bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
What There Is: The Dynamic ‘Object’ of Experience
Authors: Röck Tina
Published: September 2022

In this chapter the idea of a ‘concept of being’ is introduced and used to elucidate the Heideggerian distinction between beings and Being as well as the Aristotelian distinction between investigating beings as beings (ontology) and investigating the highest being (metaphysics). This idea of ‘highest being’ or ‘Being’ are two examples of a concept of being, that shapes the way beings can become present. A further concept of being is introduced, namely ‘becoming existence’ as temporal being. The viability of this strategy is emphasised by showing that there is no escaping a unified concept of being that informs the way beings are understood, even the existential quantifier is not neutral. It too is an (implicit) concept of being, conferring certain characteristics to what can be counted as existing (i.e. as being).
Introduction: A Synthesis and Testimony of Jocelyne Saab’s Life and Work 1
Authors: Rouxel Mathilde , Van de Peer Stefanie
Published: September 2022

The introduction of the book we offers an overview of Jocelyne Saab’s life and career. A historical and biographical overview of how and when she created her artwork will be accompanied with testimonies by the two editors, describing their own experiences with the filmmaker / activist / artist. This biographical material informs the internationalist and activist tenet of Saab’s works, as her lived experience inspired her artistic and activist practice intensively. The introduction also describes the logic of the book’s structure - which is mostly thematic - and the process of editing such a culturally diverse book. It reflects the intuitive, artistic and activist urgency with which Jocelyne Saab made her films and created her exhibitions as well as her curatorial practice. Since this information is not yet widely available, the introduction of this book engages on an in-depth level with how, in Saab’s films and artworks, the political is personal and how the political diversity in Saab’s own life informed her vision for her life and art.
On Representing the War as Rupture: Jocelyne Saab and New Lebanese Cinema (1975–90)
Authors: Sayegh Ghada
Published: September 2022

This chapter examines the cinema of Jocelyne Saab during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), while placing it in the context of New Lebanese Cinema, as she was confronted with violence that generated a fracture and crisis of representation. While in the documentary Lebanon in Turmoil (1975), the ‘real’ still seems to be under the regime of finding meaning. Informative interviews and commentary that punctuate the film give way to the poetic text of Etel Adnan in Beirut, Never Again (1976), which grasps the gap between words and objects. This need to look for new forms of representation is at the heart of a practice that attempts to represent a reality and a present, even though during war, the real may no longer be achievable or representable. Such a notion carried Jocelyne Saab’s films towards a proclivity for fiction. With A Suspended Life (1985), the filmmaker interrogates the representation of this strangeness to oneself, an absence of meaning, a gap between people and the world, in places that the characters pass through without being able to inhabit them.
Jocelyne Saab’s Hanging Gardens: A Multimedia Architecture through Stories and Time
Authors: Grandjean Joan
Published: September 2022

This chapter focuses on Saab’s role as a visual artist and cultural agent. This enables the author to highlight her artistic approach to film, while offering new background information to better understand her artworks. In the final years of her life, Saab developed her identity as a photographer, videographer and cultural agent. Shortly after the release of her feature film Dunia (Kiss me Not on the Eyes) in 2005, she created her first monumental art installation called Strange Games and Bridges, which was exhibited in the National Museum of Singapore in 2006. Still today, research on Jocelyne Saab’s role as a visual artist and cultural agent is scarce. This chapter of her life remains unwritten, it being an enterprise that will enable to place value on not only the lesser known aspects of her career, but on her career as a whole.
Exile, Gender and Empowerment in Jocelyne Saab’s Films: Gender Café and One Dollar a Day
Authors: Fortier Corinne
Published: September 2022

Jocelyne Saab was an exceptionally courageous Lebanese filmmaker who dealt with the three main topics of war, exile and gender. She produced many documentaries but also fictions, such as her most famous film, Dunia, shot in Egypt on the theme of the female body, pleasure and Female Genital Mutilation. This film was censored in Egypt and lead to severe problems with Egyptian islamists. The theme of gender was also the main topic of a series of six short documentaries created in 2013 entitled Café du Genre, which dealt with women’s situations in the Arab world, but also with other very complex themes such as homosexuality. The films portrayed artists and researchers from the Middle East, especially from Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey. In this chapter I will focus on the film about Lebanese choregraph Alexandre Paulikevitch, in which Saab deals, in her very own style and approach, with homosexuality and transidentity in the Arab World. Her latest artistic production from 2016, One Dollar a Day, observed daily life in a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon. This chapter will discuss in detail these three works of art and their common preoccupation with gendered courage in exile.
The City of Disasters and Dreams: Experiencing Beirut and its Urban Geography in Light of Jocelyne Saab’s Beirut, My City and A Suspended Life
Authors: Buchakjian Gregory
Published: September 2022

