Zambra, Codes of Honor, and Moorish Dress: Transculturation in Calderón’s Love after Death

This paper will offer a reading of Calderón’s Love after Death (Amar después de la muerte) that is removed from the binary opposition between Christianity versus Islam, which premise readings of the text as a pro-morisco play, and focuses on teasing out nuances of transculturation inherent in the text. At pivotal moments in the play, the morisco and the “pure” Christian are simultaneously presented in opposition and equality to one another in their shared adherence to a strict moral code of honor, which is arguably a Christian contribution to Spain’s hybrid culture. The cultural hybridization of clothing and costume points to the unreliability of visible signifiers that distinguished the morisco from the “pure” Spaniard and as a result, brings forth the difficulties Spain had in self-identification in opposition to the morisco. The only real signifier – the Arabic language – is linguistic, although it is clear many words from Arabic made their way into Spanish. Read in the context of a text produced in a Spain that was located at the border between purity and hybridity and between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of Europe, it can be argued that the representations of cultural practices in Calderón’s re-imagination of the rebellion of Alpujarras, bring forth evidence of a gradual process of transculturation between the moriscos and Christians and shed light on Spain’s almost desperate attempt to fight that process. Through this lens, the conflict between the moriscos and the Christians appears to have been conceived in the struggle against external forces that relegated Spain to the periphery of Europe. As a result of anti-Spanish prejudices of the leyenda negra that identified “Spanishness” with “Moorishness,” Spain was at once the colonial center in relation to the Americas and the New World, and simultaneously, Europe’s very own morisco “other.”

The Big Bang

This chapter examines the 1986 Big Bang liberalization of the London Stock Exchange (LSE), which was crucial in transforming the City of London into a truly global financial centre. This policy was the result of a winding institutional process that began in 1979 when the RPC initiated a case against the LSE for non-competitive practices. While Thatcher initially refused to exempt the LSE from this case, things changed following the government’s implementation of its monetarist experiment: MTFS. MTFS was a strategy to discipline the British economy in a depoliticized manner, by locking the government into years of financial stringency. In order for this strategy to be successful, the government had to meet certain monetary targets, which would justify the painful measures. Yet this plan went awry, plunging the economy into a deep recession while the government failed to hit its monetary targets. To prevent the complete presentational collapse of MTFS, the state began to make massive sales of government debt on the LSE as a way to meet the monetary targets. This in turn made it crucially important that the normal functioning of the LSE was not disrupted by a drawn-out court case. The Thatcher government finally decided to exempt the LSE from this investigation in 1983, which began the countdown to the 1986 Big Bang liberalization. The decision that led to the Big Bang was thus, to a significant extent, a desperate attempt to protect MTFS, which had sought to restructure the British economy in line with global competitive pressures.

IMPACTO DA PANDEMIA DE COVID-19 NO AGRONEGÓCIO BRASILEIRO

In 2020, the world changed, experiencing a new scenario, resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, which spread rapidly, causing countless victims. This situation that still remains, caused a tragedy of epic proportions and, due to lack of preparation, especially on the part of health professionals, there were extreme measures, such as social isolation and the closing of borders in a desperate attempt to contain the spread of the disease. Due to this scenario, many business sectors were harmed, suffering losses and challenges, caused by the pandemic that spread quickly throughout the world. The present work aimed to present the challenges and impacts experienced by the Brazilian agribusiness in this coronavirus pandemic scenario. The study was carried out through bibliographical research based on articles, newspapers, magazines, coverage of texts posted on the internet and other wide and rapid dissemination means of virtual communication, which address the Covid-19 pandemic and its effects on this helping sector to sustain the Brazilian economy. Studies confirm that agribusiness in Brazil has once again proved to be a strong sector, showing good results amidst a period of economic downturn and numerous challenges in the face of the impacts of the pandemic.

The Ethics of Care in the No Fire Zone: Anuk Arudpragasam’s The Story of a Brief Marriage

The ethics of care is a central element in the novel The Story of a Brief Marriage (2016), written by Anuk Arudpragasam in response to the slaughter which the Tamil community suffered in the final months of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009. This article discusses the novel from this theoretical perspective, positing that care is played out as a strategy to enhance the jeopardised human condition of those involved. The narrative bears witness to the intense suffering of this community at a time when the situation was deadly for civilians, who were confined in the so-called “No Fire Zone.” Paradoxically, this area was systematically shelled, its conditions responding to what Achille Mbembe has described as necropolitics. In the midst of this horror, however, Arudpragasam’s novel finds a deeply moving ethics of care in people’s attitudes to one another, which signals a desperate attempt to keep the bereaved community together or at least maintain an essential sense of humanness. Care is also identified as intentio autoris since the novel becomes a powerful reminder of the huge toll of human lives and the immense pain that occurred in this dark episode, as well as the failure—or lack of interest—of the international community to intervene in order to save thousands of innocent lives.

