scholarly journals Oswald Pirow’s Ashambeni (1955): a “history” of dogs, humans, werewolves

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan-Mari Barendse
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Boundary Crossing ◽  
Human Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

In this paper I explore the human-dog interaction in Oswald Pirow’s Ashambeni (1955). I focus on the position of the dog in Pirow’s depiction of a world where the lives of animals and humans, and the natural and supernatural world, are entangled. In the novel, there are references to real historical figures and particulars of Portuguese East Africa and the South African Lowveld around 1850. The historical context sketched in the novel is from Pirow’s far-right, racist perspective. While most critics place Pirow’s work in the folkloric tradition, Ashambeni is more than a folkloric tale since it promotes Pirow’s offensive views. In Ashambeni the role of the dog ranges from valuable possession to loving companion to hunting and fighting tool. It shows that a dog history cannot be separated from a human history, and that dogs are part of the social and cultural life of humans. The depiction of human-dog interaction in Ashambeni points to a historical anthropocentric entanglement rather than the boundary-crossing entanglement between human and animal proposed by contemporary human-animal studies. The human characters control the dog characters’ status in the human society. Even more problematic, the description of the dogs is tied up with Pirow’s racist ideology and subjective account of history.

scholarly journals Who killed poor Liza? Cultural transmission in Nikolay Karamzin’s novel Poor Liza

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-134
Author(s):  
M. A. Dudareva
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Russian Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Loss Of Life ◽  
National Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
Russian Literary ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Types

An appeal to the novel “Poor Lisa” by Nikolay Karamzin in an extensive cultural and historical context provides an opportunity to pose a question on the transmission of culture, its “vertical” dimension. This makes it possible to distinguish between the characters according to their cultural types: Liza is a person of “soil”, endowed with ancestors’ sacred knowledge, while Erast is a man of «culture» out of touch with the ground. In this regard, it proves to be relevant not so much the social inequality of the characters, as noted by the researchers, as their different worldview, attitude to nature, love, etc. Parallel with the Russian folklore tradition, lyrics, where the concept of «love» is represented through the lexemes «sweetheart», «soul», «heart» are also challenging in this respect. It is to this archaic knowledge, the heritage of centuries, that Liza, the main character, is attached. Separation from love, a broken heart in this context is equivalent to the loss of life. Based on such representations, Liza’s act is considered from a different angle: death is the only possible outcome for the heroine, for her heart life. In the typological aspect, it is fruitful to refer to Montaigne’s Essays, to his statements on heart life, which is to a great extent consistent with the life of nature. At that time, Montaigne’s philosophy was well known to Russian literary figures.The methodological basis of the study includes structural-typological, comparative, and system-complex (culturological) research methods, ensuring a comprehensive approach to the analysis of the artistic text and making it possible to show the national space in Karamzin’s novel. The results may be interesting to both philologists and cultural scientists, and can also be used in courses on the history of Russian literature.

The Diaspora of the Novel

1992 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-146
Author(s):  
Artemis Leontis
Keyword(s):  
Uneven Development ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
The Novel ◽  
History Of The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Type

Reflection on the history of the novel usually begins with consideration of the social, political, and economic transformations within society that favored the “rise” of a new type of narrative. This remains true even with the numerous and important studies appearing during the past ten years, which relate the novel to an everbroadening spectrum of ideological issues—gender, class, race, and, most recently, nationalism. Yet a history of the genre might reflect not just on the novel’s national, but also its transnational, trajectory, its spread across the globe, away from its original points of emergence. Such a history would take into account the expansion of western markets—the growing exportation of goods and ideas, as well as of social, political, and cultural forms from the West—that promoted the novel’s importation by nonwestern societies. Furthermore, it could lead one to examine the very interesting inverse relationship between two kinds of migration, both of which are tied to the First World’s uneven “development” of the Third. In a world system that draws out natural resources in exchange for technologically mediated goods, the emigration of laborers and intellectuals from peripheral societies to the centers of power of the West and the immigration of a western literary genre into these same societies must be viewed as related phenomena.

Rīgas humānistu motīvs Roalda Dobrovenska romānā „Magnus, dāņu princis”

2021 ◽  
pp. 172-180
Author(s):  
Ausma Cimdiņa
Keyword(s):  
Life Story ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Human Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Russian State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Role

