Receptions of the Past: Commemoration, Racism, Desire

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-303
Author(s):  
Michael Connors Jackman

This article investigates the ways in which the work of The Body Politic (TBP), the first major lesbian and gay newspaper in Canada, comes to be commemorated in queer publics and how it figures in the memories of those who were involved in producing the paper. In revisiting a critical point in the history of TBP from 1985 when controversy erupted over race and racism within the editorial collective, this discussion considers the role of memory in the reproduction of whiteness and in the rupture of standard narratives about the past. As the controversy continues to haunt contemporary queer activism in Canada, the productive work of memory must be considered an essential aspect of how, when and for what reasons the work of TBP comes to be commemorated. By revisiting the events of 1985 and by sifting through interviews with individuals who contributed to the work of TBP, this article complicates the narrative of TBP as a bluntly racist endeavour whilst questioning the white privilege and racially-charged demands that undergird its commemoration. The work of producing and preserving queer history is a vital means of challenging the intentional and strategic erasure of queer existence, but those who engage in such efforts must remain attentive to the unequal terrain of social relations within which remembering forms its objects.

Author(s):  
William Tullett

In England during the period between the 1670s and the 1820s a transformation took place in how smell and the senses were viewed. This book traces that transformation. The role of smell in creating medical and scientific knowledge came under intense scrutiny and the equation of smell with disease was actively questioned. Yet a new interest in smell’s emotive and idiosyncratic dimensions offered odours a new power in the sociable spaces of eighteenth-century England. Using a wide range of sources from diaries, letters, and sanitary records to satirical prints, consumer objects, and magazines, William Tullett traces how individuals and communities perceived the smells around them. From paint and perfume to onions and farts, this book highlights the smells that were good for eighteenth-century writers to think with. In doing so, the study challenges a popular, influential, and often cited narrative. Smell in Eighteenth-Century England is not a tale of the medicalization and deodorization of English olfactory culture. Instead, the book demonstrates that it was a new recognition of smell’s asocial-sociability, its capacity to create atmospheres of uncomfortable intimacy, that transformed the relationship between the senses and society. To trace this shift, the book also breaks new methodological ground. Smell in Eighteenth-Century England makes the case for new ways of thinking about the history of the senses, experience, and the body. Understanding the way past peoples perceived their world involves tracing processes of habituation, sensitization, and attention. These processes help explain which odours entered the archive and why they did so. They force us to recognise that the past was, for those who lived there, not just a place of unmitigated stench


2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 83-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Martin Dodsworth

This article explores the role that ‘habit’ played in discourses on crime in the 18th century, a subject which forms an important part of the history of ‘the social’. It seeks to bridge the division between ‘liberal’ positions which see crime as a product of social circumstance, and the conservative position which stresses the role of will and individual responsibility, by drawing attention to the role habit played in uniting these conceptions in the 18th century. It argues that the Lockean idea that the mind was a tabula rasa, and that the character was thereby formed through impression and habit, was used as a device to explain the ways in which certain individuals rather than others happened to fall into a life of crime, a temptation to which all were susceptible. This allowed commentators to define individuals as responsible for their actions, while accepting the significance of environmental factors in their transgressions. Further, the notion that the character was formed through habit enabled reformers to promote the idea that crime could be combated through mechanisms of prevention and reformation, which both targeted the individual criminal and sought more generally to reduce the likelihood of crime.


1913 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 384-394
Author(s):  
J. Salwyn Schapiro

It is generally considered a sort of natural law in the political world for conservatives to govern and for radicals to criticize. In France the opposite is true; there the Left and Right have changed functions, as it is the former, not the latter, which controls the destinies of the nation. This is due primarily to the fact that conservatism in France has neither a habitation nor a name; for the French Revolution, by cutting the jugular vein of the inherited traditions of the country, had established revolution itself as a tradition. So completely has the radical spirit taken possession of the French people that even the reactionaries are dominated by it; for what is a coup d'état if not a revolutionary method of establishing a conservative government? The aristocratic spirit, driven from the body politic, has found refuge in literature; there French tradition still rules, unbroken and unchallenged. Anatole France, Socialist in politics, is yet the hardest and straightest of classicists and a legitimate descendant of the eighteenth century masters. France is unique in harboring at the same time the two master-spirits of aristocracy in arts and letters, and democracy in society and politics.Revolutionary traditions have made France the protagonist of of political progress. To her history has assigned the rôle of proclaiming the newly-born thought of the world, for it is now accepted as a truism that what France thinks today the world will think tomorrow. And because new ideas always take on strange forms and speak a Quixotic language, France has been decried as fantastic when she has been only original. The history of the nation since the great Revolution has been a constant struggle between ideas and conditions.