Jocelyne Saab’s first feature film A Suspended Life (1985), tells the story of a teenage girl whose family finds refuge in an abandoned palace in Beirut. Saab’s own home was initially supposed to serve as film set, but it was destroyed on the first day of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982. Its ruins appear in the opening view of Beirut My City (1982), a documentary shot during the siege of the Lebanese capital that lasted until the evacuation of the Palestinian forces, 21 August 1982. This chapter proposes to read Beirut My City and A Suspended Life as a diptych. The first, a documentary, is a prequel to the second, a fiction. The second, produced during a lull in the war, includes rushes from the first. Both pieces take an abandoned dwelling as the point of departure for an exploration into the urban territory of West Beirut.Besides their existence as acts of resistance and invaluable documents for a critical period, these films question the relationship between life and death, and between the image and the cadaver, three decades after Blanchot’s reflections in The Space of Literature.
Introduction
Authors: Thornton Niamh
Published: September 2022

Whilst during the past century the Mexican nation has experienced periods of significant political and social unrest where lives have been lost amidst a context of conflict and violence, it has a variable and unresolved engagement with this process. Instead, the speculative light remains shining upon the glorification of events from the more distant past which include Independence and the Revolution. Of particular significance in this book are the student unrest and massacre at the Plaza de tres culturas in 1968, the subsequent dirty war of the 1970s, the losses experienced through migration, and the political turmoil resulting from the recent violence related to the illegal drugs trade. The authors in this edited collection were invited to analyse Mexican audio-visual and screen culture through three interrelated but separate concepts: trauma, memory, and the spectre. Approaching a selection of multi-layered historical presences and events, the chapters in this book examine legacies of the past by tracing how memory and trauma dominate Mexican audio-visual and screen cultures. This introduction provides some signposts for the reader to understand key historical moments and the theoretical approaches that underpin the close textual analysis carried out by the authors.
Felipe Cazals and Servando González Grapple with the Aftermath and the Archive: 1976 and 1968
Authors: Thornton Niamh
Published: September 2022

This chapter considers three films from 1976 by Felipe Cazals and Servando González. Cazals’ docudrama, Canoa, about a lynching linked to the tense atmosphere of 1968 in a village in central Mexico was the first film to deal with the political turmoil and killings. A second film by Cazals, Los Poquianchis, mixes documentary and fiction filmmaking techniques to tell the story of the exploitation, abuse, and mass murder of sex workers in Mexico. The shadow of 1968 can also be found in González’s 1976 adaptation of the novel of the Revolution, Los de abajo by Mariano Azuela (1915). All three films employ archival footage and documentary elements grounding them in reality and they deploy iconography familiar to a Mexican audience in ways that subvert their original meaning and function as reflexive, meta-texual commentaries. With the ghosts of 1968 haunting the films as well as the spectres of the distinct events they portray, Cazals’ and González’s specific uses of the archive become an exploration of the audio-visual techniques utilised by perpetrators. This chapter will explore how the films navigate this controversial terrain in ways that uphold and disrupt the perpetrators’ position.
Stages for an Assassination: Roles of Cinematic Landscape in Jorge Fons’ El atentado (2010) and Carlos Bolado’s Colosio: el asesinato (2012)
Authors: Maza-Pérez Maximiliano
Published: September 2022

A cinematic landscape can be interpreted as the filmic representation of a real or imagined space, which complies with a series of cultural functions that allow the aesthetic and ideological assessment of the film as a film discourse. According to Escher (2006), the cinematic landscape is selectively perceived by the audience and can be accepted by them as representative of reality, despite being a production created intentionally. It is not that the landscape represented accurately reflects the way the audience perceives the physical world, but that the receiver trusts the representation. From these considerations, this article explores and characterizes the functions performed by the cinematic landscape in El atentado/The Attempt Dossier (2010) by Jorge Fons and Colosio (Colosio: el asesinato, 2012) by Carlos Bolado, two Mexican films that address political crime from very contrasting aesthetic perspectives. In both films, representational spaces play a pivotal role in the reconstruction of the narrated historical events and, at the same time, are key elements that contribute to communicate the ideological positions of its directors
#YoSoy132 as a Continuation of the 1968 Legacy
Authors: Wax-Edwards Jessica
Published: September 2022

This chapter explores the links between the legacy of the events of 1968 and the #YoSoy132 student movement, with specific reference to the graphic art produced by students of both.  My visual analyses of cultural legacy is informed by the notion of spectrality and haunting as introduced by Jacques Derrida in the Spectres of Marx (1994). As argued by Derrida, the study of hauntology is borne out of a ‘concern for justice’. This chapter explores the contexts of recent historical injustice that characterised and coloured the 2012 general presidential elections. These injustices, seen in the 2006 repression of Atenco and a historical trend for controversy relating to elections in Mexico, provide further examples of the ruptures and ghosts that fuelled the emergence of the #YoSoy132 movement and the graphic artworks produced alongside it. This chapter will examine the visual parallels that exist between the artistic outputs of the 1968 and 2012 student protest movements and, specifically, the role of graphic art in disseminating and articulating civil dissent. In this vein, this chapter seeks to address the extent to which the graphic art produced by #YoSoy132 members is influenced by the art of the 1968 protestors and the complex memory of that violent repression.
What Chance Sisterhood under Patriarchy? Mary Queen of Scots (Josie Rourke, 2018)
Authors: White John
Published: September 2022

