Claude McKay’s Historical Imagination

TWILIGHT OF THE VAMPIRES: HISTORY AND THE MYTH OF THE UNDEAD Matthew Kratter University ofCalifornia Berkeley "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster." (Nietzsche, Beyond Good andEvil, IV, 146) One ofthe most satisfying parts ofan extended engagement with the mimetic theory is the bird's-eye view of history that it affords one—that magnificently coherent panorama which stretches from proto-hominids through the Passion to post-culture and the Apocalypse. The sheer scope of Girard's historical vision is also, admittedly, one ofthe more controversial aspects of his theory. As early as Violence and the Sacred (French, 1972; English trans., 1977), in a conscious revolt against the anti-Hegelian and anti-systematic temper of the times, Girard implied a historical telos for human culture that consists ofthe gradual replacement of sacrificial by non-sacrificial paradigms and praxes. With the publication of Things Hidden Since the Foundation ofthe World (1978; 1987) and The Scapegoat (1982; 1986), however, Girard appeared to step beyond the pale of polite (read, secularist) academic discourse by explicitly identifying the Christian Paraclete as the divine dynamo behind the historical process: "The Spirit is working in history to reveal what Jesus has already revealed, the mechanism ofthe scapegoat, the genesis of all mythology, the nonexistence of all gods of violence" (Scapegoat 207). More recently, in an essay on Satan (literally, "the accuser"), the contrasting role of the Paraclete (literally, "the lawyer for the defense") as a defender ofvictims is again emphasized: Matthew Kratter31 It is possible to read the history, first of the Christianized West, then ofthe Westernized planet, our modern history, as ... a process of vindication and rehabilitation of more and more persecuted victims. New hidden victims of society are continuously being brought to light; the consensus against them always dissolves after a while. First it was slaves, then the lower classes, then people ofdifferent ethnic and religious backgrounds. Today the victimization of ethnic groups, of women, ofhandicapped people, ofthe very young and the very old, is coming to light. (GirardReader 208) Mostrecently, Girard's view ofhistory has become, ifanything, more unified, as (following Raymund Schwager) he has begun to emphasize the continuity between the sacrificial and the non-sacrificial (without, of course, trying to elide their differences). At a recent AAR/SBL conference in San Francisco (22 November 1997), Girard discussed the Eucharist as a recapitulation ofthe religious history of mankind, in which all previous forms of sacrifice are present (from cannibalism and "other-sacrifice" to the other end of the spectrum and "self-sacrifice"). Or phrased somewhat differently, the redemptive effects ofthe Passion radiate backwards and forwards in time— what Giuseppe Fornari implies when he refers to Christianity's "capacity to redeem the whole history ofman, summing up and surpassing all its sacrificial forms" (187). It may well prove that "Sacrifice" (with a capital "S") is the single most important and comprehensive word that we possess to describe our history. The central contention ofthis essay is that the phenomenon ofthe vampire offers itself as a privileged site for exploring this work of the Paraclete in history. The very processes of "bringing to light" and "exhuming victims," described by Girard above, are certainly metaphors appropriate to the twilit world ofthe vampire, in which the undead are always being dug up or exposed to die light. IfI maintain that, this late in the twentieth century, we are living in the "twilight ofthe vampires," the allusion to Wagner's Götterdämmerung and Nietzsche's Götzen-dämmerung is not accidental. The ambiguity ofthe German verb dämmern (which can mean "to grow dark" or "to grow light") captures all the paradoxes that surround the mythologizing, demythologizing, and remythologizing of the traditional figure ofthe vampire. I will explore these paradoxes in five successive moments (in the most archaic and traditional form taken by the vampire, then in a medieval persecution text, a late-Victorian novel, a German Expressionist film, and finally a series of 32Twilight ofthe Vampires contemporary popular novels) in order to demonstrate the various metamorphoses undergone by the vampire throughout a history which may be viewed as overseen by the Paraclete—and by a...

