Mean Streets: Tracking the Dispositives of Address(es) with China Miéville’s “Reports of Certain Events in London”

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-171
Author(s):  
Nicola Glaubitz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
City Planning ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
First Person ◽  
Fantastic Literature ◽  
Internal Conflicts ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Story Elements

Abstract Miéville’s short story stands out for its perhaps experimental, perhaps old-fashioned form: the story’s first-person narrator adopts, in nineteenth-century fashion, the persona of an editor and presents both his own view on the ‘events’ in question and a number of mock documents he has allegedly been sent. Readers are encouraged to piece together the story elements – events and characters – from postcards, minutes of a meeting, memos, personal letters, and tables. Typographically distinct and juxtaposed rather than narratively linked, these text fragments suggest internal conflicts in a group of people who track rogue streets – streets that change their location spontaneously and wreak havoc on the geographical and the political order of cities. It is no coincidence that a mix-up of names and addresses is the starting point of the story; the story’s ending hints at the consequences of having or not having a fixed address. My contribution examines Miéville’s use of the short story form in the context of fantastic literature. Following suggestions of Miéville’s “The Conspiracy of Architecture” (1998), the foregrounding of formal and quasi-material aspects of organising and mediating knowledge is read as an engagement with the power/knowledge dispositives made up of discursive ordering principles as well as city planning and city geography.

scholarly journals Radio and Television Programs for National Minorities of the Border Multicultural Region (on the example of Transcarpathia, 1930-1991)

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 188-199
Author(s):  
Nataliia Tolochko
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Border Region ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethnic Communities ◽  
Television Programs ◽  
National Minorities ◽  
Right To Information ◽  
The Right

      The article deals with the acute problems of the origin and development of radio and television programs for national minorities within the border region of Ukraine – Transcarpathia  (in pre-Soviet and Soviet periods). The problem under consideration is relevant because of the fact that since the nineteenth century seven states and state entities have changed the territory of Transcarpathia. As representatives of different nationalities, most numerous being Hungarians, Romanians, Russians, Roma, Slovaks, Germans  have long lived at this territory, attention has been paid to changing the ethnic picture over the years. The emergence and development of media for national minorities in the pre-Soviet and Soviet periods depended on the political order, ideology of the states including Transcarpathia. Therefore, some ethnic communities did not have radio and television programs in their mother tongue during the USSR period and were granted the right to information only after Ukraine gained independence.

scholarly journals “Oh, Vladimir, King of Dioclea, Hard Headed, Heart Full of Pride!” Isaiah Berlin and Nineteenth Century Interpretations of the Live of Saint Vladimir of Dioclea

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 723
Author(s):  
Stefan Trajković Filipović
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Romantic Literature ◽  
Isaiah Berlin ◽  
God's Will ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Romantic Movement ◽  
Historical Dramas

