bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Foucault's Aestheticism
Authors: Lamb Kevin
Published: July 2012

"Foucault's Aestheticism" asks to what extent critique as Foucault conceives it can be read as a form of style. Starting from Foucault's description of "aestheticism" as "self-transformation," Lamb argues that accounts of Foucauldian critique have often sought to establish Foucault's position as one of affirmation or opposition without carefully setting out the terms by which his practice and relation to the self shift with respect to the institutions, disciplines, and practices that form his objects of study. By focusing on Foucault's description of modernity as an ethos against the reception of his history of classical ethics, the essay concludes not only that an impersonal style often functions crucially in Foucault's critical practice but also that no account of his style can afford to ignore the changed understanding of style at which Foucault ultimately arrives, an understanding in which style constitutes less the final expression of an authorial position than a provisional practice of self-modification.
Katha Pollitt
Authors: Pollitt Katha
Published: July 2012

I want to focus on the question of patriotism. If an American child and a Peruvian child were drowning, would you rush
to save the American child first? If you were in charge of feeding an international crowd of travelers stranded by a
disaster, would you give the Americans extra pie? Would you refuse on principle to marry a foreigner? Of course not.
In our lives as individuals we would find it unfair, bigoted, even bizarre, to give automatic preference to another
American. What about fairness, equality, merit, relative need, and simple human feeling?
But when one speaks not of Americans but of “The United States of America” everything changes.
Clement of Alexandria on the Importance of Table Etiquette
Authors: Leyerle Blake
Published: July 2012

Clement of Alexandria's discussion of table manners has received scant attention. In part, this is because issues of etiquette seem trivial to us—at a far remove from the serious subject of morality. In antiquity, however, behavior at meals formed part of an index of personal morality. Clement's concern to foster an ethic of restraint fits into this program of self-definition. His intent, however, is broader than the personal. As Pierre Bourdieu's work on the habitus has shown, "gestures" provide the basis for group identity. Clement uses his construct of politeness to promote group solidarity, especially at the important ritual moment of commensality.
Excaecati Occulta Justitia Dei : Augustine on Jews and Judaism
Authors: Fredriksen Paula
Published: July 2012

Seen in the perspective of the contra Iudaeos tradition, Augustine emerges as an idiosyncratic and innovative thinker whose tone when speaking of Jews and Judaism is exceptionally mild and whose estimate of the Jewish role in history is surprisingly positive. This essay argues that Augustine's relatively ironic "theology of Judaism" is the measure of his affirmation, against the Manichees, not of Jews per se, but of the God of Israel. This affirmation drove him ultimately to affirm, as with divine acceptance of Saul ( ad Simplicianum ) so with divine rejection of carnal Israel ( c. Faustum ), that God is just, though his justice is in principle hidden, occultissima . Against Blumenkranz, the essay concludes that theological encounters with Manichees, and not social encounters with Jews, stimulated Augustine's peculiar teaching.
Montanist Regional Bishops: New Evidence from Ancient Inscriptions
Authors: Tabbernee William
Published: July 2012

The unique Montanist office of koinōnos may have been introduced by Montanus himself as a means of ensuring that the essential nature of "the New Prophecy" would survive the inevitable institutionalization of Montanism. Even if koinōnoi were a feature only of later Montanism, a plausible connection can be made between them and the earliest companions of Montanus. By c. 380, but probably much earlier, koinōnoi were regional bishops who made sure that the Montanist tradition was handed on faithfully and that "the New Prophecy" continued to be taught and practiced in the region for which they were responsible.
Ambivalence Within a "Totalizing Discourse": Augustine's Sermons on the Sack of Rome
Authors: De Bruyn Theodore S.
Published: July 2012

Recent scholarship has explored the role of rhetoric in the Christianization of the ancient world. Particular attention has been given to "totalizing discourse" whereby Christian interpretations of events subsumed or excluded other interpretations. Augustine's sermons after the sack of Rome attest to competing interpretations of the sack and to tension between the attitude of Augustine and attitudes in his congregations. The paper explores the way in which Augustine deals rhetorically with the views of others, noting in particular his orchestration of biblical themes and divine sanctions to construct an identity for Christians that is antithetical to that of pagans. The persistence of dissent, even as it is represented by Augustine, reveals the limits of rhetoric as a medium of Christianization.
Ideology, History, and the Construction of "Woman" in Late Ancient Christianity
Authors: Clark Elizabeth A.
Published: July 2012

Theorists who specialize in ideology critique have noted various ways in which ideology operates to "fix" representations of the self: through stereotyping, naturalizing, universalizing, and de-historicizing of the self. Certain types of narrative writing and intertextual writing practices also serve as carriers of ideological meaning. In this essay, the writings of the Church Fathers pertaining to women are mined to demonstrate the ideological operations that can be noted therein. The effort to "re-historicize" these writings is explored in relation to the social location of the Fathers. The essay concludes with a brief suggestion that the ideological construction of an essentialized "woman" by the Fathers was not entirely successful, being in part subverted by both the patristic authors themselves as well as by the women whose identities they attempted to "fix."
Purity and Danger in Polycarp's Epistle to the Philippians: The Sin of Valens in Social Perspective
Authors: Maier Harry O.
Published: July 2012

