bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Abhidharma Buddhist Account of Conscious Experience
Authors: Chadha Monima
Published: March 2023

The Abhidharma account of conscious experience faces some serious challenges not only because of the absence of selves or persons, but also because of its commitment to mereological nihilism and the doctrine of momentariness. This chapter presents the account of conscious experience and notes the challenges that arise due to the latter commitments. These challenges question the reality, coherence, and empirical viability of the Abhidharma view of conscious experience and thought. On behalf of Vasubandhu and Abhidharma philosophers the author develops the Abhidharma interpretation of conscious experience and shows that the account can withstand these challenges and deserves serious consideration.
Classical Equilibrium Theory: Particles to Fields
Authors: Delaney Fredrickson , Delaney Kris T.
Published: March 2023

Starting with the simplest classical monatomic fluid, Chapter 2 discusses an “auxiliary field” technique that can be used to exactly convert equilibrium models of fluids framed in particle coordinates to statistical field theory models. The technique is applied to a variety of polymer and soft material models, including bonded, non-bonded, and electrostatic interactions among polymer segments. Field operators are identified that yield important structural and thermodynamic properties. A second “coherent states” field theory representation is introduced and shown to be useful in modeling polymers that can reversibly react
Advanced Simulation Methods
Authors: Delaney Fredrickson , Delaney Kris T.
Published: March 2023

Advanced methods for conducting field-theoretic simulations are surveyed. This includes a discussion of alternative ensembles, variable cell shape methods, free energy estimation, and coarse-graining methodologies. A strategy for linking atomistic particle simulations to field-theoretic simulations is also provided.
The Necessity of Young Adult Fiction
Authors: Williams Deborah Lindsay
Published: March 2023

The Necessity of Young Adult Literature argues that young adult (YA) fiction helps readers to think about some of the most pressing problems of the twenty-first century by offering imaginative reconceptualizations about identity, nation, family, and the human relationship to the planet. Using examples from YA fiction that range from the Harry Potter series to Nnedi Okorafor’s trilogy set in contemporary Nigeria, the book argues that the cultural work of YA fiction shapes readers’ perceptions, making them receptive to—and invested in—the possibility of positive social change. Speculative YA fiction shows how a cosmopolitan world-view can help to form communities that are not threatened by difference but instead see diversity and dissent as sources of strength and knowledge. YA literature opens up conversations about cosmopolitanism and climate change, suggesting that cosmopolitanism is not just a subject for theoretical debate but an ongoing practice that could radically restructure readers’ relationships with one another and the planet. The novels examined in this book could all be considered “fantastical,” but they offer insights into the real world that all readers—and particularly young adult readers—might draw on to reimagine social structures and the well-being of the planet. In different ways, these novels also illustrate the dangers inherent in fundamentalist visions of the world. The cultural work they perform and their engagement with important social and political issues demonstrate not only the power of literature to shape understandings of the world but also the ongoing relevance of “the book.”
Introduction: Why “Kids’ Books?”
Authors: Williams Deborah Lindsay
Published: March 2023

This chapter maps out the book’s overall trajectory and highlights its central focus on how the adolescent characters in the novels under discussion learn to be good readers who see the world with compassion and flexibility, rather than dogmatism and fear. “Good readers,” as introduced in this chapter, refers to the concept of “cosmopolitan reading,” an idea that is central to the argument of this book. With brief reference to each chapter, the introduction charts the book’s engagements with cosmopolitan reading, monstrosity, and the relationship between local and global, ideas that create crucial interventions in thinking about the threat of climate crisis and the fate of the human species.
Introduction
Authors: Howell Robert J.
Published: March 2023

Chapter 1 introduces readers to the puzzle of the elusive subject. On the one hand, it seems certain that there is a subject of experience. Not only does Descartes’ cogito, “I am thinking,” appear indubitable, but there are compelling metaphysical reasons to believe that conscious states must have subjects. Nevertheless, in some sense the subject of experience is elusive. As Hume observed, introspection doesn’t reveal a thing that has conscious states: it just reveals the conscious states themselves. After introducing readers to the basics of this puzzle, this introduction provides a roadmap of the argument in the rest of the book.
Introspective Elusiveness
Authors: Howell Robert J.
Published: March 2023

Philosophers as diverse as Hume, Sartre and the Buddha have argued that no self or subject can be found in experience. Try as we might, among the thoughts, feeling and conscious experience, we cannot catch a glimpse of the thing having them. Chapter 3 explains and defends this elusiveness thesis. Though some philosophers consider it obvious, others find it nearly incoherent. On one challenge, for example, we are aware of the subject by being aware of those thoughts and feelings, just as we are aware of other objects by being aware of their properties. In a sophisticated version of this challenge, Sidney Shoemaker argues that it all comes down to what is meant by inner perception. On one natural view, he argues, the subject is not elusive, but on a narrower view it is elusive but so are phenomenal states. The subject is therefore not particularly elusive. In response, four senses are articulated in which the subject is particularly elusive.
Backbenchers ‘Seize Control’
Authors: Russell Meg , James Lisa
Published: March 2023