This film is set during a period of heightened religious tension and fanaticism. In a highly divided society, a struggle for power is taking place within a political elite that is also a socio-economic elite. Issues of gender and sexuality drive both the film’s narrative and events within the nation(s) as conceived on screen and, clearly, both English and Scottish nationalisms are at stake. However, axes of social division that are absent may be as significant as factors that are present at the surface; and so, we may need to contemplate the lack of consideration given to issues of class, wealth and privilege.
Politics in “The Corridors of Power” Then (and Now): The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)
Authors: White John
Published: September 2022

This film considers the ways in which in this period foreign (and domestic) policy was determined via elite personality clashes and sexual intrigue. Religious differences were the professed determining factor in political decisions during the period but are given little consideration in the film. What is being explored, again, is the struggle for power within a socio-economic elite. The severe political instability of the period within Great Britain centres on this contest to define the established order within the nation. Insurrection (as in the Monmouth Rebellion of a few years previous) is a constant threat, and machinations between Tories and Whigs (and between factions within these parties) creates a continual source of intrigue within both the court and the wider government.
Colonialism and the Reshaping of History: Viceroy’s House (Gurinder Chadha, 2017)
Authors: White John
Published: September 2022

This film deals with a crucial episode in determining the contemporary politics of the Indian sub-continent. This is a complex historical subject. In part, the film attempts to address the fraught question of who should bear responsibility for the horrors of Partition. What were the roles of Mountbatten, Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah in the mayhem that ensued? Chadha has been responsible for perceptive films created around the diasporic experience in the UK (Bhaji on the Beach (1993)/Bend It Like Beckham (2002)): how does this film sit in relation to those earlier films? Inevitably questions are raised regarding not only the authenticity of any single interpretation of history but also who is able to write (and re-write) history.
‘Were I human’: Beingness and the Postcolonial Object in Westworld ’s Appropriation of The Tempest
Authors: Pittman L. Monique , Corredera Vanessa I. , Denslow Kristin N. , Bailey Karl G.
Published: September 2022

Ariel’s reminder to Prospero of what it means to be human—to wield agency and act on affective capacities—shorthands popular understandings of the Renaissance humanist framework for Western concepts of selfhood. As a proto-colonial text, The Tempest predicts the political domination and expropriated labor characterizing the ensuing years of Western colonialism, which relies upon the thingification of others and assumes for Caucasian males the exclusive right to a coherent humanist subjectivity. The creators of HBO’s series, Westworld, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, have repeatedly observed that their AI-theme-park-mastermind, Robert Ford, bears a striking resemblance to Prospero. The analogues to Shakespeare’s late play extend to characters who recreate Prospero’s abjects: Caliban, Ariel, and Miranda. Westworld echoes The Tempest as it imagines a narrative in which abjected figures resist and interrogate persistent claims about human beingness and freedom. Westworld’s multi-ethnic casting questions who may claim the right to feel, to remember, to act, and to be free. Thus, Westworld contests assumptions of Renaissance humanism and also adapts aspects of object-oriented ontology. Westworld radically proposes the agential capacity of entities formerly labeled as ‘things.’ The post-colonial approach deployed to read The Tempest and object-oriented theory therefore powerfully intersect with Westworld’s reimagining of object and human.
Finding Ludonarrative Harmony in the Limited Agency of Ophelia in Elsinore
Authors: Darr Andrew
Published: September 2022

Elsinore is the first video game adaptation of Hamlet to solve the Gordian Knot of adapting Hamlet — a play about a constantly delaying revenger — into a medium dependent on user agency. Elsinore does so by casting players in the role of the historically disempowered Ophelia and upending the assumed primacy of Shakespeare’s play text. This project analyzes Elsinore through two overlapping ontological systems in which Elsinore coexists. Firstly, Elsinore participates in both Shakespeare adaptation study’s rich tradition of artistic remediations of Ophelia’s ‘absence’ and video game scholarship’s effort to understand how games balance the often-opposing forces of ludology and narrative. Secondly, Elsinore reflects shifting economic and thematic trends within the video game industry as developers and consumers are increasingly aware of the need for greater gender diversity within video games. This essay catalogs and analyzes the rise of independently funded video games, often referred to as ‘indie games’, in conjunction with the rise of online harassment such as 2013’s ‘gamergate’ controversy. Juxtaposing these intersecting ontological systems, this chapter argues that Elsinore participates in the rich tradition of artistic reclamations of Ophelia’s agency while also exemplifying the progress the maturing medium of video games has made as an art form in terms of gender representation and the growing ability for games to maintain ludonarrative harmony.
Who are Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘Conceptual Personae’?
Authors: Lambert Gregg
Published: September 2022

