“Shakespeare’s Pioneer Migrant Othello”: Desire, Migration, Pathology and the Politics of Citizenship in The Nature of Blood

Pólemos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-331
Author(s):  
Chiara Battisti

Abstract In a historical period characterised by political and social occurrences of immigration crises, Shakespeare’s and early modern dramatic attention to aliens and foreigners invite us to re-read the anguish of Shakespeare’s alien and to investigate the ways in which, in the specific case of Othello, the Moor’s experience prefigures subsequent migrations and the contemporary immigrants’ struggle for integration. Caryl Phillips’ creative re-appropriation of Shakespeare’s Othello in The Nature of Blood (1998) gives voice to the psychological anguish of a migrant in the guise of an unnamed Othello-like black general newly arrived in Venice. In a never-ending dialogue between present and past, Phillips articulates a complex reflection on the immigrants’ desire to be granted recognition as a legitimised individual with a social identity, while problematising the idea of home and the sense of belonging, here understood as the subjective feeling of identification with a city/nation. With such a complex redefinition in mind, my reading conceptualises Othello (alias the migrant) as an ethnopsychiatric “symptom”, in a psychopathology of migration and exile which exposes the meanings and practices of belonging produced and supported by host societies.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Eisen

This Element explores the potential in Judaism to incite Jews to engage in violence against non-Jews. The analysis proceeds in historical fashion, with sections devoted to the Hebrew Bible, rabbinic Judaism, medieval and early modern Judaism, and modern Zionism. The last topic is given special attention because of its relevance to the current Middle East conflict. This Element also draws on insights from social psychology to explain Jewish violence - particularly Social Identity Theory.


2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (suppl 5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathália Leal Silva ◽  
Rafael Oliveira Pitta Lopes ◽  
Graziele Ribeiro Bitencourt ◽  
Hércules Rigoni Bossato ◽  
Marcos Antônio Gomes Brandão ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Objective: To analyze the concept of social identity of transgender persons and develop nursing diagnoses related to it. Methods: A concept analysis according to the Walker and Avant model. A scope review was carried out with a search of eight databases, a portal and two information systems, during June and July 2019. Articles, theses, and dissertations were analyzed in Portuguese, English, and Spanish, with no time frame definition. Results: Of the 6.847 productions, 10 were included, and the concept of social identity was described in 4 of them. Critical, prior, and consequential attributes for the social identity of transgender persons were identified, and the analysis of the concept substantiated the proposal of the diagnosis: Willingness to improve the social identity of the transgender person. Conclusion: Social identity establishes a relationship with health, and the proposed nursing diagnosis strengthens the sense of belonging of transgender people, enhancing their rights as citizens.


Author(s):  
Ирина Семеновна Слепцова

Статья посвящена рассмотрению произведений литературы Древней и Средневековой Руси и раннего Нового времени, направленных против языческих верований и практик, как источника для описания игровой культуры. Привлекаются главным образом нормативные, канонические и дидактические сочинения, а также исповедные тексты, в которых содержатся сведения о развлечениях и играх. Основное внимание уделено играм в узком смысле слова (играм с правилами), как наименее изученному феномену культуры данного исторического периода. Это расширяет представления об игровом репертуаре, месте и статусе игры в празднично-обрядовой и повседневной жизни, а также дает возможность проследить процесс десакрализации игры, ее переход в сферу «мирского». Выявленные в письменных памятниках сведения об игровой культуре Средневековья и раннего Нового времени раскрывают их включенность в языческую обрядность и демонстрируют связь с магическими практиками, что было основанием для их преследования и запрещения. Это обстоятельство определяет ограниченность использования данных источников для реконструкции игрового репертуара. В список игр попадают только те, которые расценивались церковью как языческие или нарушавшие социальный порядок и нравственные правила. Упомянутые в древнерусских и средневековых источниках формы народного веселья обнаруживают истоки ряда народных игр, бытовавших в XIX–ХХ вв., и объясняют их включенность в календарную обрядность. The article is devoted to the consideration of the works of literature of Ancient and Medieval Russia and the early modern era, directed against pagan beliefs and practices, as a source for describing the game culture. Mainly normative, canonical and didactic compositions are used, as well as confessional texts, which contain information about entertainment and games. The main attention is paid to games in the narrow sense of the word (games with rules), as the least studied cultural phenomenon of this historical period. This expands the understanding of the game repertoire, the place and status of the game in festive and ceremonial and everyday life, and also makes it possible to trace the process of desacralization of the game, its transition into the sphere of the «worldly». The information about the gaming culture of the Middle Ages and the early modern times revealed in written monuments reveals their involvement in pagan rituals and demonstrates a connection with magical practices, which was the basis for their persecution and prohibition. This circumstance determines the limited use of these sources for the reconstruction of the playing repertoire. The list of games includes only those that were regarded by the church as pagan or violating social order and moral rules. The forms of folk fun mentioned in ancient Russian and medieval sources reveal the origins of a number of folk games that existed in the 19th – 20th centuries and explain their inclusion in calendar rituals.