This chapter looks into the government’s default control of the House of Commons agenda, which came under increasing pressure after the deal had been defeated when other MPs sought to build alternative majorities. The defeat of Theresa May’s deal in the first meaningful vote sparked an increasingly bitter political period, which triggered further division between both the main parties. Moreover, MPs expressed clear opposition to a no-deal exit and supported a doomed attempt to send the government back to the negotiating table. The chapter explains the Commons asking the Prime Minister to extend the Article 50 period. It also deals with May’s subsequent resignation.
Shut Down Parliament! Boris Johnson and the Prorogation Crisis
Authors: Russell Meg , James Lisa
Published: March 2023

This chapter covers the Conservative leadership contest, which resulted in the rise to the premiership of Boris Johnson. It acknowledges the fragility of the government’s position in parliament following Theresa May’s resignation. Parliamentarians sought to take action and prevent a no-deal Brexit as the Article 50 period was due to end. MPs voted for an extension of Article 50, but Johnson responded by threatening not to comply. The chapter discusses the concept of populism and democratic backsliding. It also expounds on the announcement of prorogation and parliament’s response, which included the Benn–Burt Act. The chain of events pushed the flexibility of the UK constitution to the limits since Johnson seemed to reject the fundamental constraints inherent in parliamentary democracy. The chapter then covers the arguments over the correlation between parliament and sovereignty.
Conclusion: Brexit, Parliament, and the Constitution
Authors: Russell Meg , James Lisa
Published: March 2023

This concluding chapter gives an overview of Brexit, which meant that the UK formally left the European Union in January 2020. It cites how the Brexit issue highlighted some key aspects of UK politics. Theresa May initially proposed a deal that was generally not accepted by Brexiteers, while Boris Johnson boosted the anti-parliamentary rhetoric. Moreover, most of the Brexit process was fundamentally affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, which drew attention away from Brexit and the government’s manifesto pledges of constitutional reform. The chapter looks into the cultural changes triggered by Brexit in UK politics and its subsequent influence on democratic pressures across the world. It also acknowledges how the Johnson regime ended in summer 2022.
Growing into Language
Authors: Tolchinsky Liliana , Berman Ruth A.
Published: March 2023

We argue that children undergo significant linguistic and socio-cognitive developments from childhood to adolescence and beyond, and that these derive from a combination of changes in the brain (based on genetic endowment) and environmental factors like ambient language(s), SES background, and literacy. Based on our own research backed up by findings of philosophers, (psycho)linguists, neurobiologists, and cognitive scientists, the book traces neurological underpinnings and developmental trajectories in authentic language use in diverse communicative contexts from storytelling and peer talk to writing academic essays. Following a brief prologue and a review of how the brain drives language at different periods in development (Chapter 1), Chapters 2 through 7 each embrace a particular world of knowledge and use of language. Beginning along a timeline, the book deals with using the past for narration (Chapter 2), talking and writing about events in the present (Chapter 3), and relating to (im)possible eventualities in the future (Chapter 4); it then proceeds to the domains of figurative language (Chapter 5), metalinguistic activities (Chapter 6), and gaining literacy in writing, reading, and digital communication (Chapter 7). Chapters 2 through 7 are constructed around an introduction to the domain, followed by a description of linguistic means of expression, neurological underpinnings, and developmental trajectories. The book concludes with an overview of fresh insights shed on these topics and the factors that booster development, finally pointing to questions for future study.
Global Disease Patterns
Authors: Sanders David , De Ceukelaire Wim , Hutton Barbara
Published: March 2023

This chapter focuses on the changing pattern of health and disease worldwide. It first presents the ten leading causes of death globally, before narrowing the focus to the leading causes of death among children under five years old as an indicator of the most at-risk populations. Disease patterns in underdeveloped countries are compared with those of European countries in the nineteenth century and we see that many diseases that we now regard as ‘diseases of poverty’ were once prevalent in the northern hemisphere. Why is this so? Different theories have been put forward to explain the change in disease patterns that countries follow as they urbanise and modernise. Instead of poorer countries following the same epidemiological transition as rich countries, another type of transition is evolving. In this new transition, countries are struggling with more than one dominant disease pattern at the same time—there is often a double, triple and sometimes even a quadruple burden of disease. Importantly, this is increasingly polarised across income groups, occurring not only between rich and poor countries, but also across social classes within poor and rich countries.
Cultural Heritage Protection and the Reconciliation Thesis
Authors: Bülow William , Thomas Joshua Lewis
Published: March 2023

