Strange Bedfellows

Jah Kingdom ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monique A. Bedasse
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Colonial Education ◽  
Pan Africanism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Radical Left

This chapter examines the relationship between Ras Bupe Karudi and C.L.R. James. In 1964, James highlighted the “absurdities” of Rastafari. Additionally, in contrast to all that Rastafari represented, he remained ambivalent about Af- rican heritage and identity. By 1986, however, he was corresponding with Karudi frequently and sending money to him in support of the mission. This collaboration is critical to my exploration of how Rastafari inserted itself into the intellectual history of pan-Africanism, and to the relationship between Rastafari and the radical left. The chapter also brings James into conversation with Rastafari through the prism of colonial education and engages important questions concerning the debates over identity construction in Africa and the African diaspora.

Idleness and Freedom in Michel de Montaigne’s “Essays”

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-202
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Spiritual Quest ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
Sextus Empiricus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship

The article advances a hypothesis about the composition of Michel de Montaigne’s Essays. Specialists in the intellectual history of the Renaissance have long considered the relationship among Montaigne’s thematically heterogeneous thoughts, which unfold unpredictably and often seen to contradict each other. The waywardness of those reflections over the years was a way for Montaigne to construct a self-portrait. Spontaneity of thought is the essence of the person depicted and an experimental literary technique that was unprecedented in its time and has still not been surpassed. Montaigne often writes about freedom of reflection and regards it as an extremely important topic. There have been many attempts to interpret the haphazardness of the Essays as the guiding principle in their composition. According to one such interpretation, the spontaneous digressions and readiness to take up very different philosophical notions is a form of of varietas and distinguo, which Montaigne understood in the context of Renaissance philosophy. Another interpretation argues that the Essays employ the rhetorical techniques of Renaissance legal commentary. A third opinion regards the Essays as an example of sprezzatura, a calculated negligence that calls attention to the aesthetic character of Montaigne’s writing. The author of the article argues for a different interpretation that is based on the concept of idleness to which Montaigne assigned great significance. He had a keen appreciation of the role of otium in the culture of ancient Rome and regarded leisure as an inner spiritual quest for self-knowledge. According to Montaigne, idleness permits self-directedness, and it is an ideal form in which to practice the freedom of thought that brings about consistency in writing, living and reality, in all of which Montaigne finds one general property - complete inconstancy. Socratic self-knowledge, a skepticism derived from Pyrrho of Elis and Sextus Empiricus, and a rejection of the conventions of traditional rhetoric that was similar to Seneca’s critique of it were all brought to bear on the concept of idleness and made Montaigne’s intellectual and literary experimentation in the Essays possible.

Out of Empire into Socialist Modernity

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-70
Author(s):  
Steffi Marung
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn this article the Soviet-African Modern is presented through an intellectual history of exchanges in a triangular geography, outspreading from Moscow to Paris to Port of Spain and Accra. In this geography, postcolonial conditions in Eastern Europe and Africa became interconnected. This shared postcolonial space extended from the Soviet South to Africa. The glue for the transregional imagination was an engagement with the topos of backwardness. For many of the participants in the debate, the Soviet past was the African present. Focusing on the 1960s and 1970s, three connected perspectives on the relationship between Soviet and African paths to modernity are presented: First, Soviet and Russian scholars interpreting the domestic (post)colonial condition; second, African academics revisiting the Soviet Union as a model for development; and finally, transatlantic intellectuals connecting postcolonial narratives with socialist ones. Drawing on Russian archives, the article furthermore demonstrates that Soviet repositories hold complementary records for African histories.

scholarly journals Theorizing the Grounds of Rhetorical Judgment

1993 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John Loius Lucaites ◽  
Charles A. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Persian Gulf ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historically Situated ◽  
The Persian Gulf ◽  
The Relationship

Prudence has long been an important topic for rhetorical theorists and its place in intellectual history is becoming increasingly well documented. This essay develops a conception of prudence as an ideological construct, a term crafted in the history of its public usages to govern the relationship between common sense and political action as enacted in the name of historically situated social actors. From this perspective, prudence represents the recursive interaction between a rhetoric of judgment and the grounds on which that rhetoric is evaluated by a historically particular community of arguers. A case study of the 1991 U.S. Senate debate regarding the authorization of offensive military action in the Persian Gulf illustrates how competing standards of prudential judgment are crafted and evaluated in discursive controversy.

