bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Public Scholar
Authors: Hinton Alexander Laban
Published: May 2023

The chapter revisits theoretical issues through a contrast of the methods and epistemology of social science/anthropology and law. It looks at the synergies and discordances between the juridical production of a verdict and the author's disciplinary focus on explanation, context, and analysis. It also reconsiders the question of whether public scholars have a place in the courtroom and can contribute to international justice in a manner that can, even within the strict confines of legal procedure, provide important insights about major public issues like truth, justice, and genocide. The chapter details some of the major accomplishments of Nuon Chea's trial, ranging from the groundbreaking civil party participation to justice achieved at last for mass human rights violations. It stresses the importance of the trial to the victims, the rule of law, reconciliation, and deterrence.
Building the Workingman’s Dream
Authors: Morris Julia Caroline
Published: May 2023

This chapter takes a step back in time and historicizes Nauru's resurgence as a refugee company town within the country's first boomtown operations of copra and then phosphate. It mentions the offshore refugee company town that is described with a timing that reflects the current political climate around asylum seekers and refugees as threats, as problems, or as objects of rescue. Nauru's refugee industrial arrangement is due to a spatial and temporal environment already in existence. The chapter shows how the organization and materialization of one industry can shape another. It looks at the ways in which the industrial landscape and settlement were formed, and Nauru's governance systems were shaped in line with the particular methods of industrial production.
The Origins of Modern Major Wars
Authors: Bartoletti Andrea
Published: May 2023

This chapter provides an overview of all the other major wars in modern history. It starts by outlining the three major wars that were initiated by Louis XIV: Franco-Dutch War, Nine Years' War, and the War of the Spanish Succession. It also discusses the two major wars that were caused by the encirclement of Prussia, which includes the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War and reviews the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. The chapter analyzes in more detail the main anomaly for encirclement theory, the outbreak of World War II. It identifies the most relevant elements for encirclement theory, covering the presence of a two-front-war problem, the change in the invasion ability of the surrounding great that led to war initiation, and the logic of war contagion.
The Future of Major War
Authors: Bartoletti Andrea
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores the prospects for future major war. After debunking the myth that the nuclear revolution has made major wars anachronistic, the chapter identifies China as the next encircled great power that could initiate a major war to eliminate its two-front-war problem. A look at the past shows the recurrence of fundamental patterns across centuries and casts doubt on all those who claim that the nature of international politics has been revolutionized. The chapter discusses how the encircled great power initiates a war as a measure of last resort and with the limited aim of preventing actualized encirclement. It describes the major wars that happen in the absence of a near-preponderant state that tries to establish hegemony in its own region.
Realism and Restraint
Authors: Delury John
Published: May 2023

This chapter widens the lens to look at the dilemmas posed by America's postwar determination to defend the Free World through the Chinese Civil War and loss of China as background. It examines the writings of a strategist, theologian, academic, and philosopher to articulate a philosophical dissent from the emerging Cold War consensus. It also mentions how Yale offers a twist on the story of realism, as the university housed an influential school of geostrategists at the Yale Institute of International Studies. The chapter describes that Yale realists argued for restraint based strictly on power politics and national security, dispensing with the ethical dimension found in Christian realism or principled realism. It reconstructs Cold War realism to illuminate the larger philosophical debate over American foreign policy.
Subversion and Repression
Authors: Delury John
Published: May 2023

This chapter looks at the argument between three of the United States' leading experts: Owen Lattimore, John King Fairbank, and David Nelson Rowe. It explores how their policy debates became wrapped up in toxic political struggles with the rise of anti-communist politicians like Representative Richard Nixon and Senator Joe McCarthy, and the toll that McCarthyite repression took on the China field in particular. It also discusses how the Yale campus is presented as a local battleground in the surge of subversion and repression unleashed by McCarthyism. The chapter traces Professor Rowe's efforts in assisting the prosecution of Owen Lattimore.
Intelligence or Psywar
Authors: Delury John
Published: May 2023