Revolutions are hardly ever realized in single moments, single years, or discrete turning points. Instead, they unfold over time. Elizabeth Barrett Browning stresses this historical reality in letters and poems she wrote about Risorgimento Florence during the late 1840s. In a letter to Mary Russell Milford dated 30 April 1849, Barrett Browning glosses the events of 1849 as revolutions. This perhaps surprising claim was provoked in part by her appraisal of Grand Duke Leopold II, whose duplicitous allegiances to Tuscans and Austrians had long been suspected. By the spring of 1849, they were undeniable. Yet her frustrations aren't limited to him alone. My faith in every species of Italian is however nearly tired Barrett Browning confesses: don't believe they are men at all, much less heroes & patriots. Since I wrote last to you, I think we have had two revolutions here at Florence--Grand Duke out, Grand Duke in--The bells in the church opposite rang for both--They first planted a tree of liberty close to our door, and then they pulled it down. (1) Famous for her rallying cries on behalf of the Risorgimento, Barrett Browning in fact understood mid-century Florence through a series of uncertainties: not one but two revolutionary springs, not only the planting but also the uprooting of new life. (2) For Barrett Browning, 1849 brought the uncertainties of 1847 and 1848 into even sharper focus. Barrett Browning's 1851 diptych Casa Guidi Windows similarly dramatizes two revolutions: it dilates on the immediate aftermath of two events that read, at least at first, as inverses of one another. (3) Part one is inspired by 12 September 1847, when Leopold II promised to support the Florentine civic guard, despite his personal and political allegiances to Austria. Part two is inspired by 2 May 1849, when the Austrian army occupied Florence after Leopold II fled the city, renewed allegiances with Pope Pius IX and Emperor Franz Joseph I, and then returned. The Grand Duke's militarized re-entry confirmed his duplicity and marked the fall of the provisional Tuscan republic. (4) For Barrett Browning, the Florentine civic guard and the Austrian army embody two distinct historical possibilities. Indeed, as she chronicles her own wavering faith in Tuscan independence across Casa Guidi Windows, she returns, again and again, to the complex civic and political allegiances of two non-Italian figureheads: Pope Pius IX and Grand Duke Leopold II. While Pius IX was and is still notorious for renouncing his commitment to mid-century revolutions (Margaret Fuller famously excoriates him for reversing his implicit support of Roman revolutionaries between 1848 and 1849 in The New-York Daily Tribune), Grand Duke Leopold II will be my primary subject in this essay. Leopold II appears as an important counterpart to Barrett Browning's speaker throughout the poem. As I'll demonstrate, she compares her ambivalence to his at crucial moments, identifying with him in ways that reveal her historical imagination. By historical imagination, I mean not only how she blurs personal and political identifications with the Austro-Florentine Duke but also how she superimposes past- and present-tense expressions of patriotic sentiment, as she does in her 1849 letter to Mitford, through her reflections on him. By stressing Barrett Browning's representations of Leopold II across the 1847 and 1849 revolutions, I'll read this poem as a self-conscious meditation on historiography, one that presents seemingly recursive moments non-linearly and sometimes non-sequentially. Barrett Browning imagines poetic authority, I argue, as necessarily mutable and as an alternative to the Grand Duke's push-and-pull, give-and-take power and the civic disillusionment that it incites by the midpoint of the poem. Early critics of Casa Guidi Windows read Barrett Browning's diptych structure as evidence of her patriotic naivete: she doesn't revise part one (written in 1847) to anticipate part two (written in 1849). …

What is the role of rhythm, sound, meter, and rhyme in translations and performances of comedia? This essay discusses Sor Juana’s Amor es más laberinto and my process of translating moments of heightened verse in the play—sonnets spoken by the two princesses and sound-driven texts spoken (or perhaps sung) by the Chorus and by the character Music. The piece asks: How should these moments of heightened verse be translated? What is the relationship between author, translator, actor, and director as each participant in the creative process approaches form through their own understanding of sound and sense? Weaving together analysis of Sor Juana’s own reconfiguring of form and of contemporary innovations in poetic form, which each craft new visions of history and identity, the piece argues that translators are permitted, and perhaps obligated, to wield form and the poetic line to its full affective potential.

