scholarly journals In the Presence of Absence: Melinda Mollineaux’s Pinhole Photography

2006 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea M Fatona
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
Official History ◽  
Black Canadian ◽  
History Of ◽  
Site Web ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Presence And Absence ◽  
Pinhole Photography ◽  
Article Analyse

Abstract: In the official history of Canada, alternative Black narratives often erase the complexities of Black Canadian experiences. This article examines the pinhole photographic work of Canadian artist Melinda Mollineaux, Cadboro Bay: Index to an Incomplete History, to discuss Mollineaux’s performative act of commemorating the forgotten place of Cadboro Bay, where Black people gathered to celebrate Emancipation Day in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The photographs in the series act as material reminders of this artist’s attempt to resurrect public memories of a time and place that are intimately tied to slavery and the diasporic movement of Black people. In so doing, the article discusses the dynamics of presence and absence and the significance of what is not seen in Mollineaux’s pictures. This article features online (http://www.cjc-online.ca) photographs of Melinda Mollineaux’s pinhole photography. Résumé : Au sein de l’histoire officielle du Canada, les récits alternatifs des Noirs passent souvent sous silence la complexité de l’expérience canadienne Noire. Cette étude examine l’oeuvre photographique de l’artiste canadienne Melinda Mollineaux, intitulée Cadboro Bay : Index to an Incomplete History. Le but de cette analyse est de considérer la pratique performative de Mollineaux qui commémore le site oublié de Cadboro Bay, un endroit où certains membres de la communauté Noire se sont rassemblés pour célébrer Emancipation Day à la fin du 19e et au début du 20e siècles. Cette série de photos sert de rappel physique des gestes posés par l’artiste afin de remémorer une époque et un lieu qui sont intimement liés à l’esclavagisme et à la dispersion du peuple de race noire. Conséquemment, cet article analyse la dynamique de présence et d’absence ainsi que la signification de ce qui ne trouve pas place dans les photos de Mollineaux. Cet article inclut des photos de l’exposition de Melinda Mollineaux Pinhole Photography disponibles sur le site web de la revue : http://www.cjc-online.ca.

The Modernities of H. Lawrence Freeman

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 719-779
Author(s):  
David Gutkin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Black Press ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
White Press ◽  
Grand Opera

H. Lawrence Freeman's “Negro Jazz Grand Opera,” Voodoo, was premiered in 1928 in Manhattan's Broadway district. Its reception bespoke competing, racially charged values that underpinned the idea of the “modern” in the 1920s. The white press critiqued the opera for its allegedly anxiety-ridden indebtedness to nineteenth-century European conventions, while the black press hailed it as the pathbreaking work of a “pioneer composer.” Taking the reception history of Voodoo as a starting point, this article shows how Freeman's lifelong project, the creation of what he would call “Negro Grand Opera,” mediated between disparate and sometimes apparently irreconcilable figurations of the modern that spanned the late nineteenth century through the interwar years: Wagnerism, uplift ideology, primitivism, and popular music (including, but not limited to, jazz). I focus on Freeman's inheritance of a worldview that could be called progressivist, evolutionist, or, to borrow a term from Wilson Moses, civilizationist. I then trace the complex relationship between this mode of imagining modernity and subsequent versions of modernism that Freeman engaged with during the first decades of the twentieth century. Through readings of Freeman's aesthetic manifestos and his stylistically syncretic musical corpus I show how ideas about race inflected the process by which the qualitatively modern slips out of joint with temporal modernity. The most substantial musical analysis examines leitmotivic transformations that play out across Freeman's jazz opera American Romance (1924–29): lions become subways; Mississippi becomes New York; and jazz, like modernity itself, keeps metamorphosing. A concluding section considers a broader set of questions concerning the historiography of modernism and modernity.

