bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sacrifices Holy and Unholy in
Authors: Zeitlin Froma I.
Published: May 2024

This chapter explores Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris. It looks more closely at some of its most original features as a production that takes religion as its major focus of interest and studies its performance, ideation, and theatrical possibilities to the fullest degree. The chapter then examines the unusually intimate relations between gods and humans (Apollo-Orestes; Artemis-Iphigenia) on the one hand, and on the other, the emphasis on ritual—its practice, abjuration, and even invention, that rules the play from beginning to end. The plot itself revolves around the dual identification of Artemis, the goddess who in myth and cult occupies the boundary zone between the civilized and savage—specifically in this play between Greek and barbarian identities. It presents etiologies of not one but three different rites (in Athens/Attica), all of which may in fact be invented, and confronts the larger problematic of human sacrifice—is it a fitting offering to the gods or rather a deed of bloodshed and violence?
Patterns of Gender in Aeschylean Drama
Authors: Zeitlin Froma I.
Published: May 2024

This chapter highlights two Aeschylean dramas that frame the opposition between Thebes and Argos: the Seven against Thebes and the Suppliants, the play that opens the Danaid trilogy. The Seven and the Suppliants can be contraposed as opposites and complements of each other, both centering on the problematic which is fundamental to Aeschylean thought and dramaturgy: the interrelationships of the genos (family of origin, family of procreation) and the polis (the civic, military, and political domains). Thebes is the place of defeat and exclusion; Argos here is the place of inclusion and potential integration. Thebes must expel its own in the sons of Oedipus, while Argos can introduce and incorporate outsiders into its city. This dialectic between inside and outside operates at a number of levels in both dramas, within the city itself and without. The most important linking point between the two trilogies, however, resides in their mutual concern with the maturational process of the individual in society.
Troy and Tragedy
Authors: Zeitlin Froma I.
Published: May 2024

This chapter reflects on the aftershocks of a wholly destroyed city through various dramatic representations of Greek barbarity, in contrast to the Athenian positive iconographical program of the city's defeat as a triumph of West over East. The stuff of dramatic interest in the first instance is the Greek response to the pressures of war that promotes critical reflection on Athens' wartime ideology and indicts the corrupting force of unlimited power that turns victors into transgressors. Far from a more comfortable distance projected onto “other selves,” Troy in tragedy is what can be called the conscience of Hellas, a site for looking inwards, for the self-examination of values in the exultation (or promise) of victory. In the representation of victim and victor, the chapter discovers a much more diffuse and complex set of associations and possibilities when it came to that great and fabled city and what its fate meant or could come to mean for both sides, Trojans and Greeks alike. What counts most for the city of Troy onstage is not the battlefield and combats, not the domestic life within its walls, but rather its final destiny and the shock waves that emanate from its conflagration.
The Haik, the Hat, and the Gendered Politics of the New Public
Authors: Rahnama Sara
Published: May 2024

This chapter looks into the gendered politics of Algeria. It cites that newspapers in the interwar years saw a flood of discussions about headwear for both Muslim men and women. The debate unveils how these forms of dress became a language for Muslims to redefine what was modern or traditional and articulate visions of Algeria’s future. Thus, the historiography of the veil in Algeria has been most preoccupied with its symbolism during the Algerian War of Independence. The chapter explains how Muslim reformists proposed pride in Algerian history and traditions to combat the notion of shame and loss of dignity.
Conclusion
Authors: Rahnama Sara
Published: May 2024

This concluding chapter discusses Muslim women’s growing activism since the interwar years. It explains that Interwar discussions about women reflect a moment of colonial internationalism. Moreover, French colonial administrators continued to claim that Muslim women’s religion and customs prohibited their advancement. However, feminism as a possibility offers a path forward from the scholarly interest in the agency and resistance of Middle Eastern women. The chapter clarifies that the possibilities for women’s advancement go hand-in-hand with the interplay of feminism, internationalism, and Muslim reform. It then mentions how the historiography on Muslim women in twentieth-century Algeria has focused on their participation in the War of Independence.
Disarmed to Armed
Authors: Lynch Christopher
Published: May 2024

This chapter evaluates both Niccolò Machiavelli's account in the Florentine Histories of the causes and consequences of the disarming of the Italian powers and some of his prescriptions in the Art of War for their rearming with arms of their own. The object and scope of Florentine Histories focus on what Machiavelli is willing to say to a Florentine pope about the actions of the Florentine people. It details the rise of a corrupt system of foreign affairs dominated by mercenary arms, papal meddling, and rentier wealth. Machiavelli then urgently counsels statesmen to arm their cities with their own arms as the indispensable condition for resisting the pernicious influence of the corrupt system of foreign affairs on domestic politics. Looking at the Art of War, the chapter also discusses how an artificial political unity can be forged by means of military orders and military discipline, even as the tension between the military and political orders themselves remains at least partly unresolved within the person of the military captain who is himself both a self-interested mercenary and a servant of the political authorities, be they republican or princely.
Captain’s Dilemma
Authors: Lynch Christopher
Published: May 2024