This article seeks to move beyond traditional interpretations of Polycarp's epistle to the Philippians as formulated primarily as a response to the threat of heresy. It argues the letter was written to address the social chaos which resulted from the avarice of the presbyter Valens (11.1-2). First a case is made for understanding the charge of avarice against Valens on the basis of biblical and extra-canonical evidence that shows that well-to-do patrons enjoyed leadership positions in early Christian communities. There follows an analysis of metaphors Polycarp uses to describe the dangers of love of money. A literary background is provided for his appraisal by comparing these metaphors with various pagan and Jewish estimations of the dangers of greed. Polycarp's assessment echoes Jewish apocalyptic concerns and reveals a sectarian interest with group purity. Finally the investigation moves beyond 11.1-2 to discuss the ethical paraenesis in the rest of the letter: Polycarp's development of a household code, virtue and vice lists, and rhetorical elements which show that the letter belongs to a literary genre of epistolary advice or exhortation. It is argued that the main concern of Polycarp's paraenesis was to promote a purity-preserving and boundary-reinforcing ethos.
Lactantius and Constantine's Letter to Arles: Dating the Divine Institutes
Authors: Digeser Elizabeth DePalma
Published: July 2012

Many scholars have accepted Eberhard Heck's argument that Lactantius added two lengthy dedications to Constantine (1.1.13-16 and 7.27.11-17) when revising the Divine Institutes in C.E. 324 Parallels between this summa and Constantine's letter to the Synod of Aries (314), however, suggest that the rhetorician completed the second edition of the Divine Institutes much earlier, in 313. In this context, the chronological disparity of the dedications is evidence for an ongoing presentation of the material between them: Between 310 and 313, Lactantius may have been teaching the principles of Christianity to Constantine and his court. Thus, the last great Latin apologist may have exerted a significant influence on the first emperor to legalize Christianity.
The Polemical Context of Gregory of Nyssa's Doctrine of Divine Infinity
Authors: Weedman Mark
Published: July 2012

Gregory of Nyssa's account of divine infinity is one of his most important contributions to early Christian thought, so much so that modern scholarship has largely accepted Ekkehard Mühlenberg's claim that Gregory's formulation of the doctrine has no real philosophical or theological antecedent. However, this scholarship has discounted some important evidence to the contrary, especially that of Hilary of Poitiers, who uses an account of divine infinity in ways that anticipate Gregory's. The value of this evidence is that it helps establish the polemical rationale for why Gregory developed and employed divine infinity as he did: to defend the traditional pro-Nicene account of the Son's eternal generation against anti-Nicene (here Eunomian) claims to the contrary.
Jerome's Epitaphium Paulae : Hagiography, Pilgrimage, and the Cult of Saint Paula
Authors: Cain Andrew
Published: July 2012

In 404, Jerome composed a lengthy epitaph ( ep. 108) commemorating Paula, his longtime patron and monastic companion. This article combines textual, historical, and reception studies for an innovative approach to this fascinating work in the broader context of Jerome's life and work. Key hagiographic features of ep. 108 that have been overlooked by previous scholarly treatments are explored here. In particular, it is argued that while Jerome cast it ostensibly as a consolatio for Paula's daughter Eustochium, he conceived it primarily as the textual basis for a Bethlehem-centered cult of Paula the ascetic martyr-saint.
Remember That You Are Catholic" ( serm. 52.2): Augustine on the Unity of the Triune God
Authors: Ayres Lewis
Published: July 2012

That Augustine's Trinitarian theology "begins" with the "unity" of God is a persistent but strongly erroneous perception. In this article I offer an alternative reading of Augustine through seeing his Trinitarianism as embedded in fourth-century Latin pro-Nicene theology and as hence focused around the need to explain the inseparable operation of the triune God. This theme is common to both Greek and Latin pro-Nicene theology. Augustine approaches this task through extensive discussion of the ways in which the Incarnation provides the means for elevating our imaginations to true contemplation of the divine unity and diversity. Augustine is also explicit that there can be no formal analogy for the Godhead. I end by showing how Augustine's use of divine simplicity does not mark his theology as necessarily "neoplatonic" and distinct from his Latin predecessors, but indicates the extent to which his theology may be read as a development of that tradition.
"A Letter that Killeth": Toward a Reassessment of Antiochene Exegesis, or Diodore, Theodore, and Theodoret on the Psalms
Authors: O'Keefe John J.
Published: July 2012

The condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia and the subsequent consignment of his writings to historical obscurity is usually explained primarily as a rejection of Antiochene Christology. Ancient sources close to the matter, however, suggest that the problem was not so simple and that the resistance to Antiochene ideas extended to exegetical practices as well. Although usually cast by modern scholars in the role of misunderstood victim, it seems that, upon close examination, ancient authors had justifiable reasons to resist the Antiochene project. The exegesis of Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and, to some extent, Theodoret of Cyrus was methodologically restrictive and theologically weak. It tended to sever the linkages uniting the Old with the New and weakened the ability of the Bible to function as a Christian text. Rather than seeing Antiochene exegesis as a forward-looking project that was suppressed, we should consider it instead to be a backward-looking project that failed.
Friedrich Schlegel's Romanticization of Music
Authors: Hall Mirko M.
Published: July 2012

This articles explores Friedrich Schlegel's call for the "romanticization" of music in his early philosophical writings. This romanticization creates an infinitely perfectible musical work of dissonant sounds by actualizing the hermeneutic indeterminacy and anti-systematic tendencies of sonoric signifiers. These conditions initiate a crucial synchronic dialogue between the musical work and its listeners: as listeners actualize the work's dialectical contradictions into non-exhaustive semantic configurations, the work's formal properties shape listeners' thought-processes aesthetically.
The Man Behind the Mask?: Looking at Franz Xaver Messerschmidt
Authors: Yonan Michael
Published: July 2012

This essay challenges the notion that the disquieting grimaces and facial aberrations of sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt's Character Heads can be explained through suppositions about his eccentric or lunatic creative persona. In contrast, by foregrounding the objects themselves within a close visual analysis, Messerschmidt's sculptures are revealed as a kind of communication, but ironically an uncommunicative one, that empowered the artist to explore aspects of his craft that conventional artistic activity forbade. That we are unable to access a straightforward motivation behind his practice is precisely what renders it and these objects so compelling.
A Jewel in the Crown? Indian Wealth in Domestic Britain in the Late Eighteenth Century
Authors: Nechtman Tillman W
Published: July 2012

In the late eighteenth century, Britons labeled East India Company employees Nabobs and sharply criticized their newfound Indian wealth, arguing that it was reshaping Britain's political and economic institutions. This article seeks to understand how these debates resonated with the British public. It will argue that domestic Britons felt the return of nabobs and their nabobish fortunes in mundane economic ways, namely the increasing prices they paid when they went to buy daily commodities. It will also argue that Britons used another commodity—Indian diamonds—as a concrete demonstration of the connection between nabobs, their wealth, and the rising prices of consumer goods and of the fact that Indian money was tangibly foreign.
Gothic Piles and Endless Forests: Wollstonecraft between Burke and Rousseau
Authors: Schulman Alex
Published: July 2012

This essay seeks to reexamine the relationship of Mary Wollstonecraft to what have been called the eighteenth century's "politics of sense and sensibility" through the lens of her public battles with Edmund Burke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I demonstrate that Wollstonecraft embraces an openly contradictory stance toward such a politics in the service of her progressive political goals, especially as regards her support of the French revolutionaries, and in doing so elides a certain problematic inherent in the political embrace of emotion and sentimentality.
Blood, Shit, and Tears: The Textual Reinscription of Sacrifice, Ritual, and Victimhood in Bernard MacLaverty's Cal
Authors: Mahon Peter
Published: July 2012

This essay revisits Bernard MacLaverty's 1983 novel, Cal , in order to re-read it as a site of textual ritual sacrifice. This sacrificial reading draws on René Girard's landmark literary-anthropological explorations of the dynamic relations between sacrifice, religion and violence in Violence and the Sacred and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World . The essay argues (a) that Cal obsessively articulates and engages the Girardian mechanisms of violence, religion and sacrifice, and (b) that Cal makes it possible to theorize how literary texts "sacrificially" intervene in, modify and reinscribe the dynamics of modern political violence.
Samuel Johnson: Standardizer of English, Preserver of Gaelic
Authors: Strabone Jeff
Published: July 2012

Samuel Johnson's hostility towards Scotland and the Scots English dialect of the Lowlanders is well-known. Not so, however, his support for the preservation of Scottish Gaelic. A seeming contradiction, Johnson's position on Gaelic is essential for what it reveals about language, dialect, and national identity in the eighteenth century. Although Johnson believed in preserving all languages, he opposed diversity of dialect within languages. For him, Gaelic was a language of its own, but Scots English was an impure, corrupted dialect of a language.
Navigating "those terrible meshes of the Law": Legal Realism in Anthony Trollope's Orley Farm and The Eustace Diamonds
Authors: Pionke Albert D.
Published: July 2012

This essay draws upon Weberian sociology, law and literature studies, and Victorian novel criticism to explore Trollope's representation of the law in Orley Farm and The Eustace Diamond s . It reveals Trollope's damaging juxtaposition of the ethics of the realist novel and the commercialism of criminal advocacy in Orley Farm , and his persistent elevation of realist fiction as ethically superior to legal and romantic maneuvering in The Eustace Diamonds . Ultimately, the essay argues that Trollope is engaged in a vigorous competition on behalf of writers to rival lawyers for professional stature and charismatic authority in Victorian England.
Less Well-Wrought Urns: Henry Vaughan and the Decay of the Poetic Monument
Authors: West William N.
Published: July 2012

