Blood, Bodies, and The Lifted Veil

1997 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Flint
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Blood Transfusion ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Scientific Writing ◽  
The Body ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Common Life ◽  
Historical Specificity

The Lifted Veil (1859) is a text concerned with the interplay between science and the imagination. It is informed by The Physiology of Common Life, the work that G. H. Lewes published in the same year, and in many ways is in a dialogue with this work, asking that if we could look into someone's mind with the same power that a physician can examine the body, would we choose to exercise this specular power? The essay shows how George Eliot employs some of the same language that Lewes uses in his scientific writing, especially in the context of the circulation of blood and the circulation of feeling. Blood is crucial to this novella, and its wider nineteenth-century implications are also raised. In particular, the blood transfusion scene in The Lifted Veil is shown not to be a piece of mere Gothic melodrama but to be rooted in contemporary debate about transfusion. Historical specificity is reinforced through showing that Meunier, the doctor, had an actual prototype in the figure of Brown-Séquard. Examining these aspects of the novella raises questions about gender and authority. It is argued that, despite the dialogue with Lewes's work that occurs in The Lifted Veil, George Eliot gives even greater priority than Lewes does to the role of the imagination and to the provocative nature of that which cannot be revealed by science.

Here Is My Name When I Am Dead

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel McBride Lindsey
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
Modes Of Representation

This chapter explores death and mourning pictures within a shifting memorial culture that was rooted in historical modes of representation and theologies of redemption. Over the course of the nineteenth century, photographic portraiture emerged within this memorial culture as both the preferred iconography of mourning in nineteenth-century America and, significantly, as a relic of the departed that disclosed future glory to the bereaved. In this chapter, I explore the role of photographs as relics that illuminated the communion of shadows by mediating the body of the deceased with the grieving body of the bereaved. Here, photographs were devised not as tokens of the moldering body of the deceased but of promise of celestial reunion in glory. As memorial portraiture focused attention on the body of the deceased, another facet within the communion of shadows purported to provide evidence of the soul’s survival after death.

scholarly journals Die Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika: ’n Vrywillige vereniging of ’n vereniging sui generis?

1994 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
S. H. Gregan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South African ◽  
Case Law ◽  
The Body ◽  
Voluntary Association ◽  
Legal Person ◽  
English Court ◽  
Communion Of Saints ◽  
The Church

The Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika: A voluntary association or an association sui generis The Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk is seen as a voluntary association in South African law which is founded on a contractual basis. Recent case law has re-affirmed this fact. This was not always the case. Earlier case law referred to the church as a legal person (universitas). Because of the influence of English law and also the role of De Mist in the Cape during the nineteenth century, the courts have adopted the view that the church is a voluntary association The Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk, however, disagrees with this view of the courts. According to the the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk, one cannot simply talk of ‘voluntariness’ when membership of the church is at stake. The church is also not found on a contractual basis; Christ brought it together. The church is the communion of saints, because the believers, being members of the body of Jesus Christ, share in Christ and all He has. Recently an English court found that a church had the power to decide whether a preacher (rabbi) was fit to be a preacher and declared that the court will not interfere in such matters. This case could help to convince South African courts that the church differs from the ordinary voluntary association. The Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk also has the task to convince the courts in this regard and should be adamant in its stance that it should not be considered as a voluntary association, but rather as an association sui generis.

scholarly journals Unmasking Biometrics’ Biases

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Rosa Wevers
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Body

The article investigates the role of identity and the body in biometric technologies, contesting the conception that biometrics are neutral. It discusses biometrics’ exclusionary effects with regards to gender, race, class and ability, among others, by unveiling its historical links to nineteenth-century pseudoscientific practices. It does so through an analysis of Zach Blas’ Facial Weaponization Suite, an artistic critique of this dominant conception that draws attention to biometrics’ contested history and its current implications for marginalised identities.

scholarly journals The Emergence of Physical Education as a Subject for Compulsory Schooling in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century: The Case of Phokion Heinrich Clias and Adolf Spiess

