Early Writings Research Articles

Powers of Imagination and Legal Regimes against “Obeah” in the Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century British Caribbean

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, African-derived spiritual practices glossed as “obeah” came to be intensely associated with pathologies of the imagination, first by British Caribbean slaveholders, and then much more widely by others. This article focuses on how early writings about, and legal regimes against, African Caribbean spirit work were shaped by theories of mind-body interaction during the final decades of British Caribbean slavery. Medical ideas about the powers of the imagination had played a key part in the decriminalization of “witchcraft” across Western Europe in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. This study examines how, conversely, medical theories of the imagination influenced the criminalization of obeah as a capital offense in British Caribbean colonies in the context of rising abolitionism and slave rebellion. I argue that the colonial association of obeah with imaginative pathology was used by slavery defenders to explain away high rates of slave mortality and to portray severe measures of social control as paternalistic. Reciprocally, the chapter points to how early writings about, and laws against, obeah informed theories of mental influence on bodily health during this period and thereafter.

Translating Science—Comparing Religions

Abstract Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) was a prominent South Asian reformer of Islam who focused on the reconciliation of science and Islam in his most influential texts. This article aims to analyze the implications of science becoming the dominant discourse in nineteenth-century South Asia for the conception of Islam and religion in general. Sayyid Ahmad is an intriguing example because he actively participated in religious as well as scientific discourses since as early as the 1830s. After a concise outline of his early writings, his stances toward science and reason shall be compared with his later writings, primarily those written after 1870, to uncover the impact of the increasing influence of science in South Asia during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In his later writings, Sayyid Ahmad accomplishes a complex effort of translation, claiming mutual compatibility of science and Islam. The question of how this influences his conception of Islam and religion will be addressed, exploring whether this process should be described as a mere adoption of foreign discourse? Or does it trigger transformative effects?

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Translating Science—Comparing Religions

Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–1898) was a prominent South Asian reformer of Islam who focused on the reconciliation of science and Islam in his most influential texts. This article aims to analyze the implications of science becoming the dominant discourse in nineteenth-century South Asia for the conception of Islam and religion in general. Sayyid Ahmad is an intriguing example because he actively participated in religious as well as scientific discourses since as early as the 1830s. After a concise outline of his early writings, his stances toward science and reason shall be compared with his later writings, primarily those written after 1870, to uncover the impact of the increasing influence of science in South Asia during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In his later writings, Sayyid Ahmad accomplishes a complex effort of translation, claiming mutual compatibility of science and Islam. The question of how this influences his conception of Islam and religion will be addressed, exploring whether this process should be described as a mere adoption of foreign discourse? Or does it trigger transformative effects?

Classification of Malaysian Architecture Revisited

This paper attempts to portray the classification of Malaysian architecture according to the trends and changes along with the advancement of the economy, technology and growth of architecture schools in Malaysia. The faces of Malaysian architecture are very much influenced by graduates in architecture returning from overseas and the establishment of the Malaysian Institute of Architects. Malaysia is blessed with natural beauty and resources that enable it to be independent. The hot-wet equatorial climate of Malaysia and its high humidity together with the abundance of timber and other cheap building materials enable builders and architects alike to experiment with the built forms. The traditional and vernacular architecture that has been crystallized in the colonial style by the pioneer British architects who designed the government quarters and other government buildings in Malaysia revealed the attention towards the climatic factors and the style that later developed into modern and post-modern style that appear in the residential design of the Malaysian landscape today. This paper employs an exploratory technique from earlier writings and longitudinal historical evidences of Malaysian architecture, visual surveys from the digital media and verbal comments from the practising Architects interviewed. The finding shows that the Malaysian Architecture can be classified according to era, style and contemporary trends influenced by the changes in the world.

Afterword: Bending the Rules

Abstract This afterword to ‘Artes Poeticae: Formations and Transformations, 1500–1650’ surveys some of the organizing themes and questions that bind the various chapters of this special issue of CRJ. Particular attention is paid to the various, arguably evolving, attitudes to rules inherited from or retrospectively sourced in classical antiquity by early modern writers and commentators. The afterword attributes much of the early modern contestation over rules to lexical minutiae in (principally) Aristotelian and Horatian poetics and considers how writers in the period 1500–1650 derive literary-critical capital from those moments when familiar categories and definitions break down.

