scholarly journals Rupturing Salem, Reconsidering Subjectivity: Tituba, the Witch of Infinity in Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-59
Author(s):  
Junghyun Hwang

The Salem witch-hunt, invoking the “red hunt” analogy of the McCarthy era, has been a persistent metaphor for persecution, a symbol of fanatic excess in policing the community boundaries. In American cultural history, however, Salem is regarded American only insofar as it proves un-American—as an exception to American exceptionalism. In particular, Tituba, the only non-white “witch” of the trials to whom the unleashing of the hysteria itself has often been attributed, embodies what is negated in Salem against which Americanness is to be affirmed. Maryse Condé’s 1986 novel, I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem recuperates Tituba from this darkness not only to reconfigure American identity but ultimately to reconsider human subjectivity. In Condé’s Salem, New England Puritanism showcases the primal scene of American identity formation, in which the personal, national, and religious subjectivities are fused to form the American self as the autonomous self-possessed individual. Tituba, in contrast, exemplifies an alternative subjectivity as an embodied being constituted in relation to others. Similar to Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical subject, Condé’s Tituba highlights the primacy of the other in the formation of the human subject, ultimately rupturing the totality of history with a counter-history of silenced voices or the infinity of the other.

1980 ◽  
Vol 85 (1) ◽  
pp. 205
Author(s):  
B. R. Burg ◽  
Peter N. Carroll

2006 ◽  
Vol 188 ◽  
pp. 1048-1069 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul G. Pickowicz

This article explores cultural producation during the Mao era (1949–76) by focusing on the evolving relationship between artists and the party-state. The emphasis is on state direction of art in the all-important film industry. From 1949, well-known bourgeois Republican-era artists willingly began the complicated, painful and sometimes deadly process of adjusting to Communist Party state building, nation building and political domination. The career of influential film director Zheng Junli is examined as a case study of creative and strategic accommodation to new circumstances on the one hand, and of complicity on the other. Zheng is seen in his dual and contradictory roles as both trusted, ever loyal insider and unreliable, even degenerate, outsider. His Mao-era films, especially the spectacular Great Leap Forward production of Lin Zexu, are analysed in terms of their political thrust and reception in the difficult-to-predict world of the People's Republic.


2004 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Czajka

O golpe militar de abril de 1964 determinou-se como um marco decisivo na história política e cultural da sociedade brasileira. A proposição tem sido aceita não somente pela forma como ficou conhecida a estrutura do Estado após o advento das forças militares na cena política, mas pela intensa atividade cultural e artística por parte de intelectuais e artistas na década de 1960. Em geral, essa condição procura incutir uma certa unidade referencial nos movimentos artístico-culturais, que tinham como espelho a conduta política do Partido Comunista Brasileiro (PCB) – partido proeminente no período em questão. Embora o PCB tivesse adesão de inúmeros artistas e intelectuais, que procuravam firmar oposição ao regime e à política exercida pelos militares. Havia, por outro lado, um contingente de professores, escritores, jornalistas, poetas, diretores, atores e atrizes, entre outros, que faziam resistência sem efetivamente vincularem-se ao PCB. O chamado “pecebismo” era um elemento presente entre esse grupos, mas nunca respondeu necessariamente pela unidade (como numa “frente única”) ou articulação dos mesmos. Assim pode ser caracterizada, por exemplo, a ação do Comando dos Trabalhadores Intelectuais e da Revista Civilização Brasileira entre 1963-1968, nos quais constata-se a formação de um campo heterogêneo com disputas de projetos e debate de idéias que favoreceram a formação de uma esfera cultural crítica e abrangente. Redesigning ideologies: culture and politics at the time of a coup Abstract The military blow of April of 1964 was determined as a decisive landmark in the political and cultural history of the Brazilian society. The proposal has been accepted not only for the form as the advent of the military forces in the scene was known the structures of the State after politics, but for the intense cultural and artistic activity on the part of intellectuals and artists in the decade of 1960. In general, this condition looks for to infuse a certain referencial unit in the artistic-cultural movements, that had as mirror the political behavior of Partido Comunista Brasileiro (PCB) – broken prominent in the period in question. Although the PCB had adhesion of innumerable artists and intellectuals, who worked to firm opposition to the regimen and the politics exerted for the military. There was, on the other hand, a contingent of professors, writers, journalists, poets, directors, actors and actresses, among others, that made resistance without associating the PCB effectively to it. The called “pecebismo” was a present element among these groups, but it never answered necessarily for the union (as in a “frente única”) or joint of the same ones. Thus it can be characterized, for example, the action of the Comando dos Trabalhadores Intelectuais and the Revista Civilização Brasileira between 1963-1968, in which the formation of a heterogeneous field with disputes of projects is established, with debate of ideas that had favored the formation of a critical and including cultural sphere.


Author(s):  
Elena V. Glukhova ◽  

The article discusses the modification of the “estate topos” of Russian sym- bolism in Andrei Bely’s memoir prose. The estates Shakhmatovo, Dedovo, Serebrianyj Kolodez played a key role in the cultural history of Russian symbolism. The peculiarity of Bely’s “estate text”, on the one hand, is that he found an original neo-mythological mode in the image of these estates, on the other hand, gave them heterotopic properties. The article shows how the tonality of his memoirs about Alexander Blok changes from the first edition in journal “Notes of Dreamers” (1922) to the last part of his memorial trilogy “The Beginning of the Century” (1932). If in the first version “Shakhmatovo” appears in neo-mythological meaning and a number of significant symbolic universals are realized, then in the latter version this way of representing the estate is practically erased. The image of Alexander Blok as a spiritual and symbolic center of estate cul- ture is changing: if originally he had the folklore features of Ivan Tsarevich, the ideal symbolist poet on a background of nature, and his wife was Tsarevna, the embodiment of Sophia the Wisdom of God, then later Blok appears as a Lord, carried away only by the issues of managing the estate, and his wife gets the features of an ordinary woman. The estate Serebrianyj Kolodez appears as a heterotopic space, and the features of the estate Dedovo are recognizable in the novel “The Silver Dove”.


Author(s):  
Dietmar Schenk

AbstractHistorical archives are institutions holding historical sources, in particular deeds and files, that is to say records created in the past for administrative and legal purposes. Today, historical archives are responsible for preserving administrative documents that will become sources of history in the future. This paper reviews the connection – and disconnection – between archives of this type and musicology. In the field of music-historical research, it is most common to use music libraries and other special music collections, particularly to examine original manuscripts of musical compositions. Music historians have focused less on archival sources, though these are increasingly valued thanks to the influence of cultural history. On the other hand, historians dealing with general history have been little interested in the history of the arts and, particularly, in music history, instead focusing mainly on political, social and economic issues. Archivists have shared these preferences. By contrast, this article presents examples of the potential of archival sources for music-historical research, and shows that Archival Science contributes to the management of written cultural heritage in the field of music as well.


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