David Montgomery was both an extraordinary man and an extraordinary historian. All one needs to do is look at his autobiographical interview, which appeared in Visions of History in 1983, to know this. I had the good fortune of studying and then collaborating with David from 1979 at the University of Pittsburgh until the late 1990s at Yale University. While he had been recruited to Yale in the wake of the academic and political success of his Workers' Control in America, in my view his most beautiful book remains his first, Beyond Equality. Told with passion, intelligence, and an impressive richness of detail, it is the remarkable story of American labor and the Left immediately after the Civil War. At that time, the Republican Party, led by a friend of Marx, pursued arguably the most progressive policies of any Western government in history, embodying that world of free labor and social and racial equality, which had emerged victorious from the war against slavery. David discovered and reconstructed this world, with its special blend of liberty and justice, after having spent ten years as a skilled worker and communist trade unionist in the factories of the 1950s. During that period, he shared his political commitment with his radiant wife, Marty, who was from a large African American communist family in Chicago. In fact, the two met on a ship that was carrying both of them to the World Youth Congress in Prague.

Nacionales y gremialistas: El “parto” de la nueva derecha política chilena, 1964 – 1973

Revolutions in TimeChateaubriand on the Antiquity of the Earth Katia Sainson In his Philosophy of History, Hegel writes of the French Revolution as a key moment in the intellectual history of civilization that effected a major shift in the human race's epistemological perspective of the world and its ability to shape that world. In his attempt to convey the magnitude of this "glorious mental dawn,"1 Hegel refers to an earlier intellectual breakthrough, which similarly caused humans to reevaluate their place in the universe. He writes: Never since the sun had stood in the firmament and the planets revolved around it had it been perceived that man's existence centers in his head, that is, in thought, inspired by which he builds up the world of reality.2 With this comparison to the Copernican Revolution, which interestingly enough evokes both the astronomical acceptation of revolution as a cyclical orbit in order to describe the more modern connotation of revolution as a radical change that marks a clear and perhaps even destructive break with the past, Hegel equates the French Revolution with what was not only a key moment in the history of science but perhaps more importantly an intellectual shift that marked "the rise of the world-view of modern European culture."3 Another epistemological shift had also developed over the course of the eighteenth century, one that, like Hegel's "mental dawn," prompted questions about human kind's perspective on history. As Paolo Rossi has pointed out in his work The Dark Abyss of Time, when Robert Hooke studied those "figured stones" that we now call fossils at the beginning of the eighteenth century it was commonly accepted that the Earth's past, as was evidenced by the Scriptures, spanned only six thousand years, whereas by the end of the century, contemporaries of the French Revolution could look back on a past that was by then [End Page 47] regarded as consisting not of thousands but rather of millions of years. This shift was no less comparable to the establishment of the heliocentric heavens: The difference lies not only between living at the center or at the margins of the universe, but also between living in a present relatively close to the origins (and having at hand, what is more, a text that narrates the entire history of the world) or living instead in a present behind which stretches the "dark abyss" (the term is Buffon's) of an infinite time.4 This shift in the conceptualization of the natural world is a direct consequence of what has been dubbed the "discovery of time," in other words, the understanding of the temporal dimension of natural processes that meant that Nature—which was now perceived as having a history—was "no longer opposed, as the reign of the immutable, to history, which [was] the reign of becoming and change."5 In this article I will examine how René de Chateaubriand, one of the most important literary figures of the post-Revolutionary era, dealt with the "discovery of time" in his reflections on history. It is clear from the amount of space devoted to the subject of the antiquity of the earth in such early works as L'Essai sur les révolutions and Le Génie du christianisme that Chateaubriand was struggling with the issues raised by new geological evidence. But perhaps more importantly, notwithstanding his position on the age of the earth, Chateaubriand's historical vision, much like the great naturalists of his time, portrays a universe in which the evidence of multiple past revolutions only proves that European man does not stand at the center of the historical system but rather as a diminished figure on history's margins. It is in this sense that Chateaubriand, who so staunchly argues against the antiquity of the earth, seems to have felt the shock waves not only of political revolution but also of his era's new Copernican revolution. Before discussing the place of this epistemological revolution in Chateaubriand's historiography let us first briefly examine some of the works that formed the backdrop to Chateaubriand's writing on this subject. This survey includes the works of the...