This chapter describes the emergence of covert foreign policy and the birth of the CIA. The World War II experiment in civilian intelligence and guerrilla warfare, which was glamorized by the Jedburgh teams operating behind Nazi lines, was dismantled by President Truman as he was anxious about the risk of an American gestapo. The chapter talks about how Truman changed his mind amid Cold War fears of communist subversion and hopes in political warfare and psywar. It considers the leading role that Yalies played in the early days of the CIA, which had a field day recruiting on campus, especially during the Korean War years. The Yale of Jack Downey's college years provides an illuminating microcosm of the main themes of the loss of China, the philosophy of realism, the fear of subversion and tendency toward repression, and the rise of intelligence.
Hong Kong Fight League
Authors: Delury John
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses ground zero for weaponizing the Third Force, which was the British colony of Hong Kong. It focuses on the Hong Kong Fight League, which reconstructs the CIA outreach to Third Force intellectuals, generals, and agents. It also draws on the memoirs of a key intermediary, Zhang Fakui, who along with Carsun Chang founded the Fight League for a Free and Democratic China. Zhang doubted the efficacy of the Jedburgh model as applied to Mao Zedong's China, but he worked with his nameless American contacts to weaponize the Third Force. The chapter recounts how the counterintelligence of the Chinese Communist Party watched the covert involvement of the United States in Hong Kong and Taiwan, while Director Beetle Smith at CIA headquarters worried that covert ops were distracting the Agency from its primary mission of providing policymakers with strategic intelligence.
Manchurian Manhunt
Authors: Delury John
Published: May 2023

This chapter talks about how the Third Force operation transported volunteer agents to America's archipelago of subversion in the Western Pacific. It details the intensive training in Saipan and the establishment of a recruitment node in Hong Kong. The initial infiltration of counterrevolutionary teams escaped detection, but discovery of the liaison Li Junying triggered a Manchurian manhunt by the public security and counterespionage authorities. The chapter looks at the sources of the People's Republic of China that allowed in-depth reconstruction of the capture of CIA-backed Third Force guerillas, shedding light on the workings of the internal security apparatus in the early Mao years. As the agents of subversion were being captured and killed in Manchuria, US military leaders continued to be stymied by Chinese defenses in Korea and the American public elected the World War II hero, former general Dwight Eisenhower, as president.
War and Revolution
Authors: Delury John
Published: May 2023

This chapter covers the tumultuous years when Mao Zedong's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution turned China upside down and President Lyndon B. Johnson's war in Vietnam tore America apart. It details the pivotal Senate hearing called by William Fulbright in 1966. It also discusses the realists and China Hands that made a triumphant return to the public stage to challenge the conventional wisdom on Vietnam and China. The chapter highlights how the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution reinvigorated the spirit of antagonism against imperialist America. With US–China relations trapped in the inertia of mutual hostility and misunderstanding, each country entered into its own vortex of tumult and transformation in the mid-1960s.
The Sixties Stalemate
Authors: Colbourn Susan
Published: May 2023

This chapter shows how the political stalemate that emerged in the 1960s remade the Atlantic alliance. By the end of that decade, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had adopted a more graduated strategy, often known as flexible response, and carved out a political role as an alliance dedicated to more than deterring and, if needed, defending against Soviet aggression. The chapter cites the argument of allies that strong defenses could underwrite the search for political solutions to the most pressing geopolitical problems. It talks about the dramatic growth of Soviet forces that threatened to upend the alliance's strategy and erode confidence in the protection afforded by the United States. Through arms control negotiations, the United States and the Soviet Union could limit the costly arms race, but the terms of that agreement could easily create their own crisis of confidence within the alliance.
Parity’s Problems
Authors: Colbourn Susan
Published: May 2023

This chapter traces how the Western Europeans and, in particular, the West Germans lost confidence in the protection afforded by the US nuclear arsenal throughout the 1970s. Strategic arms control and the embrace of parity early in the decade left Washington's allies feeling exposed and vulnerable to Soviet political pressure. The chapter recounts how Richard Nixon recognized the growth of Moscow's military power, which meant that the Soviet Union could reach nuclear parity with the United States in short order. It discusses how strategic parity had existed since the late 1950s, when Soviet advances in intercontinental ballistic missiles stripped the United States of its geography. The chapter describes hypothetical military scenarios that spilled over into the realms of politics and psychology.
Shades of Gray
Authors: Colbourn Susan
Published: May 2023

This chapter emphasizes anxieties that only deepened as the decade wore on and Soviet capabilities multiplied. The development and deployment of a new Soviet medium-range missile, the SS-20, injected a degree of urgency into the debates, as the Western allies argued about whether new nuclear weapons would decrease Western Europe's security. The chapter talks about the RSD-10 Pioneers missiles, which came to be known in NATO circles as SS-20 Sabers. The Soviet Union's SS-20 Sabers are intermediate-range ballistic missiles with a range of five thousand kilometers and could easily strike the capitals of Western Europe, with everything from Reykjavik to Bonn in comfortable striking distance. The chapter details how the Western allies, alarmed by the missiles, sought new concepts, even new weapons, to shore up NATO's position.
Fiasco!
Authors: Colbourn Susan
Published: May 2023