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-30
Author(s):  
Rebekka Horlacher
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Physical Education ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The Body ◽  
Compulsory Schooling ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Compulsory Schools

In general, schooling and nation-building are associated with the unifying role of language and history education, since language and culture are perceived as fundamental pillars of the nation. Less discussed—at least regarding the curriculum—is the role of physical education, even if physical education was a highly political issue in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Based on a case study of Switzerland and textbooks for physical education by Adolf Spiess and the activities of Phokion Heinrich Clias for the Bernese school, this article discusses how physical education, distinct from the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ care for the body, became a school subject of the nineteenth century compulsory schools and how it was related to the notion of nation and nation-building. It argues that physical education became first part of the “modern” philanthropic education and schooling, was soon taken for granted as an essential curricular component of nation-building and lost thereby the political threat.

Nineteenth-Century Arabic Writings On Women And Society: The Interim Role Of The Masonic Press In Cairo — (Al-Lata'if, 1885–1895)

1985 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Byron D. Cannon
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
The Body ◽  
Considerable Importance ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
General Terms

This article, which draws largely from Arabica press sources from 1885 to 1900, seeks to sharpen our view of social attitudes reflected in the activities of local Freemasons in Egypt and Syria during the last decades of the Ottoman Empite. A number of earlier historians have attached considerable importance to pre- and post-1908 masonic orders and Ottoman politics. Too few, however, have tried to analyze ways in which essential social themes, some widely recognized as having importance across international and intercultural lines, were viewed through the perspective of late 19th-century Freemasonry. A first task in this introduction, therefore, will be to see how Masons in Europe and the Middle East viewed, or were presumed to view, a number of such social themes in general terms. We will then turn to one specific issue which clearly assumed more than passing importance as a propagandistic cause pursued by a small but influential group of Masons in Syria and Egypt over nearly two decades' time. We may tentatively suggest that the purpose of such endeavors was to encourage majority acceptance of the relevance and value of a cause espoused for the body politic as a whole, without necessary reference to its original, here clearly minority, proponents.

scholarly journals “A Living, Fleshy Bond”: The Electric Telegraph, Musical Thought, and Embodiment

2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-166
Author(s):  
Inge van Rij
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Art Music ◽  
The Body ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
Musical Thought ◽  
Rapid Spread ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The One

The development and rapid spread of the electric telegraph in the mid-nineteenth century were profoundly entangled with music in ways that are seldom if ever acknowledged. Particular emphasis is often placed on sound recording as enacting what Attali describes as “the moment when everything suddenly changed.” In fact, the telegraph anticipated several key premises of recording by decades. Its language is heard, on the one hand, in the direct imitation of Strauss Jr.'s Telegraphische Depeschen, and on the other, in François Sudre's development of a “universal musical language” to communicate across distance. Works by Berlioz and Georges Kastner reveal how the telegraph fed into conceptions of musical transcendence via Spiritualists and the Aeolian harp. The attendant emphasis on mind over body was extended through the employment by conductors of telegraph technology to control musicians across ever-greater distances. This apparent disembodiment of the telegraph carried threatening implications for those social or ethnic groups aligned with the body, including performers. However, as Marshall McLuhan suggests, electricity was also primarily a “tactile” medium, and sensitivity to the telegraphic signals in art music therefore also entailed a new appreciation of the powerful role of embodied performers. Listening for the sounds of the telegraph in music of the mid-nineteenth century thus both enriches our appreciation of the historicity of these works and offers new perspectives on the negotiations between embodiment and transcendence that continue to underpin this repertoire.