The novel “Magnus, the Danish Prince” by the Russian diaspora in Latvia writer Roald Dobrovensky is seen as a specific example of a biographical and historical genre, which embodies the historical experience of different eras and nations in the confrontation of globalisation and national self-determination. At the heart of the novel are the Livonian War and the historical role and human destiny of Magnus (1540–1683) – the Danish prince of the Oldenburg dynasty, the first and the only king of Livonia. The motif of Riga’s humanists is seen both as one of the main ideological driving forces of the novel and as a marginal reflection in Magnus’s life story. Acknowledged historical sources have been used in the creation of the novel: Baltazar Rusov’s “Livonian Chronicle”; Nikolai Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State”; Alexander Janov’s “Russia: 1462–1584. The Beginning of the Tragedy. Notes of the Nature and Formation of Russian Statehood” etc. In connection with the concept of Riga humanists, another fictitious document created by the writer Dobrovensky himself is especially important, namely, the diary of Johann Birke – Magnus’s interpreter, a person with a double identity, “half-Latvian”, “half-German”. It is a message of an alternative to the well-known historical documents, which allows to turn the Livonian historical narrative in the direction of “letocentrism” and raises the issue of the ethnic identity of Riga’s humanists. Along with the deconstruction of the historically documented image of Livonian King Magnus, the thematic structure of the novel is dominated by identity aspects related to the Livonian historical narrative. Dobrovensky, with his novel, raises an important question – what does the medieval Livonia, Europe’s common intellectual heritage, mean for contemporary Latvia and the human society at large? Dobrovensky’s work is also a significant challenge in strengthening emotional ties with Livonia (which were weakened in the early stages of national historiography due to conflicts over the founding of nation-states).

scholarly journals Genrens tøven

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (103) ◽  
pp. 108-137
Author(s):  
Carsten Sestoft
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Book Market ◽  
English Novel ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Historical Semantics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Or History

Romanens status i det 17. århundredes Frankrig The hesitations of a genre: The status of the novel in seventeenth-century FranceIn answering the question: What was the novel in seventeenth-century France? – this article provides insight into some important points of the early history of the genre. The contradiction between its non-existence in official (Aristotelian) poetics and its existence as a popular commodity on the book market was, in the course of the seventeenth century, reconciled in the emergent category of belles lettres as a plurality of genres mainly defined by their public of honnêtes gens, while attempts at legitimizing the novel as belonging to such Aristotelian genres as epic or history generally failed; and at the end of the century a number of convergences – between epic and novel, between the designations roman and nouvelle, and between the ‘high’ and ‘low’ forms of the novel – seem to point to the fact that the social existence of the genre had been strengthened, even if it was the English novel of the eighteenth century that could be said to reap the profits of this stronger position. Using historical semantics and cultural sociology to study the status of the novel in seventeenth-century France thus leads to a clearer understanding of the specificity of the novel as a literary and cultural genre.

scholarly journals Kuyper and Apartheid: A revisiting

2006 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Baskwell
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
African Society ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
South African Society ◽  
Empire Building ◽  
Vertical Partitioning ◽  
The Social ◽  
Government Involvement

Was Abraham Kuyper, scholar, statesman, and university founder, the ideological father of Apartheid in South Africa? Many belief so. But, there are others, amongst them George Harinck of the Free University in Amsterdam, who don’t think so. The article argues that there is an element of truth in both opinions. Kuyper did exhibit the casual racism so characteristic of the Victorian era, with its emphasis on empire building and all that it entailed. Kuyper was also directly responsible, ideologically, for the social structure in the Netherlands known as “verzuiling” or “pillarization” in terms of which members of the Catholic, Protestant, or Socialist segments of society had their own social institutions. This pillarizing, or segmenting, of society was, however, always voluntary. This is not true of the pillarizing or segmenting of South African society known as Apartheid. While there are similarities between Apartheid and “verzuiling”, especially in their vertical partitioning of the individual’s entire life, the South African historical context, the mediation of Kuyper’s ideas through South African scholars, the total government involvement, and therefore, the involuntary nature of Apartheid, point to their inherent dissimilarity. Apartheid was simply not pure Kuyper. Hence, while the effects of Kuyper’s ideas are clearly discernable in Apartheid policy, the article aims at arguing that Kuyper cannot be considered the father of Apartheid in any direct way.

scholarly journals Anger, Irony, and the Formal Rationality of Professionalism

2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 241-248
Author(s):  
Ajay K. Mehrotra
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
American Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
Formal Rationality

One of the challenges in writing about the history of American law and political economy is determining the proper amount of historical context necessary to make sense of past institutional and organizational change. Where to begin and end a historical narrative and how much to include about the broader social, cultural, political, and economic conditions of a particular place and time are, of course, questions that accompany any attempt to reconstruct the past. How one addresses these issues invariably shapes the motives and intentions that can be ascribed to historical figures. In their eloquent and thoughtful comments, Christopher Capozzola and Michael Bernstein have urged me to think more carefully about these issues, about where my story begins and ends, about the broader social, political, and material circumstances that animated World War I state-building, and about the seemingly apolitical ideas and actions of the Treasury lawyers who are the center of “Lawyers, Guns, and Public Moneys.”