Saint Vladimir of Dioclea (i.e. Zeta) (c. 990–1016) left very few traces in medieval sources, and yet, for centuries now, he is present throughout the Balkans, notably in the areas of modern Albania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia. Compared to other notable medieval holy kings (e.g. Saint Stefan of Dečani), Saint Vladimir is a “vague” character; he was never as popular and his representations were never fully standardized nor uniformed – he is often simultaneously addressed with few names (Vladimir/Jovan/Jovan Vladimir) and with more than one title (an emperor/Tsar, king or prince). However, this “vagueness“, and yet persistence of the story about this saint makes an interesting research topic. The first elaborated narrative about the saint, the Life of Saint Vladimir of Dioclea, was published in 1601 as part of the Annals of the Priest of Dioclea, a chronicle depicting the history of an imagined early medieval Slavic dynasty and used as an introductory chapter to the Kingdom of Slavs by Mauro Orbini. The Life represents a developed hagiographic narrative with two main lessons – the value of (Saint Vladimir’s) martyrdom (following the model of Christ’s Passion) and of divine punishment awaiting the sinners. Furthermore, as part of the Annals of the Priest of Diocela (and of the Kingdom of Slavs), the Life depicts Vladimir as a Slavic holy king. Since its first edition, the Life remains the main source of inspiration and a starting point for most of the later interpretations of the story of Saint Vladimir’s life and death. In the focus of the article is a specific transformation that occurred in the nineteenth century regarding the story, within Serbian romantic literature. The approach to the transformation is based on the interpretation of the Romantic Movement provided by Isaiah Berlin in his 1965 Mellon lectures delivered in Washington DC (The Roots of Romanticism). I observe the transformation through the analysis of three representative nineteenth century interpretations of the story of Saint Vladimir: the historical dramas Vladimir and Kosara (1829, by Lazar Lazarević) and Vladislav (1843, by Jovan Sterija Popović) and the short story Vladimir of Dioclea (1888, by Stevan Sremac). Comparison of the Life with these narratives reveals significant shifts in main motives and lessons one finds in the story. Thus, instead of focusing on the notions of a holy man who serves as a tool of God’s will and of a Slavic holy king, one finds in nineteenth century interpretations the notions of man’s will, desire and utter loyalty to his own principles and values, one of them being his (Serbian) nation, as key ideas and supreme virtues. In spite of keeping certain hagiographic traits, these romantic interpretations bring reversals of main lessons of the story of Saint Vladimir and thus contribute to Berlin’s observation about the process of conscious creation of new mythologies within Romantic Movement with long-term consequences.

Anti-Semitism, Denunciation, and the Frankfurt Trial against Rosa Luxemburg

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-354
Author(s):  
Andrew G. Bonnell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Imperial Germany ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Political Left ◽  
Political Weapon ◽  
Rosa Luxemburg

This paper examines the largely overlooked role of denunciation in initiating the Frankfurt trial of Rosa Luxemburg in early 1914 for inciting disobedience among German soldiers, and corrects errors that have entered the scholarly literature on the topic. This is then taken as the starting point for wider reflections on the connections between denunciation, anti-Semitism, and anti-socialism in Germany in the ‘long nineteenth century’. It will be argued that the practice of denunciation, directed both against the political Left and against Jews, long preceded the now well-documented salience of denunciation in the Nazi dictatorship. Denunciation was thus an asymmetrical political weapon – it could be invoked against the political Left by their right-wing and conservative opponents in nineteenth-century Germany, but was not available to the democratic Left, nor would it have been palatable to them. The capacity of German anti-Semites to resort to denunciation of Social Democrats also highlights the extent to which anti-Semites could count on being regarded as among the ‘state-supporting’ parties in Imperial Germany.

scholarly journals From the King’s Two Bodies to the People’s Two Bodies: Spinoza on the Body Politic

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-71
Author(s):  
Marin Terpstra
Keyword(s):  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Composite Body ◽  
Political Body ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Two Bodies ◽  
Traditional Representation

Abstract In this article, using Spinoza’s treatment of the image of the political body, I aim to show what happens to the concept of a healthy commonwealth linked to a monarchist model of political order when transformed into a new context: the emergence of a democratic political order. The traditional representation of the body politic becomes problematic when people, understood as individual natural bodies, are taken as the starting point in political theory. Spinoza’s understanding of the composite body, and the assumption that each body is composed, raises the question of the stability or instability of this composition. This has implications for the way one looks at the political order’s conditions of possibility, I argue, and at the same time reveals the imaginary nature of the political body.

scholarly journals Author, Author: A Short Story of the Rise, reign and ruine of the late Antinomians, Familists, and Libertines (1644) Reappraised

2021 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 431-458
Author(s):  
David D. Hall
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Starting Point

Abstract When the great nineteenth-century antiquarian James Savage disputed the assumption that John Winthrop wrote A Short Story (London 1644), he was on to something, although the evidence he adduced was incorrect. Taking as a starting point two facts about the book-it is a compilation of documents and bears numerous marks of being an intentional text-this essay describes how the Short Story came into being and suggests who may be the "I" who mysteriously (and unidentified) speaks in the text.

scholarly journals The Road to Terrace Bank: Land Capitalization, Public Space, and the Redpath Family Home, 1837-1861