Viollet-le-Duc and the body: the metaphorical integrations of race and style in structural rationalism

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles L. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Frank Lloyd Wright ◽  
Cultural Variations ◽  
Architecture Theory ◽  
Compositional System ◽  
Critical Interest

At first glance, it might seem counterintuitive to insist upon Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc's (1814-79) critical interest in the human body as a metaphor for style in architecture. Not only did he oppose the anthropomorphic metaphors for style touted by Neo-Classical theorists at the École des Beaux-Arts, but he was most widely known in the nineteenth century for his preoccupation with the monumental and structural potential of modern materials such as iron. This reception of Viollet-le-Duc's thought persisted in the twentieth century with Sir John Summerson's estimation of Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier's debt to the constructive principles of his architectural organicism. Such accounts have made it possible to interpret construction and/or structure as the main ‘body’ of Viollet-le-Duc's architecture theory. However, this reading confuses the eclipse of Neo-Classical anthropomorphic metaphors for style - which translated the proportional relationships between the human body's constituent parts into a compositional system of design - with the complete eclipse of critical references to the human body in the French style debates of the nineteenth century. As we trace the role of the human body in Viollet-le-Duc's style theory, it becomes clear that the principles of human variation in biology and ethnography enabled him to account for the cultural variations of national peoples in his conception of style.

Prophets of Party in American Political History

The Forum ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 685-709
Author(s):  
Daniel Schlozman ◽  
Sam Rosenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Collective Actors ◽  
Do So

Abstract This article pursues a developmental understanding of American parties as autonomous and thick collective actors through a comparison of four key historical actors we term “prophets of party”: partisans of the nineteenth-century Party Period; Progressive reformers; mid-twentieth century liberal Democrats; and activists in and around the body popularly known as the McGovern-Fraser Commission. Leading theories portray political parties as the vehicles either of ambitious politicians or of groups eager to extract benefits from the state. Yet such analyses leave underdetermined the path from such actors’ desires for power to the parties’ wielding of it. That path is mediated by partisan forms and practices that have varied widely across institutional and cultural context. As parties search for electoral majority, they do so in the long shadow of ideas and practices, layered and accreted across time, concerning the role of parties in political life. We analyze four such prophesies, trace their layered contributions to their successors, and reflect on their legacy for contemporary party politics.

‘A very diadem of light’: exhibitions in Victorian London, the Parliamentary light and the shaping of the Trinity House lighthouses

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEPHEN COURTNEY
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Scientific Adviser ◽  
John Tyndall ◽  
Michael Faraday ◽  
The Trinity

AbstractIn the midsummer of 1872 a lighthouse apparatus was installed in the Clock Tower of the House of Commons. The installation served the practical function of communicating at a distance when the House was sitting, but also provided a highly visible symbolic indication of the importance of lighthouse technology to national concerns. Further, the installation served as an experimental space in which rival technological designs, with corresponding visions for the lighthouse system, could compete in public. This article considers nineteenth-century lighthouse technology as a case study in the power and political significance of display. Manufacturers of lighthouse lenses, such as the firm of Chance Brothers, sought to manage interpretations of the lights through the framing of exhibitions and demonstrations; so too did scientific authorities, including Michael Faraday and John Tyndall, both of whom served in the role of scientific adviser to Trinity House, the body responsible for lighthouse management. Particularly notable in this process was the significance of urban, metropolitan display environments in shaping the development of the marine lighthouse system around the nation's periphery.

Binding with a Perfect Sufi Master: Naqshbandī Defenses of rābiṭa from the Late Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-78
Author(s):  
M. Brett Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
The Body ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Turkish Language ◽  
Late Ottoman ◽  
Different Parts

Abstract This article explores debates surrounding the controversial spiritual exercise of rābiṭa – the binding of the disciple with a Sufi master by envisioning the image of the master in different parts of the body. Despite being criticized as a non-Qurʾanic practice and as a form of idolatry, rābiṭa was made a ritual of prominence among the Khālidī-Naqshbandī suborder which took shape in early nineteenth-century Syria and spread throughout the late Ottoman Empire. Tracing defenses of the practice from Arabic sources in the early nineteenth century to Turkish language treatises in the twentieth century, I argue that the Sufi ādāb manual al-Bahja al-saniyya composed by Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Khānī (1798-1862) established a repertoire of arguments that have been adopted and reused in Turkish language treatises until the present with little variation, revealing a remarkable continuity of apologetics over nearly two centuries. Additionally, the article considers the role of this ritual in defining the nature of master-disciple relationships and establishing hierarchies of Sufi devotion and obedience.

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