"Less Well-Wrought Urns" focuses on the concern of seventeenth-century poets with the durability of literature. Donne, Waller, and Herrick each reconsider the classical tradition that the poet created a work "more enduring than bronze," hinting that such durability was a poetic fiction. But Vaughan suggests that his poems may last as mere matter devoid of form. Vaughan imagines his poem "The Book" as a thing that, even as it falls apart, continues to yield or offer meaning. Such a theory suggests one of the appeals of material studies-that, in the absence of shared assumptions, it may be possible to forge a community based on attention to matter itself.
Gray's Ambition: Printed Voices and Performing Bards in the Later Poetry
Authors: Mulholland James
Published: July 2012

This essay examines the connection between Thomas Gray's later poems and Celtic oral culture. Scholars believe Gray to be nostalgic for medieval modes of literary authority and have tended to see the latter half of his career as a retreat from the literary marketplace. I suggest instead that in "The Bard" (1757) and in imitations of Celtic oral poetry from the 1760s Gray invents and refines a poetics of printed voice that simulates the sense of immediacy that he perceives to exist between bards and their audience. Rather than disengaging from the literate in favor of the oral, these poems simulate bardic voice in print and thus make a concerted attempt to counter the sense of alienation and misunderstanding that for Gray characterizes the relationship between modern authors and readers in print culture.
Boudinot's Change: Boudinot, Emerson, and Ross on Cherokee Removal
Authors: Schneider Bethany
Published: July 2012

This essay engages Cherokee editor Elias Boudinot's shift from resisting to supporting Cherokee Removal and his treasonous signing of the 1835 Treaty of New Echota. Reading Boudinot's change alongside Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1838 "Cherokee Letter," published in New England newspapers, and Cherokee Chief John Ross's insistence on the limited "freedom" of the Cherokee national press in his 1828 annual address, I turn away from readings of Boudinot as trapped between white and Cherokee identifications, reorienting the question from "why" to "where" did he do what he did. Boudinot's change of opinion had a long history of suppression and appearance in the Cherokee and United States national presses. I argue that that this publication history portrays not the polarization between but the increasing geographical, political, and legal overlap of the Cherokee Nation and the United States.
All Saints
Authors: Howie Cary
Published: July 2012

This introduction proposes that, throughout French (and not only French) literary history, saints embody the risk and the pleasure of a world that exceeds our grasp.
Staging Sanctity: Moral Confusion in Pierre Troterel's Tragédie de sainte Agnès
Authors: Meere Michael
Published: July 2012

Reading Pierre Troterel's La Tragédie de sainte Agnès ( 1615) against Counter-Reformation discourses, "Staging Sanctity" argues that this depiction of the patron saint of virginity slips between praise and subversion, thus creating moral confusion between official doxae on sanctity and representations of martyrs on the early modern urban stage.
Between Angela and Actaeon: Dislocation
Authors: Masciandaro Nicola , Kłosowska Anna
Published: July 2012

A coincidence of bodily and linguistic dislocation (dismemberment, disarticulation) connects Angela of Foligno's mystical experience and its Orphic parallel, the death of Actaeon. We explicate this intersection in order to interpret sanctity as dislocation with help from Foucault, Lyotard, Agamben, Meher Baba, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Pseudo-Dionysius, Bachelard, Levinas, Certeau.
A Saint of One's Own: Emmanuel Levinas, Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, and Eulalia of Mérida
Authors: Burrus Virginia
Published: July 2012

Shame and sanctity are intimately related in ancient "lives" of Jewish sages and Christian ascetics. Infinitely other , saints (from Eliezer to Eulalia) are also infinitely seductive in the audacity of their willful abjection. Drawing desire beyond law, hagiography evokes "not ethics alone," but "le saint, la sainteté du saint" (Levinas).
Sanctified Signs, Sacramental Seductions
Authors: MacKendrick Karmen
Published: July 2012

Sacramental sanctification occurs not through conventional causality, but in the nature of sacraments as signs. Taking up the Greek and Latin terms for these rites, this paper argues that sacraments are at once a promise and a mystery: always promising a mysterious more, the sacrament draws significance into the sacred.
Ex-Voto: Image, Organ, Time
Authors: Didi-Huberman Georges , Moore Gerald
Published: July 2012

Considering their historical persistence and various forms from the Middle Ages to the present day, Didi-Huberman opposes the relegation of votive offerings to the status of the primitive, arguing instead that they operate a material resemblance, in which the symbolic and the iconic are irreducibly contaminated by indexical contact.
Walking with Angels in Giacometti and Beckett
Authors: Mathews Timothy
Published: July 2012

What kind of knowledge is offered by art? This essay discusses Giacometti together with Beckett and Benjamin. Giacometti and Beckett are concerned with relations and their collapse: between persons, between memory and forgetting. Together, they prompt questions about the compatibility of space and time which, in Benjamin, show the difficulty of writing history without triumphalism.
Métis et Métissages: L'éclairage littéraire en miroir
Authors: Loum Daouda
Published: July 2012