This chapter delves into a controversy that dominated NATO's deliberations in 1977 and 1978, the so-called neutron bomb affair. Though ultimately the alliance's schemes collapsed, the deliberations over the neutron bomb laid critical foundations for the Dual-Track Decision. The chapter discusses how the Western allies hammered out an agreement that would combine plans to deploy new weapons with offers to limit those same deployments. It details how the collapse of the alliance's plans injected a new sense of urgency into the parallel debates regarding the Soviet Union's SS-20 Sabers and NATO's nuclear posture in Europe. The chapter highlights the grim depictions of the missiles designed to kill people but preserve property that seared into the public imagination and spurred a new wave of antinuclear activism dedicated to stopping the weapon.
The Year of the Missile
Authors: Colbourn Susan
Published: May 2023

This chapter covers the final countdown in 1983 (“year of the missile”) as the governments of Britain, Italy, and the Federal Republic of Germany succeeded in securing support for deployment. Throughout 1983, the missiles' opponents held out hope that they might achieve even greater successes shaping the choices made in the United Kingdom, Italy, and the Federal Republic of Germany. The chapter discusses the votes cast by constituents and the parties they return to office to in democracy that tends to turn popular dissatisfaction into actionable policy. It looks at the direct political challenges faced by NATO members that are not expected to host the missiles. It also mentions Italians that had stayed the course and ensured that the Federal Republic's chief condition was met, which is the housing of a nonnuclear, continental power.
The Empty Chair
Authors: Colbourn Susan
Published: May 2023

This chapter considers how the Western allies brought the Soviet Union back to the negotiating table, setting this within a broader effort in 1984 to jumpstart East–West dialogue after the doldrums of the early 1980s. It mentions how Western allies tried to create conditions that would bring the Soviet Union back to the bargaining table. As long as the Kremlin's chair remained empty and absent from the negotiations, NATO's governments invested their energies in attempts to reinvigorate East–West dialogue and shore up the alliance's image. The chapter discusses the Western allies' champion of defense and détente as the pillars of their strategy after being faced with skepticism in the late 1960s regarding their continued relevance in a changing international landscape. It recounts the arrival of US missiles in Western Europe, which was a source of disappointment for many who had mobilized to stop the bomb.
Who’s Afraid of Gorbachev?
Authors: Colbourn Susan
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores the challenges, both old and new, posed by the new general secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev, whom Ronald Reagan found a partner with that he was willing and able to negotiate. Gorbachev sought breathing space in order to shore up the Soviet Union, echoing Leonid Brezhnev's strategy. The chapter points out how the results of the negotiations, whether the near-deal at Reykjavik in 1986 or the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) Treaty signed a year later, set the cat among the pigeons in NATO circles. The chapter recounts the year 1981, wherein the Western allies had wholeheartedly endorsed the zero option. Then in 1987, the superpowers' embrace of zero left governments across Western Europe terrified about what would happen to NATO's defenses.
Blast from the Past
Authors: Colbourn Susan
Published: May 2023

