Virginia Woolf, Europe, and Peace

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Peace Studies ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Bloomsbury Group ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Second World

From the “prying,” “insidious” “fingers of the European War” that Septimus Warren Smith would never be free of in Mrs Dalloway to the call to “think peace into existence” during the Blitz in “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid,” questions of war and peace pervade the writings of Virginia Woolf. This volume asks how Woolf conceptualised peace by exploring the various experimental forms she created in response to war and violence. Comprised of fifteen chapters by an international array of leading and emerging scholars, this book both draws out theoretical dimensions of Woolf’s modernist aesthetic and draws on various critical frameworks for reading her work, in order to deepen our understanding of her writing about the politics of war, ethics, feminism, class, animality, and European culture. The chapters collected here look at how we might re-read Woolf and her contemporaries in the light of new theoretical and aesthetical innovations, such as peace studies, post-critique, queer theory, and animal studies. It also asks how we might historicise these frameworks through Woolf’s own engagement with the First and Second World Wars, while also bringing her writings on peace into dialogue with those of others in the Bloomsbury Group. In doing so, this volume reassesses the role of Europe and peace in Woolf’s work and opens up new ways of reading her oeuvre.

Introduction to Carolyn Heilbrun’s ‘The Bloomsbury Group’, 1968

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda R. Silvert
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Bloomsbury Group ◽  
Group A

Brenda Silver, a noted scholar of modernism, cultural studies, and of Virginia Woolf in particular, was a friend and colleague of Carolyn Heilbrun. In this essay, Silver describes the importance of Heilbrun’s work in general and the significance of her 1968 essay, ‘The Bloomsbury Group’, a courageous and ground-breaking consideration of the role of sexuality in the work and reception of the group. For several decades, until the 1991 publication of Christopher Reed’s ‘Bloomsbury Bashing’, critical work on Bloomsbury largely ignored (at best) or deprecated Bloomsbury’s queer sensibility. Silver explains that Heilbrun’s essay was an important contribution to later scholars’ understanding of Bloomsbury because it validates sexual dissidence as an important source of Bloomsbury’s creative and intellectual energy and ethos.

11. Gender and Security

2018 ◽  
pp. 159-172
Author(s):  
Caroline Kennedy ◽  
Sophia Dingli
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
Gendered Roles ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines the relationship between gender and security, distinguishing between ‘practical’ and ‘discursive’ aspects of such relationship and exploring the problematizing of gendered roles through Queer Theory. Practical aspects are exemplified by the concrete role of women in militaries, or as victims, bystanders, or helpers of military conflict or of militarization in general. Discursive aspects are exemplified by the traditional connections made between militarism and masculinity and between nurturing, peace, and femininity. The chapter first explains what gender means and why issues of gender are relevant to understanding security. It shows how understanding and placing notions of gender at the centre of any debate on security can help us comprehend the way men and women relate to insecurity, violence, and war. Theorists have often discussed gender and security by referring to war and peace, but the chapter stresses the need to pay attention to the post-conflict environment.

scholarly journals Living in the Age of Axis Internationalism: Imagining Europe in Serbia Before and During the Second World War

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Antić
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Nazi Occupation ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Second World

This article explores how ‘European civilization’ was imagined on the margins of Europe in the first half of the twentieth century, and how Balkan intellectuals saw their own societies’ place in it in the context of interwar crises and World War II occupation. It traces the interwar development and wartime transformation of the intellectual debates regarding the modernization of Serbia/Yugoslavia, the role of the Balkans in the broader European culture, and the most appropriate path to becoming a member of the ‘European family of nations’. In the first half of the article, I focus on the interwar Serbian intelligentsia, and their discussions of various forms of international cultural, political and civilizational links and settings. These discussions centrally addressed the issue of Yugoslavia’s (and Serbia’s) ‘Europeanness’ and cultural identity in the context of the East–West symbolic and the state’s complex cultural-historical legacies. Such debates demonstrated how frustrating the goal of Westernization and Europeanization turned out to be for Serbian intellectuals. After exploring the conundrums and seemingly insoluble contradictions of interwar modernization/Europeanization discussions, the article then goes on to analyse the dramatic changes in such intellectual outlooks after 1941, asking how Europe and European cultural/political integration were imagined in occupied Serbia, and whether the realities of the occupation could accommodate these earlier debates. Serbia can provide an excellent case study for exploring how the brutal Nazi occupation policies affected collaborationist governments, and how the latter tried to make sense of their troubled inclusion in the racial ideology of the New European Order under the German leadership. Was Germany’s propaganda regarding European camaraderie taken seriously by any of the local actors? What did the Third Reich’s dubious internationalism mean in the east and south-east of Europe, and did it have anything to offer to the intelligentsia as well as the population at large?