Introduction of key concept from What is Philosophy? Discussion of its application to understand the role of identification in the history of contemporary continental philosophy (e.g., ‘isms’).
Towards a Political Geology
Authors: Lambert Gregg
Published: September 2022

Explication of the concept of ‘geophilosophy’ in Deleuze and Guattari’s What is Philosophy? Discussion of relation to philosophies of new materialism and speculative realism.
Drone Violence as Wild Justice: Administrative Executions on the Terror Frontier
Authors: Enemark Christian
Published: September 2022

This chapter examines state uses of armed drones that appear to fall outside the paradigm and morality of war. Drone violence wielded remotely by the US government sometimes resembles more closely a non-war form of state violence – lethal, punitive law-enforcement (capital punishment). In parts of the world that are outside zones of conflict, the user of armed drones appears sometimes to act in the manner of a lawman delivering ‘wild justice’ to outlaws. This wildness manifests in the US government’s recent practice of conducting ‘personality strikes’ against alleged terrorists. These strikes arguably amount to administrative executions and thus fall short of ethical expectations for lethal law-enforcement practices. Instead, this punitive form of drone violence is ‘wild’ because it merely mimics the legalism of proper criminal justice practice. When drone-based killings are sanctioned and conducted secretly by non-judicial agents of government, the ethical problem is that there is too much potential for unjust (arbitrary) violation of a person’s right to life. Drone violence as wild justice thus presents a governance challenge: either to prohibit personality strikes outside war zones or to tame such violence by arranging for it to be judicially authorised.
Conclusion
Authors: Enemark Christian
Published: September 2022

This chapter draws together the diverse perspectives and approaches presented in the volume, highlighting key areas of disharmony and common ground between contributors’ ethical assessments of drone violence. It identified the most thought-provoking arguments and unanswered questions that emerge from the volume and warrant further consideration. Three themes of enduring ethical concern are highlighted: the significance of risk to the wielder of violence; the categorisation of violence; and the need for better governance of violence.
The Rhythm of Democracy, the Pulse of Deconstruction
Authors: Waltham-Smith Naomi
Published: September 2022

This chapter explores the “knot between rhythm and democracy” in Derrida’s Politics of Friendship. Drawing out a style or syncopation that characterises Derrida’s work, this text links the rhythms of democracy to the heartbeat. In so doing, it challenges an identarian discourse which would understand blood in terms of a nationalistic and xenophobic politics of tradition and aristocracy. This offers us a different understanding of the heartbeat, emphasising the disruptive qualities of its rhythm. Tying Politics of Friendship to Derrida’s later work on the death penalty, this demonstrates the link between rhythm and democracy in Derrida’s work, separating blood from its nationalistic reference point. In so doing, it emphasises the fundamental link between deconstruction and democracy.
Mine Closure in the Coal Industry: Global and National Perspectives
Authors: Marais Lochner , Burton Jesse , Campbell Maléne , Nel Etienne
Published: September 2022

However, the threat of global warming means that the world is now looking for cleaner forms of energy. The pressure for cleaner forms of energy comes from the Paris Agreement, which compels signatories to limit greenhouse gases. This chapter discusses the practical consequences of mine decline and closure. The chapter highlights the need to address the social aspects of mine closure and look at international perspectives on the topic. These social consequences of mine closure will have local consequences. Anticipating these consequences and planning for them is an essential part of the quest for a just transition. Normative approaches such as those advocated in the just transition literature are essential but must be careful not to overlook the socio-economic realities and complexities that mine closure brings.
The Health Impacts of Coal Mining and Coal-based Energy
Authors: Paul Denoon-Stevens Stuart , du Toit Katrina
Published: September 2022

This chapter investigates the relationship between coal mining, coal-based energy production, and health in Emalahleni. We find in this chapter that this region has generally worse health metrics per capita compared to national averages despite its strong economic foundation and role. We also find that, excluding initiatives undertaken by the mines, the resourcing of the area per capita in terms of health personnel and finances was significantly below national averages. This again shows a lack of sensitivity by the state to the unique health challenges faced by regions with a high prevalence of coal mining and coal-based energy production. 
Relating this to the just transition literature, with the (likely) move to cleaner energy production, residents of this area will continue to experience health issues due to coal mining and coal-based power production for decades to come. Thus a just transition necessitates action on the part of the state to address this legacy of poor health outcomes.
Is a Just Transition Possible?
Authors: Marais Lochner , Burger Philippe , Campbell Maléne , Denoon-Stevens Stuart Paul , van Rooyen Deidré
Published: September 2022