The chapter examines the political fallout from the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) Treaty. It examines the Western allies' arguments over whether to modernize their remaining short-range nuclear weapons in Europe and when they should negotiate with the Soviets on these systems. The struggle over short-range nuclear forces was not just about the continuation of NATO's nuclear deterrent but also about the Federal Republic of Germany's place within the alliance. The chapter recounts the summer of 1989 wherein policymakers in Washington, London, and beyond worried more and more about a resurgent and increasingly assertive Bonn. Before 1989 was through, the unthinkable reunification of Germany's two halves seemed possible.
Angry at a Dead Son
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter is addressed to Jack. It talks about everyday things like politics and familiar old conversations between mother and son. Updates on how the family is faring since his passing are also included. “See, now everyone thinks about you all the time,” the author admonishes him, as things that had once brought the family pleasure only serve as unhappy reminders of a departed loved one. The chapter also recounts a time when the author had driven past the cemetery—a rare thing for her, and one which occurred by pure happenstance. Here, the author reminisces on funerals and death and remarks on the fact that neither Jack nor his grandmother, who had died only months before, have a headstone yet.
Learning to Travel
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter recounts the author's earliest experiences of travel. She had learned it from her mother, who often piled her children into the car to go see relatives in Washington. Early road trips involved recollections of cars constantly on the verge of breaking down, of visiting national monuments and historic events. The chapter paints a portrait of the author's mother as a traveler, both intrepid and foolhardy, who believed in the moment and taught the author to do the same. However, the author surmises that it was from her mother that she also learned the habit of running away from pain, at least for a little while, “because it would still be there when you pulled back into the driveway.”
Birding on Bleaker Island
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses a birding trip on Bleaker Island, in the Falklands, after Jack's death. There were several birds in the area which the author had yet to see, such as the black-browed albatross, five species of penguin, and flightless steamer ducks. However, the author recounts her experiences with the local brown skuas, who were known to harass other birds as well as humans. The chapter also notes conversations with Mike and Phyl Rendell, the owners of Bleaker. The Rendells told the author stories about the surrounding area and pointed out prime locations for bird watching. Neither of them were present for the Falklands War, however, which meant that they became a rather comforting presence in a place still reeling from the trauma of the war.
Fictional World
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores escapism in fiction through the close-knit families of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series, as well as The Waltons television show. These stories were contrasted with the reality of the author's growing up in a poor subsistence dairy farm, with a father who would eventually leave his family behind. The chapter compares the restlessness of the author's father with the father figure from the Little House books. It describes the author's childhood spent moving place to place to follow her father's whims, until he later left. Life in the aftermath of abandonment is also explored, showcasing the significance of the fictional worlds the author inhabits in order to cope with the misfortunes with the real world.
The Time Tim Went to Cuba
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter is an angry letter to the author's husband for leaving on the trip to Cuba. It dwells on the author's feelings of longing, bitterness, and abandonment, as she struggles to forgive her husband for leaving her behind on the anniversary of Jack's death. The chapter also details the mundane aspects of everyday life in her husband's absence, all the while considering deeper meanings for certain events, such as finding a door lock “out of alignment.” Why the author is angry at her husband is explored within these daily vignettes, which goes on for over a week until the author concedes that she has exhausted herself by dwelling on these emotions. The author then gives up on writing further daily updates.
Searching for Home in Italy
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter details a trip to Italy. This occurred a few months after Jack died and was meant to be a tour with other travel writers. They would be based in Bologna, but would take day trips. Prior to the trip, however, the author visits Dryden Lake, which she considers her anchor to the world she lives in when she is not traveling. The visit to Italy itself proved to be overwhelming for the author, as although she admired the scenery and its people, she found herself still searching for Dryden Lake while there. The author notes that she had difficulty interacting with the people there, as well as her companions, remarking that she “didn't know how to behave around people anymore.”
Minefields
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter talks about minefields. It discusses the minefields of the Falklands, planted there by the Argentine forces in 1982. How the Falkland Islanders have been coping with their presence and gradually clearing away the mines are explored. The chapter also focuses on minefields as a metaphor for the author's house in the aftermath of Jack's death, as even though his bedroom had been cleared away, there are still plenty of other parts of the house which bear reminders of Jack, serving as a minefield of memento mori for the author. Afterward, the chapter takes a look at the compromise settled between husband and wife when the family is unable to move out of the house and away from Jack's memory—a house renovation project which will give the author a space further away from Jack.
The Truth about Selfishness
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter focuses on another aspect of Tim's letter: when their remaining children confessed to feeling like their mother had abandoned them after Jack's death. They said that when they lost their brother, they also lost their mother. The author tries to explain why she had kept her family at arms' length during that time, stating that she was spiraling into an emotional black hole and did not want to drag her daughters into it. She acknowledges that constantly running away helped her to move on. Yet she also realizes that it was selfish of her to disconnect from her family like this, and wishes that she could have done things differently.
The Present
Authors: Dickinson Rachel
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses living in the present. Now, almost a decade has passed since Jack's death, and the author has finally learned to place him in the past. By the same token, however, she has difficulty placing him in the future. Indeed, she has difficulty imagining anything and anyone—including herself—in the future. This is partly because things seem so unstable at the time—the country hangs poised between Donald Trump and president-elect Joe Biden, and COVID-19 continues to claim lives and force everyone into lockdown. The world somehow seems meaner than it did in the past. Yet, for the author, life goes on.
Introduction
Authors: Kaplan Edward
Published: May 2023

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee (NESC), whose task was to determine what damage the USSR could inflict in a surprise attack. The NESC was fundamental to the creation of US nuclear strategy, and its work is virtually unknown. For twelve years, the subcommittee quantified the cost of failure. During critical moments—such as the crises in Berlin, Quemoy and Matsu, Laos, and Cuba, among others—and during day-today containment of the USSR, the NESC's reports were the best estimates of the butcher's bill of conflict and of how to reduce the cost in American lives. The reports show what presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy believed were plausible outcomes of nuclear war and delineated what the presidents thought was achievable in fighting a nuclear war, as opposed to peacetime deterrence. This assessment of the cost of failure came at a pivotal time in the history of US national security, between 1950 and 1965 as the Cold War's most direct confrontations between the superpowers occurred, and the NESC is a key to understanding that moment.
War Termination and NESC’s End
Authors: Kaplan Edward
Published: May 2023