This chapter critically analyses what we label the Reconciliation Thesis, which holds that cultural heritage should be protected during armed conflict because of its instrumental use in promoting peace and reconciliation between warring groups. We begin by arguing that combatants and military decision makers have strong reasons to fight in ways that uphold the prospects of future peace. We then identify several ways in which the safeguarding of cultural heritage might plausibly contribute to post-war peacebuilding. Nevertheless, we ultimately argue that there are reasons to be sceptical of the Reconciliation Thesis, especially when it is evoked as a justification for imposing serious risks or costs on persons, or sacrificing other significant military objectives.
Architecture and Cultural Memory
Authors: Hopkins Robert
Published: March 2023

Does historic architecture enable a form of collective memory? Taking a lead from John Ruskin, I argue yes. Memory is representing the past to oneself. The representations one uses to do this need not be mental, and the memories for which they are the vehicles can be collective. Despite the widely held view of architecture as an abstract art, some buildings do represent, symbolising what Susanne Langer called ‘an ethnic domain’—the distinctive form of life of a society or culture. In allowing us to experience their meaning, those buildings act as vehicles of collective memory for earlier forms of life. Given this, their loss in war (or otherwise) amounts to loss of shared memory for the cultures from which they sprang. We may still have knowledge of those cultures—there are many ways to retain information about them. But we will, as Ruskin says, no longer remember them.
The Stuart State and Its Peripheries
Authors: Smuts R. Malcolm
Published: March 2023

This chapter continues the discussion of its predecessor by examining efforts to bring disorderly peripheral regions—specifically the Anglo-Scottish Borders, the Scottish Isles and Highlands, and Ireland—under more effective state control. Initial efforts to create a uniform administrative system over the Borders failed to eliminate basic differences in the enforcement of criminal justice between English and Scottish counties, but the region did gradually become more settled. James abandoned schemes for civilizing the Scottish Isles by planting colonies and imposing changes on clan leaders, opting instead to delegate the task to the earl of Argyll. In parts of Ireland, especially Ulster, he similarly sought to impose order indirectly through reliance on the defeated Irish earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell, and new lordships erected by English and Scottish planters, in Antrim and elsewhere. But English officials in Dublin pursued a different approach of trying to establish English-style assizes and county magistracies throughout the island. These efforts had some success in dampening disorder, but were hindered by a paucity of substantial freeholders, on whose participation English methods of governance depended, and by Catholic resistance that erupted in a rebellion of Munster towns in 1603 and persisted thereafter. In Scotland James’s attempts to impose royal control over the Kirk also encountered opposition that intensified after 1617, in controversy over the Five Articles of Perth. Religious dissonance and the king’s lack of adequate revenues meant that the state remained fragile, despite progress in combating disorder.
The Problem of Religious War and the Structure of Politics at the Accession of Charles I
Authors: Smuts R. Malcolm
Published: March 2023

A previous half-century of efforts to deal with problems of religious war and violence structured the political environment Charles inherited in multiple ways. In starting a new war with Spain, he and his favorite, George Villiers duke of Buckingham, attempted to replicate the strategy of leading through bold action that the earl of Essex had advocated a generation before. But their military ventures failed and confidence in their leadership quickly declined, exacerbating factional divisions that spilled into parliaments. This made it impossible to address the crown’s lack of adequate resources to fight a war, except through irregular and arbitrary taxation that further increased political divisions. Mutual recriminations provoked by these failures were shaped by a legacy of earlier polemical disputes over puritanism, Arminianism, and Catholicism. By withdrawal from foreign wars Charles restored stability after 1629. But in 1637 he triggered a new crisis by resuming his father’s efforts to impose liturgical changes on the Scottish Kirk. The resulting armed revolt and the king’s determination to crush it threatened to militarize the polities of both British kingdoms, especially as soldiers who had enlisted in foreign armies returned home in large numbers. It simultaneously intensified pre-existing religious divisions within all three kingdoms. The state in Britain and Ireland collapsed under these strains.
Two Multiplication Operators
Authors: Garcia Stephan Ramon , Mashreghi Javad , Ross William T.
Published: March 2023

This chapter concerns the multiplication operators Mx:L2[0,1]→L2[0,1],(Mxf)(x)=xf(x) and Mξ:L2(T)→L2(T),(Mξg)(ξ)=ξg(ξ). We discuss their spectra and invariant subspaces. This requires the introduction of Fourier series and the Hardy space H2.
The Unilateral Shift
Authors: Garcia Stephan Ramon , Mashreghi Javad , Ross William T.
Published: March 2023

The unilateral shift operator S on ℓ2, defined by Sen=en+1 for n⩾0, is of supreme importance in operator theory. Despite its simple appearance in the setting of ℓ2, this operator is best understood with complex analysis. For example, the lattice of S-invariant subspaces is described by seminal work of Riesz, Smirnov, and Beurling on inner functions.
The Bergman Shift
Authors: Garcia Stephan Ramon , Mashreghi Javad , Ross William T.
Published: March 2023