Whether talking about steering a wheelbarrow over rugged terrain or plotting the course of international relations, human performance systems involve change. Sometimes changes are subtle or evolutionary, sometimes they are catastrophic or revolutionary, and sometimes the changes are from periods of relative calm to periods of vibrant oscillations to periods of chaos. As a general rule, more complex systems are likely to produce more complex forms of change. Although social scientists have long acknowledged that change occurs and have considered ways to effect desirable change, the dynamical processes of change have been poorly understood in the past. This volume combines recent advances in mathematics and experimental design with the best available social science theories to produce a new, integrated, and compact theory of work, organizations, and social evolution. The domains of application extend from human decision-making processes to personnel selection and work motivation, work performance under conditions of stress, accident and health risk analysis, the development of social institutions and economic systems, creativity and innovation, organizational development and group dynamics, and political revolutions and war. Relative to other literature on nonlinear dynamical systems theory (NDS), this book is unique in that it integrates new developments in NDS with substantive psychological theory. It builds on many recent developments in organizational theory to show that nonlinear dynamics were often implicit in those works all along. The result is an entirely new way of viewing social events, understanding change processes, and asking questions about social systems. This book also contains much new empirical work and explains the newly developed methods for testing these new hypotheses.

THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION represents the most thorough case study of revolutionary change anywhere in the history of the modern world.' In ten years of sustained internal and international warfare, a colony populated predominantly by plantation slaves overthrew both its colonial status and its economic system and established a new political state of entirely free individuals-with some ex-slaves constituting the new political authority. As only the second state to declare its independence in the Americas, Haiti had no viable administrative models to follow. The British North Americans who declared their independence in 1776 left slavery intact, and theirs was more a political revolution than a social and economic one. The success of Haiti against all odds made social revolutions a sensitive issue among the leaders of political revolt elsewhere in the Americas during the final years of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century.2 Yet the genesis of the Haitian Revolution cannot be separated from the wider concomitant events of the later eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Indeed, the period between 1750 and 1850 represented an age of spontaneous, interrelated revolutions, and events in Saint

Tax and the Forgotten Classes A Brief History Written in Letters of Blood and Fire

Under the Influence resents the first investigation of the social, cultural, and political factors that affected drinking and temperance among Russian and Soviet industrial workers from 1895 to 1932. Kate Transchel examines the many meanings of working-class drinking and temperance in a variety of settings, from Moscow to remote provinces, and illuminates the cultural conflicts and class dynamics that were deeply rooted in drinking rituals and the failure of attempted reforms by the Tsarist and Soviet authorities. As the title suggests, workers were often under the influence of alcohol, but they were also under political influences that defined what it meant to be a Soviet worker. Perhaps more importantly, they were under deeper, prerevolutionary cultural influences that continued to shape lower-class identities after 1917. The more the Soviet state tried to control working-class drinking, the more workers resisted. Radical legislation, massive propaganda, and even coercion were not sufficient to motivate workers to abandon traditional forms of fraternization. Under the Influence highlights working-class culture and underscores the limitations the Bolsheviks faced in attempting to create a cultural revolution to complete their social and political revolution.

The headlines of the past several years have been dominated by political revolutions and discussions of economic inequality all over the world.1 These movements are not uncommon historically, but their clustered existence illustrates the need for further development in our systems of government and economy in order to realize a better tomorrow. Conventional welfare systems, command economies and open markets have proved, in different ways, to be unable to provide for individuals’ fundamental needs and for their full participation in their societies. The challenge has been to develop systems that are reflective, receptive and effective in ensuring citizens’ welfare. This balance has been difficult to find and has led to the continued development of how we envision our economic and political systems. Each chapter of this volume educates us on how systems can or might work to meet specific needs and interests. Each of these potential and realized systems used different devices and motivations to give currency to citizens.