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roderick Macleod
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social History ◽  
City Planning ◽  
The Political ◽  
Great Success ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
The Road ◽  
Family Home

Abstract The efforts of nineteenth-century Montreal land developer John Redpath to subdivide his country estate into residential lots for the city's rising middle class were marked by a shrewd sense of marketing and a keen understanding of the political climate – but they were also strongly determined by the Redpath family's need for status and comfort. Both qualities were provided by Terrace Bank, the house at the centre of the estate, and both would only increase with the creation of a middle-class suburb around it on the slopes of Mount Royal. As a result, the Redpath family home, and the additional homes built nearby for members of the extended Redpath family, influenced all stages of the planning and subdivision process, which met with great success over the course of the 1840s. In its use of personal correspondence, notarial documents, plans, the census, and cemetery records, this paper brings together elements of city planning, political and social history, and family history in order to provide a nuanced picture of how the nineteenth-century built environment was shaped and how we should read pubic space.

scholarly journals Scandal and Secrecy in the History of the Nineteenth-Century British Empire

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Callie Wilkinson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
British Empire ◽  
The Political ◽  
General Picture ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
History Of

Abstract For historians of empire, scandals provide a useful starting point for investigating how the operations of imperial power were contested and reworked in moments of crisis. Yet, existing scholarship on imperial scandal consists mostly of case-studies that do not always reflect on the larger trend of which they are a part. This review draws on six accounts of imperial scandals to produce a general picture of the characteristics and functions of scandals in the historiography of the nineteenth-century British empire. What this comparison suggests is that imperial scandals possessed distinctive stakes and seem, as a result, to have represented periodic ruptures in longer-term patterns of local silence and complicity. Scandals, if used cautiously, can therefore provide evidence to support ongoing discussions about the logic of colonial concealment. At the same time, scandals also remind us that publicity is not a simple cure-all. By including a wider range of actors and non-governmental sources, future studies of scandal might elucidate the political limits of transparency, as well as exploring how imperial subjects negotiated gendered and racialized access to public and political platforms.

scholarly journals “Noite de Almirante”: Interracial Love in Machado de Assis’s Nineteenth Century

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 119-136
Author(s):  
Paulo Dutra
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
First Century ◽  
Machado De Assis ◽  
Racial Identification ◽  
Brazilian Society ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Twenty First Century

In the twenty-first century some scholars started revisiting the works of the mulatto Machado de Assis through discussions about his racial identification and posture with regard to race. As a consequence a new range of reading possibilities has been released. The racial identification of the characters, hence, their interpretations, customarily based on an ideal hegemonic white model of society, began to be revised and challenged. Having racial marks attributed to the characters as the starting point while approaching them reveals Machado’s keen eye on the tension involved in the negotiations of spaces in the not always harmonious relations developed in the extremely mixed-race nineteenth-century Brazilian society. This essay resorts to the short story “Noite de almirante,” hitherto excluded from this perspective, as a case study to demonstrate the potential of such a reading.

Rammohun Roy and the Bengal Renaissance

2019 ◽  
pp. 36-53
Author(s):  
Dermot Killingley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Western World ◽  
The Political ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
International Environment ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Bengal Renaissance ◽  
Broad Overview

This chapter does two things that are important to create a starting point from which to think about modern Hinduism. First, it gives a broad overview of the fundamental transformations that took place in the politics, economy, education, and cultural life of Bengal at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. This is the part of India where British colonialism first covered extensive territory, and where many of the political and intellectual reactions to the colonial situation, and to other forces of globalization, would start. Secondly, it provides an introduction to the life and work of Rammohun Roy, situating this great intellectual in relation to the transformative period of India’s history called the ‘Bengal renaissance’. Roy was perhaps the most important figure in the transmission of religious and philosophical ideas between India and the Western world in the early nineteenth century. Rammohun Roy, although critical of a number of socially undesirable practices, never rejected Hinduism, showing his contemporaries that one can indeed be a Hindu in a modern and international environment.

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