This chapter focuses on a new and final direction for the Net Evaluation Subcommittee's (NESC) reports, as it discerned when a nuclear war might end, short of an all-out exchange, in a study of war termination. As work on the 1963 report wrapped up, the NESC began its most unusual and interesting study: “The Management and Termination of Nuclear War” (referred to as the termination report). Growing from a study group led by the Harvard economist, strategist, and later Nobel Prize winner Thomas Schelling, the report scrutinized coercive nuclear operations. This and the 1964 annual report marked the end of the NESC's existence, as an empowered Defense Department took over its analytical role. Ultimately, the final phase of the NESC's work was marked by its attempt to evolve in a new national security environment.
Making a Mirror for Priests
Authors: Klepper Deeana Copeland
Published: May 2023

This chapter focuses on the autograph manuscript for Albert of Diessen and his work, Mirror of Priests. It details how object and text in the Mirror are inextricably intertwined. According to the documentary record, Albert of Diessen was knowledgeable about history, landed and moveable property, and the art of negotiation. The chapter notes the value of manuscripts as they communicate much about the experience of composing, circulating, and reading a text. It acknowledges how Albert of Diessen's work provides valuable insight into the nature of Christianity as imagined for parish communities. Due to the nature of an autograph manuscript, a multidirectional conversation about the ideal Christian community becomes clear.
The Plastic Turn
Authors: Ghosh Ranjan
Published: May 2023

This chapter elaborates on the material-aesthetic dimensions of the plastic turn. It looks into the quality of plastic that was often referred to in technical and symbolic issues. The dimensions of plastic turn range between socioeconomic realities, metaphoric articulations through chemistry, transparency, and philosophy. Moreover, plastic created its pervasive resonance that is complicit in material necessity, self-activism, auto-immunity, and an in-trending power. The chapter acknowledges that plastic turn upended the way people think, express themselves, and live. The plastic turn encouraged the rearticulation of the philosophy of the Other, which is the communities of conversations and exchanges of the principles of I-You and the literary Other.
Plastic Affect
Authors: Ghosh Ranjan
Published: May 2023

This chapter expounds on the notion of the plastic affect. It likens Charles Darwin's concept of plastiglomerate to today's fascination and fetish, imagination and indignation surrounding plastic. Plastic Earth goes beyond the tradition of terraformation since it is an art form that has a conjoint intervention between human and nonhuman hands. The chapter then covers the phenomenon of plastifossilization in geomorphology. It also considers the environmental melancholia triggered by the denial and disavowal of plastic as sublime toxicity. Meanwhile, regardless of plastifossilization or plastipsychosis or plastic sublime, the plastic turn encourages agnotology since it is a steadily retreating frontier brought by either neglect or suppression.
Turn on …
Authors: Ghosh Ranjan
Published: May 2023

This chapter acknowledges the inevitability of plastic. It also considers the complexity surrounding the love for plastic transforming into a necessity to love avoiding plastic. The plastic affect primarily works on a disadjustment with the biotic and non-biotic world that builds more on mutuality instead of achieving a permanent split. The chapter also notes that plastic technology and plastic as technology is the unavoidable connection that ensures the cosmos of people's everyday life. It considers the people's aim to find a sense of place regardless of the cosmopolitan presence of plastic in their daily lives. The material-plastic element animates the mind and triggers the imagination, or the aesthetic, which is the inner recesses of the matter.
Introduction
Authors: Safran Gabriella
Published: May 2023

This introductory chapter provides an overview of how writers in the mid-nineteenth-century Russian Empire listened attentively to, recorded, and repeated the words of people unlike themselves, often Slavic peasants. These writers, even as they responded to the circumstances of the Russian Empire, were also members of a global mid-nineteenth-century media generation who competed to display their mastery of modern modes of hearing and recording. They recognized the spoken words of “the people” as performances, produced in the moment and meant to draw attention. The chapter introduces the concept of attentive listening as a performance, before listing thirteen ways to identify the winners of the listening contests that these texts stage. If listening across social lines is a kind of creative contest where the onlookers choose the winner, then the contestants can use different techniques to impress their audience.
Crossing
Authors: Safran Gabriella
Published: May 2023

This chapter argues that people mocked Dmitry Grigorovich as a tourist with a notebook for many reasons: his own demonstrative foreignness; his thematizing of epistemological uncertainty in his own writing; and, especially, Russian writers' need in the midcentury to find examples of inadequate listening to “the people” and to distinguish themselves from those rivals. The chapter begins by looking at Grigorovich's own writing, considering the novella The Village (1846), which recounts the short sad life of the peasant woman Akulina. Because Grigorovich was such an entertaining speaker who sometimes behaved like an adolescent, it makes sense to understand him as crossing, claiming a connection with Russian peasants in ways that made his claims of Russianness into “a focal object of play, contemplation, and dispute.” Grigorovich's crossing in The Village prompted critical comments and articles that reflected on the logistics and politics of reproducing rural language, even as they played with, contemplated, and disputed the author's identity. The chapter explores the ways in which writers who were engaged in “crossing” used examples other than Grigorovich to express their anxiety over being something like comic philologists.
Paper Making
Authors: Safran Gabriella
Published: May 2023