Many of the same properties hold (the point spectrum is empty, the spectrum is the closed unit disk, the point spectrum of the adjoint is the open unit disk). However, the invariant-subspace structure is dramatically different.
Operator Matrices
Authors: Garcia Stephan Ramon , Mashreghi Javad , Ross William T.
Published: March 2023

This chapter concerns operators represented by matrices of operators. We examine the norm, spectrum, and invariant subspaces of such operators in terms of their entries.
Subnormal Operators
Authors: Garcia Stephan Ramon , Mashreghi Javad , Ross William T.
Published: March 2023

A subnormal operator is the restriction of a normal operator to an invariant subspace. This chapter surveys a variety of subnormal operators, a representation theorem that is the analogue of the spectral theorem for normal operators, and a proof of the existence of invariant subspaces for subnormal operators.
Credibility and Testimonial Injustice
Authors: Lackey Jennifer
Published: March 2023

One of the core components of the concept of agential testimonial injustice developed throughout this book is that speakers are given an excess of credibility, so it is helpful to have a sense of what a sufficient amount of credibility involves. I begin, then, with a discussion of how to best understand proper assessments of credibility. I raise several objections to the standard norm of credibility assessments operative in the philosophical literature, arguing that testimonial injustice can involve both distributive and normative dimensions. A central function of this conclusion is to show that even when the standard conception of testimonial injustice is significantly expanded and revised in these ways, there is a fundamentally distinct notion left entirely unexplained. This will provide the theoretical motivation for the introduction of the concept of agential testimonial injustice, which will be developed in the remaining chapters.
False Confessions and Agential Testimonial Injustice
Authors: Lackey Jennifer
Published: March 2023

This chapter examines confessions, which have long been regarded in the criminal legal system as the ‘gold standard’ in evidence. Despite this, interrogators in the United States systematically use tactics that are manipulative, deceptive, and coercive, leaving suspects desperate, confused, vulnerable, and ultimately willing to falsely confess to even the most unimaginable crimes. While there are many obvious wrongs suffered by those who falsely confess, this chapter shows that they also face the unique and previously unrecognized epistemic wrong of agential testimonial injustice. In particular, after false confessions are extracted from innocent suspects and defendants, they play a massively oversized role evidentially in the criminal proceedings that follow.
Race, Gender, and the Multi-Directional Model of Credibility Assessments
Authors: Lackey Jennifer
Published: March 2023

This chapter takes a close look at the way biases, prejudices, and myths about race and gender cause, fuel, and exacerbate agential testimonial injustice, leading to a multi-directional attack on the credibility of some of the most vulnerable suspects, defendants, witnesses, and victims in the American criminal legal system. According to this “multi-directional model,” credibility assessments wrong testifiers in a multitude of directions and a variety of ways, all of which can be magnified by other factors at both the intrapersonal and interpersonal levels, such as myths and prejudices that target social identities, other biases, and the content of the testimony in question. What we have, then, is not a linear regression of deficits leading to an ever-increasing discounting of credibility, but a multi-directional attack that twists and turns and, in so doing, maximizes the epistemic wrongs perpetrated within the criminal legal system.
Introduction
Authors: Iversen Astrid
Published: March 2023

This chapter introduces the topic of the book, intercreditor equity in sovereign debt restructuring, and places it in a broader context of sovereign lending and borrowing and debt crisis resolution. It continues by elaborating the approach and structure of the various chapters of the book. It notes that because the title of the book refers to ‘intercreditor equity’, one might assume that it is mainly concerned with whether a creditor can enforce an intercreditor equity claim against another creditor. However, rights and obligations stemming from a loan instrument exist mainly between each creditor and the respective debtor. The question of intercreditor equity is therefore mainly decided by reference to the rules engaging the debtor state and the extent to which each of the creditors can enforce these rules against the debtor. Last, the chapter clarifies the terminology used in the book, in particular how it may diverge from terminology used in relation to corporate insolvency procedures.
A Right Not to Be Trafficked?
Authors: Jovanovic Marija
Published: March 2023

The chapter demonstrates that the human right not to be trafficked is an implied but stand-alone prohibition within the right to be free from slavery, servitude, and forced labour. The reason for that is to be found in the notion of exploitation, which represents a unique wrong this right is meant to protect against, and which underlines different practices that fall under the umbrella term of ‘modern slavery’. The discussion explores the conceptual boundaries of the prohibition of ‘modern slavery’ and elucidates the meaning and relationships between both expressly prohibited and implied concepts in order to determine situations in which the right is or is not engaged. This analysis exposes common misunderstandings about the relationship between human trafficking and practices of slavery, servitude, and forced labour.
Ben Ali's Tunisia
Authors: Wolf Anne
Published: March 2023