2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 98-100
Author(s):  
Muhamad Ali

Studies of Islam in Southeast Asia have sought to better understand its multifacetedand complex dimensions, although one may make a generalizedcategorization of Muslim beliefs and practices based on a fundamental differencein ideologies and strategies, such as cultural and political Islam.Anna M. Gade’s Perfection Makes Practice stresses the cultural aspect ofIndonesian Muslim practices by analyzing the practices of reciting andmemorizing the Qur’an, as well as the annual competition.Muslim engagement with the Qur’an has tended to emphasize the cognitiveover the psychological dimension. Perfection Makes Practice analyzesthe role of emotion in these undertakings through a combination ofapproaches, particularly the history of religions, ethnography, psychology,and anthropology. By investigating Qur’anic practitioners in Makassar,South Sulawesi, during the 1990s, Gade argues that the perfection of theQur’an as a perceived, learned, and performed text has made and remade thepractitioners, as well as other members of the Muslim community, to renewor increase their engagement with the holy text. In this process, she suggests,moods and motivation are crucial to preserving the recited Qur’an and revitalizingthe Muslim community.In chapter 1, Gade begins with a theoretical consideration for her casestudy. Drawing from concepts that emphasize the importance of feeling andemotion in ritual and religious experience, she develops a conceptualizationof this engagement. In chapter 2, Gade explains memorization within thecontext of the self and social relations. She argues that Qur’anic memorizershave a special relationship with its style and structure, as well as with thesocial milieu. Although Qur’anic memorization is a normal practice for mostMuslims, its practitioners have learned how to memorize and recite beautifullysome or all of the Qur’an’s verses, a process that requires emotion ...


2021 ◽  
pp. 251660852098428
Author(s):  
Vikas Bhatia ◽  
Chirag Jain ◽  
Sucharita Ray ◽  
jay Kumar

Objective: To report a case of young male with stroke and bilateral internal carotid artery (ICA) dissection. Background: Cervical Artery Dissection in Stroke Study trial has provided some insight on management of patients with ICA dissection. However, there is a need to modify the management strategies as per specific clinical scenario. Design/Methods: Case report and literature review. Results: A 45-year-old male presented with 1 month old history of acute onset numbness of right half of the body with slurring of speech. Computed tomography angiography showed complete occlusion of left cervical ICA just beyond origin with presence of fusiform dilatation and spiral flap in right extracranial cervical ICA. The patient was started on antiplatelets and taken for endovascular procedure using 2-mesh-based carotid stents. Patient was discharged after 3 days on antiplatelet therapy. At 1-year follow-up, there were no fresh symptoms. Conclusion: This case emphasizes the role of successful endovascular management of carotid dissection in a young male. These clinical situations may not be fully represented in trials, and a case-based approach is required.


1959 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 742-756 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heinz Eulau ◽  
John C. Wahlke ◽  
William Buchanan ◽  
Leroy C. Ferguson

The problem of representation is central to all discussions of the functions of legislatures or the behavior of legislators. For it is commonly taken for granted that, in democratic political systems, legislatures are both legitimate and authoritative decision-making institutions, and that it is their representative character which makes them authoritative and legitimate. Through the process of representation, presumably, legislatures are empowered to act for the whole body politic and are legitimized. And because, by virtue of representation, they participate in legislation, the represented accept legislative decisions as authoritative. But agreement about the meaning of the term “representation” hardly goes beyond a general consensus regarding the context within which it is appropriately used. The history of political theory is studded with definitions of representation, usually embedded in ideological assumptions and postulates which cannot serve the uses of empirical research without conceptual clarification.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Preeti Jadhav ◽  
Hassan Tariq ◽  
Masooma Niazi ◽  
Giovanni Franchin

We report a case of a 35-year-old female who presented to the emergency room (ER) complaining of a pruritic rash involving multiple areas of the body. She had a significant history of cocaine use in the past. She had first developed a similar rash in 2013 when she was diagnosed with cocaine-induced vasculitis. Her urine toxicology had been positive for cocaine in the past until July 2013. She was incarcerated and attended a drug rehabilitation program after which she quit cocaine use, which was consistent with negative urine toxicology on subsequent admissions. Further workup did not reveal any other, autoimmune or infectious, etiology of this clinical presentation. The patient underwent biopsy of the skin lesion that was consistent with thrombotic vasculopathy likely secondary to levamisole.


