fundamental pillars. This might lead to reimagining of scholarship, the reconstruction of social work education, and acceleration of social reform.

The Cross in Spirituality

2020 ◽  
pp. 121-179
Author(s):  
Richard Viladesau
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Conceptual Level ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Conceptual Formulation

Spirituality may be based on an explicit conceptual theology; or it may be relatively unreflective on the conceptual level. It operates primarily not on the conceptual but on the aesthetic or imaginative level. It symbolically mediates and expresses a relation to God and to the world, and implies a certain intellectual (but not necessarily conceptual) formulation and certain modes of acting, both religious and secular. The traditional spirituality of the cross, involving appropriating Christ’s sacrifice and joining with his suffering, was strongly represented in a number of twentieth-century figures, including several stigmatics, people who showed the signs of Christ’s crucifixion on their bodies. At the same time, liberation theologies stress, solidarity with those who suffer “the cross” in our own times, and include a spirituality of social reform.

Conformity and Idiosyncrasy: Jean Rhys

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vike Martina Plock
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Jean Rhys ◽  
Left Bank ◽  
Female Images ◽  
Image Construction ◽  
Political Modernity ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Good Morning ◽  
Professional Mobility

By looking at Jean Rhys’s ‘Left Bank’ fiction (Quartet, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie, Good Morning, Midnight, ‘Illusion’, ‘Mannequin’), this chapter investigates how new operational procedures such as Fordism and Taylorism, which were introduced into the French couture industry at the beginning of the twentieth century, affected constructions of modern femininity. Increasingly standardized images of feminine types were produced by Paris couturiers while the new look of the Flapper seemingly advertised women’s expanding social, political and professional mobility. Rhys, this chapter argues, noted fashion’s ability to provide resources for creative image construction but she simultaneously expressed criticism of its tendency to standardize female costumes and behaviour. Ultimately, Rhys demonstrates in her fiction that the radically modern couture of the early twentieth century was by no means the maker of social change and women’s political modernity. To offset the increased standardization of female images that she witnessed around her, Rhys created heroines and texts that relied on an overt display on difference.  

The Samarin Family and the Parish Question in the Russian Empire. 1860s–1910s

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 235-246
Author(s):  
Alexey L. Beglov
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Public Discussion ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Church Life ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
The Church ◽  
Do So

The article examines the contribution of the representatives of the Samarin family to the development of the Parish issue in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The issue of expanding the rights of the laity in the sphere of parish self-government was one of the most debated problems of Church life in that period. The public discussion was initiated by D.F. Samarin (1827-1901). He formulated the “social concept” of the parish and parish reform, based on Slavophile views on society and the Church. In the beginning of the twentieth century his eldest son F.D. Samarin who was a member of the Special Council on the development the Orthodox parish project in 1907, and as such developed the Slavophile concept of the parish. In 1915, A.D. Samarin, who took up the position of the Chief Procurator of the Most Holy Synod, tried to make his contribution to the cause of the parish reforms, but he failed to do so due to his resignation.

Saving the Nation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Reilly
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Social Christianity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Urban Elite ◽  
Justice And Mercy

This book is a history of the Chinese Protestant elite and their contribution to building a new China in the years from 1922 to 1952. While a small percentage of China’s overall population, China’s Protestants constituted a large and influential segment of the urban elite. They exercised that influence through their churches, hospitals, and schools, especially the universities, and also through institutions such as the YMCA and the YWCA, whose membership was drawn from the modern sectors of urban life. These Protestant elites believed that they could best contribute to the building of a new China through their message of social Christianity, believing that Christianity could help make Chinese society strong, modern, and prosperous, but also characterized by justice and mercy. More than preaching a message, the Protestant elite also played a critical social role, through their institutions, broadening the appeal and impact of social movements, and imparting to them a greater sense of legitimacy. This history begins with the elite’s participation in social reform campaigns in the early twentieth century, continues with their efforts in resisting imperialism, and ends with their support for the Communist-led social revolution.

Realignment and Beyond

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell J. Dalton
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
Societal Changes

Affluent democracies have experienced tremendous socio-economic changes since the mid- twentieth century, which has reshaped public opinion, party programs, and electoral choices. This chapter first summarizes the societal changes that have been a driving force behind the political changes described in this study. One pattern involves the longstanding economic issues of contemporary democracies, and shifting social positions on these issues. In addition, an evolving cultural cleavage and its ties to broader attitudes toward social change have altered citizen policy preferences. In most affluent democracies, the parties’ responses to these changing citizen demands have produced a realignment to represent both economic and cultural positions. The chapter concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for the working of electoral systems and the democratic process more broadly.

Punarvivaham vs. Pativratyam: Pulugurta Lakshmi Narasamamba and the Widow Remarriage Question in Colonial Andhra

2021 ◽  
pp. 025764302110017
Author(s):  
Shaik Mahaboob Basha
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Child Marriage ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Women's Journals

The question of widow remarriage, which occupied an important place in the social reform movement, was hotly debated in colonial Andhra. Women joined the debate in the early twentieth century. There was a conservative section of women, which bitterly opposed the widow remarriage movement and attacked the social reformers, both women and men. Pulugruta Lakshmi Narasamamba led this group of women. Lakshmi Narasamamba treated widow remarriage (punarvivaham) with contempt and termed it as an affront to the fidelity (pativratyam) of Hindu women. According to her, widow remarriage was equal to ‘prostitution’, and the widows who married again could not be granted the status of kulanganas (respectable or chaste women). Lakshmi Narasamamba’s stand on the question of widow remarriage led to the emergence of a fiery and protracted controversy among women which eventually led to the division of the most famous women’s organization, the Shri Vidyarthini Samajamu. She opposed not only widow remarriage but also post-puberty marriage and campaigned in favour of child marriage. This article describes the whole debate on the widow remarriage question that took place among women. It is based on the primary sources, especially the woefully neglected women’s journals in the Telugu language.

Guarding the Public Interest: England's Coroners and Organ Transplants, 1960–1975

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 926-946 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Spare Part ◽  
Organ Transplants ◽  
Legal Requirement ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Law ◽  
Do So

AbstractFrom the mid-twentieth century, England's coroners were crucial to the supply of organs to transplant, as much of this material was gleaned from the bodies of people who had been involved in accidents. In such situations the law required that a coroner's consent first be obtained lest removing the organs destroy evidence about the cause of the person's death. Surgeons challenged the legal requirement that they seek consent before taking organs, arguing that doing so hampered their quick access to bodies. Some coroners willingly cooperated with surgeons while others refused to do so, coming into conflict with particular transplanters whom they considered untrustworthy. This article examines how the phenomenon of “spare part” surgery challenged long-held conceptions of the coroner's role.

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