Peripheral identities on Desert Island Discs and Beti a’i Phobol

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Hill
Keyword(s):  
Minority Language ◽  
History Of ◽  
Desert Island ◽  
Cultural Belonging ◽  
British Culture

Beti a’i Phobol has been a fixture on the Radio Cymru schedule since 1987. It is the closest equivalent to Desert Island Discs on the Celtic fringe, and indeed the only such programme in a minority language within Britain. Though not a direct copy of Desert Island Discs, Beti a’i Phobol nonetheless offers a useful comparator to the expressions of Welshness evident over the last 70-plus years of Desert Island Discs. This chapter explores expressions of cultural belonging by Welsh castaways and contextualises their appearances in the history of Welsh political and linguistic struggles, in order to gauge the changing sense of Welshness over the programme’s history and the concomitant sense of Wales within British culture.

War of Perception, Perception of Time

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 252-267
Author(s):  
Kuniichi Uno
Keyword(s):  
Michel Tournier ◽  
Crucial Question ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Desert Island ◽  
Perception Of Time

For Gilles Deleuze's two essays ‘Causes and Reasons of Desert Islands’ and ‘Michel Tournier and the World Without Others’, the crucial question is what the perception is, what its fundamental conditions are. A desert island can be a place to experiment on this question. The types of perception are described in many critical works about the history of art and aesthetical reflections by artists. So I will try to retrace some types of perception especially linked to the ‘haptic’, the importance of which was rediscovered by Deleuze. The ‘haptic’ proposes a type of perception not linked to space, but to time in its aspects of genesis. And something incorporeal has to intervene in a very original stage of perception and of perception of time. Thus we will be able to capture some links between the fundamental aspects of perception and time in its ‘out of joint’ aspects (Aion).

Introduction

Red Britain ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Matthew Taunton
Keyword(s):  
Russian Revolution ◽  
George Orwell ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Catastrophic Event ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
Arthur Koestler ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
British Culture

The introduction argues that the Russian Revolution should be understood as a fundamentally important precondition for mid-century British culture. It explains the range of intellectuals covered in the book, and the central importance of anti-Communists Arthur Koestler and George Orwell for its argument. It then outlines three key arguments that run through the book: first, that the effects of the Russian Revolution on British culture are best understood in terms of gradual sedimentation in a longue durée rather than as a catastrophic event; second, Red Britain emphasizes the ideological diversity on either side of the Cold War divide; third, that British responses to the Bolshevik Revolution should be understood not only as a clash of internationalist or cosmopolitan ideologies, but also as an episode within a longer history of nationally grounded Anglo-Russian cultural and political relations. The introduction ends with brief summaries of the book’s five chapters.

More Beautiful Than Necessary

Vulcan ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
David Ritchie
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
British Culture ◽  
First World

What was it about the First World War that brought on Modernism? Like the simplified poppy form and the sword-within-a-cross which both came to memorialize the First World War in British culture, materiel from that era—shells, rifle stocks, helmets, bullets, bunkers— have a thoroughly modern, almost Bauhaus aesthetic. This was not entirely new in the history of weapons; the common soldier had often fought with unadorned weapons. In this war, however, there was nothing else to see; soldiers could safely regard only the sky, their comrades, their weapons and—viewed through a periscope’s framing—a landscape stripped of nature’s adornments. The inference is that this limited vision and consequent focus on unadorned form were key to the modern aesthetic taking hold.

The Invention of Altruism

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Dixon
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Herbert Spencer ◽  
Religion And Ethics ◽  
Auguste Comte ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religion Of Humanity ◽  
British Culture

‘Altruism’ was coined by the French sociologist Auguste Comte in the early 1850s as a theoretical term in his ‘cerebral theory’ and as the central ideal of his atheistic ‘Religion of Humanity’. This book traces this new language of ‘altruism’ as it spread through British culture between the 1850s and the 1900s, and in doing so provides a portrait of Victorian moral thought. Drawing attention to the importance of Comtean positivism in setting the agenda for debates about science and religion, this volume challenges received ideas about both Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer as moral philosophers. Darwin saw sympathy and love, not only selfishness and competition, throughout the natural world. Spencer was the instigator of an Anti-Aggression League and an advocate of greater altruism in Britain’s dealings with the ‘lower races’. The book also sheds light on the rise of popular socialism in the 1880s, on the creation of the idealist ‘altruist’ in novels of the 1890s, and on the individualistic philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, and G. E. Moore—authors considered by some to be representative of fin de siècle ‘egomania’. This wide-ranging study in the history of ideas is relevant to contemporary debates about altruism, evolution, religion, and ethics.