Based on a wealth of new primary data, Anne Wolf offers the first account of the internal regime factors that—so she demonstrates—ultimately caused the fall of the longtime dictatorship of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia during the Arab Uprisings, challenging studies focusing on the role of mass mobilization alone. She shows that in the last decade of Ben Ali’s presidency, dissent within his ruling party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally, mounted to such an extent that followers began challenging their own powerbroker, culminating in regime figures staging a secret coup d’état against Ben Ali in January 2011—an event which has not been uncovered before. Wolf proposes a new theory of power and contention within ruling parties in authoritarian regimes to explain how dictators seek to fortify their rule and foster party-political stability, but also when, why, and how they succumb to internal contention and with what effect.
The Rebellion
Authors: Wolf Anne
Published: March 2023

Chapter 5 shows that, during the 2010–2011 Tunisian uprisings, internecine contention erupted publicly, becoming a key factor behind the regime’s collapse. Instead of organizing rallies in support of Ben Ali, party activists became agents of contention: some joined the mass protests, especially at the grassroots level, whereas others pursued passive forms of resistance. Most Constitutional Democratic Rally followers sought political reforms, calling on Ben Ali to strengthen the party and desist from nepotism; they did not seek the total overhaul of the regime or the dissolution of their party, though some later adopted this agenda. However, their contentious actions exposed Ben Ali’s vulnerability, and the overall fluidity of the moment empowered a small clique of officials to move against the President. In contrast to the widely accepted narrative that Ben Ali fled the mass protests, this chapter provides evidence that he was, in fact, ousted in a secret coup d’état.
Winding Numbers and Topology
Authors: Needham Tristan
Published: March 2023

This chapter assesses a simple but immensely powerful concept-the number of times a loop winds around a point. As the name suggests, the winding number v(L, 0) of a closed loop L about the origin 0 is simply the net number of revolutions of the direction of z as it traces out L once in its given sense. A loop is called simple if it does not intersect itself; in the case of a loop that is not simple, it is no longer obvious which points are to be considered inside the loop, and which are outside. The winding number concept allows one to make the desired distinction clearly. The chapter then looks at Hopf’s Degree Theorem; polynomials and the Argument Principle; Rouché’s Theorem; the Maximum-Modulus Theorem; and the Schwarz-Pick Lemma.
Perfectly Understood Problems
Authors: Dika Tarek R.
Published: March 2023

Chapter 9 shows how Descartes’s requirement that the material simple natures be intuited by the intellect aided by the imagination determines the activity of the Cartesian scientific habitus in mathematics. Descartes introduces several problem-solving techniques in Rules 13–21. Sections 9.2–9.3 discuss the reduction of problems about subject-matters to problems about relations between pure magnitudes (Rules 13–14). Section 9.4 discusses the representation of these magnitudes by means of the material simple nature of figure alone via the unit (Rule 15). Section 9.5 discusses Descartes’s algebraic notation, which symbolically represents relations between pure magnitudes (Rule 16). Sections 9.6–9.7 discusses Descartes’s geometrical interpretation of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and root extraction (the “geometrical calculus” in Rule 18). In mathematics, intuition requires the construction of a geometrical figure that embodies the relevant mathematical operations and satisfies the solution criteria expressed in the problem. Section 9.8 discusses how Descartes’s method in mathematics encounters a number of problems that lead him to end the treatise prematurely at Rule 21.
Descartes’s Method after Rules
Authors: Dika Tarek R.
Published: March 2023

Chapter 11 examines Descartes’s method after Rules for the Direction of the Mind. Sections 11.2–11.3 show how problems internal to Rules led Descartes to abandon the treatise and turn to metaphysics and systematic natural philosophy in 1629–1630. Section 11.4 examines whether Descartes’s method continues to play a role in his philosophy in and after 1629–1630. Sections 11.5–11.6 reconstruct the development of the theory of simple natures (mostly in Principles and related texts and correspondence) as well as the relation between Descartes’s theory of simple natures and his ontology of substance, attribute, and mode.
A Kind of Freedom
Authors: Meyer James H.
Published: March 2023

This chapter discusses Nâzım’s life in the Eastern Bloc from the mid-1950s until the end of the decade. Nâzım was doing well materially and emotionally, traveling frequently throughout the Eastern Bloc and elsewhere, and living with his physician/lover Dr. Galina Kolesnikova. During these years, Nâzım was common-law married to one woman, living with another, and falling in love with a third as he pursued Vera Tulyakova, a married mother thirty years his junior. Nâzım’s triple life was protected by the Iron Curtain, which served as both his narrative foil and a practical instrument. This chapter ends with a discussion of Nâzım’s publications in the Eastern Bloc in the second half of the 1950s.
“Even though it be against yourselves, or your parents and kinsmen” (Q 4:135)
Authors: Simonsohn Uriel
Published: March 2023