P. Herennius Dexippus: The Greek World and the Third-Century Invasions

1969 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 12-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fergus Millar
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Crucial Question ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Europe ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Greek World

The legend of the Scythians and the books of Athens, with Petrus Patricius' comments on it, raises precisely the most crucial question about the culture and society of later Antiquity: what was the relationship between the all-pervasive literary culture of the time, with its obsessive and apparently sterile fascination with the classical past, and men's conduct in the world ? The question cannot of course be answered. If we wished to stress the positive and vital aspects of Imperial Greek culture, we could partly avoid answering it by concentrating on a few figures of real intellectual stature in the second to early fourth centuries, and thereby pointing to a number of fields in which the Greek Renaissance saw significant, sometimes revolutionary, progress. Ptolemy, Galen, Diophantus, Origen, Plotinus, Porphyry and Eusebius all in their different ways marked an epoch in the intellectual history of Europe. Even a man of much lesser originality, Cassius Dio, provided the Byzantine world with its definitive account of the history of Rome. But we can also try, if not to answer the question properly, at least to raise some themes directly relevant to it.

Prehistoric Monuments as Numinous Sites of Spiritual Tourism

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-80
Author(s):  
Carole Cusack
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Recent History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Spiritual Tourism ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Use ◽  
Ritual Site ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Prehistoric monuments in Britain are sites that have "drawn" people throughout history, due to their impressive size, dramatic location in the landscape, and the sense of permanence and timelessness they convey. The religious attraction of such stones for modern Pagans has been studied in some detail, particularly in terms of renowned circles like Stonehenge and Avebury, but the appeal that Neolithic monuments have for "spiritual tourists" has not been assessed to date. This article focuses on the Rollright Stones near Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, a relatively accessible group of monuments that has an established body of folklore attached to the site, a profile in popular culture, and a recent history of use by modern Pagans as a ritual site. The author's fieldwork at the Rollright Stones in 2014 produced three interrelated hypotheses: first, the primary appeal of prehistoric monuments for "spiritual tourists" is aesthetic; second, that responding aesthetically to such monuments is an experience that feels "special" and often involves an experience of the "numinous"; and third, this "specialness" is linked to ideas about what it means to be human, the relationship of the past to the present and future, and to the process of identity-construction and the search for wellbeing that spiritual tourists typically engage with in their travels.

scholarly journals Identity, construction and memory in Joanne Leonard’s Being in pictures: An intimate photo memoir (2008)

Literator ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heilna Du Plooy
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Autobiographical Narratives ◽  
Written Text ◽  
Art Works ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Selection Of

When Joanne Leonard’s photo collage Romanticism is ultimately fatal (1972) appeared in H.W. Janson’s History of art, the image brought her recognition as an artist. It gave her the confidence to further develop her technique of making photo collages, and the collages became a means of giving expression to her personal emotions as well as her reactions to historical events and public debates. In 2008, Leonard published an autobiographical text, ‘an intimate memoir’, in which she presents a selection of photographs and photo collages narrating her development as an artist and as a person. Written text is added to the visual images, providing information about the content and technical aspects of the photographs and collages as well as about the stages of her life as a person and an artist. This article discusses Joanne Leonard’s photo memoir by focussing on the relationship between identity and narrativity, on the constructed nature of all representions and especially represented autobiographical narratives and, finally, on the understanding and functioning of memory. The theoretical and philosophical aspects of identity, narrative identity, construction and memory are explored, and selected art works are analysed and discussed. The conclusion of the article suggests that autobiography, in all its variety, remains one of the most fascinating genres to study and that this photo memoir is an exceptional example.

scholarly journals Pan-Africanism: A Quest for Liberation and the Pursuit of a United Africa

Genealogy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Malisa ◽  
Phillippa Nhengeze
Keyword(s):  
Political Ideas ◽  
Kwame Nkrumah ◽  
Political Independence ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Pan Africanism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Cultural Movement ◽  
Thabo Mbeki ◽  
Independence Movements

