Travel Writing/Writing Travel to Report: Matthew Flinders to Evan Nepean from Coepang Bay Timor

Author(s):  
Polina Shvanyukova ◽  

Texts authored by maritime explorers occupy a special place in the body of travel literature in English dealing with the exploration of the Pacific in the modern period. This article focuses on a specimen of scientific travel writing in epistolary form authored by Commander Matthew Flinders, the officer under whose command HMS Investigator completed the first circumnavigation of Australia in 1803. I analyse Matthew Flinders’s official despatch to Evan Nepean, Secretary of the Admiralty at the time, as an example of early nineteenth-century epistolary travel writing, paying special attention to the textual strategies employed by Flinders in order to produce a coherent and accurate travel account, on the one hand, and to negotiate his professional status and persona with his interlocutor(s), on the other.

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 380
Author(s):  
Matthew John Paul Tan

This paper will focus on one element of the pushback against the massive influx of immigrants taken in for humanitarian purposes, namely, an identity-based chauvinism which uses identity as the point of resistance to the perceived dilution of that identity, brought about by the transformation of culture induced by the incorporation of a foreign other. The solution to this perceived dilution is a simultaneous defence of that culture and a demand for a conformity to it. While those in the critical tradition have encouraged a counter-position of revolutionary transformation by the other through ethics, dialogue, or the multitude, such a transformation is arguably impeded by what is ultimately a repetition of the metaphysics of conformity. Drawing on the personalism of Emmanuel Mounier and the Eucharistic theology of Creston Davis and Aaron Riches, this paper submits an alternative identity politics position that completes the revolutionary impulse. Identity here is not the flashpoint of a self-serving conflict, but the launch-point of politics of self-emptying, whose hallmarks include, on the one hand, a never-ending reception of transformation by the other, and on the other hand, an anchoring in the Body of Christ that is at once ever-changing and never-changing.


1952 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-28
Author(s):  
B. De Kretser

The consideration of this problem is important for at least two reasons. In many countries there are reports of an increasing decline in public morals and of growing dishonesty and corruption in the life of the body politic. This is taking place at a time when the established religious systems are being subjected to the pressure of pseudo-scientific secularism on the one hand and the claims of modern alternative faiths on the other. Clearly the two developments are interconnected. Yet, to judge from the burden of many public utterances of responsible leaders, including the now important and significant ‘Moral Re-armament’ Group, the close dependence of moral truth and the truth about the character of reality is not realised. Most people are content to mutter the usual platitudes—‘Honesty is the best policy’, ‘Do please try to be good and speak the truth’. But the problem of truth is more complicated than our naīve moralists would have us believe.


1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicity J Callard

Geographers are now taking the problematic of corporeality seriously. ‘The body’ is becoming a preoccupation in the geographical literature, and is a central figure around which to base political demands, social analyses, and theoretical investigations. In this paper I describe some of the trajectories through which the body has been installed in academia and claim that this installation has necessitated the uptake of certain theoretical legacies and the disavowal or forgetting of others. In particular, I trace two related developments. First, I point to the sometimes haphazard agglomeration of disparate theoretical interventions that lie under the name of postmodernism and observe how this has led to the foregrounding of bodily tropes of fragmentation, fluidity, and ‘the cyborg‘. Second, I examine the treatment of the body as a conduit which enables political agency to be thought of in terms of transgression and resistance. I stage my argument by looking at how on the one hand Marxist and on the other queer theory have commonly conceived of the body, and propose that the legacies of materialist modes of analysis have much to offer current work focusing on how bodies are shaped by their encapsulation within the sphere of the social. I conclude by examining the presentation of corporeality that appears in the first volume of Marx's Capital. I do so to suggest that geographers working on questions of subjectivity could profit from thinking further about the relation between so-called ‘new’ and ‘fluid’ configurations of bodies, technologies, and subjectivities in the late 20th-century world, and the corporeal configurations of industrial capitalism lying behind and before them.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 244-252
Author(s):  
Brahim BOUKHALFA

The yearning for a journey towards the places of strangers, the longing to mingle with them and immerse themselves in their lives, and to record everything that is strange and wondrous about their lifestyle, their ways of thinking, their customs and traditions, that is the nature that characterizes man, since ancient times. The lives of the prophets, may blessings and peace be upon them, were frenetic migrations, and a constant movement, length and breadth, in search of a place of intimacy, a comfortable life, and a bright truth. Western poets, writers, philosophers and travelers have also been fond of the journey to the Naked and Islamic East, from the Middle Ages to the present day; The desire to get to know the Easterners closely, to mix with them, and then to dominate them, was evident in the so-called travel literature. It is the writing emanating from the experiences of travelers in the eastern "One Thousand and One Nights". However, these travelers have always hidden the true intentions that drove them on the journey, which, as we will present in the body of this study, are colonial motives deposited in the political consciousness of Western governments that stand behind the colonial phenomenon. It is from this perspective in the research that urgent questions come to the surface, which we are trying to answer. What are the real motives for the trip for Western writers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? What is their relationship with the Western governments that were colonizing large areas of the Arab countries? What are the representations of Arabs and Muslims in so-called travel literature? The answer to these questions is to reveal to us the colonial nature of the modern West, and the extent of its contempt for non-Westerners, which is supported by myths of racial superiority and self-centeredness in that. It is a belief that has not been affected by the tremendous development in the field of human sciences that our time has witnesse


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 411-430
Author(s):  
Maja Tabea Jerrentrup