The tension between kinship and community is at the heart of this chapter. Based on a selection of literary sources, diverse in their religious origin and genre, the chapter focuses on the significance of kinship ties for promoting religious agendas. The ancient conflict, witnessed in the terrible scene of the binding of Isaac, persisted in the endeavors of rabbinic sages, ecclesiastical leaders, and Muslim religious scholars to prioritize God over family, or community over kinship. Yet kinship was not seen only as a rival to the divine, but also as a path to it. Extensive attempts on the part of communal agents to enter and dominate the private household, by overseeing the proper administration of family affairs and assemblies, offer a useful indication of the perception of the family as a vehicle for transmitting religious ideals. Moreover, a sophisticated discourse, reflected in the writings of different religious leaderships, in which a vocabulary of kinship was employed to explicate the bond between God and believers, is a reminder of both the strength of kinship and its communal utility. It is here, at the center of competing and completing kinship and communal affiliations that women stood, both vulnerable and powerful at the same time. The final part of the chapter thus moves to explore the manner in which the presence of women in religiously mixed families was perceived as both threat and opportunity for communal agendas.
Under the Bhasha Gaze
Authors: Raveendran PP
Published: March 2023

Under the Bhasha Gaze: Modernity and Indian Literature is a study of literatures in India in the context of recent discussions on modernity. It is a critique of the aesthetics and politics of modernity as they are embodied in Indian bhasha writing of the past two centuries. Exploring the trajectory of modernity after Indian literature came into contact with colonialism in the early nineteenth century is the book’s primary object, though the intricate ways in which the bhasha imagination negotiated questions clustering around such concepts as the literary, the historical and the social receive focused attention in the analysis. The work can also be regarded as a critical intervention in the current debates on comparative Indian literature. Though the study acknowledges the European provenance of modernity as a historical idea, it also recognizes the concept’s inherent complexity and its equivocal connotations when used with reference to the multilingual bhasha environment in India. Theoretical issues debated in relation to modernity such as its conceptual affinities with the western enlightenment project, its ideological investment in European aesthetics, and its implication for the evolution of the hermetic aesthetic are important for the study. The work also examines the local and regional strengths of the bhasha imagination that renders inevitable a specifically Indian conception of modernity. Although the book is concerned with issues pertaining to Indian literature in general, the theoretical postulates undergirding it are illustrated with the help primarily of Malayalam literature, with supplementary inputs from literatures in other bhashas and Indian English.
Introduction: Bhasha in Focus
Authors: Raveendran PP
Published: March 2023

The chapter sets up the general ground for the study and outlines the broad theoretical framework adopted for the analysis to be conducted in the subsequent chapters. It reviews and elaborates the key concepts that are central to the book’s argument, concepts such as modernity, the everyday, the social imaginary, bilingualism, and, above all, the deeply nuanced bhasha, which is used in the present study as an index to Indian literary modernity’s non-hegemonic character and its rich resistance potential The chapter begins with an analysis of the monolithic, European modernity that in essence signifies a non-traditional organization of social life that emerged in Europe in the eighteenth century and then spread to the rest of the world, but gives way in the course of the analysis to the idea of a proliferation of modernities evolving around the concept’s non-European models. Modernity, it is argued, can manifest in diverse forms across cultures, and it is not imperative that it should always remain in an adversarial relation with tradition. It is in this context that one is justified in talking about alternative modernities and their specifically Indian variants constructed around individual bhasha literatures.
Bhasha Writing as World Literature
Authors: Raveendran PP
Published: March 2023

This chapter rethinks the idea of world literature, which at a preliminary level can be understood as a universal and representative compendium of the ‘best’ literature written in languages across the world. Though the sense of universalism that this implies might force one to consider the term to be a weak ally of modernity, a closer examination of the term’s genesis and its subsequent evolution, especially in the possible context of its assimilation by Indian bhasha literatures, would indicate that it partakes of all the dangers that one might associate with western modernity, such as Euro-centrism and a bias for the hermetic aesthetic. In postulating a role for bhasha writing in the larger dispensation of a West-centred world literature, the chapter sees some historical parallels in the relation between the ancient Prakrit languages and the hegemonic Sanskrit in the pre-modern Sanskrit cosmopolis.
Realism in the Bhasha Novel
Authors: Raveendran PP
Published: March 2023

This chapter is on Gopinath Mohanty’s pre-Independence Odia novel, Paraja. The novel, set in the tribal world, is often regarded as a typical social realist narrative that deals with the everyday travails of the tribal people in the tradition of nineteenth-century western realism. Making a close scrutiny of the text of Paraja, the chapter argues that the realism implied by Paraja is not merely a mode of representation that attempts to communicate the authenticity of experience, but is the manifestation of a vision of life and a method of writing that is simultaneously modern and Indian. The novel illustrates the divide in the modern Indian mind, which comes from its ambivalent attitude to western modernity. The ambivalence is more evident in the writer’s approach to progress and his vision of the future. Mohanty’s repudiation of the idea of progress as nature in this context is also to be understood as linked to his implied vision of an alternative modernity.
S.K. Pottekkat
Authors: Raveendran PP
Published: March 2023