Our paper examines the place of Pan-Africanism as an educational, political, and cultural movement which had a lasting impact on the on the relationship between liberation and people of African descent, in the continent of Africa and the Diaspora. We also show its evolution, beginning with formerly enslaved Africans in the Americas, to the colonial borders of the 1884 Berlin Conference, and conclude with the independence movements in Africa. For formerly enslaved Africans, Pan-Africanism was an idea that helped them see their commonalities as victims of racism. That is, they realized that they were enslaved because they came from the same continent and shared the same racial heritage. They associated the continent of Africa with freedom. The partitioning of Africa at the Berlin Conference (colonialism) created pseudo-nation states out of what was initially seen as an undivided continent. Pan-Africanism provided an ideology for rallying Africans at home and abroad against colonialism, and the creation of colonial nation-states did not erase the idea of a united Africa. As different African nations gained political independence, they took it upon themselves to support those countries fighting for their independence. The belief, then, was that as long as one African nation was not free, the continent could not be viewed as free. The existence of nation-states did not imply the negation of Pan-Africanism. The political ideas we examine include those of Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Du Bois, Kwame Nkrumah, Maya Angelou, and Thabo Mbeki. Pan-Africanism, as it were, has shaped how many people understand the history of Africa and of African people.

THE SPIRIT AND FORM OF AN ETHICAL POLITY: A MEDITATION ON AUROBINDO'S THOUGHT

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
SUGATA BOSE
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The West ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Indian Nationalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Ethics And Politics

This article elucidates the meaning of Indian nationalism and its connection to religious universalism as a problem of ethics. It engages in that exercise of elucidation by interpreting a few of the key texts by Aurobindo Ghose on the relationship between ethics and politics in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Both secularist and subalternist histories have contributed to misunderstandings of Aurobindo's political thought and shown an inability to comprehend its ethical moorings. The specific failures in fathoming the depths of Aurobindo's thought are related to more general infirmities afflicting the history of political and economic ideas in colonial India. In exploring how best to achieve Indian unity, Aurobindo had shown that Indian nationalism was not condemned to pirating from the gallery of models of states crafted by the West. By reconceptualizing the link between religion and politics, this essay suggests a new way forward in Indian intellectual history.

MODERNITY AGAINST MODERNITY: WANG HUI'S CRITICAL HISTORY OF CHINESE THOUGHT

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
VIREN MURTHY
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Chinese Thought ◽  
Critical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Intervention ◽  
Chinese Intellectuals ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
The Relationship

In the last fifteen years or so, Chinese intellectuals have been heatedly debating the complex relationships between China's prospects, China's past, and the modern predicament. In this context Wang Hui has emerged as one of China's most challenging and controversial intellectuals. His work is controversial. At a time when intellectuals take modernization as a goal, Wang has consistently voiced reservations. Readers find his works challenging because, instead of criticizing modernity or capitalism from simple moral tenets, Wang has always sought to redefine the terms of the debate through detailed and sensitive historical analysis. Hence amidst his busy life as editor, professor, and polemicist, Wang has devoted more than ten years to writing his magisterial four volume book The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought (Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi), in which he fundamentally rethinks the relationship between modernity and Chinese thought. However, Wang's book is not just an immense contribution to historical and historiographical scholarship; his work is a self-consciously political intervention. Specifically, he highlights the role of intellectual history as critique and attempts to recover repressed elements of the past in order to question the structures that govern the present. In the last line of the conclusion to his book he writes, “the history that modernity loftily and even proudly rejects contains the inspiration and possibilities for overcoming its crisis.” Taking China as his focus, Wang attempts to write this history.

Negotiating a Vocabulary for Urban Infrastructure, Or, The WPA Meets the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-158
Author(s):  
Lisa Gitelman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Urban Infrastructure ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Technology And Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ◽  
Modern Landscape ◽  
The Relationship

Though historians of technology generally work toward detailed case studies of individual machines or industries, a few voices have lately been raised in a call for broader perspectives. In a recent review essay, Josef W. Konvitz, Mark H. Rose and Joel A. Tarr urge an intellectual history of urban technologies. The discipline that treats the spinning jenny and the cotton gin must also equip itself to analyze the varied and complex technological systems present in the modern city. Only with such a broad vision will the relationships between technology and culture become clear. One helpful version of such an overview has been offered by Rosalind Williams's historical and literary meditations on underground technological environments. But Williams's focus upon nineteenth-century culture has led her to ignore the American experience almost entirely. Bound by Leo Marx's paradigmatic “machine in the garden,” Williams dismisses America in favor of Britain and France, where underground technology first entered the modern landscape. A twentieth-century focus, however, reveals a rich and complex intellectual history of urban technology within the American scene. The built environment of New York City, in particular, has dominated contemporary American expressions of the relationship between culture and technology.

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