EVERYDAY POLITICS AND COLLECTIVE MOBILIZATION AGAINST FOREIGNERS IN A SOUTH AFRICAN SHACK SETTLEMENT

Africa ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 85 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamlyn Monson
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Social Distance ◽  
Informal Settlements ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
Shared Experiences ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Equal Citizenship

ABSTRACTIn contrast to the tolerant and largely peaceful ‘living politics' of informal settlements, as embodied by the social movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, this article considers a darker side of squatter politics: ‘xenophobic’ mobilization. I show how the historical stratification of citizenship in South Africa remains spatially embedded in longstanding informal settlements, where distinctive repertoires of collective action have been shaped by a (still unfinished) history of struggle for inclusion. Using archival research and interviews conducted in the informal settlements of Atteridgeville, Gauteng, I show how the continuing struggle for equal citizenship draws on shared experiences of mundane hardship and collective labour, giving rise to social distance between established local squatters and politically indifferent foreign newcomers. At times of protest, this polarity is concentrated by and converges with familiar practices of insurgent citizenship, creating a context for mobilization against foreigners. In this sense, ‘xenophobic’ mobilization may be seen to articulate a claim for inclusion by structurally excluded ‘citizens', rather than an exclusionary claim by those who already belong. The article provides a useful counterpoint to readings of ‘xenophobic’ violence that focus on the role of elite discourses, instrumental leaders or crude racial identities in shaping such mobilization.

Ottoman Population Records and the Census of 1881/82–1893

1978 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kemal H. Karpat
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Major Factors

Population movements have always played a dynamic role in the transformation of human society throughout history. Indeed, there is not a single phase of history anywhere in the world which has not been related in some way to low or high rates of birth and mortality, to migration and settlement and to their social, cultural, economic, and political effects. The history of the Middle East supplies excellent examples to support this contention. The Muslim calendar begins with an act of migration, that is the hejira of a.d. 622. Migrants going from the countryside to urban centers or fleeing from areas hostile to Islam have always exerted a crucial influence upon the social and political destiny of Muslim countries. The refugees from Spain to North Africa in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the forced migration of Muslims from Russia (the Caucasus and Crimea) in the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, the shift of population in India, Pakistan, and Palestine in the 1940s, to cite just a few examples, have been major factors accounting, at least in part, for the social transformation of the Muslim world in general, and of the Middle East in particular.

scholarly journals Two crossbows and a carbine: Out of the commentary on A.N. and B.N. Strugatsky’s novel “Hard to be a God”

2020 ◽  
pp. 51-58
Author(s):  
Irina N. Arzamastseva ◽  
Alexander V. Kuznetsov
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sea Monster ◽  
Intertextual Connections

The article is devoted to the study of the functions of the characters’ weapons in A.N. and B.N. Strugatsky’s novel “Hard to be a God”. It is important for writing a commentary on the prologue of the novel. The authors used the historical-typological and mythopoetic research methods. As the result of reviewing the history of words-concepts, as it made by A.N. Veselovsky, the authors managed to study the intertextual connections of “Hard to be a God” with V.T. Shalamov’s poem “Crossbow” and his story “May”, as well as N.S. Gumilev’s poem “Just looks through the cliffs...” and E. Hemingway’s play “The fifth column”. Through these connections, the image of weapons is formed in the work of science fiction writers. It is necessary to destruct the mythological enemy – the sea monster, which symbolizes the social evil within the novel framework. As we have found out, the reason for such an intricate symbolism lies in the peculiarities of the age: the image of the sea monster standing for public evil is due to historical reasons. And since the elimination of social problems by such radical methods, according to the authors, is impossible, the movement towards a bright future should be only gradual and peaceful. As in reality, weapons are fundamentally unable to perform their task. Moreover, the weapon is dangerous for its owner, which indicates the ambivalence of the image. In addition, the comparison, important for the novel “Hard to be God”, of the past and future appears the first in the comparison of crossbows and carbines, further developing by other means. Weapons are involved in creating a number of important motives: doom, the danger of using force, and interference in the course of history.

scholarly journals MARIKANA, A PAST NEVER TRULY ESCAPED: A CRITIQUE ON THE COMMODIFICATION OF THE LEGAL SYSTEM AND THE LAW AS AN INSTRUMENT OF JUSTICE IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vaughn Rajah
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
African Society ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
South African Society ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Black South Africans ◽  
History Of

This article demonstrates that the Marikana tragedy was not a departure from the norm, but a continuation of state and corporate behaviour that has oppressed black South Africans for hundreds of years. This will be done through an analysis of the historically discriminatory socio-economic patterns of South African society, and how they subjugate the poor by limiting their access to legal and physical protection. These trends portray a history of commodification of the legal system. I discuss a notable documentary on the massacre, Miners Shot Down, and examine its depiction of the causes and effects of the events. The film provides no mention of the historical context of the killings, nor does it comment on many of the factors contributing to the massacre. Despite this, it succeeded in bringing the events to the attention of the broader public. I analyse the notions of justice, the rule of law and their application in South Africa as well as norms in the nation’s legal culture. Additionally, I examine the Farlam Commission, and how its procedures and conclusions hindered the course of justice in the context of our democracy. Ultimately, I demonstrate how the Marikana massacre was not a change in dynamic, but a reminder of a past we have never truly escaped.

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