Due to slavery, colonialism, and neo-colonialism, the violent contacts between Europe and Africa engendered social changes and aroused feelings of frustration, hatred, and even revenge. This painful experience appealed to the imagination of various black intellectuals. Through fiction and poetry, they tried to make alienated and subjugated Africans not only recover the quintessence of their "Negritude" but also contribute to the "Universal Civilization." Hence, the topicality in twentieth-century French African literature of this theme: "The Métis Imagination and Cross-Culture: A Literary Approach." This paper is an attempt to examine the evolution of the issue through history, especially in the light of three trends of thought. Firstly, as patriots and upholders of African values, Ousmane Socé Diop and Mariama Bâ systematically reject intermarriage, since they find it detrimental to the black race, and to the progress of Africa as well. Secondly, Abdoulaye Sadji, who is aware of the inevitable social transformations that occur when people of divergent cultures come into contact and conflict, moderates his point of view, considering that interracial marriage entails both advantages and inconveniences. Thirdly, Léopold Sédar Senghor, the president and poet, approves of hybridity, while focusing on cultural, intellectual, and economic exchanges for the fulfillment of the "Universal Civilization." What is worth stressing is that although he promotes mixed marriage, Senghor does not impose it as a sine qua non condition for the accomplishment of this political and humanistic project.
On the Fringes of the "Civilizing Mission": "Suspicious " Frenchmen and Unofficial Discourses of French Colonialism in AOF (1918–1939)
Authors: Keller Kathleen
Published: July 2012

Dans les études historiques d'Afrique Occidentale française l'État colonial est souvent le point de départ pour comprendre la « mission civilisatrice ». Cependant, la communauté européenne coloniale en AOF ne fut pas limitée à l'administration coloniale. Des négociants Bordelais, petits commerçants, touristes, et visiteurs de passage ne furent pas des administrateurs mais ils avaient aussi des conceptions de la « mission civilisatrice ». Cet article propose d'examiner des discours non-officiels de la « mission civilisatrice » pour comprendre comment la compréhension de la « mission civilisatrice » peut être enrichie. L'article commence avec une description des divisions dans la communauté française d'AOF du point de vue de l'administration. La police d'AOF eût peu de droits de contrôler migration française et manifestèrent des peurs du développement d'une population « dangereuse » en AOF. Cette critique des blancs pauvres par les autorités d'AOF indique une grosse division dans la population française et suggère que les buts de tous les Français aux colonies n'étaient jamais parallèles. La deuxième section propose une analyse des documents policières de la surveillance des personnages « suspects ». Des « personnages suspects » français nous présentent un groupe de Français marginaux qui attirèrent l'attention de la police pour les propos où gestes jugés « suspects ». Bien sûr que ce groupe montre les préjugés et peurs de la police, mais il offre aussi une image des Français qui ne conformaient pas aux normes sociaux bourgeois de l'État. Néanmoins, des versions de la « mission civilisatrice » de ce groupe montre que même parmi ceux qui cherchèrent l'aventure, la richesse, où l'évasion aux colonies ils gardèrent la rhétorique de condescendance et intervention dans la vie africaine qui caractériser la « mission » officielle. D'autres ré-imaginèrent la mission des Français en Afrique en termes de politique de gauche, utilisant la colonisation pour entreprendre des missions de propagande communiste.
Au fil des eaux de la Sèvre: Une interface avec les colonies d'Amérique au XVIII e siècle
Authors: Marien Laurent
Published: July 2012

In focusing mainly on the study of the great Atlantic ports to understand the relationship between early modern France and its colonies, particularly New France, historiography has neglected the hinterlands. As a result, the maritime economy remains imperfectly documented. The aim of this contribution is to measure the impact of colonial and maritime relations on the countryside inland from La Rochelle and Rochefort, along the Sèvre niortaise, and to assess their importance in the spatial organization of these territories. What we discover is not only a trade and transit area, but also a production and transformation platform dealing with New France. Migratory flows also contributed to these colonial exchanges: the region of Marans and the Sèvre axis were a recruiting and transit area for people who made their way to the other side of the Atlantic in the eighteenth century.
« Le délit d'abandon de domicile conjugal » ou l'invasion du pénal colonial dans les jugements des « tribunaux indigènes » au Soudan français, 1900-1947
Authors: Rodet Marie
Published: July 2012

This article aims to examine the interplay between customary law, colonial law, and French law through the study of court cases of female desertion in the region of Kayes in French Sudan (now known as Mali) for the period 1900-1947. In 1903, a new colonial legal system was decreed in French West Africa. The new legislation guaranteed that the colonial courts would enforce African customs for African subjects. In order to facilitate control over colonial courts and the application of customary laws, the colonial administration was eager to formalize and unify the content of customary laws. This formalization relied on what the "traditional power," the jurisprudence of colonial courts, and the colonial administration viewed as customary law. This process ultimately led to a kind of "invention of tradition" pertaining to family law, which with the help of "traditional power" entailed the penalization of female desertion. The colonial and local considerations of power control in the region entailed increasing restrictions over women's mobility. From 1910 onward, wives accused of desertion were increasingly forced by the colonial courts to return to their husbands. If they refused, from 1914, the court started sending them to prison. Both "traditional power" and the colonial administration had agreed to declare female desertion as being henceforth a "customary offence."
Le baron Portal et l'indépendance d'Haïti, 1818–1821
Authors: Brière Jean-François
Published: July 2012

