To travel to suffer: towards a reverse anthropology of the early modern colonial body

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karel Vanhaesebrouck
Keyword(s):  
South America ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Intercultural Dialogue ◽  
Cultural Imagination ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Colonial Body ◽  
A Site

By focusing on the way early modern plays staged these colonial encounters, this contribution will address the question of the enslaved body which functioned as a site of both cultural exoticism and compassionate identification, directly dealing with complex issues such as pain, cruelty and martyrdom. This chapter will take two specific texts as its starting point: the fascinating play Les Portugais infortunés (1608) by Nicolas Chrétien des Croix, which stages an encounter of a shipwrecked Portuguese crew with an indigenous African tribe, and La Peinture spirituelle (1611) by Louis Richome, the account of the massacre of 39 Catholic martyrs from the ‘Compagnie de Jésus’, murdered by Protestants, on their way to Brazil on the 15th of July in 1570. In both cases the human body functions as a spectacular locus of intercultural dialogue (or warfare). This chapter proposes an analysis of both texts, not as literature in the first place, but as artefacts of cultural imagination which question the idea of alterity and the all too easy dichotomy between the self and the other, while at the same time showing that Europe, Africa and Brazil (or by extension South America) share a history and a culture of the (hurt) body.

Der Körper als Medium höfischer Kommunikation am Beispiel des Hofballets

Daphnis ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 491-513
Author(s):  
Marie-Thérèse Mourey
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Symbolic Form ◽  
A Site

Among the highly varied vehicles of communication in early modern German an European courts, the human body was both a crucial medium and symbolic form. The body of the prince was strategically used and glorified as a site of political representation, espexially in central German courts. This paper explores the performative functions of the ballets de cour as aestheticized, ritual expressions of power as well as the self-fashioning of the participating princes. Taking the representation of the prince in a ballet from 1687 as a case study, it focuses on the distinctive situation in the Court of Saxony-Gotha.

scholarly journals Jak możliwa (do pomyślenia) jest dobrowolna niewola? O nowożytnych formach rządzenia, ideologii i spektaklu władzy

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 101-110
Author(s):  
Mateusz Falkowski
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Etienne De La Boetie ◽  
The One ◽  
Voluntary Servitude

The article is devoted to the famous The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Étienne de La Boétie. The author considers the theoretical premises underlying the concept of “voluntary servitude”, juxtaposing them with two modern concepts of will developed by Descartes and Pascal. An important feature of La Boétie’s project is the political and therefore intersubjective – as opposed to the individualistic perspective of Descartes and Pascal – starting point. It is therefore situated against the background of, on the one hand, the historical evolution of early modern states (from feudal monarchies, through so-called Renaissance monarchies up to European absolutisms) and, on the other hand – of the political philosophy of Machiavelli and Hobbes.

“The Continuity of Married Companionship”

2012 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 494-530
Author(s):  
Cara Weber
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Conception ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ethical Action ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
A Site ◽  
Focus Questions

Victorian writers often focus questions of ethics through scenes of sympathetic encounters that have been conceptualized, both by Victorian thinkers and by their recent critics, as a theater of identification in which an onlooking spectator identifies with a sufferer. George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871–72) critiques this paradigm, revealing its negation of otherness and its corresponding fixation of the self as an identity, and offers an alternative conception of relationship that foregrounds the presence and distinctness of the other and the open-endedness of relationship. The novel develops its critique through an analysis of women's experience of courtship and marriage, insisting upon the appropriateness ofmarriage as a site for the investigation of contemporary ethical questions. In her depiction of Rosamond, Eliot explores the identity-based paradigm of the spectacle of others, and shows how its conception of selfhood leaves the other isolated, precluding relationship. Rosamond's trajectory in the novel enacts the identity paradigm's relation to skeptical anxieties about self-knowledge and knowledge of others, and reveals such anxieties to occur with particular insistence around images of femininity. By contrast, Dorothea's development in ethical self-awareness presents an alternative to Rosamond's participation in the identity paradigm. In Dorothea's experience the self emerges as a process, an ongoing practice of expression. The focus on expression in the sympathetic or conflictual encounter, rather than on identity, enables the overcoming of the identity paradigm's denial of otherness, and grounds a productive sympathy capable of informing ethical action.