Sandfontein: An Operational Re-examination of the Battle, Contextualised within General J.C. Smuts’ First Phase of the German South West African Campaign 1914

The battle of Sandfontein November 26, 1914 marked the fledgeling Union Defence Force’s first defeat. Historians have used this long-forgotten battle as a lens to view the divisive political and military aspects of the Union’s early history. Unfortunately, some of their scholarship has passed through a distorted lens. Official histories were the first to obfuscate military and leadership shortcomings and interfere with the operational context surrounding Sandfontein. Theirs was for political reasons—a mission to protect delicate reputations and mollify a divided population. Historians have erroneously assumed that General J.C. Smuts’ initial plan for the invasion of German South West Africa 1914 was modified to exclude Walvis Bay/Swakopmund’s occupation. Instead, delays in occupying Walvis Bay/Swakopmund placed the UDF’s forces at Lüderitzbucht in a precarious position. Sandfontein, a desperate attempt to distract the Schutztruppe, was an operational failure, rather than the tactical faux pas portrayed by historians.

Hide-and-Seek: The Tale of Three Girls in the Giado Concentration Camp in Libya (1942–1943)

typhus epidemic that broke out in the Giado concentration camp in Libya in December 1942 constituted the major cause of death among the hundreds of Jewish detainees. Seeking to prevent its spread, the camp guards shaved the heads of those who had lice in their hair. In interviews conducted between 2009 and 2017 with survivors of the camp who were children at that time, only the women mention the shaving of heads and their desperate attempt to evade this fate. This chapter relates the story of three women who, as children, were incarcerated in the camp. Their narratives, which move fluidly between their perceptions as children and their adult recollections, point to a gender-related phenomenon pertaining to the dread of being caught and subjected to a head-shaving, and the trauma associated with a girl’s being shorn of her hair.

Aab Ky Marr! Pulwama to Balakot: India's New Normal

Pulwama/Balakot crisis is important for several reasons. The prime amongst it is that Pakistan changed the rule of the game. It not only thwarted India's design, it effectively demonstrated that it could respond to any Indian aggression through conventional means. The paper argues that although India and Pakistan had a narrow escape during the conflict, there is a need for a cautious approach when it comes to Indo-Pakistan strategic stability. The papers focus on the crisis behavior of both countries and argue that while India intentionally initiated the crisis whereas Pakistan took every step to deescalate. At the end of the crisis, Modi claimed that India was prepared to hit Pakistan with multiple missiles if it had not returned the IAF pilot. While it might be music to his ultra-Hindu fundamentalist supporters, in fact, it was nothing but a desperate attempt to restore his credibility. In the subcontinental culture, aab ky Marr explains such a mindset.

Northern Phoenix

The year 1837 featured one of Russia’s most spectacular fires, which broke out at the Winter Palace on 17 December. All that was left standing was the hulking skeleton of what had been among the greatest palaces in the world. An unknown number had perished, many in desperate attempt to save articles from the fire and to prevent its transmission to the adjoining Hermitage. The catastrophe created distinct dangers for the regime. Yet it also provided a remarkable opportunity for Russia to demonstrate its resilience and unity of purpose. The emperor, Nicholas I, set an almost impossible deadline for the palace’s reconsecration: the spring of 1839, a mere 15 months after the building’s destruction. Astonishingly, his autocracy managed to achieve that goal, staging a triumphant rededication on Easter night. The whole process featured a curious combination of triumph and anxiety, thus offering insights about the monarchy’s aspirations and apprehensions.

Flying Back to Africa or Flying to Heaven? Competing Visions of Afterlife in the Lowcountry and Caribbean Slave Societies

ABSTRACTThis article presents a new interpretation of the famous folktale about enslaved Africans flying home, including the legend that only those who refrained from eating salt could fly back to Africa. It rejects claims that the tale is rooted in Igbo culture and relates to suicide as a desperate attempt to escape from slavery. Rather, an analysis of historical documents in combination with ethnographic and linguistic research makes it possible to trace the tale back to West-Central Africa. It relates objections to eating salt to the Kikongo expression curia mungua (to eat salt), meaning baptism, and claims that the tale originated in the context of discussions among the enslaved about the consequences of a Christian baptism for one's spiritual afterlife.

A Poetics of the Holocaust? Three Exemplary Poets

Whether or not we understand the Holocaust to be unique or following a series of catastrophes in Jewish history, there is no doubt that the writing that came out of those traumaticevents is worth examining both as testimony and as literature. This article looks again at Holocaust poetry, this time circumventing Adorno’s much-cited and often misquoted dictum onpoetry after Auschwitz. The essay challenges the binary of either “Holocaust poetry is barbaric and impossible” or “art is uplifting and unaffected by the Holocaust.” I analyse three individual cases of Holocaust poetry as a means of both survival and testimony during the Holocaust – not retrospectively or seen by poets who were not there. Aesthetic and ethical issues are very much part of a writing in extremis which is conscious of the challenge well before Adorno and critical theory. In a comparison of Celan, Sutzkever, and Miłosz we can see their desperate attempt to write a poetry that meets the challenge of the historical moment, for all the differences between them in their cultural backgrounds, language traditions, and literary influences. As I argue, although scholars and critics have read these poets separately, they should be studied as part of the phenomenon of grappling with an unprecedented horror which they could not possibly at the time understand in all its historical dimension and outcome. We should no longer ignore their sources and antecedents in trying to gauge what they did with them in forging a “Holocaust poetics” that would convey something of the inadequacy of language and the failure of the imagination in representing the unspeakable, which they personally experienced on a day to day basis. By not reading “after Adorno” we can arrive at a more nuanced discussion of whether there isa Holocaust poetics.