Abstract The art of bodypainting that is fairly unknown to a wider public turns the body into a canvas - it is a frequently used phrase in the field of bodypainting that illustrates the challenge it faces: it uses a three-dimensional surface and has to cope with its irregularities, but also with the model’s abilities and characteristics. This paper looks at individuals who are turned into art by bodypainting. Although body painting can be very challenging for them - they have to expose their bodies and to stand still for a long time while getting transformed - models report that they enjoy both the process and the result, even if they are not confident about their own bodies. Among the reasons there are physical aspects like the sensual enjoyment, but also the feeling of being part of something artistic. This is enhanced and preserved through double staging - becoming a threedimentional work of art and then being staged for photography or film clips. This process gives the model the chance to experience their own body in a detached way. On the one hand, bodypainting closely relates to the body and on the other hand, it can help to over-come the body.


2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Willitts

This article defines, explains and argues for the necessity of a post-supersessionistic hermeneutical posture towards the New Testament. The post-supersessionistic reading of the New Testament takes the Jewish nature of the apostolic documents seriously, and has as its goal the correction of the sin of supersessionism. While supersessionism theologically is repudiated in most corners of the contemporary church through official church documents, the practise of reading the New Testament continues to exhibit supersessionistic tendencies and outcomes. The consequence of this predominant reading of the New Testament is the continued exclusion of Jewish ethnic identity in the church. In light of the growing recognition of multiculturalism and contextualisation on the one hand, and the recent presence of a movement within the body of Messiah of Jewish believers in Jesus on the other, the church’s established approach to reading Scripture that leads to the elimination of ethnic identity must be repudiated alongside its post-supersessionist doctrinal statements. This article defines terms, explains consequences and argues for a renewed perspective on the New Testament as an ethnic document; such a perspective will promote the church’s cultivation of real embodied ethnic particularity rather than either a pseudo-interculturalism or the eraser full ethnicity.


Text Matters ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 15-34
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Łowczanin

This paper reads The Monk by M. G. Lewis in the context of the literary and visual responses to the French Revolution, suggesting that its digestion of the horrors across the Channel is exhibited especially in its depictions of women. Lewis plays with public and domestic representations of femininity, steeped in social expectation and a rich cultural and religious imaginary. The novel’s ambivalence in the representation of femininity draws on the one hand on Catholic symbolism, especially its depictions of the Madonna and the virgin saints, and on the other, on the way the revolutionaries used the body of the queen, Marie Antoinette, to portray the corruption of the royal family. The Monk fictionalizes the ways in which the female body was exposed, both by the Church and by the Revolution, and appropriated to become a highly politicized entity, a tool in ideological argumentation.


Zootaxa ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4429 (1) ◽  
pp. 157
Author(s):  
LUCIANA MARTINS ◽  
MARCOS TAVARES

Paulayellus gustavi, a new sclerodactylid genus and species, is described from the Pacific coast of Panama. The new genus and species is assigned to the subfamily Sclerothyoninae based on a suite of characters, which include the radial and interradial plates of the calcareous ring united at the base only. Paulayellus gen. nov. differs from the other Sclerothyoninae genera in having posterior processesof radial plates undivided. Additionally, differs from Sclerothyone, Thandarum and Neopentamera in having knobbed buttons, plates and cups in the body wall (whereas the body wall is furnished only with tables and plates in Sclerothyone, Temparena and Thandarum, and only with knobbed buttons and plates in Neopentamera). The new genus is, so far, monotypic. The also monotypic genus Neopentamera proved to have the radial and the interradial plates of the calcareous ring united at the base only, as typically found in the Sclerothyoninae, and is therefore transferred to that subfamily. The discovery of a new genus in the Sclerothyoninae and the transfer of Neopentamera required the amendation of the diagnosis for the subfamily. A key to the Sclerothyoninae is given. 


2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-72
Author(s):  
Håkan Larsson

Håkan Larsson: Sport and gender This article concerns bodily materialisation as it occurs in youth sport. It is based on interviews with teenagers 16 to 19 years of age doing track and field athletics. The purpose of the article is to elucidate how the notion of a “natural body“ can be seen as a cultural effect of sports practice and sports discourse. On the one hand, the body is materialised as a performing body, and on the other as a beautiful body. The “performing body“ is a single-sexed biological entity. The “beautiful body“ is a double-sexed and distinctly heterosexually appealing body. As these bodies collide in teenager track and field, the female body materialises as a problematic body, a body that is at the same time the subject of the girl’s personality. The male body materialises as an unproblematic body, a body that is the object of the boy’s personality. However, the body as “(a problematic) subject“ or as “(an unproblematic) object“ is not in itself a gendered body. Rather, these are positions on a cultural grid of power-knowledge relations. A girl might position herself in a male discourse, and a boy might position himself in a female discourse, but in doing so, they seem to have to pay a certain price in order not to be seen as queer.


2014 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 55-67
Author(s):  
Paulina Codogni

The article discusses the phenomenon of hunger strikes which are considered to be an example of strategies and tactics of nonviolent struggle. The resistance is based on a conscious refusal to eat food which causes the political matter against which the protest is directed to become an existential matter. Everyday actions, such as eating, take on a different meaning. The same happens with the meaning of the act of political contestation. On the one hand what can be seen is the embodiment of politics and on the other the politicization of the body. The article also showcases a number of historical and contemporary examples of hunger strikes and tries to find the answer whether hunger strikes are an effective method of political resistance.


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