The authors analysed the current situation and considered future scenarios. Achieving a just transition will be difficult. Several reasons contribute to this. First, neoliberalism is a specific phase of economic development and is socially embedded in society (see Chapter 1). Policymakers need to take both these arguments into account to counter these embedded realities. Second, an approach towards a just transition requires mining companies to understand that investment is required at the back end of the mine life-cycle. Mining companies have a responsibility to assist with the transition. Thirdly, a just transition also requires local governance, accountability and finance. Fourthly, an active approach to dealing with the consequences of the decline. At the bottom of all, this approach acknowledges the negative side of mine closure.
Writing and Listening: Voices from Inside
Authors: Özdalga Elisabeth
Published: September 2022

In previous chapters the chief purpose has been to describe basic themes and styles in official hutbes, and to interpret the homiletic discourses in the light of existing social, political, institutional and historical contexts. In this chapter focus is moved to persons who regularly attend the Friday sermon, either in the role of imam or member of the congregation. What are in their eyes the merits and shortcomings, especially of the sermons delivered by Diyanet? Six interviews from a larger set of interviews have been selected. The interviewees complain about repetitiveness, irrelevancy, lack of eloquence, shortly, that people, in fact, expect better sermons. Asked if it would be better if imams and preachers (hatips) were allowed to preach their own mind, most interviewees respond in the negative. The insufficient level of education among the religious personnel is alleged as the main reason.
Gillian Clarke: From Woman Poet to National Poet
Authors: Varty Anne
Published: September 2022

This examines Clarke’s leadership in the battle to gain public acceptance for poetry by women, and considers how she turned the divisions of language-use in Wales to a means of developing a representative voice. It is organised by three subheadings. First, Breaking a Path gives an in-depth account of her work during the 1970s as a poet, and as Editor of The Anglo-Welsh Review 1976-1984. It examines her ground-breaking poem Letter from a Far Country in its first context as commissioned for radio in 1979, and explores her feminist revaluation of the idea of home as the power-house of society, the ‘domus’. Consolidating the Role of ‘Women’s Poetry’ in the 1980s pursues Clarke’s leading participation in debates about ‘women’s poetry’ conducted in poetry journals such as Poetry Wales and Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, and her interventions in the era’s wider feminist debates about poetry. The Voice of the Tribe explores Clarke’s cultural leadership in the campaign for devolved government of Wales in 1979, and her negotiation of the dual languages of Wales to forge a uniquely inclusive instrument of expression which brands the cultural nationalism of her poetry.
Liz Lochhead: Performing Scotland
Authors: Varty Anne
Published: September 2022

Lochhead has always been a public poet by virtue of the performance element of her work which encompasses dramatic monologues and revue as well as lyric poetry. This chapter examines her pairing of the political status of Scotland within the United Kingdom with the social status of woman within patriarchy, and her use of cliché as a mode of speaking in public to sharpen political attention. The first section, Mapping Scotland, considers how Lochhead remaps her country by making women visible and audible within it where previously they had been invisible and silent. It draws on her feminist revue work, Mary Queen of Scots Got her Head Chopped Off, alongside her lyric poetry. The second section, Refracting Binaries: From The Colour of Black and White to Fugitive Colours, examines her complication of traditional binary oppositions such as man/woman, black/white, English/Scottish, and her embrace of an enlarged sense of global community in her Makar collection Fugitive Colours.
Answering Back: Poetry in Conversation with Wordsworth, Burns and Yeats
Authors: Varty Anne
Published: September 2022

Taking its cue from Duffy’s edited anthology, Answering Back. Living poets reply to the poetry of the past (2008), this chapter examines how Clarke, Duffy, Lochhead and Meehan have generated dialogue with iconic national poets of the past. It places these conversations in the context of feminist revisionism, and refers to work by Eavan Boland, Sinead Morrissey, Adrienne Rich, and Dorothy Wordsworth amongst others. It recognises that in addition to their feminist enterprise, the poets today salute, as well as adjust, the nation-building potential of their forebears. The chapter is organised under three subheadings, Wordsworth, Burns, Yeats and considers work which Clarke, Duffy, Lochhead and Meehan wrote prior to their laureate appointments as well as poetry and cultural activity undertaken during and as a result of their tenures.
Postscript for the Future
Authors: Varty Anne
Published: September 2022

This is a brief conclusion to observe how laureate service by Clarke, Duffy, Lochhead and Meehan set a pace for cultural change as their work validates focus on ordinary experience and potentially excluded individuals or groups and thereby contributes to a democratisation of national self-understanding. It considers how the public authority of women’s poetry is changing, surveys the position of women as gatekeepers in the poetry business, and notes how initiatives such as the Ledbury Emerging Critics promotes the authority of global majority poets and critics.
The Possibility of Intervention: Vocational Exploration in Non-Fiction Immigrant Narratives
Authors: Loustaunau Esteban E.
Published: September 2022