Although France recognized Haitian independence in 1825 (21 years after its proclamation by the Haitian government), it was Baron Portal, minister of the Navy and Colonies in 1818–1821, who initiated that move several years earlier by abandoning for the first time all claims by France to direct colonial rule over rebellious Haiti. That decision was the result of a struggle between former colonial planters who had been expelled from the island in 1804 and were lobbying the French government to attack Haiti again, and the chambers of commerce of the major ports of Western France, which were very eager to trade with Haiti and did not want to hear about military operations against the former colony. Being himself a former merchant-trader from Bordeaux, Portal sided with the commercial lobbyists, put the development of French maritime trade above the interests of the planters and paved the way for Haiti's recognition in the process.
Aristotle in New France: Louis Nicolas and the Making of the Codex canadensis
Authors: Warkentin Germaine
Published: July 2012

Le Codex canadensis est un manuscrit remarquable du XVII e siècle, composé de dessins d'autochtones, ainsi que de la flore et de la faune nord-américains. Le manuscrit fut redécouvert dans les années 1930. L'on détermina que son auteur était le jésuite Louis Nicolas seulement en 1979, et sa date précise demeure toujours incertaine. Cet article examine la provenance du manuscrit, sa présentation matérielle, son écriture, ses origines dans l'expérience jésuite en Amérique du Nord, ses sources dans les sciences naturelles antérieures à Linné et les conditions sociales de sa composition. A partir d'approches et d'informations fournies par plusieurs domaines de l'histoire politique, de l'histoire scientifique, de l'étude du mécénat et de la codicologie, il conclut que Nicolas travaillait encore sur le manuscrit en 1700, et qu'il s'agissait probablement d'un livre destiné à être présenté à Louis XIV. Le Codex canadensis n'est pas un simple portfolio de dessins. Sa présentation est une mise en scène des populations et créatures qui peuplaient la Nouvelle France, selon les concepts de hiérarchie de l'imaginaire des Européens de l'époque.
A Newly Discovered Manuscript Map by Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz
Authors: Sayre Gordon M.
Published: July 2012

En 2007, la bibliothèque du Congrès a acquis une carte manuscrite de la main d'Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz, colon de la Louisiane française et auteur de l'Histoire de la Louisiane (1758). La carte a été faite peu après le retour de l'auteur en France en 1734. Pour les historiens de la colonie française et de sa cartographie, cette nouvelle carte est très intéressante. D'abord, elle ne fait aucune référence à Moncacht-apé, un indien Yazoo qui, selon les œuvres du Pratz des années 1750, a voyagé du Mississippi à l'Océan Pacifique bien avant Lewis et Clark. De plus, la nouvelle carte suggère que Le Page du Pratz consultait le cartographe Jean-Baptiste Bouguignon d'Anville quand il était en débat avec les cartographes de la famille Delisle en 1752–53.
African Words, Academic Choices: Re-Presenting Interviews and Oral Histories
Authors: Reef Anne
Published: July 2012

There are many things that it is like, this storytelling business. One of them (so she says in one of the paragraphs she has not crossed out yet) is a bottle with a genie in it. When the storyteller opens the bottle, the genie is released into the world, and it costs all hell to get him back in again. Her position … better, on the whole, that the genie stay in the bottle.

So says the narrator of the protagonist of J.M. Coetzee's novel, Elizabeth Costello. Costello, an aging novelist, philosophizes at a point in the book where Coetzee has conspired to provoke a moment of ethical reflection on the process of telling stories. Irony and paradox cleave to this paragraph's core—clearly, Coetzee, by continuing to write and to publish, does not really believe that the genie should stay bottled. But, while Costello intends to edit this reflection from her written work, both the narrator and Coetzee consider it worthy of inclusion in the novel, thus endorsing its importance.