This chapter assesses Niccolò Machiavelli's The Life of Castruccio Castracani of Lucca, which is an imaginary depiction of a mercenary captain turned prince. It illustrates Machiavelli's model of a life of excellence that is possible within the world shaped by Christianity. Castruccio made the leap from citizen, to prince, to absolute ruler of Lucca, and from there did all he had to do to become prince of Tuscany and even of Italy. The fact that his life is not a success and that he himself ultimately criticizes his own imperial designs do not, in themselves, detract from Castruccio as a positive model. Correctly understanding the reasons for his failure, viewed within the context of the purposes of the Life, and the actual content of his self-criticism are the interpretive keys. The chapter offers a summary of the Life before considering the significance of the discussions of fortune and excellence that frame the narrative. It then looks at how Machiavelli concludes the Life by comparing Castruccio to “Scipio of Rome,” examining his poem On Ingratitude.
Unraveling the Gray Area Problem
Authors: Griffith Luke
Published: May 2024

This book examines the US role in why the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty took almost a decade to negotiate and then failed in just thirty years. The INF Treaty enhanced Western security by prohibiting US and Russian ground-based missiles with maximum ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. Significantly, it eliminated hundreds of Soviet SS-20 missiles, which could annihilate targets throughout Eurasia in minutes. Through close scrutiny of US theater nuclear policy from 1977 to 1987, the book describes the Carter administration's masterminding of the dual-track decision of December 1979, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) initiative that led to the INF Treaty. The Reagan administration, in turn, overcame bureaucratic infighting, Soviet intransigence, and political obstacles at home and abroad to achieve a satisfactory outcome in the INF negotiations. Disagreements between the US and Russia undermined the INF Treaty and led to its dissolution in 2019. Meanwhile, the US is developing a new generation of ground-based, INF-type missiles that will have an operational value on the battlefield. The book urges policymakers to consider the utility of INF-type missiles in new arms control negotiations. Understanding the scope and consistency of US arms control policy across the Carter and Reagan administrations offers important lessons for policymakers in the twenty-first century.
Introduction
Authors: Griffith Luke
Published: May 2024

This introductory chapter discusses the establishment of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The Carter and Reagan administrations played essential roles in securing the INF Treaty of 1987, which required them to address the gray area problem. Due to their limited range and nuclear capabilities, gray area systems were excluded from Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions negotiations about conventional weapons in Europe. The INF Treaty enhanced Western security for thirty years, but it soon changed when the Donald Trump administration labeled the INF Treaty a relic of the bipolar Cold War and withdrew the United States from the INF Treaty. The chapter cites that the INF saga highlighted the value of bargaining leverage during arms control negotiations.
Between “Green Cheese” and “the Moon”
Authors: Griffith Luke
Published: May 2024

This chapter explains the Reagan administration's proposal of the zero option, which is the defining feature of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. It cites that the zero option proposal correlates to Reagan's dream to abolish nuclear weapons without undermining Western deterrence. Given the INF imbalance, presidents Carter and Reagan prioritized the modernization track in line with the US theater nuclear policy. In January 1981, the Reagan administration was divided over the dual-track decision as NATO allies urged the Reagan administration to open arms talks with Moscow. However, the Reagan administration embraced the dual-track decision in May 1981 after agreeing that theater nuclear modernization was a prerequisite for fruitful arms talks with Moscow.
Narrating What Is Known
Authors: Drexler Elizabeth F.
Published: May 2024

This chapter shows how the infrastructure of impunity is threatened by both new historical disclosures and an international verdict. It covers the process by which narratives of betrayal and endangerment secure citizen complicity in a system of law that does not recognize the equal rights of all citizens. The International People's Tribunal (IPT) expert judges determined in 2015 that the 1965 killings were crimes against humanity and qualified as a genocide, provoking an unprecedented emotional response by political and military elites. The chapter considers the IPT as an affront to perpetrators and their ability to control the parameters and implementation of the law. It suggests that Joshua Oppenheimer's film The Act of Killing and the IPT problematize impunity in new ways by focusing on perpetrators and the legal system rather than on the humanity of the victims.
Introduction
Authors: Ben-Ur Aviva , Klooster Wim
Published: May 2024

This chapter stresses the close ties between Jews and non-Jews across imperial boundaries and the connections between Jews and other ethnic groups in their own environments. It aims to revolutionize the study of Jews in early American history. It also explains how a deeper understanding of early modern Jewish history in the New World can be accomplished by using the tools and insights of Atlantic history. The chapter highlights the interactions of Jews with others, which were not limited to North America or non-Atlantic Europe but extended to numerous places across the Atlantic world. It self-consciously reframes the study of colonial and early American Jewry within an Atlantic paradigm.
Introduction
Authors: Fichter James R.
Published: May 2024