The 1990s were particularly harsh when they decreed – almost without intellectual opponents – that what had ended in 1989 was not the Stalinist dictatorship but, above all, socialism itself. Capitalism would be the (a) historical and universal, permanent and inevitable destiny of humankind. Outside this ‘destiny’ there would be no alternative. An unhistorical nature, an assured destiny, the future would then be inescapable. In order to bring this ideology to life, a memory of the European past has been built that does not pass through the laboratory of history. History is not memory. In these article we will debate 3 dominant thesis: is that of Nazism as the work of a madman, concealing that the Nazi regime was the corollary of the explosion of an entire economic and social system, capitalism, in the crisis of 1929. The other recurring theme, which calls for social resignation, insists that all emancipatory attempts in the twentieth century would result in totalitarian societies, starting with the October 1917 social and political revolution itself. The idea that the European Union is the constructor of the European Social State is another myth disseminated amidst the illustrated common sense. Finally, the hypothesis that European social rights ended, with neoliberalism, because of the fall of the USSR in 1989–1991, is another widely disseminated myth.

THE UPRISING (1982): HISTORY THROUGH FILM by Joanna Siegel "History records human action through time; it is the memory of human group experience."' The joint German-Nicaraguan film The Uprising, a portrayal of the Nicaraguan revolution, relates a significant event in recent human experience, and as such is an important and useful document. Filmmaker Peter Lilienthal 's stated purpose in creating The Uprising is to challenge the European stereotype of the "banana republic" by portraying the Nicaraguan revolution as a major event in the history of the Third World. The film depicts the dynamics of the overthrow of a long and brutal dictatorship by the collective will and muscle of the Nicaraguan people. Lilienthal chooses a fictional approach to his subject, which allows him a certain liberty in capturing the basic patterns and relationships he has identified as linking the events of the revolution. The nonfictional documentary style, perhaps a more generally accepted expression for a filmmaker's "historical imagination," could also be used to present an interpretation of these events. Fiction, however, has a unique potential for "following the thread of transformation of thought," an approach identified by one filmmaker as more relevant to the study of history than the traditional format of recording "dates, names, alliances, betrayals, wars, and conquests." "With a fiction feature," Lilienthal explains, "you can go inside. Then the audience can know what kind of people the revolution was made for... "^ Lilienthal wants to humanize his subject matter, to confront the narrow stereotypes he has observed Joanna Siegel io a negiAtexcd nuXAe. who hoA òtudie.d Latin Amexican HiAtony at U. C. L. A. She hoA been wonking with the Salvadonean ne{¡ugee. community in centnal Loo AngeleA. Il in Europe, the "poor but happy" generalization, or the "Communist Guerrillas vs. the Legitimate Government" explanation of Latin American liberation movements. By acquainting his audience with the intimacies of the lives of people involved with the revolution, he hopes to make the revolution "mean something" to people who are very far removed from it.5 To win sympathy and identification in his audience, the director chooses subjects with universal appeal. He wishes to expose his audience to the "very original and simple"^ aspects of Nicaraguan life which captivated him during his stay there. Foremost is his emphasis on the strength of the family unit. Flashes of the family seated around the dinner table, men protectively holding their small sons, grandmothers reaching for their grandchildren, and the many hands of all ages passing a firehose along its course are interspersed with more explicit scenes. His portrayal of the village mothers, all dressed in black, going to the barracks to demand the return of their sons shows the depth and importance of the family relationships involved. The war is not just the soldiers of Somoza vs. Sandini sta rebels; it is the integral family unit drawn into this conflict. The role of the church as a powerful force in the people's lives and in the revolution is also addressed. When the father wants to convince his son Agustín to desert from the Guard, he takes him to the village priest. A written study such as Weber's Nicaragua, the Sandinist Revolution can provide certain information on the Church's participation in a didactic form: "The Sandinists are hugely popular. ..even among a section of the clergy;... a major section of the clergy has thrown in its lot with revolutionary socialism." The fiction account, however, allows the audience to witness the priest saying, "Hermanos, estoy contigo." We see him opening the church allowing the people to hide, to display their banners of protest, or to seek refuge during an attack. Such details would be awkward to enumerate in non-fiction; yet, they add substantially to the audience's grasp of the situation by showing the actual ways in which the clergy supported the revolution. This use of fiction, of inside perspectives to touch an audience and affect them by means of their identification with characters, can of course be accomplished by written fiction as well as by film. Novels have perhaps even greater potential in this sphere because of their ability to convey not only actions, speech...