Costello's comment provokes consideration of the nature and effects of narration in other representations. One such site is academic writing that uses interviews and oral histories as source material. Such writing necessitates at least two levels of narration: first, re-presentation of the primary material and second, the author's analysis, synthesis, and commentary on it. As in other genres, this distils into two kinds of material: mimesis and diegesis. Here Elizabeth Tonkin's definitions of these terms are useful. She describes mimesis as “the representation of direct speech” and diegesis as “the description of nonverbal events.”
Chipimpi, Vulgar Clans, and Lala-Lamba Ethnohistory
Authors: Siegel Brian
Published: July 2012

Common to the matrilineal peoples of eastern central Africa is their clan system, and the reciprocal joking or “funeral friendship,” relations that exist between clans with figuratively complementary names (Cunnison 1959:62-71; Richards 1937; Stefaniszyn 1950). This paper, however, focuses on the southeastern Shaba Pedicle, and the anomalous, one-sided joking between the Vulva and (allegedly pubic) Hair clans of the Lala and Lamba chiefs. I suggest that this joking, like the claim that these clans share a common mythical ancestor, is best explained in terms of nineteenth-century Lala and Lamba history, and of their competing claims to the Pedicle's easternmost end. This region of Bukanda lies between the Aushi to the north (in Bwaushi), the Lala and Swaka to the east and south (in Ilala and Maswaka), and the Lamba (of Ilamba) to the west. The main distinction among these closely-related and adjacent peoples, with their similar customs and languages, is in the histories and traditions of their chiefs.

The bizarre relationship between the chiefly Vulva and Hair clans is not widely known. I only heard of it during my fieldwork in Ilamba. The Lala, like the Lamba, straddle both the Congolese and Zambian sides of the Shaba Pedicle, and the literature on this region, in both French and English, is fragmentary and marked by an ahistorical and uncritical acceptance of oral traditions. The Lala are probably best known in relation to Mwana Lesa's Watchtower movement of the 1920s (Verbeek 1977,1983). Norman Long's Social Change and the Individual (Manchester, 1968) is the only modern ethnography on the Lala, yet this study of the enterprising Jehovah's Witnesses has little to say about dieir history or clans. Fortunately, Léon Verbeek's Filiation et usurpation (1987) has sorted through the oral and colonial histories, and has paved the way for comparative ethnohistories of the peoples on both sides of the Shaba Pedicle.
Perspectives on Fifty Years of Ghanaian Historiography
Authors: Adjaye Joseph K.
Published: July 2012

This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate on African methodology—sources, issues, methods, challenges—by presenting a Ghanaian case study, for, whereas there are a number of broad overviews of African methodology, some of which include surveys of regions such as eastern or southern Africa, as well as countries like Nigeria and Senegal, a study specifically devoted to examining historical production in Ghana is yet to be essayed. This paper, however, shares common concerns with African historiography in general in terms of the quest for distinctly African constructions of history as well as the manifold ways in which African historical production might be made to relate more effectively to local contexts.

In a recent contribution to a volume dedicated to honoring Bethwell Ogot, David William Cohen (2001:53) echoed a call which was by no means new but which still has relevance for African historical production today as it did in the 1960s. Emphasizing the need for African voices, he asserted that “…there are realms of knowledge and programs of knowledge production outside the academy, and outside the field situation, that might be understood and drawn upon to work at the reconstruction of the African past.” It is in this light that this piece was originally prepared in connection with Ghana's fiftieth independence anniversary in 2007.

Ghana has had a long span of historical writing dating back several centuries, but a tradition of Ghanaian historiography is only about 50 years old, as is the case with the development of national historiographies throughout much of Africa.
“The Lost Province”: Neglect and Governance in Colonial Ogoja
Authors: Manton John
Published: July 2012

The notion that the colonial entity administered as Ogoja Province represented a Nigerian form of “the frontier” persisted right through the period of British rule in Nigeria. In a late colonial geography, Ogoja and eastern Calabar are referred to as the “pioneer fringe.” Marginalized by the economic geography of colonialism, as a result of its relatively low population density, in contrast to much of southeastern Nigeria, and by virtue of its terrain, crossed by unforded rivers and characterized by heavy, clayey soils which restricted wet-season travel, it could still be characterized in the 1940s as a “traceless praierie [sic]” by one of its most seasoned European observers, and as “the Lost Province” in common colonial parlance. Scholarly exploration has done little to address this marginalization, a fact both pivotal in the administration and development of Ogoja Province and restrictive of our attempts to understand and describe these administrative processes. The dynamics of community, trade, and migration in Ogoja, and the systematic misunderstandings to which these dynamics were subject, both constitute historical processes which call for scrutiny, and help shape development and welfare projects undertaken in the later colonial period and in post-independence Nigeria. This study investigates the problematic interaction of ethnography and administration at the colonial margin, and the implications of this both for the historical study of Ogoja and its hinterland and for economic and social development planning in the area.
The Benin Kingdom in British Imperial Historiography
Authors: Osadolor Osarhieme Benson , Otoide Leo Enahoro
Published: July 2012

The body of knowledge that constituted British imperial writing, and the expression that interacted with it were attempts to engage European readership on the imperial adventure in Africa in the age of the new imperialism. This study is an attempt to address the complex issues involved in the production of historical knowledge about precolonial Benin to justify British colonial rule. The argument advanced in this paper is that, since imperial discourse set out to deal with history in terms of civilization, British imperial writing was a struggle to articulate certain ideas about Benin into a position of dominance before the British public. As Mary Louise Pratt explains, “depicting the civilizing mission as an aesthetic project is a strategy the west has often used for defining others as available for and in need of its benign and beautifying intervention.” British imperial discourse will form the basis of the discussion in this paper.