This introductory chapter discusses the Boston Tea Party, which did little to turn Americans away from drinking tea and did not create US national identity. It looks into the survival and ultimate consumption of the East India Company's tea in Boston and Charleston and their importance in the politics of 1774. Essentially, tea boycotts were disagreements among fellow Britons that barely altered tea consumption. The central, symbolic role of tea in the Continental Association was linked to other issues, such as how Patriots mobilized the populace and controlled the distribution of information. The chapter also considers how the war elevated the political value of merchants.
Conclusion
Authors: Fichter James R.
Published: May 2024

This chapter reviews the interplay of politics and tea between 1773 and 1776. It notes that the Coercive Acts heightened the all-or-nothing conflict between the Boston Patriots and the Boston consignees. In its post-Coercive Acts symbolism, destroying tea acquired a political “truth” concerning the common cause and resistance to what the Patriots saw as a dangerous new constitutional settlement. Moreover, the Acts made the Boston Tea Party seem heroic and justified, which is reiterated in other tea parties and the press. Eventually, Congress gave up its prohibition on tea in April 1776. The chapter looks into tea's final act in American politics as a symbol of economic independence.
Introduction
Authors: Moran Ryan
Published: May 2024

This chapter looks at how insurance companies aggregated lives through the commodity, which had the effect of reifying capitalist social relations. The community idealized in insurance discourse could signify both nation and the laboring classes in discussions of the state-run system in interwar and wartime Japan. The chapter describes how companies and the state presented insurance as a means of re-creating social bodies engaged in the intimate work of supporting each other. The chapter highlights the significance of moments of disruption and looks at how the state and private companies rebuilt social relations through the establishment of communities of insurance customers. Insurance demonstrates how a vision of the future could work to reestablish social relations in modern Japan.
Creating a Desire for Life
Authors: Moran Ryan
Published: May 2024

This chapter analyzes the specific process by which the Japanese life insurance industry created consumer desire for stability and security. It focuses on the insurance salesman, located at the heart of the nexus of relations that developed between customers and firms. It also details how the role of the insurance salesman took on greater prominence after life insurance had become more of a mass consumer product following the 1905 Russo-Japanese War. The chapter talks about how salesmen believed that life insurance was the best way for customers to ensure their and their families' future financial stability, although customers often initially resisted their overtures. Salesmen created an enticing portrait of a probable future by deploying modern management techniques.
A Feel for the Environment
Authors: McLellan Timothy G.
Published: May 2024

This chapter highlights the importance of intangible skills and tacit knowledge in natural sciences and quantitative social sciences. The commonalities between anthropology and environmental sciences help illuminate what is threatened by the insistence that research provides value for money. Moreover, environmental science is punctuated by playful inquiry which are moments that both stand outside rationalized data collection and provide the impetus for data collection. The chapter also considers the devaluing of “nonscientific” staff. It explains that demands for value for money through rapid, scalable research can undermine and erase the knowledge-making skills of scientists and faculty.
Introduction
Authors: Ewing Christopher
Published: May 2024

This introductory chapter highlights how race was crucial to the making of queer politics in the Federal Republic of Germany. It starts with the establishment of the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD), the first radical right-wing party originally founded on a platform of Euroskepticism. Racism and antiracism drove competing political agendas that were closely intertwined. Queer people of color formed antiracist movements that shifted queer political landscapes in the Federal Republic and created different possibilities, but White stubbornness constrained these possibilities and antiracism became an increasingly unavoidable topic in queer politics. The chapter also introduces the key concept of homonationalism which is inextricably tied to race, and the notion of racialized desire as an important mover of queer racist and antiracist politics.
Making Homophobic Migrants out of Neo-Nazis
Authors: Ewing Christopher
Published: May 2024

This chapter explains how queer investments in the politics of normalization created an increased commitment to multicultural diversity and made racialized homophobia convincing. It starts with how neo-Nazis attacked one of East Berlin's most famous queer spaces, the Gründerzeit Museum. Focal points of violence prevention, rights-based politics, and sex tourism shaped how many white gay and lesbian activists and even some activists of color discussed immigration and racial difference. The development of new strategies for post-unification Germany coincided with the emergence of a new group, the Gay Federation in Germany (Schwulenverband in Deutschland, SVD). The chapter cites that attending to the German specificities reveals how strategies were entangled in the queer politics of race and how deeply fragile state-focused strategies were.
Memory, Mediality, and the “Performative Turn”
Authors: Mitchell Stephen A.
Published: May 2024

This chapter looks into the key concepts of memory, mediality, and performative turn in line with recontextualizing remembering in medieval Scandinavia. Throughout the Viking and the Middle Ages, Scandinavians were acutely aware of runic mediality so the relationship between the self-conscious written text and its narrative was much more diverse and complicated. Moreover, Medieval Scandinavians were acutely aware of memory, both as a useful tool in their cultural kits and as an abstract concept. The chapter cites that performance and mediality hold considerations of how memory is packaged and communicated. It explains how memory, performance, and mediality form the trifold mechanism that produced, and preserved narrative art in the Old Norse world.
The Mythologized Past
Authors: Mitchell Stephen A.
Published: May 2024

