The Productive Force of Friendship in Literary History

Transmedia Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century sets out to recuperate adaptation within literary history as the driving force of literary and artistic production and reception, rather than part of...

This book provides a critical introduction to David Drake, or Dave the Potter, an enslaved pottery maker and author of inscribed verses and couplets, who lived and worked in Edgefield, South Carolina, from the 1830s until the Civil War period. Various scholars, artists, and historians in the present volume join together to interpret the meaning of a figure who signed the prodigious vessels he made with the single name “Dave.” Topics in the volume range from considerations of the production forces shaping Dave the Potter’s activity to a study of the West African traces of artistry and religion in the vessels. With contributions drawing on disciplines ranging from literary history, poetry and poetics, and African American phenomenology to archaeology and material culture studies, the collection provides an exhaustive assessment of the competing meanings of a range of topics in the multifaceted writing and wares of Dave the Potter: slavery and the self, notions of mastery and the thing, dates and the slave signature, themes of alienation, plenty, creativity, and unintelligibility. In their totality, the essays finally comment on the (in)accessibility of the slave past and the ethics of representing a slave who is also a nameable exception.

The scientific work, based on archival sources, examines Ukraine’s loss of valuables during the evacuation at the beginning of World War II. These studies contain interesting factual material, including the restructuring of the economic life of the country to the military system, the development of the military economy, the movement of productive forces to the east of the country and more. An important place in the study is the disclosure of conditions and factors that influenced the preparation and conduct of the evacuation in Kremenchug in 1941. The novelty of the study is due to the fact that the names and positions of people who led the evacuation in Kremenchuk and characterized the impact of conditions and factors on preparation, course and the results of the evacuation during the German- Soviet war. Disclosure of features, nature of evacuation will contribute to the formation of a holistic picture of the evacuation of agricultural food and transport resources, factories, factories, locomotive depot, river fleet during the Second World War; identification and disclosure of forms and methods of using troops during the evacuation during the specified period. Thus, the analysis of the study shows that the author solved a number of important scientific problems, which allowed to clarify the state of study of the topic in the historical literature, to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the source base of the study; to reveal the essence of the characteristic features and peculiarities of evacuation. The subject of research on the topic is the process of evacuation to the east, not only in the USSR, but also in the city of Kremenchuk. The methodology of this study is theoretical research, namely the observation and use of historical and logical research methods. And empirical, namely the abstraction, analysis and synthesis of historical events in this topic. The aim is to identify the problems and methods of their solution that at different stages of development of historical science dominated in the study of evacuation processes. This problem has not yet been the subject of a separate study. At the same time, in the works devoted to the actual evacuation of the industry of the USSR, the works of Soviet historians were analyzed and evaluated.

This book presents itself as a critical overview of the historical literature about the emergence of a consumer society in Europe and its colonial appendages during the period from 1650 to 1800. Since the groundbreaking work of McKendrick, who in 1982 identified a “consumer revolution” in this era—albeit one confined to Britain—this theme has attracted the attention of multiple historians in many countries who have both deepened our knowledge of the dynamic material world of this era and proposed explanations for its emergence and interpretations of its meaning.1 Kwass’ synthesis, which introduces readers to what is now a vast literature, seeks to identify the places where earlier interpreters have fallen short, proposing an agenda for a history of consumption that satisfies current requirements.Kwass interweaves two approaches to his topic. He begins and ends by treating the consumer revolution as a product of political and economic forces. He claims that the topic is important today because consumption is at the root of contemporary society’s most pressing problems, most notably global warming, income inequality, and racism. In his view, it is no accident that consumption is the source of so many evils today, given its creation at the intersection of imperialism and slavery. This fatal synergy “increased the influx of low-priced consumer goods into Europe,” which “is now seen as central to the consumer revolution” (73). The consumer society of the modern world has a lot to answer for, both in the circumstances of its birth and in its contemporary consequences. Kwass wants to convince readers that it should be brought to an end and replaced with ethical consumption practices (222).But, to return to Kwass’ historical topic, through which channels and which chains of causation did an influx of low-priced goods produce a revolution in consumer behavior in societies where, as Kwass notes, real wages did not rise and most people struggled to survive? Furthermore, by what standard was this influx “low priced”? Such claims require more rigorous forms of analysis than Kwass provides; his discussion tends to float on the surface of things.Fortunately, most of the book is not actually about external, supply-side shocks to Europe’s Early Modern economy. The bulk of the book is a fairly conventional discussion of selected aspects of the consumer cultures of the long eighteenth century, with particular attention paid to the elite material world of ancien régime France. Four of the book’s seven substantive chapters delve into the novel retail venues of the time, as well as the salons, cafes, and public promenades frequented by elite consumers. They also explore the so-called “reading revolution” of the age of Enlightenment and the uses of consumer goods in furthering the revolutionary movements of the age on both sides of the Atlantic.These chapters are all well referenced and well argued. The high point is chapter 4, in which Kwass discusses the cultural meaning of consumption. He begins with the premise that “there is no innate propensity to consume.” Therefore, “it is important to explore the cultural contexts in which meanings are forged and desires take shape” (99). “Consumption has a history” (4)—a history that accelerated in the long eighteenth century, tightly linked to the Enlightenment project. The consumer revolution of this age, which constituted an important step on the road to modernity, led directly to the creation of today’s universal consumer culture. Kwass might have elaborated more about the interrelationships to which he alludes between consumption, enlightenment, revolution, and the shaping of desires.Consumer behavior as a historical agent is not an easy topic for academic analysis, perhaps because it seems so obvious to us. We are all consumers, and we all have doubts and anxieties about our consumption choices. Indeed, consumption is the locus of everyday politics for most people today. Kwass is correct to claim that a historical analysis of how modern consumer society emerged is essential to understanding the options that now stand before us. Unfortunately, two distinct strands of analysis are essayed in this volume without being brought to satisfactory conclusions.