This chapter assesses listening and paper making in three stories from Ivan Turgenev's Notes of a Hunter (1852): “Khor' and Kalinych,” “The Singers,” and “Bezhin Meadow.” In all three, Turgenev's hunter-narrator thinks about his tenuous aural access to peasant voice. The first includes the purchase of rags to make paper; the second involves a song contest won by a paper factory vatman; and in the third a paper smoother describes a domovoi (house spirit), who manipulates the tools in a paper factory. The chapter argues that Turgenev's careful descriptions of hand paper making at a time when paper was increasingly being produced through an automated process—in stories about listening to “the people” in the dark—anticipate and respond to the critics' valorization of unmediated listening. In Notes of a Hunter, he finds a different way to justify his transcription of his characters' thoughts and thereby his critique of serfdom: he makes the production of paper and thus writing itself seem a natural part of the countryside.
Laughing
Authors: Safran Gabriella
Published: May 2023

This chapter explains that one reaction to the fantasies of perfect communication and verbatim recording across social lines was a parody of some of the technologies and modes of listening that enabled those dreams. It begins by looking at texts from the 1870s in which Turgenev and Dostoevsky return to the kinds of listening scenes that they had described earlier, but no longer with confidence that the peasant voice is available for their understanding and appreciation. The chapter then turns to Ivan Gorbunov, who published his comic sketches repeatedly in the 1860s and 1870s, considering his self-presentation as a child of serfs and how his biography demonstrates the instability of estate boundaries. His comic scenes depict authority and status as up for grabs, showing urban crowds of ill-educated people who refuse to listen peacefully to more literate people; his depictions of cannons and cannon shots suggest the decline of communication systems in which one person can convey a message clearly to many. Moreover, he parodies the awed percussive listening and the ecstatic opera listening seen in previous chapters.
Introduction
Authors: Alvarez Rafael
Published: May 2023

This chapter provides an overview of the life of Bruce White. White was born into an all-white, postwar suburb of lawyers, doctors, and businessmen. White's rosy memories of a somewhat idyllic childhood are brief, ending abruptly when he was six or seven years old and sexually abused by older boys in the neighborhood. His traumatic experience became the foundational trauma of his addiction. The Bruce White story details the brutal intractability of addiction while showcasing that even the most depraved junkie can recover from the progressive, fatal disease. The chapter acknowledges how addiction saturated American society. It quotes White's statement of believing that anyone can get clean and sober if he can.
Big Fucking Indian
Authors: Alvarez Rafael
Published: May 2023

This chapter notes that Bruce White met a guy named BFI, which was short for Big Fucking Indian. It starts with White getting acquainted with the Grove brothers, Dale and Gary. However, he was set up and robbed of $750. White called for BFI's help, who responded to his call and intimidated the Grove brothers. BFI went far and started slicing Gary's ear, demanding the money and drugs. The chapter explains that Bruce ended his friendship with his high school pal when Bruce was enthralled with the situation. The situation highlights White's core issues of anger and ego combined with recklessness.
One Promise
Authors: Alvarez Rafael
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores Bruce White expanding his business of recovery houses. It starts with a homeless woman asking for White's help for safe housing, citing it became the inspiration for the establishment of Hen House. Hen House is White's first recovery residence, which had thirteen beds for women and turned into a safe space for addicts to get clean and start over. Additionally, White desires to run an outpatient program in an effort to expand his business and serve Baltimore's entrenched population of addicts. The chapter mentions how White's professional image, despite his crude past, made some people in Baltimore's recovery industry jealous.
Burning Privilege
Authors: Scott Blake C.
Published: May 2023

This chapter assesses the contentious relationship between tourism, social inequality, and anticolonialism. Throughout the colonial and decolonizing world, hotels created spaces “for the localization of modernity in the colonial milieu.” Inside, guests wined and dined enjoying modern comforts, while sharply uniformed and dark-skinned locals catered to their travel desires. From the outside looking in, this exclusive system was a sign of what was wrong with the colonial world. As bastions of privilege, yet dependent on racialized and exploited labor, hotels evolved into battlegrounds between the colonial past and an undecided future. By the mid-twentieth century, the expansion of US power and the growth of tourism in Latin America and the Caribbean had produced a powerful wave of anti-Americanism. The chapter then looks at the attack on the Hotel Tivoli in the middle of a populist uprising against the US presence on the isthmus. It also traces the history of US–Panamanian relations, considering the larger wave of revolution sweeping across the developing world in the 1960s. In the aftermath of anticolonialism, the future of international tourism in the Caribbean was at first uncertain. However, tourism and foreign investment continued to be a primary vehicle for attracting capital in the postcolonial era.
Nubia in the (Non-Aligned) World
Authors: Carruthers William
Published: May 2023