Itumeleng Mosala: Giving Theology Its World, Feet and Hands

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Takatso Mofokeng
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Consciousness ◽  
History Of ◽  
Black Consciousness Movement

Worthy of celebration is the contribution made by Itumeleng Mosala (hereafter Mosala) to the Black Methodist Consultation, the theological community in Southern Africa, and the Black Consciousness Movement. This article attempts to give theology its world, feet and hands in the person of Mosala. The article departs from the narration of the history of Mosala. It locates Mosala within township life and Old Testament scholarship. Furthermore, the article searches for suitable and effective weapons of intellectual struggle in light of Mosala’s life. The aim of this article is to celebrate the indelible footprints that Mosala made as he communed with black people.

Specters of Colonialism - Sven Augustijnen's Haunted Cinema

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrzej Marzec
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Contemporary Cinema ◽  
Presence And Absence

The author analyzes Sven Agustijnen's Specters from the philosophical perspective. He tries to prove that the cinema of the Belgian director is haunted because it presents the reality as made out of traces, which disturb the traditional division into presence and absence. The author analyzes Augustijnen's film techniques and uses Jacques Derrida hauntology to show, how contemporary cinema tries to face the difficult and unfinished colonial history of Belgium (the genocide in Congo during the reign of the Belgian king Leopold II and the murder of the first prime minister of the independent Congo, Patrice Lumumba).

Theodore H. Friedgut, Stepmother Russia, Foster Mother America: Identity Transitions in the New Odessa Jewish Commune, Odessa, Oregon, New York, 1881–1891, together with Israel Mandelkern, Recollections of a Communist (ed. and annotated Theodore H. Friedgut). Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014. 199 pp.

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Foster Mother ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Identity Transitions ◽  
Israeli Kibbutz

This chapter reviews the book Stepmother Russia, Foster Mother America: Identity Transitions in the New Odessa Jewish Commune, Odessa, Oregon, New York, 1881–1891 (2014), by Theodore H. Friedgut, together with Israel Mandelkern, Recollections of a Communist (edited and annotated by Theodore H. Friedgut). Stepmother Russia, Foster Mother America is a two-in-one volume that explores an obscure episode in the history of the Jews in the late nineteenth century while at the same time connecting much of its content to the author’s own life experience as a son of western Canada’s Jewish farming colonies and, later, as an ideologically driven halutz on an Israeli kibbutz. Stepmother Russia, Foster Mother America retells one branch of the mostly forgotten history of the Am Olam agricultural movement and brings a new layer into the discussion of global Jewish agrarianism, while Recollections of a Communist offers an edited and annotated version of a memoir written by Mandelkern.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurit Yaari
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Future State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
State Of Israel

This chapter examines the lack of continuous tradition of the art of the theatre in the history of Jewish culture. Theatre as art and institution was forbidden for Jews during most of their history, and although there were plays written in different times and places during the past centuries, no tradition of theatre evolved in Jewish culture until the middle of the nineteenth century. In view of this absence, the author discusses the genesis of Jewish theatre in Eastern Europe and in Eretz-Yisrael (The Land of Israel) since the late nineteenth century, encouraged by the Jewish Enlightenment movement, the emergence of Jewish nationalism, and the rebirth of Hebrew as a language of everyday life. Finally, the chapter traces the development of parallel strands of theatre that preceded the Israeli theatre and shadowed the emergence of the political infrastructure of the future State of Israel.

The Growth of Historical Method in Tang China

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Hartman ◽  
Anthony DeBlasi
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Daily Production ◽  
Successor State ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Official History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Over Time

This chapter discusses how the full emergence of the centralized, aristocratic state in the seventh century brought about an official historiography that was part of the bureaucracy of that state. Beginning in the Tang, each dynastic court maintained an office of historiography. Over time, a regularized process evolved that, in theory and often in reality, turned the daily production of court bureaucratic documents into an official history of the dynasty. Although this process was ongoing throughout the dynasty, the final, standard ‘dynastic history’ was usually completed after the dynasty's demise by its successor state. Indeed, the very concept of a series of dynastic histories that, taken together, would present an official history of successive, legitimate Chinese states, dates from the eleventh century.