Before the rise of private homes as we now understand them, the realm of personal, private, and local relations in England was the parish, which was also the sphere of poverty management. Between the 1740s and the 1790s, legislators, political economists, reformers, and novelists transferred the parish system's functions to another institution that promised self-sufficient prosperity: the labourer's cottage. Expanding its scope beyond the parameters of literary history and previous studies of domesticity, Be It Ever So Humble posits that the modern middle-class home was conceived during the eighteenth century in England, and that its first inhabitants were the poor. Over the course of the eighteenth century, many participants in discussions about poverty management came to believe that private family dwellings could turn England's indigent, unemployed, and discontent into a self-sufficient, productive, and patriotic labour force. Writers and thinkers involved in these debates produced copious descriptions of what a private home was and how it related to the collective national home. In this body of texts, Scott MacKenzie pursues the origins of the modern middle-class home through an extensive set of discourses--including philosophy, law, religion, economics, and aesthetics--all of which brush up against and often spill over into literary representations. Through close readings, the author substantiates his claim that the private home was first invented for the poor and that only later did the middle class appropriate it to themselves. Thus, the late eighteenth century proves to be a watershed moment in home's conceptual life, one that produced a remarkably rich and complex set of cultural ideas and images.

In the 21st century today, economic globalization and the advent of an information age have greatly unleashed and boosted productive forces. They have presented unprecedented opportunities while make climate change, ecological imbalances, financial risks, refugee crises, and major infectious diseases cross the national borders to become a global challenge for humanity. The Chinese communists headed by Xi Jinping, through in-depth analysis and rational thinking of the historical trend, the trend of current times, and the law of human civilization development, have put forward the concept of “a community of shared future for mankind” .With peace, development, cooperation, and win-win as its core value, the concept is a “China solution” to meet global challenges, to safeguard world peace, and to promote the common development of all countries. It also represents “Chinese Wisdom” and “Chinese Responsibility” as a rising power in the world. The concept of “a community of shared future for mankind” is rooted in the broad and profound Chinese traditional culture and is a scientific prediction based on the characteristics of the times and the direction of the development of human society. In September 2017, the 8th World Conference on Confucianism was opened in Qufu, Shandong Province, hometown of Confucius. Domestic and foreign experts conducted discussions on the theme of “Confucian Thoughts and A Community of Shared Future for Mankind”. Zhu Jieren, President of the Chinese Historical Literature Research Association, as one of participating experts, mentioned: “Confucius, in his era, had proposed the idea of “Grand Union” and in his thought, mankind is a community of shared future.” (Li, 2017) Confucian thoughts of “Grand Union” is precisely coincides with the concept of “a community of shared future for mankind” both in values and pursuits. If the “Grand Union” thought is the pursuit of Chinese ancient thinker for an ideal human society, then the concept of “a community of shared future for mankind” is the pursuit of Chinese communists for a peaceful and progressing world (Sun, 2016). Based on common pursuits and values, the two thoughts are proposed based on different historical backgrounds and realistic conditions. Therefore, it is of great realistic and practical significance that by analyzing and comparing the two thoughts, the innovation and internationalization of Confucianism studies can be greatly promoted and the construction of a community of shared future for mankind can be also pushed forward.