scholarly journals Anglophiles in Balkan Christian states (1862-1920)

Balcanica ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 95-145
Author(s):  
Slobodan Markovich
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Cultural Patterns ◽  
Balkan Wars ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mutual Relations ◽  
British Culture

The life stories of five Balkan Anglophiles emerging in the nineteenth century - two Serbs, Vladimir Jovanovic (Yovanovich) and Cedomilj Mijatovic (Chedomille Mijatovich); two Greeks, Ioannes (John) Gennadios and Eleutherios Venizelos; and one Bulgarian, Ivan Evstratiev Geshov - reflect, each in its own way, major episodes in relations between Britain and three Balkan Christian states (Serbia, the Hellenic Kingdom and Bulgaria) between the 1860s and 1920. Their education, cultural patterns, relations and models inspired by Britain are looked at, showing that they acted as intermediaries between British culture and their own and played a part in the best and worst moments in the history of mutual relations, such as the Serbian-Ottoman crisis of 1862, the Anglo-Hellenic crisis following the Dilessi murders, Bulgarian atrocities and the Eastern Crisis, unification of Bulgaria and the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885, the Balkan Wars 1912-13, the National Schism in Greece. Their biographies are therefore essential for understanding Anglo-Balkan relations in the period under study. The roles of two British Balkanophiles (a Bulgarophile, James David Bourchier, and a Hellenophile, Ronald Burrows) are looked at as well. In conclusion, a comparison of the Balkan Anglophiles is offered, and their Britain-inspired cultural and institutional legacy to their countries is shown in the form of a table.

scholarly journals Into the Interior of Cultural Affiliations: Joan Anim Addo’s Imoinda and the Creolization of Modernity

2015 ◽  
pp. 62
Author(s):  
Mina Karavanta
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Caribbean Diaspora ◽  
Plantation Economy ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
A Site ◽  
British Culture

If creolization was represented as the property of the postcolonial world, the sign of hyphenated cultures emerging from the slave plantation economy and the slave trade, it has become a concept that names the transformation of the dominant cultures from within the other “minor” cultures and histories with which they have been living. Creolization emerges as the urgency to develop new concepts and disseminate “contrapuntal” and “affiliated” histories (Said) in order not only to narrate the Caribbean diaspora but also the social, political, and historical development of a wider British culture. In this light, this essay examines Imoinda: Or She Who Will Lose Her Name as a text that mediates between cultures represented as oppositional and operates as a site where their discrepant histories are translated, written anew, and rethought. The text as a site of translation and affiliation of different aesthetics, genres and traditions represents a new poetics of the human whose history is now narrated by the formerly dispossessed and expropriated other. The history of imperialism and slavery narrated of imperialism and slavery is an old narration but its telling is new for it generates new ways of understanding this history in the present where constituencies and communities of different cultural practices, often speaking different languages while sharing the language(s) of the dominant culture, are called forth to live together and live well.

Europe and the British Geographical Imagination, 1760-1830

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Stock
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
European Continent ◽  
Geographical Imagination ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Difference ◽  
Commercial Network ◽  
British Culture ◽  
British People

Europe and the British Geographical Imagination, 1760–1830 seeks to establish what literate British people understood by the word ‘Europe’ in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It achieves this objective through detailed analysis of nearly 350 geographical reference works, textbooks, dictionaries, and encyclopaedias. Largely neglected by historians, these materials were widely read by contemporaries and can reveal the formative ideas about Europe circulating in Britain. The book therefore traces the history of ideas in non-elite contexts; it moves away from an approach to intellectual history concerned predominantly with prominent thinkers. The opening two chapters outline the characteristics and popularity of geography books and explain how they structure geographical knowledge. The remaining chapters explore eight themes which frame how Europe is understood in British culture. A chapter each is devoted to religion; the natural environment; race and other theories of human difference; the state; borders; the identification of the ‘centre’ and ‘edges’ of Europe; commerce and empire; and ideas about the past, progress, and historical change. Each chapter shows how geographical texts use these intricate concepts to communicate and construct widely understood ideas about the European continent. Is Europe unified by shared religious heritage? Where are the edges of Europe? Is Europe primarily a commercial network or are there common political practices too? Is Britain itself a European country? By showing how these and other questions were discussed in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British culture, the book provides a thorough and much-needed historical analysis of Britain’s enduringly complex intellectual relationship with Europe.