This chapter covers the mythologized past and memory of medieval and early modern Gotland. It provides an overview of the role of constructed memories that shaped the island's history. Gotland distinguishes itself in the East Scandinavian area for the existence of an early prose history of the territory, the so-called Guta saga. Guta saga offers detailed information about how the island is transformed from this heathen state into a Christian world. The chapter looks into how memory studies may, in time, result in a realization of tradition studies while referencing how socially constructed memory contributes to the mythologizing of the past.
On the Old Swedish Trollmöte or Mik mötte en gamul kerling .
Authors: Mitchell Stephen A.
Published: May 2024

This chapter discusses the Old Swedish poem known as Trollmöte, which has the opening line of Mik mötte en gamul kerling (I met an old crone). The line exists in a single, unique text, part of the impressively large Vadstena miscellany, Uppsala universitetsbibliotek (UUB) C 4. Old Swedish poetry has generally been consigned by literary scholarship to an aesthetic category, only ever so slightly above doggerel and nursery rhymes. The chapter considers the Old Swedish poem as a very tightly composed work as regards meter that appears to have roots in the Birgittine motherhouse in Vadstena. The exotic metrical quality employs a service of themes that are on one level built on the widespread Christian theme of pilgrimage while simultaneously possessing a particular Nordic twist.
The Canonic Moment
Authors: Hellebust Rolf
Published: May 2024

This chapter illustrates the nineteenth-century Russian model of a narrative structure for literary tradition, drawing examples from historiographers of the period. The agents in the narrative of a tradition are its authors. The basic literary-historiographic task of this narrative is to symbolize the genesis of aesthetic value and its distribution among these agents. Thus, its structural units—what one might call its canonic moments—must show how the great writers in the course of their interactions receive, hand down, and contribute to the organic totality of aesthetic value that is at the heart of the tradition. They must also invoke its mythical redemptive mission, as a resolution of those conflicts and oppositions that are intrinsic to the self-image of Russian culture. As a manifestation of the unified aesthetic value and redemptive intent of a tradition, sanctified by suffering, the canonic moment has a double significance. It is diachronic—a historical confirmation of the handing over (traditio) of the transpersonal value of the tradition. It is also a synchronic binding of individual members to the tradition—a binding that consecrates their potential for the creation of aesthetic value. The chapter then looks at the historiography of the canonic moment.
Conclusion
Authors: Hellebust Rolf
Published: May 2024

This concluding chapter reviews the model of Russian literary tradition constructed in the previous chapters. Because of the peculiarities of its path and its cultural situation in relation to western Europe, nineteenth-century Russia provides an asymptotic test case for the concept of a modern, postromantic national literary tradition. As in other countries, the Russian tradition advertises itself via a canon of literary monuments constituting an atemporal “ideal order among themselves.” Yet this is a tradition that could only have been born at a specific moment, during the golden nineteenth-century age of national political and literary historiography, and of nation building in general. The Russian example reveals with particular clarity the contradictions between immutability and innovation, universality and specificity that have lain at the heart of modern conceptions of artistic tradition. It also shows the fullest elaboration of those cultural mechanisms that have evolved, despite all the contradictions, to preserve the image of a unified tradition that is essential for the creation of a unified national consciousness, however insoluble the contradictions that cleave the nation itself. The chapter then emphasizes Russia’s continuing eagerness to fill the empty ideological vessel of its political greatness with cultural content.
Governing the Displaced
Authors: Bhagat Ali
Published: May 2024

This book answers a straightforward question: how are refugees governed under capitalism in this moment of heightened global displacement? To answer this question, the book takes a dual case-study approach to explore three dimensions of refugee survival in Paris and Nairobi: shelter, work, and political belonging. The book makes sense of a global refugee regime along the contradictory fault lines of passive humanitarianism, violent exclusion, and organized abandonment in the European Union and East Africa. It highlights the interrelated and overlapping features of refugee governance and survival in these seemingly disparate places. In its intersectional engagement with theories of racial capitalism with respect to right-wing populism, labor politics, and the everyday forms of exclusion, the book is a timely and necessary contribution to the field of migration studies and to political economy.
The Fantasy
Authors: Bhagat Ali
Published: May 2024