This chapter discusses the literary output of S.K. Pottekkat, fictionist and travel writer, who thought of himself basically as a writer of romantic fiction. A serious chronicler of his times, Pottekkat is one of the early Indian writers to internalize the everyday context of modernity into his practice of writing. As a travel writer, he is a pioneering figure in bhasha writing. While travel in a literal sense offered him opportunities to get to know people and places, in a metaphorical sense it offered him room for mobility and mental expansion, which must have permitted him to see modernity in a new light. Writing for Pottekkat is surrogate travel, perhaps an act of fantasy travel, which brings the writer and the reader together, and then drives both into contact with new and strange environments.
Ayyappa Paniker
Authors: Raveendran PP
Published: March 2023

An architect of poetic modernism in Malayalam, Ayyappa Paniker nevertheless cannot be treated as a strict adherent to the tenets of modernism in his poetic practice. He is a kind of maverick in his practice of writing. His deep respect for the tradition of romantic writing in his language illustrates that his modernism contains within it a number of contradictory elements. Paniker’s modernism also represents a kind of literary cynicism that even as it upholds certain characteristics of modernism, chooses to unearth the paradoxes in the modern mind which are left undocumented by dominant versions of writing. One might say that he is a modernist, a postmodernist, a romanticist, and an anti-romanticist, all at the same time. His prose works would furthermore reveal him to be the formulator of a unique theory of reading that brings together the principles of Indian and western aesthetics in a creative way.
Madhavikkutty
Authors: Raveendran PP
Published: March 2023

The life writings of the bilingual writer Madhavikkutty (Kamala Das) form the topic of discussion in this chapter. Madhavikkutty’s materialism, her attitude to the body, her conception of the immanence of experience, and her practice of genre-crossing are all seen as intimately connected to her understanding of the self, which, as her writings indicate, is a divided one. The divide between the memoirs and the autobiographical pieces that she wrote in English and Malayalam is a clear indication of the self-divide in her. Works like My Story, Neermatalam Pootha Kalam, and Januvamma Paranja Katha are critically reviewed here in order to discover how history and memory lie intermeshed in them.
Hemp, Tobacco, and Hot Commodities on the English Stage
Authors: Steffen William H.
Published: March 2023

In plays such as Romeo and Juliet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and A Christian Turn’d Turk, ladders of rope are used in scenes where male suitors seek to access commodified female bodies. In each of these “ladder plays,” the ladder (presumably made from hemp rope) is in close proximity to a real or metaphorical fire. Furthermore, Shakespeare’s ladder scenes reference Phaeton’s scorching of the earth, which implicates hemp in the same anti-tobacconist discourse that cautioned White English consumers against smoking tobacco, and conflates industrial hemp with psychoactive cannabis and tobacco. These ladder scenes stage hemp’s complex role in signaling the risks and punishments of economic expansion on the one hand, while laying the groundwork of a racial ideology on the other. Not unlike cork and galls, hemp on the English stage helps to create an inextricable link to the objectification of African bodies in the English imaginary.
Shaking the Superflux
Authors: Steffen William H.
Published: March 2023

This chapter proposes that King Lear overturns a religious model of redemption offered by the medieval flood plays (where human sin is punished with divine retribution and global deluge) in favor of a more secular model of redemption. Whereas “faults” are recognizable as human sins in the flood plays, they are also in Lear the geological fault-lines by which nature achieves balance. One antiquarian, Richard Verstegan, imagined that the white cliffs of Dover had formed as the result of a superflux finding its balance in nature, a theory that informs the white cliffs as the site of Gloucester’s economic redistribution. Both storm and cliffs suggest that the play’s economic imbalances might be restored with the help of the earth’s restoration of natural imbalances. Through Lear, we learn to take responsibility for the economic imbalances generated by a long history of human (and geologic) “faults.”
Introduction
Authors: Hokama Rhema
Published: March 2023

In my reading of The Winter’s Tale, I posit that English Calvinism provided not only a theology but also an epistemology—one that articulated a sensory and experiential model for ascertaining knowledge and truth. For Calvin, epistemological certainty was not based solely on intellectual apprehension, but also on firsthand experience. I outline my aim to demonstrate the continuities between the forms of worship that took place within the official ceremonies of the Reformed English church and the forms of experientialist popular devotion that shaped English religious and erotic life outside of the confines of the official church services. In doing so, I maintain that the Reformed liturgy and communion—as imagined in The Winter’s Tale and the literary culture of the Reformation—subscribed to an epistemology inspired by Calvinist experientialism that was shared by popular devotional writers like William Perkins.
Byzantium
Authors: Crostini Barbara
Published: March 2023