The language of ‘testimonio’ in immigrant narratives develops vocation through social engagement with marginalized people and texts. This chapter contends that immigrant narratives speak about intervention as a vocational encounter that can extend beyond the texts to students’ lives and build solidarity with others. Such encounters can prompt courageous actions that respond to the call to live in community. Two texts—Jose Antonio Vargas’ Dear America: Notes on an Undocumented Citizen and Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions—prompt questions about identity, belonging and vocation. Memoirs and testimonios demonstrate the transformative power of intervention through addressing immigration policy, the migration crisis, and activism.
Introduction: Recovering Hill Burton
Authors: Beveridge Craig
Published: September 2022

A brief outline is provided of the wide range of Burton’s publications which included significant texts on David Hume and Jeremy Bentham besides works on political economy, Scots Law and editorial contributions on historical source material for the Scottish Book Clubs. However the book’s focus is identified as Burton’s multi-volume History of Scotland completed in 1870; as well as the contemporary reception of his historical oeuvre as revealed in a wide variety of contemporary print media and manuscript sources. The book’s overall structure and the subject matter of the subsequent chapters is signalled.
Romantic History
Authors: Beveridge Craig
Published: September 2022

A range of elements in Burton’s multi-volume History are analysed as reflecting the characteristics of nineteenth-century romantic literature. These include the habit of ‘performative’ authorship. In addition, many events are conveyed in passages whose narrative incorporates romantic language and associations, including allusions to romantic literature, particularly the works of Walter Scott. Besides romantic content – at times incorporated despite the author’s explicit scepticism on their sources – it is argued his approach includes an identifiably romantic methodology. This is characterised by an emphasis on attending to the actual words and language of the sources, and a search, partly achieved through such attention, for the ‘spirit of the times’: the past should be understood on its own terms. The extent to which this approach involves the inclusion of source passages in the Scots language, and in the characteristic expressions of Scottish religiosity, is highlighted.
The formative influences shaping these features in Burton’s work are then traced in the manuscript evidence of his literary juvenilia; his early familiarity with romantic fiction and poetry, particularly Scott; his admiration for T. B. Macaulay and Macaulay’s early essay on History; and his enthused response to the historiographic approach of P.F. Tytler.
Introduction: Continuities and Ruptures in the Mevlevi Tradition
Authors: Feldman Walter
Published: September 2022

The ceremony of the ‘Whirling Dervishes’ had been one of the few cultural creations of the Ottoman Turks that attracted the attention of European travellers over many centuries, to the point that it acquired descriptive names in the French and English languages. European musicological interest in this ceremony developed at the start of the 20th century. It was cut short, however, by the 1925 prohibition of all dervish ceremonies in the new Republic of Turkey. After about twenty years of official repression, the Mevlevi music and ceremony were gradually reinstated as a cultural and touristic manifestation, but with minimal participation of people who had been initiated as Mevlevi dervishes. Even without the benefit of full Sufistic training, musicians with some Mevlevi education and background succeeded in preserving much of the Mevlevi tradition, and even to create new compositions for the ceremony, until the present day.
Defining the Mystical Music of the Mevlevi Dervishes
Authors: Feldman Walter
Published: September 2022

Modern Turkish usage (since the post-WWII era) tends to collapse the distinction between ‘mysticism’ and ‘religion’ by creating a binary contrast of the secular and the religious. This binary system does not agree with the culture of the Ottoman Empire, and of the earlier Muslim Turkic states of Anatolia. In all of them Islamic mysticism or ‘Sufism’ had a defined place in a variety of social contexts, both in the cities and in the countryside. Unlike other areas of the Muslim world, in the Ottoman Empire the pan-Islamic mystical ceremony known as ‘zikr’ and the various more specialized mystical ceremonies, known as sema, mukabele, devir, ayin or ayin-i cem, all were able to co-exist within different social contexts, for many centuries. This long cultural experience allowed the Anatolian Turks (as well as Kurds) to create mystical musical expressions that were structurally differentiated from any form of either secular or religious music. This musical differentation went hand in hand with mystical poetic texts, whether in Turkish, Persian or forms of Kurdish. For many centuries the Mevlevi dervishes distinguished themsevles as performers, composers and teachers, within both the mystical and the secular musical spheres.
The Mevlevi Phenomenon
Authors: Feldman Walter
Published: September 2022