This chapter examines the refugee fantasy, contending with Marxist theories of the state, neoliberal statecraft, and the utility of ideology through psychoanalytical critiques of capitalism. Race powers the operant fantasy of the refugee subject amid rising xenophobia, concerns over job stealing, and (racially motivated) demographic change in both France and Kenya. In France, the candidacy of Marine Le Pen and even Emmanuel Macron's dog-whistle politics that spur Islamophobia are indicators of rising racial tensions and nationhood in France. In Kenya, Somalis in particular are chastised as terrorist threats to the nation. To understand how race dovetails with concerns about the nation and the refugee fantasy, the chapter connects psychoanalytical theories of enjoyment with theories of racial capitalism. The nation, as a social relation in neoliberal capitalism, demarcates who belongs and who does not. Since welfare is constrained by neoliberal logics of accumulation and austerity, questions surrounding political belonging as it pertains to refugees are of particular importance. Significantly, race contributes to the refugee fantasy as a way to paint the displaced as violent, terror inducing, job stealing, and undeserving.
The Refugee Fantasy and the European Frontier
Authors: Bhagat Ali
Published: May 2024

This chapter assesses the refugee fantasy and the trope of the refugee crisis through the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). The CEAS offers many contradictions under the guise of human dignity where the system appears neutral, progressive, liberal, and concerned with the rights of refugees. Ultimately, however, the chapter illustrates the ways in which refugees are rendered disposable at the level of the EU as they attempt to enter member states—in contradiction to the rights-based rhetoric of the CEAS. The European frontier, which refers to border sites and the countries that the EU pays to warehouse refugees, represents a prevention strategy to keep refugees out of the EU. A political gap emerges with regard to refugee welfare, and thus the chapter also highlights the built-in tensions surrounding income and shelter across the twenty-seven member states (EU-27). Systemic issues concerning refugee welfare point to the authoritarian turn in neoliberalism where, instead of a coherent agenda for shelter and long-term work, many states focus on border security and the naming (and framing) of refugees as threats to the economy and cultural coherence of the EU.
Disposability and Abandonment in Nairobi
Authors: Bhagat Ali
Published: May 2024

This chapter explores embodied disposability in Nairobi, where refugees are made de facto illegal people. The chapter begins by providing an overview of the particularities of neoliberal restructuring in Kenya and Nairobi before moving to a discussion of shelter, labor, and political insecurity by asking, who does a city belong to? In so doing, the chapter examines housing precarity, ongoing displacement in Nairobi, and various strategies of survival that hinge on loans. It particularly considers the ascension of entrepreneurialism as a survival strategy for refugees. Ultimately, the chapter highlights the liminality of refugees who are simultaneously seen as security and economic threats while also being forced to hide as illegal and marginalized subjects in urban space.
Commodity Frontiers
Authors: Raeymaekers Timothy
Published: May 2024

This chapter explores the racial dynamics that underpin the reproduction of migrant labor in the plantation economy of the Mediterranean. It examines patterns of gendered and racialized migration within Italy. The discourse on contemporary migrant slavery as a form of labor exploitation reflects widespread refusal in Italy and Europe to grapple with the structural racism that historically became part and parcel of the global supply chains. The chapter also highlights the complex and multifold Black struggles within the economy, referencing the notion of natural racialization of allocating Black lives outside the perimeters of modern and civilized humanity. It argues that global agri-food production has no labor shortage, but rather a shortage of workers willing to work under conditions that go beyond the accepted perception of the humane.
Territorializing Labor
Authors: Raeymaekers Timothy
Published: May 2024

This chapter looks into the current border regime characterizing the Mediterranean border and migration management. It discusses the importance of bordering infrastructures in understanding the dynamics of the differentiation and stratification process. The notion of bordering infrastructure also involves the instrument of territorial residence, which increasingly keeps migrant workers tied to the land and their employer as unfree workers. Moreover, extractivism persists as a form of labor exploitation in a way it is socially and culturally reproduced through operations of unsettlement. The chapter examines the factors of agricultural production and reproduction in Basilicata's tomato district, which includes the social reproduction of Basilicata's agricultural economy. It then provides an overview of specific infrastructures that have been put in place to coerce and discipline migrant labor in the context of Mediterranean agri-food supply chains.
Impermanent Territories
Authors: Raeymaekers Timothy
Published: May 2024

This chapter overviews a complementary look into migrant ghettos as emerging rural infrastructures. Even though infrastructures are essential to the agrarian economy of cash crop production in the Italian South, they are also deliberately excluded from the formal social, political, and economic sphere. The term bordering infrastructures help frame the sociomaterial dimension of migrants' included exclusion in contemporary agricultural supply chains. On the other hand, the notion of natural racialization describes the specific manners in which territorial infrastructures are effectively naturalizing a racialized humanity into a stratigraphic order with all the violent struggles and negotiations. The chapter examines the politics surrounding labor migration flows in the Alto Bradano area from the mid-1990s until today before highlighting the racializing dynamics that underpin the persistent separation from an infrastructural point of view.
Liquids in Socialist Realism I
Authors: Vinokour Maya
Published: May 2024