PRINC EVGENIJE SAVOJSKI IZMEĐU PARIZA, BEČA I BEOGRADA

Lipar ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (75) ◽  
pp. 111-128
Author(s):  
Duško Lopandić
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Military Leader ◽  
Royal Court ◽  
European Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Decisive Victory ◽  
Historical Role ◽  
The One ◽  
Second World

The paper presents the life and work of Eugene of Savoy, a famous military leader at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, whose achivements left a mark in the history of numerous countries, from Austria, through Germany, Italy and France, to Serbia. The biography of Prince Eugene has a mutinational, “pan-European” char- acter, bearing in mind that he came from an Italian family (princes of Savoy), that he was raised in the environment of the French royal court, and that he served three Habsburg emperors (Leopold I, Joseph I and Charles VI). Napoleon considered Eugene one of the seven greatest commanders of history.The article contains presentation of young years and military career of Prince Eugene, especially during the Great Turkish war (1683-1699) and after, includin presantation of crucial battles of Zenta (1687), Petrowaradin (1716) and Belgrade (1717). The Prince’s fame was secured with his decisive victory against the Ottomans at the Battle of Zenta in 1697, earning him Europe-wide fame. The Battle of Zenta proved to be the decisive victory in the long war against the Turks. Renewed hostilities against the Ottomans in the Austro-Turkish War consolidated his reputation, with victories at the battles of Petrovaradin (1716), and the decisive encounter at Belgrade (1717). Of all Eugene’s wars this was the one in which he exercised most direct control; it was also a war which, for the most part, Austria fought and won on her own. The war had dispelled the immediate Turkish threat to Hungary and was a triumph for the Empire and for Eugene personally. In the period after the Second World War, during the period of growing popularity of European integration and cooperation, as well as supranational ideas, there was a reinterpretation of the historical role of Eugene Savoy as an archetypal character “pan-European”, “hero of European culture”, “builder of Europe”. The period of the Austro-Turkish wars in which Prince Evgenije participated and his great victories over the Turks had an exceptional influence and significance on the history of the Serbian people (Great Migration 1690). A large number of Serbs also took part in the campaigns and battles led by Eugene of Savoy.

Michael Kelly, Hilary Footitt, Myriam Salama-Carr (eds.): The Palgrave Handbook of Languages and Conflict

2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ľubomír Zvada
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Speakers Of Other Languages ◽  
War And Conflict ◽  
Almost All

This Handbook maps the contours of an exciting and burgeoning interdisciplinary field concerned with the role of language and languages in situations of conflict. It explores conceptual approaches, sources of information that are available, and the institutions and actors that mediate language encounters. It examines case studies of the role that languages have played in specific conflicts, from colonial times through to the Middle East and Africa today. The contributors provide vibrant evidence to challenge the monolingual assumptions that have affected traditional views of war and conflict. They show that languages are woven into every aspect of the making of war and peace, and demonstrate how language shapes public policy and military strategy, setting frameworks and expectations. The Handbook's 22 chapters powerfully illustrate how the encounter between languages is integral to almost all conflicts, to every phase of military operations and to the lived experiences of those on the ground, who meet, work and fight with speakers of other languages. This comprehensive work will appeal to scholars from across the disciplines of linguistics, translation studies, history, and international relations; and provide fresh insights for a broad range of practitioners interested in understanding the role and implications of foreign languages in war.

Taxi! The Modern Taxicab as Feminist Heterotopia

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-232
Author(s):  
Anne E. Fernald
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Maximum Power ◽  
Male Gaze ◽  
Real Place ◽  
Critical Relation ◽  
Transitional Mode ◽  
Mode Of Transport ◽  
Woman's Body

The taxicab operated as a crucial transitional mode of transport for bourgeois women, allowing them maximum power as spectators when it was still brave for a woman to be a pedestrian. The writings of Virginia Woolf, which so often depict bourgeois women coping with modernity, form the chief context in which to explore the role of the taxicab in liberating the modern woman. The taxi itself, clumsy and ungendered, encases a woman's body and protects her from the male gaze. At the same time, a woman in a taxi can look out upon the street or freely ignore it. As such, the taxi is a type of heterotopia: a real place but one which functions outside of and in a critical relation to, the norms of the rest of the community.