Mevlana Rumi (d. 1273) was both a great Islamic teacher and thinker and a renowned mystical poet. Nevertheless the extraordinary success of his descendants—beginning with his son Sultan Veled and grandson Ulu Arif Çelebi—in creating and maintaining a hierarchical Sufi organization and highly distinctive cultural practice, under aegis of the Mevlevi Dervish Order, was the result of their charismas, but also of the unique role of Sufism in the Islamicizing process taking place in Anatolia. One must also consider the patronage of the newly Islamic Mongol rulers in supporting them. This process began in Konya, Karahisar and other Anatolian cities, where systems of mystical training were adopted within the Melevi centers, known as Mevlevihane. By the 15th century this training came to combine the principles enunciated by Shams-e Tabrizi—the teacher of Rumi—and later by Pir Adil Çelebi (d. 1460) in Konya. By the earlier 17th century the Mevlevis became accepted within the new Ottoman capital Istanbul. From this period onward the Mevlevis were increasingly identified with and influential upon Ottoman civilization.
Postlude: Music, Poetry, and Mysticism in The Ottoman Empire
Authors: Feldman Walter
Published: September 2022

Rumi has been much appreciated as a Sufi poet throughout the Persianate World, from Bukhara and India to Iran itself. But today it is much less widely understood that Rumi’s legacy had no institutional basis in any of these countries. Through the Mevlevi Order of Dervishes this legacy had its center in the Seljuq and Karamanid states, and then the Ottoman Empire. Likewise, important elements of medieval Persianate Sufistic musical practices survived and were further developed in the Anatolian and later the Ottoman musical environments. Within this spiritual and cultural complex, human artistic creation held a highly significant role. Despite periods of political and economic instability, and the economic decline of most of Anatolia in relation to Istanbul and the European Ottoman provinces, the Mevlevis had both the cultural and economic resources to maintain the essence of this position for a period of over six centuries. In part due to their maintenance of the highest level of an Islamicate civilization close to its “classic” phase, the Mevlevis had the intellectual flexibility to help initiate the “locally generated modernity” of the long 18th century.They were also within its continuation under the harsher conditions of Western-oriented Ottoman modernity in the later 19th-early 20th centuries.
Alevi Agency in Changing Political Contexts
Authors: Özkul Derya , Markussen Hege
Published: September 2022

This chapter introduces the main concerns of this book – that is, the agency Alevis display when facing discrimination in Turkey and their struggles for recognition and representation in political and social spheres in Turkey and in the diaspora, as well as how these struggles change Alevi rituals, representation, and authority. This first chapter introduces significant changes in the political landscape in Turkey and its consequences for Alevi recognition. The analysis of these issues needs to be explored in relation to Alevis’ agency in navigating, resisting and/or changing political structures.
The Transformation of the Sacred Authority of the Çelebis: The Ulusoy Family in Contemporary Turkey
Authors: Yikmiş Meral Salman
Published: September 2022

This chapter is about the Çelebi branch of the Bektaşi order and the persistence of the Ulusoy family as the leading sacred patrilineage of the Alevi-Bektaşi community in the Turkish republican period. In the Ottoman period, the Çelebi branch (the Ulusoy family) was formally recognized as Hacı Bektaş Veli’s hereditary successors. After the establishment of the Republic, however, the family lost its granted privileges. The displacement of the family during the republican regime was destructive, because the hierarchical order within the “path,” in other words, the old social differentiation among mürşits, dedes, and talips, became blurred. In line with this, the authority of the mürşit was dispersed among all male members of the family. The competing claims of the efendis over the sacred authority led to further struggles over succession. However, this process was also constructive because family members undertook the newly emerging forms of authority. The title of efendi gained new meanings with the modification of the structure of the “path.” Sacred authority was converted into the political realm by being the founders of political parties or being elected as deputies in areas where Alevi-Bektaşi communities lived.
Amateur Craft
Authors: Nenadic Stana
Published: September 2022

Changing areas of craft-making for leisure are considered in this chapter. It starts by exploring the meaning of amateur craft for men and women, with gendered skills being uppermost, including those focussed on home making, decoration and domesticity for women and the manipulation of complex tools or materials for men. Gift-giving was an important motivator for the amateur craftworker. Elite, middle class and working-class amateurs are featured. The shops, magazines and training that catered for the amateur are considered. Amateurs were a frequent presence at craft exhibitions and were promoted by the Arts and Crafts movement in the late nineteenth century. The chapter ends with analysis of the tensions that sometimes existed between the amateur and the craftsman or woman who worked for a living.
Dream of the ’90s: Mary Harron in Indiewood
Authors: Barrett Kyle
Published: September 2022

In Chapter Three, Kyle Barrett studies I Shot Andy Warhol, American Psycho, and The Notorious Bettie Page within the context of Indiewood. Barrett reflects on Harron’s aesthetics and use of satire, comparing Harron’s work to that of her contemporaries. I Shot Andy Warhol is analyzed alongside Julian Schnabel’s biopic Basquiat. American Psycho is examined together with David Fincher’s Fight Club, both films noted for their deconstruction of toxic masculinity. Finally, Barrett examines The Notorious Bettie Page alongside Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette in comparison to their respective visual styles.
“I Like to Dissect Girls”: Mary Harron’s American Psycho as Gendered Metafiction
Authors: d’Hont Coco
Published: September 2022