This chapter focuses on the emerging values of Socialist Realism. These values, especially “revolutionary romanticism,” were as anti-rational, labor-oriented, and bound up in the language of fluids as other phenomena within Soviet culture's organic turn. There are many superficial similarities between Stalinist Socialist Realism and official Nazi culture: the passion for gigantic, unrealizable architectural projects; the promotion of larger-than-life neoclassical statuary; and the view of Dostoevsky as degenerate. Yet the most salient similarity is both regimes' espousal of what the historian Jeffrey Herf called “reactionary modernism.” The chapter then considers how the creation of the Soviet Writers' Union signaled that, henceforth, writers would be classified alongside other Soviet toilers, from “canal armyists” and factory workers to teachers and office employees. Ultimately, the merging doctrine of Socialist Realism erased the boundaries between fact and fiction, past and future, individual and collective, free and incarcerated, manual laborer and intellectual worker.
Nostalgia, Retro, and Trauma
Authors: Platt Kevin M. F.
Published: May 2024

This chapter details the interplay of nostalgia, retro, and trauma in Riga, which became a favored production site for Soviet film and television projects set. Moreover, televisual events, such as the New Wave competition, take up Soviet legacies of representation of Latvia in contrasting manners. The music festival and the duel of documentary films illustrate the effects of Russian soft power in Latvia. The chapter also explores the notion of history, memory war, and entanglement present in the clash between Nazism, Baltic Style, and The Soviet Story. Meanwhile, the social identity of bordered children of Soviet occupiers constitutes the messy remainder that cannot be assimilated into the intact yet incompatible constructions of collective identity endorsed by either film.
Indirect Rule
Authors: Lake David A.
Published: May 2024

This book examines how states indirectly exercise authority over others and how this mode of rule affects domestic and international politics. Indirect rule has long characterized interstate relationships and US foreign relations. A key mechanism of international hierarchy, indirect rule involves an allied group within a client state adopting policies preferred by a dominant state in exchange for the dominant state's support. Drawing on the history of US involvement in the Caribbean and Central America, Western Europe, and the Arab Middle East, the book shows that indirect rule is more likely to occur when the specific assets at risk are large and governance costs are low. The book's conceptualization of indirect rule sharpens our understanding of how the United States came to occupy the pinnacle of world power. Yet the consequences of indirect rule that the book documents—including anti-Americanism—reveal its shortcomings. As US efforts at democracy promotion and other forms of intervention abroad face declining support at home, the book compels us to consider whether this method of rule ultimately advances US interests.
Indirect Rule
Authors: Lake David A.
Published: May 2024

This chapter defines the theory of indirect rule, which is the exercise of authority by proxy. It explains the importance of the presence of an allied group within the subordinate society with a policy preference closer to that of the dominant state than the domestic opposition. The consequences of indirect rule depend on the size of the allied group. Moreover, the theory develops the key concepts of interests, governance costs, specific assets, opportunism and international hierarchy, and alternatives to indirect rule. The chapter clarifies that indirect rule is a deal in which the dominant state provides support and the allied group acts in its self-interest to provide a policy that both actors desire.
Indirect Rule in the Caribbean and Central America
Authors: Lake David A.
Published: May 2024

This chapter focuses on the indirect rule in the Caribbean and Central America (CCA). It explains that the US policy in the CCA led to a century or more of brutal authoritarian repression and anti-Americanism. The United States mostly ruled indirectly while allying with local elites who then enacted policies that both preferred the strictly domestic policy alternative. Moreover, economic expansion is one of the primary interests that allowed indirect rule to flourish in the CCA. The chapter then discusses the forms of support provided by the United States to the regional elites, and the domestic political consequences of indirect rule.
Ambassadors of Social Progress
Authors: Galmarini Maria Cristina
Published: May 2024

This book examines the ways in which blind activists from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe entered the postwar international disability movement and shaped its content and its course. The book shows that the international work of socialist blind activists was defined by the larger politics of the Cold War and, in many respects, represented a field of competition with the West in which the East could shine. Yet, the book also reveals that socialist blind politics went beyond propaganda. When socialist activists joined the international blind movement, they initiated an exchange of experiences that profoundly impacted everyone involved. Not only did the international blind movement turn global disability welfare from philanthropy to self-advocacy, but it also gave East European and Soviet activists a new set of ideas and technologies to improve their own national movements. By analyzing the intersection of disability and politics, the book enables a deeper, bottom-up understanding of cultural relations during the Cold War. The book shows that disability activism did not start as an import from the West in the post-1989 period, but rather had a long and meaningful tradition that was rooted in the socialist system of welfare and needed to be reinvented when this system fell apart.
Ideology in the Karmal Era
Authors: Klimentov Vassily
Published: May 2024

This chapter focuses on the ideology amidst the Karmal regime. Babrak Karmal's regime was unable to fight the insurgency on its own while Soviet forces secured cities and communication routes. The chapter explains that the influence of ideology is central to understanding how the Soviets ended up conducting a policy that was at cross-purposes with its professed interests. It cites that belief in socialism's ultimate victory weighed heavily on the Soviet decision to intervene. Moreover, Soviet neglect of Islam was the product of the ideological approach since religion did not fit with how Krelim and its advisers saw the world. The chapter explains that Marxist–Leninist ideology was crucial to the Soviet approach in Afghanistan since it affected the politburo's view and influenced the Soviets.
The Politics of Emotion
Authors: Silleras-Fernandez Nuria
Published: May 2024