Imperial discourse and its subjectivity raises questions about issues of power and privilege of those writers who were determined to sustain their voices in the debate on European imperialism in Africa. Their approach to the constitution of knowledge about Benin was one of many ways that opened the frontiers of knowledge about African states and societies to redefine civilization, albeit for the purposes of understanding various meanings and implications in this intellectual assault. This provides a vital entry point for examining the European colonial approach to the construction of the image of Africa. The aim is to demonstrate how this process suggests a connection from imperial expansionism to forms of knowledge and expression that reaffirmed metropolitan authority in the context of colonial subjugation.
Gassendi and Kant on Existence
Authors: Forgie William
Published: July 2012

In rejecting Descartes's ontological proof for the existence of God, Gassendi maintained that existence is not a property and Kant said that it is not a "real predicate." It is commonly supposed that both are making the same claim. Some have even thought that they advance essentially the same argument for that same claim. I believe none of this is correct. Gassendi and Kant offer different arguments. And they are arguing for different conclusions. These differences stem from a more fundamental one: they mean different things by existence.
Peirce's Epistemology and Its Kantian Legacy: Exegetic and Systematic Considerations
Authors: Midtgarden Torjus
Published: July 2012

This paper considers Peirce's epistemology against the background of its Kantian legacy. While various interpreters like R. Rorty, K.-O. Apel and J. Habermas have claimed that Peirce remained a Kantian philosopher, the thesis defended here is that Peirce rejected several of Kant's epistemological dichotomies, such as the transcendental-empirical and the a priori-a posteriori dichotomy. In particular, the paper considers an epistemological project which has been largely neglected in the literature: Peirce's semiotic analysis of assertions. This analysis reconstructs various sign forms as elements of assertions and as pre-theoretic conditions for formal logic and for scientific inquiry. The paper shows how this analysis bears on modern philosophical research on indexicals, and also on pragmatically oriented philosophy of language more generally.
Descartes's Substance Dualism and His Independence Conception of Substance
Authors: Rodríguez Pereyra Gonzalo
Published: July 2012

Descartes maintained substance dualism, the thesis that no substance has both mental and material properties. His main argument for this thesis, the so-called separability argument from the Sixth Meditation (AT VII: 78) has long puzzled readers. In this paper I argue that Descartes' independence conception of substance (which Descartes presents in article 51 of the Principles) is crucial for the success of the separability argument and that Descartes used this conception of substance to defend his argument for substance dualism from an important objection.
Dunamis and the Science of Mechanics: Aristotle on Animal Motion
Authors: De Groot Jean
Published: July 2012

It is shown that Aristotle's references to automata in his biological treatises are meant to invoke the principle behind the ancient conception of the lever, i.e. that points on the rotating radius of a circle all move at different speeds proportional to their distances from the center. This principle is mathematical and explains a phenomenon taken as whole. Automata do not signify for him primarily a succession of material movers in contact, the modern model for mechanism. For animal locomotion and embryological development, Aristotle models his dunamis concept on the idea of mechanical potential that the lever principle displays.
Prostate Cancer Screening Perceptions, Knowledge and Behaviors among African American Men: Focus Group Findings
Authors: Forrester-Anderson Ivis T
Published: July 2012

The purpose of the study was to explore, using focus groups, the knowledge, perceptions, attitudes, and behavior of African American men concerning prostate cancer and screening for the disease using the prostate specific antigen and the digital rectal examination. Twelve focus groups (n=104) were conducted among African American men 40 years of age and older, residing in three counties in the metropolitan area of Baltimore, Maryland. The results of the study show various barriers to screening among the target population, which include limited knowledge about the disease, lack of access to screening services, embarrassment and fear of a positive diagnosis. Additional barriers reported were distrust of medical professionals and the government, reluctance to talk about sex-related health problems, complacency about the possibility of having the disease, and belief that prostate cancer is related to sexual behavior. Positive beliefs, hope, and familiarity with the disease were enabling factors for prostate cancer screening. The focus groups served to open doors to communities from the research and medicine world, and heightened awareness of prostate cancer.
Health Insurance Coverage and Health-Related Quality of Life: Analysis of 2000 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Data
Authors: Bharmal Murtuza , Thomas Joseph
Published: July 2012

This study investigated relationships between health insurance status and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) using the 2000 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data. Health-related quality of life was measured using the SF-12 Physical Component Summary (PCS) and SF-12 Mental Component Summary (MCS). The analysis controlled for sociodemographic and attitudinal variables and medical conditions. The analysis also investigated and controlled for possible reverse causality between HRQOL and health insurance in the models. After adjusting for covariates, individuals without health insurance had significantly lower mean PCS scores (beta=-5.8; SE=0.4) than those with health insurance. The adjusted association between no health insurance and MCS scores (beta=-1.1; SE=0.4) also was significant. The adjusted difference in HRQOL among people with health insurance and those without it exceeds or is comparable to adjusted differences in HRQOL between people with each of various medical conditions and people without them.