This chapter covers the Nubian campaign's links with the nascent and institutionalized Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), whose members aim to distance themselves from outright membership of the Cold War power blocs. Many Western commentators have long considered the High Dam as the emblematic project of an autocratic revolution led by Nasser and an event fundamentally tied to Soviet technical assistance. Moreover, UNESCO's Nubian campaign is easily placed within Cold War binaries. However, even though the global Cold War coursed through Nubia, the global event never governed it entirely. The chapter explains how members of the NAM proved able to influence UNESCO's campaign.
Repeopling Nubia
Authors: Carruthers William
Published: May 2023

This concluding chapter explores the aftermath of the Nubian campaign. It acknowledges the Temple of Dendur to be the most famous of the structures gifted abroad by Egypt during UNESCO's Nubian campaign. In Nubia, the slow dispossession and disaggregation of the region's population from the ancient remains served to create that population as a tangible entity and aided modernization policies in Egyptian and Sudanese society. The chapter highlights UNESCO's project generating a disconnect between past and present that constituted the colonial genealogy of much of the fieldwork in Nubia. Even though representations of UNESCO's Nubian campaign urged a concentration on monument preservation, archaeological survey, and excavation, the technical practices interrelate to the social life of Nubians, which triggers queries about how Nubian life related to structure.
The Man from the Movie Kingdom
Authors: Parker Luke
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines four key Russian theorists of cinema and culture who entered into direct dialogue in a debate on the cinema. It shows how the approaches to exile of these more established figures informed Vladimir Nabokov's connection of chess and cinema in The Luzhin Defense (1929–1930). Two of these figures, the art critic Pavel Muratov and the poet Vladislav Khodasevich, present sophisticated analyses of cinema's place within an Americanized mass culture, which lead them to pessimistic conclusions about the place of art in European exile. Meanwhile, the polymathic and multilingual writers Andrei Levinson and Evgeny Znosko-Borovsky saw the cinema as part of a flourishing and healthy European culture. In following this debate with his own practical take, Nabokov's portrayal in The Luzhin Defense of the émigré chess impresario turned movie producer Valentinov combines an awareness of the culture industry with the gambit of a multilingual career. This allows Nabokov to bring the cinema into his own artistic sphere, a form of practical culture theory. Thus, Nabokov's work with the cinema is seen as turning decisively from the theoretical to the practical, yet retaining the scope of debates on the cinema's status as art.
Bee
Authors: Jukes Helen
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines the category and type of beehive. It investigates how to approach the bees and begin relating to them. All together in the hive, the bees can seem quite full of chaos, the very opposite of reason. The chapter delves into what kind of looking—what kind of scrutiny, what quality of attention—should the author be aiming for—what kind of gaze is good. It then reviews how to learn something about the colony as a whole by separating it out, piece by piece. A hive is not a factory, and a bee is not a machine part. The author seeks to understand her bodily experience—how it feels to be a bee going about in the world, with hooked knees and curling tongue, eyes and sting and armor plating. The chapter chronicles old rituals and traditions employed to attract wild colonies. It particularly discusses the ancient Mediterranean belief in the practice of bugonia, the spontaneous generation of a swarm from an ox or bull carcass. The chapter lays out detailed instructions for this task.
Losing Sight
Authors: Jukes Helen
Published: May 2023

This chapter presents the author's observations about bees. It notes that it is possible to tell the difference between a worker and a drone bee from a distance of two meters—you just have to look out for the size of their abdomen and for their eyes, which are differently spaced. At the hive they are bodies; at the fence, they are black and determined specks marking flight paths in the air. The workers are out searching for pollen and nectar, but the drones are not. The chapter also reviews the question of honeybee reproduction which was a source of debate and contention for centuries. It underlines that the mystery surrounding their reproduction persisted until the time of François Huber. The chapter then returns to Huber's letters, following his investigations into the impregnation of the queen. Since beekeeping is about keeping something alive, not just fixing it in place, the chapter seeks to find out how a colony regenerates itself—where does its new life come from?
Honey
Authors: Jukes Helen
Published: May 2023

This chapter opens with a discussion about the process of honey-making—how flower nectar is collected by bees from miles around and brought back inside the hive, where it's regurgitated and passed around to draw the moisture off, before being deposited in the wax cells and sealed as honeycomb. The chapter looks back at the author's whole experience of beekeeping—of learning and asking questions about the hive. It recalls the question she had when she was first considering getting a hive. What is the link between beekeeping and therapy—and what does honey have to do with healing? The chapter pays attention to honey and healing, and recounts some articles about honey's medicinal use, ailments honey, and the accounts of honey's use in human medicine, which date as far back as records go. The chapter digs into honey's in-betweenness, arguing that this may well have been part of what made honey so attractive as a component of healing rituals and magic rites: it is so difficult to place, neither wholly one thing nor the other; not animal; nor completely plant-based. The chapter highlights that honey is gathered from countless flowers and flower species, and produced by thousands of individual bees.
Afterword
Authors: Jukes Helen
Published: May 2023

