The Glory and the Sorrow

The book describes the life and the world of a small-time lawyer, Adrien-Joseph Colson, who lived in central Paris from the end of the Old Regime through the first eight years of the French Revolution. It is based on over a thousand letters written by Colson about twice a week to his best friend living in the French province of Berry. By means of this correspondence, and of a variety of other sources, the book examines what it was like for an “ordinary citizen” to live through extraordinary times, and how Colson, in his position as a “social and cultural intermediary,” can provide insight into the life of a whole neighborhood on the central Right Bank, both before and during the Revolution. It explores the day-to-day experience of the Revolution: not only the thrill, the joy, and the enthusiasm, but also the uncertainty, the confusion, the anxiety, the disappointments—often all mixed together. It also throws light on some of the questions long debated by historians concerning the origins, the radicalization, the growth of violence, and the end of that Revolution.

Demonizing Africa: A Bend in the River and Naipaul’s Comprador Intellectuality

This paper establishes V.S. Naipaul’s position as a comprador intellectual for his essentialist representation of Africa in A Bend in the River. The position (of comprador intellectual) has been ascribed by Hamid Dabashi to the array of highly feted non-Western writers who justify the Western orientalist (mis)appropriation of the East. The unrelenting orientalist bashing of the imperialized world (Africa in this case) legitimizes the civilizational responsibility of the West to mend the situation of the supposedly inferior Africans. The violent colonial intervention to provide order and stability to the place shows Naipaul’s orientalist world view regarding the colonized Africans. The alleged, all-pervading darkness of Africans can thus be illuminated by the White colonizer’s masterful exercise of power. Naipaul, as an author, functions as a comprador intellectual who appears serving the colonial commercial interest. The West needs to destroy all the cultures that may be potential sites of resistance, so, Naipaul offers a systematic denigration of African culture to sabotage the potential culture of resistance. The narrative of African demonization justifies the colonial machinery and its exercise of violence against the natives. The paper, therefore, calls into question Naipaul’s role as a cultural intermediary, since his 'point of enunciation' (a concept given by Stuart Hall) seems to be resting on an overtly colonial trajectory of the West.

Estranhos na história da literatura brasileira: Elizabeth Bishop como mediadora cultural Elisabete da Silva Barbosa

A história literária que, no passado, se pensava totalizadora, tem sido entendida na contemporaneidade como atividade provisória e lacunar, a exemplo de Brazil 2001: A revisionary History of Brazilian Literature and Culture. Trata-se de coletânea composta por ensaios em língua inglesa escritos por autores, em sua maioria, brasileiros. Os textos revisam diferentes concepções da identidade nacional, tomando esse termo na acepção de totalidade incompleta e lacunar (CHAUÍ, 2000). Dado o panorama mais amplo, buscamos refletir sobre os critérios para a inserção de estrangeiros que, na condição de mediadores culturais, contribuem para a escrita da história da literatura brasileira. Nessa publicação, Paulo Henriques Britto (2000) redige o texto Elizabeth Bishop as cultural intermediary, com o qual estabelecemos diálogo a fim de compreender o papel de intermediária cultural desempenhado por Bishop.

Dialectics of Transnational Mobility, Class, and Cultural-Intermediary among Indonesian Student-Migrant Workers in South Korea

Cosmopolitanism among migrant workers may present as the result of interpretations between transnational mobility, class, and cultural intermediary. Applying the ethnographic method this research was carried out during 2018-2019, which took Indonesian student-migrant workers aged 20-35 years in South Korea as informants. Travel and immigration, and higher education experiences have left Indonesian migrant workers at work in any places both in and out of campus areas. These practices show that the broader social, cultural, and individual agendas are one way of recognizing a new cosmopolitanism. There are two factors influence the cosmopolitanism process of Indonesian migrant workers; first, the transnational migration process. Second, the process of cultural intermediation in universities. This study reveals significant differences in how Indonesian migrant workers respond to the possibilities and opportunities of transnational mobility, from developing the cultural acceptance skills needed in their life trajectories for building network relationships with other transnational actors. Higher education for migrant workers has introduced another form of work, namely cultural intermediation, which can be seen as a cosmopolitan process.

Intermediating the Everyday : Indie Game Development and the Labour of Co-Working Spaces

Emblematic of major cultural and economic shifts towards ‘new work,’ indie game development has positioned itself at the forefront of market innovation by subverting traditional, hierarchical models of workplace organization. At the centre of these major shifts is the figure of the ‘cultural intermediary’ – a nebulous, ill-defined role which we, nonetheless, contend is integral to understanding cultural industries. By focusing on the mercurial forms of labour performed by founders and directors of indie co-working spaces, this chapter aims to give shape and dimension to the role of cultural intermediaries, arguing that their networked mobility and delamination from traditional ‘sites’ of work necessitates a rethinking of studio-based study as the standard for examining indie cultural production.

Resituating the political in cultural intermediary work: Charity sector public relations and communication

Drawing on a case study of public relations in the UK charity sector, this article argues that cultural intermediary research urgently requires a more sustained focus on politics and the political understood as power relations, party politics and political projects such as marketization and neoliberalism. While wide-ranging research has analysed how cultural intermediaries mediate the relationship between culture and economy, this has been at the expense of an in-depth analysis of the political. Using our case study as a prompt, we highlight the diversity of ways that the political impacts cultural intermediary work and that cultural intermediary work may impact the political. We reveal the tensions that underpin practice as a result of the interactions between culture, the economy and politics, and show that the tighter the engagement of cultural intermediation with the political sphere, the more tensions must be negotiated and the more compromised practitioners may feel.

Twelfth-Century Latin Medicine in Hebrew Garb: Doeg the Edomite as a Cultural Intermediary

In 1197–1199 an anonymous scholar completed the translation of twenty-four medical works from Latin into Hebrew, which he listed in a Preface he wrote to the entire corpus. Some seventeen of these translations are extant. The translator describes himself as a Jew who took baptism but subsequently repented. His self-image as an apostate is reflected in his referring to himself as “Doeg the Edomite,” an appellation we also use. Doeg’s motivation to embark on his gigantic translation project was to keep Jews from flocking at the doors of Christian doctors, who prescribe to them medicines containing impure foodstuffs. Doeg also followed the aim of “enlightening” the Jews and reports that he was taken to task for this. The works translated by Doeg, which we seek to identify, mostly belong to the Salerno corpus. We argue that Doeg is likely to have worked in the setting of a Latin medical school, where the books he put into Hebrew were used in a program of learning. Doeg’s use of Occitan vernacular words transliterated in Hebrew letters allows us to conclude that he lived in the Midi, suggesting that he was in contact with medical scholars in Montpellier. Doeg’s corpus of translations is a significant index to the medical texts valued in Montpellier and sheds light on both Hebrew and Latin intellectual history. Comparisons of Hebrew passages from Doeg’s translations with their Latin Vorlagen allow us to conclude that for the most part Doeg translated literally, although at times reverting to paraphrases or shortening his texts. We argue that, whereas in the domains of philosophy and science most translations in the Midi were made from Arabic, in medicine Latin-into-Hebrew translations were fairly frequent already in the thirteenth century. Doeg’s story points to the causes of this difference: the medical field was one, comprising Jewish and gentile doctors and patients, with the ensuing collaborations or competition over patients compelling Jewish doctors to avail themselves of the best available knowledge.