‘If this is to be a jingo, then I am a jingo’ – Labour Patriotism before 1914

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Swift
Keyword(s):  
Left Wing ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Imperial Germany ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Popular Nationalism ◽  
European Situation ◽  
British Culture ◽  
First World

This chapter introduces some of the principle concepts and personalities that would dominate the Left during the years of the First World War, surveys the debate surrounding the Boer War, examines the history of ‘radical patriotism’ on the British Left, and notes the theoretical and actual commitments of the British Left to internationalism and pacifism. It aims to contribute to our understanding of the extent and nature of labour patriotism during the war by examining the continuity or otherwise between the decades immediately preceding 1914. The argument outlined here is two-fold. Firstly, across the labour movement as a whole there was an ambiguous attitude toward nationalism and patriotism. An uncertainty and contradiction resulted from abstract commitments to peace and camaraderie coupled with the realities of the European situation, popular nationalism and broader British culture, and this could sometimes be a problem for the Left. Nonetheless, for many across labour movement their commitments to internationalism and pacifism were superficial at best. Very often their left-wing views were based around an idea of community and nationhood that belied any internationalism. The fight for national survival against Imperial Germany allowed the façade of internationalism to slip, and confirmed the compatibility of left-wing and nationalist sentiment.

Television and Public Service: A Brief History1

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
Broadcasting Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Uk ◽  
British Culture

This chapter traces the history of public service television. The history of British public service broadcasting policy in the 20th century is characterized by a series of very deliberate public interventions into what might otherwise have developed as a straightforward commercial marketplace. The creation of the BBC, the launch of an ITV network required to produce public service programming, and the addition of the highly idiosyncratic Channel 4 gave the UK a television ecology animated by quality, breadth of programming and an orientation towards serving the public interest. At each of these three moments, the possibilities of public service television were expanded and British culture enriched as a result. The 1990 Broadcasting Act and the fair wind given to multichannel services may have ended the supremacy of the public service television ideal. However, public service television has survived, through the design of the institutions responsible for it, because of legislative protection, and as a result of its continuing popularity amongst the public.

The United States, 1783–1861: Britain's Honorary Dominion?

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. G. Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
British Empire ◽  
The United States ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Related Notion ◽  
Cultural Themes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Practical Politics ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
British Culture

This essay reinterprets the evolution of the United States between 1783 and 1861 from the perspective of imperial history. The established literature on this period focuses on the national story, and particularly on the struggle to achieve liberty and democracy. Historians of empire, however, routinely distinguish between formal and effective independence and evaluate the often halting progress of ex-colonial states in achieving a substantive transfer of power. Considered from this angle, the dominant themes of the period were the search for viability and development rather than for liberty and democracy. The article illustrates this proposition by re-evaluating the political, economic, and cultural themes that are central to the history of the period. The argument in each case is that the United States remained dependent on Great Britain to an extent that greatly limited her effective independence. The standard controversies of domestic political history, notably the battle between Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian visions of the state, are recast as differing strategies for achieving real and permanent independence. Strategies for achieving economic development made practical politics of competing arguments for protection and free trade, but failed to release the economy from its dependence on the British market and British capital. Attempts to create an independent national identity were compromised by the continuing influence of British culture and by the related notion of Anglo-Saxonism, on which prevailing policies of assimilation relied. In all these respects, the United States was an unexceptional ex-colonial state, and indeed closely followed the trajectory of other colonies of white settlement that were classified as dominions within the British Empire. The United States, however, was a dependent state that failed in 1861, and its struggle for independence had to be renewed after the Civil War.

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