Chapter Four provides an in-depth analysis of the filmmaker’s most (in)famous film. Coco d’Hont contextualizes American Psycho within gendered metafiction, a concept that interrogates the boundary of fact and fiction in its representation of violent masculinity in popular culture. D’Hont argues the film was part of a trend in cinema that explored the crisis of masculinity at the end of the twentieth century. With comparison to Silence of the Lambs and Pulp Fiction, d’Hont contends Harron’s adaptation is a subversive text as a depiction of masculine violence.
Competing with Entrepreneurial Diasporians: Origins of Anti-Semitism in Nineteenth-Century Russia
Authors: Kolstø Pål
Published: September 2022

The chapter analyses an aspect of ethnic conflict traditionally regarded as driven by religious bigotry and incompatible identities: Russian anti-Semitism, as it developed in the second half of the 19th century. However, popular, stereotyped perceptions of this phenomenon are marred by several misconceptions. It is widely believed that anti-Semitism originated among the peasants, partly as a result of religious obscurantism and partly as a reaction against alleged Jewish exploitation. In fact, however, pogroms almost invariably started in towns and cities, and the main instigators were artisans and merchants and others who plied the same trades as the Jews, later also professionals such as lawyers. Economic interests and professional competition, not exploitation, was the major driving force. This is clear in the writings of Russian anti-Semites and is also how most Jews at the time understood the reasons underlying their ordeals. Jews could be targeted for persecution because they were a diaspora group, and did not enjoy the same protection as did the indigenous population. Even though the tsarist regime did not deliberately instigate pogroms, they contributed to them by failing to give the Jews the same rights as other subjects of the empire.
A Maelstrom of Doing and Undoing: McCarthy’s Political Imaginary
Authors: O'Connor Patrick
Published: September 2022

The conclusion consolidates the overall argument about McCarthy’s place in the canon of philosophical novelists. Additionally, it summarises the findings of the book, reflecting on its achievements and significance, as well as examining future avenues of research.
THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE AS A TOOL FOR PROMOTION OF THE RUSSIAN WORLD (ON THE MATERIAL OF THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA)
Authors:   Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Moscow, Russian Federation, ANDREEVA EKATERINA
Published: September 2022

The purpose of the research. The article is devoted to the issue of the position of the Russian language in the countries of the East. Currently, there can be observed a steady interest in learning Russian in China, on the one hand, and a significant narrowing of the Russian-language information space, a decrease in prestige and popularity of Russian in Europe and North America, on the other. The main purpose of this study is to assess the prospects of the Russian language in China, taking the current political situation into account. The scientific novelty of the study consists in an analysis of the possible prospects for development of the Russian language in China during the following decade, as well as in the study of modern trends and projects of cultural cooperation between the two countries. When considering the latest trends in teaching Russian to Chinese students, the author of the article identifies the main modern problems of teaching the Russian language in the People’s Republic of China and suggests possible ways to overcome them. The practical value of the study consists in the fact that the observations and conclusions proposed in this paper can be used in the development of effective programs for promotion of the Russian language in the East. The research methodology includes the method of synchronous analysis and the method of contextual analysis. Among the general scientific research methods, concretization, systematization, analysis and synthesis of information can be singled out.
THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO DEFINING THE STATE AS TARGET OF STRATEGIC INSTABILITY
Authors:   Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Moscow, Russian Federation, KAFTAN VITALY , MOLODTSOV IGOR
Published: September 2022

The purpose of the research. The article is about the issues of strategic instability of modern states. Based on the analysis of the state as the most significant object of socio-political interaction and the primary goal for the technologies of organizing strategic instability, the authors typify various theories of the socio-humanitarian sciences on the formation of statehood on the principle of scientific rationality. This is necessary to determine the main directions of countering the influence of information and communication technologies of a destructive nature, used by Western political actors in order to destroy the subjectivity of the Russian Federation, intercept state administration and form hotbeds of socio-political instability. Conclusions. As a result of the study, the authors come to the conclusion that the modern Russia, needs to focus its main efforts on concentrating social actors’ powers, necessary resources, forces and means of information and communication in order to ensure effective security and sustainable regulation of social relations.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND “SMART CITY”: FROM DIGITALIZATION TO INNOVATION CITY
Authors:   Moscow Center of Urban Studies “City” Foundation, oscow, Russian Federation, RASKHODCHIKOV ALEKSEY
Published: September 2022

The article discusses modern theoretical approaches to the formation of a “smart city”, assesses the risks of a technological approach to the adoption of digital services and the prospects for socially oriented models of innovative urban development. On the basis of sociological data, it demonstrates the problems of imbalance in the urban environment of mega-cities and analyzes the possibilities of using big data and artificial intelligence technologies to harmonize the living environment in cities in favour of people.