Production of Greek manuscripts, from papyri to codices, overlaps with the territorial extent of the Byzantine empire and even spreads to outlying areas marked by its cultural influence. Piecing together the history of the Byzantine book entails keeping all these places in view, from Egypt to Georgia, from southern Italy to Russia and Armenia. The codex primarily enshrined the authority of the Bible and was chosen as the mark of identity for Christianity in terms of both learning and liturgy. Besides practical considerations such as the resistance of parchment to destructive agents such as humidity or fire, the ease of consultation of the book format, and the portability of bound quires, the codex became an object of reverence, made ornate within and without by artistic works such as carved bindings and gold-backed miniatures. The history of the Byzantine book is here retold from both a practical and an ideological perspective. Evolution in materials and forms of scripts is retraced in detail through many examples. At the same time, books are considered as carriers of identity displayed both inside and outside their communities, at times affirming continuity with the classical and Jewish heritage, at others emphasizing alterity and uniqueness. In closing, the chapter points to the current work of digitization and conservation of Greek manuscripts around the world that will ensure future access to this precious heritage.
Medieval Western Europe
Authors: Rundle David
Published: March 2023

During the millennium surveyed in this chapter, Western Christendom was defined, on the one hand, by its respect for the book and, on the other, by the inability of many of its peoples to read the texts that books contained. These were societies in which the tasks of reading and writing were delegated to a small minority of the population. This, however, did not diminish the power of the book but achieved the opposite. This chapter considers how the book was endowed with mystical, even sometimes magical, aura. The range of elements which formed the hand-written volume—the manuscript—combined together to enhance this potency. This continued for a markedly long time, even as the availability of books was transformed by both social and material changes, including for example, the rise of universities and the introduction of paper to Christian cultures. The mystical aura of the book remained a feature even as print began to be a presence.
“Some Call It Arsmetrike, and Some Awgryme”
Authors: Barany Michael J.
Published: March 2023

Algorithms found significant new audiences in early modern mathematical pedagogy through vernacular arithmetics like Robert Recorde’s 1543 Ground of Artes. Recorde presented rule-based algorithmic methods as powerful but error-prone, requiring practice and expertise to apply effectively. This view of algorithms is apparent in Recorde’s exposition through pedagogical dialogue, with a frequently erring Scholar continually corrected by a learned Master. In contrast to later mechanistic views of algorithms, sixteenth-century algorithmic thinking reflected experience and discernment, not just in the manipulation of numbers but in the contextual appreciation of mathematical knowledge. This chapter explores these aspects of early modern algorithmic thinking through a close reading of Recorde’s presentation of long division, framed by Recorde’s discussion of the terminology of arithmetic and algorism, and concludes with a meditation on farts and algorithmic modernity.
Capitalism by Algorithm
Authors: Rosenthal Caitlin C.
Published: March 2023

In nineteenth-century America and the Atlantic world, the “rule of three” was usually regarded as the endpoint of a basic mathematics education. This essay considers the importance of the rule as an algorithmic technology that enabled broader access to the calculations necessary to participate in the increasingly global market economy. Used by workmen, women, and even enslaved people, the rule and related tools translated basic literacy into practical numeracy. By doing so, they offered a diverse range of people the ability to negotiate more effectively. At the same time, however, the spread of the rule and other calculating technologies helped to legitimate particular types of exchange and commensuration, and with them the emerging capitalist economy.
“For Computing Is Our Duty”
Authors: Fiss Andrew
Published: March 2023

This chapter explores the class and gender connotations of algorithmic work through investigating the many ways that people became computers at the 1870s Harvard Observatory. Famously, the 1893 speech “A Field for ‘Woman’s Work’ in Astronomy” drew attention to the observatory’s practice of employing teams of women as human computers who performed complex, time-consuming calculations for astronomers and observers. Yet the initial employment of women was not so straightforward. The Harvard Observatory was also a home, so early computing was done by wives, daughters, and maids. The 1879 Observatory Pinafore, a scientific parody of Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore, particularly showcased the blurred boundaries of the 1870s observatory, how it was unclear who would perform algorithmic work at the time, just as it was occasionally unclear who was male or female. Inspired by this libretto, as well as its 1929 performance, this chapter argues that the “woman’s work” of computing emerged from servants’ and families’ practices. Its analyses provide a fuller picture of the Harvard Observatory and the work of human computers generally, encouraging further interrogation of STEM business practices, especially ones that proclaim “computing is our duty.”
Seeds of Control
Authors: Dryer Theodora
Published: March 2023

At its roots, the history of algorithmic computing is a history of how information and data are conceptualized, ordered, and put to use in economic and political decision-making, and how these data-driven systems impact the environment and human life. In this chapter, author Theodora Dryer traces the New Deal origins of algorithmic control and digital agricultural management, which constitutes a triple concurrence of linked data-driven transformations in industrial manufacturing, sugar beet breeding, and New Deal policy and administration. At the center of the story is the Statistical Quality Control chart, an emblem of control computing. The chapter reveals the stratified layering of algorithmic design and data processing, agricultural and industrial practices, and institutional reorganization and political powers built in the name of a control society. Unearthing these seeds of control makes the relationships between data extraction and policy visible and confronts the entrenched political myth that algorithms are in control of data and economy.