The Nonviolent Struggle for Indian Freedom, 1905-19

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hardiman
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Passive Resistance ◽  
Civil Resistance ◽  
Political Concept ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World ◽  
Moral Stance

Much of the recent surge in writing about the practice of nonviolent forms of resistance has focused on movements that occurred after the end of the Second World War, many of which have been extremely successful. Although the fact that such a method of civil resistance was developed in its modern form by Indians is acknowledged in this writing, there has not until now been an authoritative history of the role of Indians in the evolution of the phenomenon.The book argues that while nonviolence is associated above all with the towering figure of Mahatma Gandhi, 'passive resistance' was already being practiced as a form of civil protest by nationalists in British-ruled India, though there was no principled commitment to nonviolence as such. The emphasis was on efficacy, rather than the ethics of such protest. It was Gandhi, first in South Africa and then in India, who evolved a technique that he called 'satyagraha'. He envisaged this as primarily a moral stance, though it had a highly practical impact. From 1915 onwards, he sought to root his practice in terms of the concept of ahimsa, a Sanskrit term that he translated as ‘nonviolence’. His endeavors saw 'nonviolence' forged as both a new word in the English language, and as a new political concept. This book conveys in vivid detail exactly what such nonviolence entailed, and the formidable difficulties that the pioneers of such resistance encountered in the years 1905-19.

Implications

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Edele
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
World War ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Middle Position ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Second World

This chapter turns to the present and explains the implications of the current study for the ongoing debate about the Soviet Union in the Second World War and in particular about the role of loyalty and disloyalty in the Soviet war effort. It argues that this study strengthens those who argue for a middle position: the majority of Soviet citizens were neither unquestioningly loyal to the Stalinist regime nor convinced resisters. The majority, instead, saw their interests as distinct from both the German and the Soviet regime. Nevertheless, ideology remains important if we want to understand why in the Soviet Union more resisted or collaborated than elsewhere in Europe and Asia.

Leonard Woolf

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred Leventhal ◽  
Peter Stansky
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
Early Death ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
John Maynard Keynes ◽  
Bloomsbury Group ◽  
Unusual Position ◽  
Leonard Woolf ◽  
Hogarth Press ◽  
The Village

This is a wide-ranging biography of Leonard Woolf (1880–1969), an important yet somewhat neglected figure in British life. He is in the unusual position of being overshadowed by his wife, Virginia Woolf, and his role in helping her is part of this study. He was born in London to a father who was a successful barrister but whose early death left the family in economic difficulty. Though he abandoned his Judaism when young, being Jewish was deeply significant in shaping Leonard’s ideas, as well as the Hellenism imbibed as a student at both St Paul’s and Trinity College, Cambridge. Despite his secularism, there were surprisingly spiritual dimensions to his life. At Cambridge he was a member of the secret discussion group, the Apostles, as were his friends Lytton Stracheyand John Maynard Keynes, thus becoming part of the later Bloomsbury Group. He spent seven years as a successful civil servant in Ceylon, which later enabled him to write brilliantly about empire as well as a powerful novel, The Village in the Jungle. Returning to London in 1911, he married Virginia Woolf the next year. In 1917 they founded the Hogarth Press, a successful and significant publishing house. During his long life he became a major figure, a prolific writer on a range of subjects, most importantly international affairs, especially the creation of the League of Nations, a range of domestic problems, and issues of imperialism, particularly in Africa. He was a seminal figure in twentieth-century British life.

The International Legal Personality of the Individual

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid Kjeldgaard-Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Legal Personality ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Individual ◽  
International Legal Personality ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

This book scrutinizes the relationship between the concept of international legal personality as a theoretical construct and the position of the individual as a matter of positive international law. By testing four main theoretical conceptions of international legal personality against historical and existing international legal norms that govern individuals, the book argues that the common narrative about the development of the role of the individual in international law is flawed. Contrary to conventional wisdom, international law did not apply to States alone until the Second World War, only to transform during the second half of the twentieth century to include individuals as its subjects. Rather, the answer to the question of individual rights and obligations under international law is—and always was—solely contingent upon the interpretation of international legal norms. It follows, of course, that the entities governed by a particular norm tell us nothing about the legal system to which that norm belongs. Instead, the distinction between international and national legal norms turns exclusively on the nature of their respective sources. Against the background of these insights, the book shows how present-day international lawyers continue to allow an idea, which was never more than a scholarly invention of the nineteenth century, to influence the interpretation and application of contemporary international law. This state of affairs has significant real-world ramifications as international legal rights and obligations of individuals (and other non-State entities) are frequently applied more restrictively than interpretation without presumptions regarding ‘personality’ would merit.

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