The Tolstoy Connection in Bakhtin

PMLA ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 100 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caryl Emerson
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Good Reader ◽  
Death In Literature ◽  
Binary Model ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Good Starting Point ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Mikhail Bakhtin's work on Dostoevsky is well known. Less familiar, perhaps, is Bakhtin's attitude toward the other great Russian nineteenth-century novelist, Leo Tolstoy. This essay explores that “Tolstoy connection,” both as a means for interrogating Bakhtin's analytic categories and as a focus for evaluating the larger tradition of “Tolstoy versus Dostoevsky.” Bakhtin is not a particularly good reader of Tolstoy. But he does make provocative use of the familiar binary model to pursue his most insistent concerns: monologism versus dialogism, the relationship of authors to their characters, the role of death in literature and life, and the concept of the self. Bakhtin's comments on these two novelists serve as a good starting point for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the Bakhtinian model in general and suggest ways one might recast the dialogue between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky on somewhat different, more productive ground.

Performing the Self and Staging the Other: Scripting the Legend of Lucretia in Early Modern England

Paragrana ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-59
Author(s):  
Sarah D. R. Sallmann
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
National Identities ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
The Subject ◽  
English Identity ◽  
Plot Structure ◽  
And Control

AbstractIn England, throughout the early modern period and beyond, the Rape of Lucretia served as a central intertext for literary and non-literary works engaging with the subject of transgression. Not only did legal tracts and social pamphlets prescribe a woman to behave analogously to Lucretia after rape in order to contest the innocence of her soul through her bodily performance. Allegorically, the legend′s iteration within new cultural contexts in contemporary English historiography and drama provided a powerful subtext with which national histories and identities were scripted according to a familiar plot structure in order to represent 'the Turk′ and thereby to interpret and control what was perceived to be a threat to English identity and sovereignty at a time of intensifying Anglo-Ottoman encounters. This paper not only demonstrates the re-staging of the Rape of Lucretia in different texts and contexts; it examines the way in which the national identities and cultural encounters are represented and performed through the legend in order to stage the self and the Other within the radical discourse of alterity in contemporary proto-orientalist contexts.

scholarly journals The “refugee crisis” in Europe – between totality and the infinite

2019 ◽  
pp. 37-52
Author(s):  
Moisés de Lemos Martins
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Relationship

The self and the other. Totality and the infinite. In other words, totality as the discourse of the self which erases the other; and the infinite as the discourse of the other, which constrains and imposes reservations on the discourse of totality. I encounter the other in a face-to-face relationship, who thereby starts to exist within me, becomes part of me, constitutes me. This is the path whereby we fall in love, and can also be the path of compassion and solidarity. But the relationship with the other is not exhausted in the encounter. The encounter with the other is often followed by erasure, assimilation, and even domination of the other. Strictly speaking, we can say that the other can never be reduced to the self, i.e. may never be erased within me. And if the issue at stake is to ignore the other, or segregate, discriminate and dominate him, this implies exerting a form of violence over him. This is my starting point and my focus on discussing the “refugee crisis” in Europe.

scholarly journals A Taxonomy of Ethical, Legal and Social Implications of Wearable Robots: An Expert Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 3229-3247
Author(s):  
Alexandra Kapeller ◽  
Heike Felzmann ◽  
Eduard Fosch-Villaronga ◽  
Ann-Marie Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Human Body ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Implications ◽  
Intimate Connection ◽  
Wearable Robots ◽  
Human Motor

AbstractWearable robots and exoskeletons are relatively new technologies designed for assisting and augmenting human motor functions. Due to their different possible design applications and their intimate connection to the human body, they come with specific ethical, legal, and social issues (ELS), which have not been much explored in the recent ELS literature. This paper draws on expert consultations and a literature review to provide a taxonomy of the most important ethical, legal, and social issues of wearable robots. These issues are categorized in (1) wearable robots and the self, (2) wearable robots and the other, and (3) wearable robots in society.