Our new century finds America still embroiled in some fashion in the culture wars that have characterized the past two decades. Conservatives still stand behind the banner of family values, Western civilization, the rule of reason, the canon of the Great Books, and a vision of history that promotes the American dream. Their enemies are still regarded as postmodern nihilists and politically correct thought-police, who promote the gospel of multiculturalism and a revisionist history of the United Sates. Most critical discussions of this conflict merely add to the already heated polarization that exists or fail to provide any illuminating analysis that might lead to some kind of resolution. Sven Birkerts, in The Gutenberg Elegies, clearly is biased in his disdain for the postmodern camp's influence within contemporary culture. While he admires some of their contributions,1 he is convinced that they have no desire to coexist with their conservative opponents, and that the latter can only have an increasingly diminishing influence in the years ahead.2 However, despite his own guarded pessimism, Birkerts does provide an analysis of this conflict that not only is quite shrewd and original, but contains the seeds for a possible resolution as well. Birkerts argues that these culture wars ought properly to be seen as wars.3 He claims that we are becoming a people who no longer print but screens. Indeed, he identifies this shift towards hypertextual as being the root cause or symptom of the rise of postmodernism in the arts.4 I shall explore his thesis in this essay, but also try to dispel his apocalyptic concerns, for the benefits of hypertextual culture need not come at the expense of the loss of intensive reading. To support this claim, I shall suggest that our current culture war in America is simply the latest in a long line of episodes that scholars have referred to as the battle between the Ancients and Moderns. I intend to examine the first occurrence of this conflict in the Twelfth Century Renaissance as a mirror for illuminating the dynamics involved in our own contemporary battle. For it too was essentially a rhetorical fight over the preferable way to and write. To understand this earlier conflict, though, I need first to provide the necessary context by examining Aristotle's influential theory of rhetoric. We may discover that our current war may also provide a mirror for understanding past ones as well. Finally, following my exploration of this parallel battle of ideas, I shall then marshal my arguments for why linear and hypertextual can indeed coexist in our contemporary culture. One prominent contention that will be considered is that hypertextual has always coexisted alongside intensive reading, as evidenced by the existence of commonplace books in the medieval and renaissance eras. But first we must examine Birkert's complex thesis itself and assess its merits and weaknesses. The reader should note that the title of this essay is carefully worded to reflect that my aim is not only to read accurately the nature of culture wars, but that to do so we must examine the very nature of reading itself. The Gutenberg Elegies Birkerts knows that his contrasting the stable hierarchies of the page with the rush of impulses on the screen has implications for our understanding not only reading, but writing and literary criticism as well.5 His description of students today and their difficulty concentrating on dense prose, dealing with allusions, and accepting digressions from the straight plot, should strike a chord of recognition among every teacher in contemporary schools.6 He acknowledges the benefits of electronic postmodernity: 1) an increased grasp of a global perspective and respect for complexity; 2) a capacity to deal with more stimuli simultaneously; 3) a relativistic tolerance for differences; and 4) a greater willingness to cope with novelty. …

This introduction to contemporary historical theory and practice shows how issues of identity have shaped how we write history. Stefan Berger charts how a new self-reflexivity about what is involved in the process of writing history entered the historical profession and the part that historians have played in debates about the past and its meaningfulness for the present. He introduces key trends in the theory of history such as postmodernism, poststructuralism, constructivism, narrativism and the linguistic turn and reveals, in turn, the ways in which they have transformed how historians have written history over the last four decades. The book ranges widely from more traditional forms of history writing, such as political, social, economic, labour and cultural history, to the emergence of more recent fields, including gender history, historical anthropology, the history of memory, visual history, the history of material culture, and comparative, transnational and global history.