This book explores the intersection of powerful emotional states—love, melancholy, grief, and madness—with gender and political power on the Iberian Peninsula from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. The book focuses on three royal women: Isabel of Portugal (1428–1496), queen-consort of Castile; Isabel of Aragon (1470–1498), queen-consort of Portugal; and Juana of Castile (1479–1555), queen of Castile and its empire. Each of these women was perceived by their contemporaries as having gone “mad” as a result of excessive grief, and all three were related to Isabel the Catholic (1451–1504), queen of Castile and a woman lauded in her time as a paragon of reason. Through the lives and experiences of these royal women and the observations, judgments, and machinations of their families, entourages, and circles of writers, chronicles, courtiers, moralists, and physicians in their orbits, the book addresses critical questions about how royal women in Iberia were expected to behave, the affective standards to which they were held, and how perceptions about their emotional states influenced the way they were able to exercise power. More broadly, the book details how the court cultures in medieval and early modern Castile and Portugal contributed to the development of new notions of emotional excess and mental illness.
The Politics of Emotion
Authors: Silleras-Fernandez Nuria
Published: May 2024

This chapter provides a background on Isabel of Portugal, Isabel of Aragon, and Juana of Castile and other historical personalities and literary characters who populated the court culture of medieval and early modern Iberia. It explores broader questions relating to how the three women contributed to and participated in the development of notions of grief, love, excess, mental instability, and melancholy from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. It also connects the historical individuals to the imaginary of their time, its literary production, and to contemporary medical, philosophical, and religious views. The chapter highlights issues relating to gender and ideas regarding rationality, the role of emotions, grief, physical and mental health and disability, politics, and the literary representation of women. It emphasizes how the expectations for dowager queens, queen consorts, and queens in their own right were substantially different from those for their male counterparts.
Regulating Death, Grief, and Consolation
Authors: Silleras-Fernandez Nuria
Published: May 2024

This chapter discusses the regulation of emotions, the construction of melancholy as a disease, the norms and laws regarding funerals and mourning enforced by the Church and the monarchy, and the need for consolation that recommended patience and acceptance to the bereaved. It considers emotions to be dangerous and gendered, which intersect in the misogyny of the time that characterized women as irrational, unstable, and prone to excess. It also highlights prejudices that could be enduring and have catastrophic consequences for women in positions of power and influence. Although women were expected to take active political roles, they never escaped masculine surveillance and male suspicion that they were inherently unfit to rule. The chapter points out how any emotional excess on the part of women merely served to confirm existing male biases and was invariably seen in the worst light.
Contested Agency
Authors: Silleras-Fernandez Nuria
Published: May 2024

This chapter explores the construction of Isabel of Portugal's reputation as a sick and melancholic dowager and considers the reasons behind her retirement from court. It disentangles and debunks the elements of legend that were later added to the narrative of Isabel's distress. It also examines her allegedly fraught relationship with one of her ladies-in-waiting, Beatriz da Silva, who was eventually canonized. The hagiographic narratives written to promote Beatriz's order and her canonization present a violently jealous and insane Isabel pushing Beatriz toward sainthood. The chapter explores the chronicles and hagiographic texts of the time that deprived Beatriz and Isabel the agency they had in real life.
Conclusion
Authors: Silleras-Fernandez Nuria
Published: May 2024

This chapter begins with the famous couplets written by Jorge Manrique, which lays out all of the key themes regarded as relevant to death in the fifteenth century. It explores the forms in which the dead are memorialized, buried, mourned, prayed for, and remembered from an intersectional perspective. For some, a deceased loved one will remain a powerful presence that will not allow them to overcome their grief but rather lock them into a dynamic of mourning that had no clear resolution. The chapter explains how Isabel of Portugal, Isabel the Catholic, Isabel of Aragon, and Juana I fell into the grip of intense sorrow, because prior to their grief they had experienced intense love. Intense love was to be reserved for God alone, therefore abandoning oneself to excessive mourning represented an offense to God and a defiance of his will.
Chapter XVIII
Authors: Bakin Kyokutei
Published: May 2024

This chapter describes the Ōnin era that lasted for two years before being renamed Bunmei. At that period, it had been three years since Tatsuka, Shino's mother, had died and during that time he had served his father with an ever-increasing sense of duty. Even with Shino's care, Ōtsuka Bansaku Kazumori, who had added widowerhood to lameness, grew weaker of spirit with every passing year. The chapter highlights how Bansaku, in intervals between bouts of illness, wrote a book that he gave to village elders about what he knew concerning preparations for floods and droughts, provisions for lean harvests, and everything pertaining to the daily usages of the granger. Although Bansaku's dog Yoshirō had turned twelve years old, he was healthier in spirit than ever and, as a result, came to have a certain authority among the village dogs.
Chapter XXI
Authors: Bakin Kyokutei
Published: May 2024

