scholarly journals (Dis)Empowerment of Native Americans in Orson Scott Card’s The Tales of Alvin Maker

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Weronika Łaszkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Indigenous Sovereignty

The aim of this article is to analyze the portrayal of Native Americans in Orson Scott Card’s The Tales of Alvin Maker (1987-2003). The series is an alternative history of America in the early 19th century, which allows Card to condemn the country’s colonial history, particularly the institution of slavery and the plight of Native Americans. Nevertheless, in spite of his obvious sympathy for Native Americans, Card does not manage to avoid all of the traps awaiting a non-Native author writing about Indigenous people. The following article examines the series’ portrayal of Native Americans, demonstrating how the author both empowers his Indigenous characters and undermines their empowerment. The framework for the proposed analysis is provided by Gerald Vizenor’s theories regarding the simulation of Native presence in dominant culture, the persistence of stereotypical indians, the concept of survivance, and the possible retrieval of Indigenous sovereignty.

scholarly journals Eurocentrism and the Historical Perception About the Malays

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 06005
Author(s):  
Azmi Arifin
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Local History ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
European Values ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century

This study examines the effects of Eurocentrism to the view of the character, nature and image of the Malays especially in the period of British colonialism in the 19th century. This research explains why Eurocentrism creates confusing and negative views of the nature, civilisation and wisdom of the indigenous people. Eurocentrism is a form of thoughts that often measures and defines non-European civilisation through historical, cultural, religious, geographical, scientific and progressive perspectives based on Western or European values, which is considered to be supreme. The beliefs transpired in the minds of scholars and European politicians as early as the 16th century, and some were extended in the writings about local history by means of the roles played by the European colonial explorers and administrators. In the process of colonising and exploiting the wealth of the indigenous people, the European explorers and administrators often created records that could explain not only the economic potentials of the area that they intend to colonise, but also depicted the inferior characteristics and civilisations of that society to justify their colonisation attempts. In the process, they produced a record of colonial history which later became key references to historians to understand and explain the traits of the indigenous peoples. The ideas behind that colonial history were not only biased as the result of exaggerating the ignorance and retrogression of the indigenous people; it even sought to undermine the wisdom and civilisation of the indigenous people. This is to highlight their own superiority and noble values when placed side by side with the values of the indigenous people. Despite the prejudice, the Eurocentric colonial history is very influential in Malaysia's historiography until this day. This study explains how the influence of thoughts has blurred the understanding of the actual traits of the indigenous peoples and create an apparent confusion over the history of Malay society.

From Evolutive Paranoia, by August Wimmer (1902)

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 478-495
Author(s):  
German E Berrios ◽  
Johan Schioldann ◽  
Johan Schioldann
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Delusional Disorder ◽  
Clinical Profile ◽  
World War ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Historical Changes ◽  
Clinical Evolution ◽  
History Of ◽  
Clinical Concept

Literature on the history of ‘paranoia’ (as a clinical concept) is large and confusing. This is partly explained by the fact that over the centuries the word ‘paranoia’ has been made to participate in several convergences (clinical constructs), and hence it has named different forms of behaviour and been linked to different explanatory concepts. The Classic Text that follows provides information on the internal clinical evolution of the last convergence in which ‘paranoia’ was made to participate. August Wimmer maps the historical changes of ‘ Verrücktheit’ as it happened within the main European psychiatric traditions since the early 19th century. After World War II, that clinical profile was to become reified and renamed as ‘delusional disorder’.

scholarly journals Romantyczne wędrówki Polaków po Szwajcarii Saskiej

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 149-175
Author(s):  
Ewa Grzęda
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Polish Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Polish Language ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Spatial Imagination ◽  
Aesthetic Sensibility ◽  
The 19Th Century

Romantic wanderings of Poles across Saxon SwitzerlandThe history of Polish tourism in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains as well as the literary and artistic reception of the landscape and culture of Saxon Switzerland have never been discussed in detail. The present article is a research reconnaissance. The beginnings and development of tourism in the region came in the late 18th and early 19th century. The 1800s were marked by the emergence of the first German-language descriptions of Saxon Switzerland, which served as guidebooks at the time. From the very beginning Poles, too, participated in the tourist movement in the area. The author of the article seeks to follow the increasing interest in Saxon Switzerland and the appearance of the first descriptions of the region in Polish literature and culture. She provides a detailed analysis of Polish-language accounts of micro-trips to the Elbe Sandstone Mountains by Andrzej Edward Koźmian, Stanisław Deszert, Antoni Edward Odyniec, Klementyna Hoffman née Tańska and a poem by Maciej Bogusz Stęczyński. As the analysis demonstrates, in the first half of the 19th century Poles liked to visit these relatively low mountains in Central Europe and tourism in the region is clearly part of the history of Polish mountain tourism. Thanks to unique aesthetic and natural values of the mountains, full of varied rocky formations, reception of their landscape had an impact of the development of the aesthetic sensibility of Polish Romantics. Direct contact with nature and the landscape of Saxon Switzerland also served an important role in the shaping of spatial imagination of Polish tourists, encouraging them to explore other mountains in Europe and the world, including the Alps. On the other hand thanks to the development of tourist infrastructure in Saxon Switzerland, facilitating trips in the region and making the most attractive spots available to inexperienced tourists, micro-trips to the Elbe Sandstone Mountains marked an important stage in the development of mountain tourism on a popular-recreational level. Polish-language accounts of trips to Saxon Switzerland from the first half of the 20th century are a noteworthy manifestation of the beginnings of Polish travel literature.