2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Akhil Gupta

In this paper, I have tried to reflect on what cosmopolitanism might mean in a very different era of globalisation than the present. Although cosmopolitanism, as an expansive and sociable vision, is often contrasted with the geographically limited perspective and claustrophobic affinities of nationalism, the term originates in a historical period before the rise of nationalism in Europe. I argue that the residents of the civilisations around the Indian Ocean in the medieval and early modern world were cosmopolitan even by the standards of the high modernist meaning of the term. Not only did a range of people transact and translate across different languages, but they also knew how to conduct themselves in different cultural settings with people of different religious beliefs, while respecting the disparate religious, social, and cultural practices of their neighbours.


2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shani Oppenheim-Weller ◽  
Jenny Kurman

What can facilitate bicultural identity integration (BII)? To answer this question, we introduce a new relevant construct—subjective value fulfillment. We contend that the subjective feeling of value fulfillment within a social identity can enhance the motivation to integrate this social identity with other identities. Furthermore, after distinguishing between central, peripheral, and conflictual identities that differ in level of identification, we contend that perceiving a conflictual identity as allowing value fulfillment is especially important to BII. We examine these hypotheses in four studies. Three examined Arab-Israelis (a total of N = 399), while the fourth study investigated Druze-Arab-Israelis ( N = 212). Our findings indicate that value fulfillment contributes to elevated BII, that manipulation of perceived value fulfillment elevates BII, and that perceived value fulfillment–BII relations are contingent on type of identity. More specifically, we found that perceived value fulfillment within a conflictual identity was more relevant to BII than perceived value fulfillment in a central identity. Last, we found that perceived value fulfillment predicted BII over and above identification.


2008 ◽  
Vol 34-35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 267-278
Author(s):  
Laurence Fontaine

This essay reflects on the theoretical and methodological complexities of the concept of social identity, using a case study of migrant merchants in early modern Europe. The essay opens with an analysis of historians’ usages of the important but contested concept of identity. Then, it attempts to demonstrate how the literate society, political and religious officials, sedentary merchants, and the host populations with which itinerant merchants entered into contact, tried to impose identities on these migrants. Finally, the study attempts to show how migrants used this polyphony of external representations in order to understand the limits of the merchants’ abilities to utilize these imposed identities for their own advantage.


2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 631-657 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHIL WITHINGTON

ABSTRACTThe article considers the rapid increase in the English market for alcohol and tobacco in the 1620s and the set of concurrent influences shaping their consumption. It suggests that intoxicants were not merely a source of solace for ‘the poor’ or the lubricant of traditional community, as historians often imply. Rather, the growth in the market for beer, wine, and tobacco was driven by those affluent social groups regarded as the legitimate governors of the English commonwealth. For men of a certain disposition and means, the consumption of intoxicants became a legitimate – indeed valorized and artful – aspect of their social identity: an identity encapsulated by the Renaissance concept of ‘wit’. These new styles of drinking were also implicated in the proliferation (in theory and practice) of ‘societies’ and ‘companies’, by which contemporaries meant voluntary and purposeful association. These arguments are made by unpacking the economic, social, and cultural contexts informing the humorous dialogue Wine, beere, ale and tobacco. Contending for superiority. What follows demonstrates that the ostensibly frivolous subject of male drinking casts new light on the nature of early modern social change, in particular the nature of the ‘civilizing process’.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDER BERGS ◽  
THOMAS HOFFMANN

What do we know about the past? For at least some languages, we have textual (or archaeological) evidence from various periods – beyond that, there is only reconstruction. But even when we have some textual evidence, what does it tell us? The answer to this question crucially depends on the way we approach the question: we can treat texts as decontextualized, linguistic evidence, as Neogrammarian or Structuralist studies have done (see McMahon 1994: 17–32). Such an approach already allows us to discover important generalizations about the linguistic state of affairs of a particular language or historical period. Using decontextualized historical evidence, for example, we can already ascertain with a high degree of certainty that in Old English voiced and voiceless fricatives were allophones, rather than phonemes, that there was nodo-periphrasis in Middle English, and that in Early Modern English there was some variability between third-person singular present tense {-s} and {-th} – just as we know that present-day Japanese and Korean use postpositions, rather than prepositions.


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