2021 ◽  
pp. 213-225
Author(s):  
Maciej Tanaś

The article presents the enormous scientific, organisational and social achievements of Professor Andrzej Jaczewski – the doyen of Polish sexology, doctor and educator. The author recalls the awarding of the Medal of Merit for the Development of Polish Pedagogy, presented by the Chapter of the Committee of Pedagogical Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The author describes and analyses the various fields of the Professor’s activities, referring to available studies and insightful personal accounts. Undisputed, original and significant scientific achievements at the medical and pedagogical junctions, as well as beautiful accounts from his own life and accomplishments set new perspectives for pedagogical sciences, earning the Professor enormous respect from within and beyond his Polish and German academic cohort and peers. The Professor was and remains to many, a physician of the body, mind and spirit. With his unwavering passion and dedication to his students and the scouts, he truly exemplifies and models a path that seeks truth, beauty and doing good. There is a discussion about the shape of Polish education concerning errors in teaching science and biology, wasting children’s abilities in the sciences more than it is commonly believed, the problem of physical and mental “splitting maturation”, the role of adventure in scouting, “becoming” a mature person, the highest grades on secondary school-leaving certificates and young people’s lack of skills in communicating in other languages. In addition, the discussion addresses the competences needed to build social relations, personal courage and responsibility, tolerance and respect for other people, the ability to cooperate and build a community, the catalogue of values in the process of education, integration of education and upbringing processes, theatre, ballet, classical and opera music concerts, popular culture, as well as digital media and human rights to a life of value, sailing and education reforms. The conversation with professor Andrzej Jaczewski at his home in Ropki in the Beskid Niski leads to the conclusion: “We have to invent a new school. A school worthy of our dreams and the fate of our children and grandchildren”. The author treats it as the Professor’s pedagogical will.


Pólemos ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Nicolini

Abstract This essay addresses different patterns of the visualisation of the law. It examines how scholars attempt to depict, represent, and perform the law and its founding authority. It also focuses on the pragmatics of legal language: written and spoken standard legal English are pragmatically enriched within contexts where the law is interpreted, uttered, or performed. The linguistic notion of “context” discloses the interrelations between the agendas of law and power and reveals how the law conveys its content to the body politic as its ultimate addressee. It then proposes a renewed concept of legal linguistics. In order to determine the different ideologies underpinning the evolution of English legal language, as well as its prototypical forms of the visualisation of the law, three stages in the history of the English language will be examined: Late Middle English, Early Modern English, and Contemporary English. Each of these stages will be likened to the different parts of judicial proceedings. This will allow us to examine how English legal language has been used in a specific context, the trial, where the law is both uttered and performed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-313
Author(s):  
Enver Hasani

Kosovo’s Constitutional Court has played a role of paramount importance in the country’s recent history. The author uses a comparative analysis to discuss the role of the Court in light of the work and history of other European constitutional courts. This approach sheds light on the Court’s current role by analyzing Kosovo’s constitutional history, which shows that there has been a radical break with the past. This approach reveals the fact that Kosovo’s current Constitution does not reflect the material culture of the society of Kosovo. This radical break with the past is a result of the country’s tragic history, in which case the fight for constitutionalism means a fight for human dignity. In this battle for constitutionalism, the Court has been given very broad jurisdiction and a role to play in paving the way for Kosovo to move toward Euro-Atlantic integration in all spheres of life. Before reaching this conclusion, the author discusses the specificities of Kosovo’s transition, comparing it with other former communist countries. Among the specific features of constitutionalism in Kosovo are the role and position of the international community in the process of constitution-making and the overall design of constitutional justice in Kosovo. Throughout the article, a conclusion emerges that puts Kosovo’s Constitutional Court at the forefront of the fight for the rule of law and constitutionalism of liberal Western provenance.


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