This chapter details what happened to Shino while he finished his father's intermediacy, such as being accompanied by Hikiroku and Kamezasa's menial named Gakuzō and being brought with a pot of food. Gakuzō was replaced by another manservant after Nukasuke reported to Shino's uncle and aunt that the menial became ill. It is revealed that Gakuzō feigned his illness to return to Hikiroku and Kamezasa as Shino had been difficult to live with and had refused to be served upon. The chapter mentions Sesuke, a man of more than sixty years old that replaced Gakuzō. But Kamezasa was convinced that Gakuzō should be reconciled with Shino and accompanied him to make amends with her nephew.
Chapter XXII
Authors: Bakin Kyokutei
Published: May 2024

This chapter describes Hikiroku and Kamezasa's affectionate treatment of Shino from the day they welcomed him into their house, but they were only doing so to burnish their reputations. Hikiroku had deceived the villagers and appropriated unto himself Bansaku's Tillage and not a smidgen of which he employed on Shino's behalf. The chapter details Hikiroku's intention to end Shino after acquiring Bansaku's sword Rainmaker and to find a more fitting groom for Hamaji to make his old age pleasant. The chapter highlights how it was difficult for Hikiroku to end Shino as he had his father's foresighted final counsel, talent, and capacity and he was a rare youth who could have outmatched Ushiwaka for wit. Shino has been well aware of Hikiroku's feelings and never for a moment let down his defenses, keeping the sword at his waist every moment from the day he moved into his aunt's house.
Chapter XXVII
Authors: Bakin Kyokutei
Published: May 2024

This chapter details Samojirō's conversation with Hikiroku's old servant, Sesuke, who revealed that there was going to be a wedding between Hamaji and Kyūroku. With the news that Shino went away and Hamaji would be marrying another man, Samojirō's heart uncontrollably boiled over and with every intake of breath and every exhalation the fumes of his wrath grew more and more unbearable. Samojirō was upset that Kamezasa did not keep her promise that he can marry Hamaji after he switched Shino's sword with a fake one, although secretly he was in actual possession of the mystical blade. The chapter narrates how Samojirō devised a plan to abduct Hamaji in secret and if she still refused him, he intended to sell her as a pleasure girl in Kamakura or the Capital. On the night of the wedding, Hamaji attempted to take her life but was disrupted by Samojirō, who promptly kidnapped her.
Chapter XXXIII
Authors: Bakin Kyokutei
Published: May 2024

This chapter begins with the appearance of Kobungo as Kenpachi, Shino, and Bungobei were conversing on the boat. While Bungobei led Kenpachi and Shino to his inn to hide, Kobungo created a bundle of bath cloth to deceive pursuers that Kenpachi and Shino were still on the boat drifting down the river. At the inn, Kobungo, Kenpachi and Shino showed the beads they possessed and marks on their body that resembled each other. The chapter covers Shino's description of Gakuzō as he also possessed an identical bead and mark. Shino talks about the plum tree that bore fruit in bunches of eight and on each plum appeared a character of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, filiality, fraternity, loyalty, and fidelity a year after he buried the body of a dog named Yoshirō beneath it.
Chapter XXXV
Authors: Bakin Kyokutei
Published: May 2024

This chapter recounts Nengyoku's visit at the inn while Kobungo was about to feed the ill Shino some reheated gruel. Although hesitant, Kobungo let Nengyoku stay the night at the inn. Kobungo's wrestling disciples suddenly arrived at the inn to confront him and loudly exclaimed to execute him as he let Fusahachi beat him. After Kobungo taught his disciples a lesson and beating them up, a new visitor came by named Toyama Myōshin, who escorted Fusahachi's wife Niu and son Daihachi so that they can stay at the inn for the night. Before Myōshin left, she heard Nengyoku's flute playing The Nestling Crane, a song about the pheasant in the burning field, crane at night, and every living thing that knows the sorrow of parting from a mate, the love, and duty of a parent and child.
Chapter XXXVI
Authors: Bakin Kyokutei
Published: May 2024

This chapter details Fusahachi's arrival at the inn to settle a previous score with Kobungo when he overheard him and his wife Nui talking in one of the rooms. Niu was weeping and in despair as she told Kobungo that she did not know what she will would say to their father about her failed marriage. Angered by Niu's insistence to look at the storeroom and imminent discovery of Shino that was hidden away, he tried to make Niu and Daihachi leave when he was attacked by Fusahachi. The chapter narrates how Fusahachi revealed that he was the man that attacked Kobungo while he tried to put the bundled bath towel in the boat to trick the pursuers of Shino and Genpachi. Kobungo fought with Fusahachi as he intended to deliver Shino to Atsumitsu.