This chapter recounts reports of honeybee losses across the United States and Europe, which drew public attention to the plight of pollinators and our dependency on them. Honeybees, as the chapter emphasizes, are a small part of a much larger picture—there are around twenty thousand bee species worldwide, and a multitude of other pollinating insects, including wasps, beetles and hoverflies—and in the years since, a far more devastating truth has come to light. The chapter highlights that honeybees are largely managed populations. It notes that there is an obvious economic incentive for maintaining numbers because both the honey industry and many crop farmers depend on them. The chapter also underlines that wild bees are crucial pollinators too, but because their role is less understood, their situation is more perilous. The chapter poses this question: If honeybee populations are being maintained while ecosystems are degraded, is it possible they're creating competition for wild species? It then considers how the honeybees led the author to a new understanding of the world and her place in it.
Conclusion
Authors: Bouchard Constance Brittain
Published: May 2023

This concluding chapter explains that medieval peasants were certainly not powerless and they exercised real agency. They sought to better themselves, they felt aggrieved when they were treated unfairly by the more powerful, and they tried to find ways to improve their situation. In spite of their diversity, medieval peasants recognized that collective action would often be necessary in opposing the powerful. They were entirely capable of organizing themselves, whether in creating a commune, adopting the Customs of Lorris, raising money to buy their way out of onerous dues, building a village church, or complaining to a court that they were being downtrodden. Moreover, French peasants of the high Middle Ages are found in the records choosing their own spouses, inheriting from family members, and opening up new lands to agriculture. The powerful in the high Middle Ages fully recognized this agency.
Asymmetries of Readability
Authors: Blumenberg Hans
Published: May 2023

This chapter looks at one of the linguistic preconditions of the idea that nature would tell its story without prompting, called “natural history.” The standard meaning of humankind as the narrator of natural history can be reinterpreted when early empiricism toys with the idea that nature must be allowed to disclose its history uncoerced. It mentions Francis Bacon, who looked for a metaphor that expresses the relationship of the theoretical subject to nature as its object. The chapter talks about paradisal humanity, which repeats the names originally pronounced in the divine fiat, which ensures obedience as the names emerged from the void in the act of creation. A deep-seated rivalry exists between a theory oriented to the ideal of depiction and one oriented to the ideal of the name.
The Idea of the Absolute Book
Authors: Blumenberg Hans
Published: May 2023

This chapter details how the Enlightenment seemed to have gained an irreversible victory when the self-appointed executor of the French Revolution transformed the Papal States into a republic. It talks about how the proclamations of downfall do wonders for the preservation of historically legitimated institutions. A year after the republicanization of Rome, German Romanticism set out to rediscover the Middle Ages. The chapter looks at historical consciousness that has tested its own powers by ascribing rationality to what had been defamed hitherto as pure unreason. Historicism does not rehabilitate obsolete institutions but the identity of the human nature that produced and endured them.
A Book on Nature as a Book of Nature
Authors: Blumenberg Hans
Published: May 2023

This chapter analyzes the view of physical reality as landscape, which is determined by a fact that was all but self-evident in early geography. It mentions that the French Encyclopedia had shown a universe primarily created by human beings, with nature presented in analogy to artifacts as a kind of meta-museum of isolated exhibits. It also stresses how one forgets how to remark or recognize the degree to which the techniques of illustration determine whether reality is seen as a drawing or as a mass of disparate objects. The chapter describes the title Kosmos, which should not be understood solely in relation to its historical meanings if the aesthetic connotations point to the archaic antecedent of ornament. The idea of an interconnectivity of all things could integrate vulcanism as the reaction of a planet's interior to its surface.
The Empty World Book
Authors: Blumenberg Hans
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses the Romantic idea of the absolute book that was characterized by another uncertainty that can only be explained or excused by the immature state of aesthetic reflection. The idea of the absolute book leaves intermediate versions to one side and provides a prior decision to satisfy the absolutism that prompted it. The chapter mentions the limiting of the author's role to the mere formality of its catalyzing function to reduce the basic idea of an aesthetics of reception to its pure form. It looks at the fiction of imagining an anonymous readership at work that is present in an exemplary undertaking of Romanticism. Extreme counter-project to the consciousness of unique genius stands in a text of Novalis from summer 1798 is connected with the plan to write on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe the natural scientist.