Ashantis in Warsaw: Notions of “Blackness” in Polish Society at the Turn of the 20th Century – A Preparatory Contribution to Polish Colonial History

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agata Łuksza
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Polish Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century

The author recognizes Włodzimierz Perzyński’s comedy Aszantka as a meaningful remnant of „blackness” in the history of Polish theatre, and therefore she uses it as a point of entrance into a broader inquiry about the entanglement of Polish society into European colonial project, and the ideas, values, and cultural practices it entailed. That is why in the article the author attempts to reconstruct possible concepts and images of “blackness” which Warsaw dwellers might have shared at the end of the 19th century by analysing the reception of the performances of alleged representatives of Ashanti people in the Warsaw circus in 1888. From “Ashanti” performances on, the popularity of this type of entertainment – so called ethnographic shows or human zoos – grew in the colonized capital of the Kingdom of Poland. The author points to “savageness” and “nakedness” as constitutive traits of “blackness” which she understands as a specific human condition, experienced both by overseas colonized societies as well as subaltern social groups (to which “Aszantka” from Perzyński’s comedy belonged) in European societies.

Historicism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mari Hvattum
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
Related Idea ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Historian ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Art And Architecture

In its most general sense, historicism refers to a new historical consciousness emerging in late-18th- and early-19th-century Europe. This novel “historical-mindedness,” as the cultural historian Stephen Bann has called it, sprung from a recognition that human knowledge and human making are historically conditioned and must be understood within particular historical contexts. Historicism inspired new interest in the origin and development of cultural phenomena, not least art and architecture. When used in relation to architecture, historicism usually refers to the 19th-century notion that architecture is a historically dynamic and relative phenomenon, changing with time and circumstance. This in contrast to 18th-century classicism which tended to uphold the classical tradition as a universal ideal and a timeless standard. Historicism in architecture often entails Revivals of various kinds, i.e., the reference to or use of historical styles and motifs. The term is related to concepts such as eclecticism, revivalism, and relativism. In architectural history, an early anticipation of a historicist way of thinking is Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s History of the Art of Antiquity (1764). While still idealizing Greek art, Winckelmann also analyzed Egyptian, Etruscan, Phoenician, and Persian art and architecture, paying close attention to the historical conditions in which each of these cultures emerged. This new attentiveness to the relationship between cultural conditions and artistic expression lies at the heart of historicism, as does the related idea that architecture has the capacity to represent an epoch or a nation, forming a veritable index of cultural development. There is a strong organicist aspect to historicism, i.e., a tendency to think about cultural phenomena as organic wholes that evolve according to laws.

Religion and Native American Assimilation, Resistance, and Survival

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tammy Heise
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
White American ◽  
Cross Cultural Communication ◽  
Reservation System ◽  
The 19Th Century

Since the early 19th century, the expansion of American empire has constrained Native American autonomy and cultural expression. Native American history simply cannot be told apart from accounts of violent dispossession of land, languages, and lifeways. The pressures exerted on Native Americans by U.S. colonialism were intense and far-reaching: U.S. officials sought no less than the complete eradication of Native cultures through the assimilation policies they devised in the 19th century and beyond. Their efforts, however, never went uncontested. Despite significant asymmetries in political power and material resources, Native Americans developed a range of strategies to ensure the survival of their communities in the complicated colonial context created by American expansion. Their activism meant that U.S. colonialism operated as a dynamic process that facilitated various forms of cultural innovation. With survival as their goal, Native American responses to U.S. colonialism can be mapped on a continuum of resistance in which accommodation and militancy exist as related impulses. Native Americans selectively deployed various expressions of resistance according to the particular political circumstances they faced. This strategy allowed them to facilitate an array of cultural changes intended to preserve their own cultural integrity by mitigating the most damaging effects of white rule. Because religion provided the language and logic of U.S. colonial expansion and Native American resistance, it functioned as a powerful medium for cross-cultural communication and exchange in the American colonial context. Religion facilitated engagement with white (mostly Protestant) Christian missionaries and allowed Native Americans to embrace some aspects of white American culture while rejecting others (even within the context of Native conversion to Christianity). It also allowed for flexible responses to U.S. consolidation policies intended to constrain Native autonomy still further by extending the reservation system, missionary oversight of indigenous communities, and land use in the late 19th century. Tribes that fought consolidation through the armed rebellions of the 1870s could find reasons to accept reservation life once continued military action became untenable. Once settled on reservations, these same tribes could deploy new strategies of resistance to make reservation life more tolerable. In this environment of religious innovation and resistance, new religious movements like the Ghost Dance and peyote religion arose to challenge the legitimacy of U.S. colonialism more directly through their revolutionary combinations of Native and Christian forms.

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