Schopenhauer’s Pessimism in Context

2020 ◽  
pp. 283-298
Author(s):  
Mark Migotti
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

In this chapter, the author attempts to establish what is philosophically living and what is philosophically dead in Schopenhauer’s pessimism. Against the background of the intriguing the history of the terms “optimism” and “pessimism”—in debates about Leibniz’s theodicy in the early eighteenth century and the popularity of Schopenhauer in the late nineteenth century, respectively—the author points up the distinction between affirming life, which all living beings do naturally, and subscribing to philosophical optimism (or pessimism), which is possible only for reflective beings like us. Next, the author notes the significance of Schopenhauer’s claim that optimism is a necessary condition of theism and explains its bearing on his pessimistic argument for the moral unacceptability of suicide. The chapter concludes that Schopenhauer’s case for pessimism is not conclusive, but instructive; his dim view of the prospects for leading a truly rewarding, worthwhile human life draws vivid attention to important questions about how and to what degree an atheistic world can nevertheless be conducive to human flourishing.

Police Records

2019 ◽  
pp. 797-819
Author(s):  
Cristina Vatulescu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Detective Fiction ◽  
Media History ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Police Records ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter approaches police records as a genre that gains from being considered in its relationships with other genres of writing. In particular, we will follow its long-standing relationship to detective fiction, the novel, and biography. Going further, the chapter emphasizes the intermedia character of police records not just in our time but also throughout their existence, indeed from their very origins. This approach opens to a more inclusive media history of police files. We will start with an analysis of the seminal late nineteenth-century French manuals prescribing the writing of a police file, the famous Bertillon-method manuals. We will then track their influence following their adoption nationally and internationally, with particular attention to the politics of their adoption in the colonies. We will also touch briefly on the relationship of early policing to other disciplines, such as anthropology and statistics, before moving to a closer look at its intersections with photography and literature.

Sufis and the Sufi Lodges in Istanbul in the Late Nineteenth Century: A Socio-Spatial Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 009614422110252
Author(s):  
Ahmet Yusuf Yüksek
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Spatial Analysis ◽  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religion And Spirituality ◽  
Spatial History ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Social Profiles

This study investigates the socio-spatial history of Sufism in Istanbul during 1880s. Drawing on a unique population registry, it reconstructs the locations of Sufi lodges and the social profiles of Sufis to question how visible Sufism was in the Ottoman capital, and what this visibility demonstrates the historical realities of Sufism. It claims that Sufism was an integral part of the Ottoman life since Sufi lodges were space of religion and spirituality, art, housing, and health. Despite their large presence in Istanbul, Sufi lodges were extensively missing in two main areas: the districts of Unkapanı-Bayezid and Galata-Pera. While the lack of lodgess in the latter area can be explained by the Western encroachment in the Ottoman capital, the explanation for the absence of Sufis in Unkapanı-Bayezid is more complex: natural disasters, two opposing views about Sufi sociability, and the locations of the central lodges.

The edible tide: How estuaries and migrants transformed the Straits of Melaka, 1870–1940

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-596
Author(s):  
Anthony D. Medrano
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The Straits of Melaka have long played a central role in the history of Southeast Asia, from facilitating the movement of people, ideas, and commodities to marking the salty edge of states, empires, and sultanates. Networks, circulations, and mobilities have shaped our vision and understanding of this waterway. This article charts a different kind of story, one that explores the Straits not as a space of passage but rather as a place of production. It shows how and why these waters became an industrial fishing zone — an industrial estuary, as it were — in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through the case of Bagan Si Api Api, a Hokkien-built town at the mouth of Sumatra's Rokan River, it explains why estuaries and migrants were central to Southeast Asia's urban rise from 1870 to 1940. By looking at the Straits during this pivotal moment, the article reveals the ways in which ecologies, beliefs, technologies, and cultures all combined to shape not only the economic life of Southeast Asia's estuaries, but also, and more importantly, the place of these estuaries in the region's economic life.

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