scholarly journals The Italian London of John North: Cultural Contact and Linguistic Encounter in Early Modern England

2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Other ◽  
Personal Networks ◽  
Cultural Contact ◽  
Cultural Encounter ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

AbstractThis article takes as its subject the remarkable diary kept by a young English gentleman named John North from 1575 to 1579. On his journey home from Italy in 1575–77, North changed the language of his diary from English to Italian. On his return to London, he continued to keep a record of his everyday life in Italian. This article uses North’s diary as a starting point from which to reconstruct the social and sensory worlds of a returned traveler and Italianate gentleman. In doing so, it offers a way of bridging the gap between individual experiences and personal networks on the one hand, and the wider processes of cultural encounter and linguistic contact on the other.

scholarly journals Art imitates the Digital

Lumina ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Nash
Keyword(s):  
Formal System ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Digital Art ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Boundary Problems ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Internet Art ◽  
A Site

Where is art in the digital era? This essay identifies the digital as an abstract, formal system. Since art has always relied on formal, abstract systems to carry and deliver itself, what are the implications for art in the digital era? Is the digital a site for art, or is it the other way around? Can there be digital art? Identifying limit and boundary problems as the crucial existential problems for the digital, the essay shows that art has always concerned itself with such problems. This prompts the question as to whether it is possible that human existence and art become the same thing in the digital. Because the digital is currently primarily manipulated in the service of globalist economics, this is clearly not (yet) the case, so what does this mean for art? The essay then briefly examines the self-declared movements of dada, post-digital and post-internet art, concluding that these movements are not capable of questioning the digital as digital, before going on to examine some artists whose practice may be providing guiding lights toward a genuinely digital art.

scholarly journals The Arab World and the Occident: Toward the Construction of an Occidentalist Discourse

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-222
Author(s):  
Zahia Smail Salhi
Keyword(s):  
Arab World ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Reverse Relationship ◽  
Style Of Thought ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
East West

Purpose: This article aims to engage in a meaningful discussion of Occidentalism as a discourse that draws its roots from Orientalism. It scrutinizes the limitations of Occidentalism in investigating the East-West encounter from the perspective of Orientals (Arab intellectuals) and the multifarious ways the latter relate to and imagine the Occident. It will cast a critical eye on the multiple and diverse constructions of Occidentalism as a discourse, arguing that unlike Orientalism, which homogenizes the Orient, Occidentalism does not Occidentalize/homogenize the Occident. Methodology: We take as a starting point Edward Said’s definition of Orientalism as a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and ‘the Occident’, and we explore the limitations and the possibilities of Occidentalism as a method to construe the colonial mechanisms of misrepresentation of the Other as everything different from the Self. This article compares and contrasts a plethora of existing definitions of Occidentalism as formulated by scholars from both the Arab world and the Occident. Findings: This paper concludes that the Oriental’s encounter with the Occident cannot, and should not, be projected as a reverse relationship, or, as some claim, as an ‘Orientalism in reverse’. Instead, it should be projected as a diverse set of relationships of Orientals who have experienced the Occident in a variety of manners. Furthermore, while Orientalism derives from a particular closeness experienced between the Occident and its Orient, often through real or imagined encounters, Occidentalism is also the outcome of a long cultural relationship between the Orient and its Occident. What differs between the Orient and Occident, however, is the position of power and hegemony, which characterizes the Occident’s encounter with the Orient. Originality: This article takes an all-inclusive view to discuss the term Occidentalism from the perspectives of both the Orient and the Occident. It teases out the limitations of this term. It challenges Orientalist methods of misrepresentation, which continues to blemish the Arab world and its discourse of Occidentalism as a discourse of hatred of the Occident. Furthermore, through the discussion of Alloula’s Oriental Harem, it offers insight into the suggested Occidentalism method, which emphasizes the disfigurations of the Orient while tactfully writing back to the Occident.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document