ПОЭЗИЯ ДЗИГИ ВЕРТОВА И АНАТОЛИЯ МАРИЕНГОФА: ОПЫТ СОПОСТАВИТЕЛЬНОГО АНАЛИЗА

The article focuses on a comparative analysis of poems written by Dziga Vertov and Anatoly Marienhof. Despite the fact that the two poets were not acquainted and there is no documentary evidence of their mutual influence, they share a number of similarities in the development of their lives and artistic endeavours, in which the cultural and historical context of their era was reflected. The authors’ early writings share a common cutting technique. Montage became the main technique for describing both the rapidly changing reality of the post-revolutionary era and the fragmentation of the world and consciousness. That explains the duality of the protagonist and the appearance of the image of a buffoon. The similarity between Marienhof’s early poems and Vertov’s ones is also revealed in the predominant tragicomic tone, which is conditioned by the perception of the Revolution as a traumatic experience. Similarity can also be traced in the composition of images: it is cutting again that they use while organizing their metaphors (separate images are combined by thematic or associative links). In later works Marienhof and Vertov reevaluate their personal histories, using the antithesis of “now” and “then”, which shows a tragic turn in the lives of both artists. Apart from that, they turn from avant-garde poetic forms to more traditional ones. Thus, the article explores important stylistic, ideological, and biographical correlations in the work of two Russian avant-gardists.

The Ensemble Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and Scientific Realism

The article takes under consideration three versions of the ensemble (statistical) interpretation of quantum mechanics and discusses the interconnection of these interpretations with the philosophy of science. To emphasize the specifics of the problem of interpretation of quantum mechanics in the USSR, the Marxist ideology is taken into account. The present paper continues the author’s previous analysis of ensemble interpretations which emerged in the USA and USSR in the first half of the 20th century. The author emphasizes that the ensemble approach turned out to be a dead end for the development of the interpretation of quantum mechanics in Russia. The article also argues that in Soviet Russia, the classical Copenhagen (standard) approach to quantum mechanics was used. The Copenhagen approach was developed by Lev Landau in 1919–1931 and became the basis of the Landau-Lifshitz famous course on quantum mechanics, one of the classics of twentieth-century physics literature (the first edition was published in 1947). Although Vladimir A. Fock’s approach to the interpretation of quantum mechanics differs from the standard presentation by Lev Landau and Evgeny Lifshitz, Fock put forward a very important principle that complementarity is a “firmly established law of nature”. The fundamental writings of Lev Landau, Vladimir Fock and Igor Tamm, the authors of the mid-twentieth century, did a lot to defend the standard point of view such as the popular interpretations by Landau and Lifshitz. This approach can be traced back to Landau’s early writings and to Fock’s criticism of the ensemble approach.

Teaching the Big Three: Making Sense of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton

Arguably, the three most important early writers in the English language – indeed, one might say the founders of the language – are Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400), William Shakespeare (1564-1616), and John Milton (1608-1674). Yet our experience at the higher level of education is that students have had little exposure to the life and times of these writers or of their work. Our study shows that, while some Georgian school leavers have been exposed briefly to a bit of Shakespeare, few have chanced to encounter Chaucer and none to Milton. Moreover, while teaching what we might call “The Big Three” of English language and literature, much the same might be said at the master’s level: a bit of Shakespeare, little of Chaucer, and none of Milton. To the extent that students of English as a foreign language encounter any literature at all, they tend to be offered little other than literal translation. “Retell the text.” They miss the nuances of the English language as they would encounter them through the greatest of writers. It is, therefore, essential that those who teach any or all of these great writers develop a strategy to fit the needs of the students while meeting the objectives of the course. The key to making sense of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton is to make connections to what students already know, to their own experiences, to make these greatest of all English writers relevant to the lives of the students in ways they can understand.
 Keywords: English literature, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton

Margaret MacDonald’s scientific common-sense philosophy

ABSTRACT Margaret MacDonald (1907–56) was a central figure in the history of early analytic philosophy in Britain due to both her editorial work as well as her own writings. While her later work on aesthetics and political philosophy has recently received attention, her early writings in the 1930s present a coherent and, for its time, strikingly original blend of common-sense and scientific philosophy. In these papers, MacDonald tackles the central problems of philosophy of her day: verification, the problem of induction, and the relationship between philosophical and scientific method. MacDonald’s philosophy of science starts from the principle that we should carefully analyse the elements of scientific practice (particularly its temporal features) and the ways that scientists describe that practice. That is, she applies the techniques of ordinary language philosophy to actual scientific language. MacDonald shows how ‘scientific common-sense’ is inconsistent with both of the dominant schools of philosophy of her day. Bringing MacDonald back into the story of analytic philosophy corrects the impression that in early analytic philosophy, there are fundamental dichotomies between the style of Moore and Wittgenstein, on the one hand, and the Vienna Circle on the other.

Journalistic Judgment in Comparative Perspective: A Weberian Analysis of France and the United States

Building on literatures that emphasize (1) the standardizing effects of markets and technology, and (2) the historical patterns and social functions of the press, this article theorizes the simultaneous co-presence of cross-national similarities and differences in journalistic judgment. Drawing from Max Weber's early twentieth century writings on journalism, we argue that similar cross-national judgments reveal journalism's shared structural basis as a commercial enterprise, whereas differences highlight the distinctive social functions that journalists assume in particular national settings. We illustrate this framework via semi-structured interviews conducted between 2015 and 2020 with a strategic sample of French and American journalists evaluating their best work. In both country samples, journalists that express pride in attracting audiences by translating complex issues and dignifying story subjects highlight journalism's structural basis. Cross-national differences reflect nationally distinct understandings of journalism's social functions, with French journalists emphasizing their ability to shed light on large issues and their American counterparts highlighting efforts to pry information from power holders.

“Send Back the Bloodstained Money”: Frederick Douglass on Tainted Gifts

Institutions today face calls to return “tainted” donations from controversial donors like the Sackler family. Such critiques of “dirty money,” while gaining in public salience, are prone to charges of puritanism or of hypocrisy. This paper recovers a distinctive position on dirty money, capable of responding to these charges, from the early speeches and writings of Frederick Douglass. In Great Britain in 1846, Douglass delivered a series of speeches claiming that the Free Church of Scotland had “made itself responsible for slavery” by accepting donations from American slaveholders, and he led a public campaign to “Send back the money.” Douglass’s argument centers on the claim that accepting money and other gifts can distort political relationships and subvert political judgment. His rhetoric also shows how criticizing objectionable gifts is an opportunity to shape people’s moral reasoning and political judgment for the better.

Material Ecstasy: cultural alienation and the influence of the nouveau roman in the work of Nakahira Takuma and J.M.G. Le Clézio

This article analyses some of the important early work (ca. late 1960s-early 1970s) of the Japanese photographer Nakahira Takuma (1938–2015) in terms of the themes of materiality and cultural alienation, focusing on Nakahira’s links with radical European art and writing of the period. In particular, it explores the relationship with the work of the French writer J.M.G Le Clézio in early writings such as Le Procès-Verbal (1963), L’Extase matérielle (1967) and La Guerre (1970). Le Clézio includes a selection of his own photos as an appendix to La Guerre and the article also embraces an analysis of that imagery and its role in relation to the author’s association with the nouveau roman during this early, experimental phase of his career.

Listening to “the Squirrel's Heart Beat”

Listening to “the Squirrel's Heart Beat”

What do "barbarians" eat? Integrating ceramic use-wear and residue analysis in the study of food and society at the margins of Bronze Age China.

The Siwa archaeological culture (ca. 3350 and 2650 cal yr BP) has often been associated with the tribes referenced in textual sources as Qiang and Rong: prized captives commonly sacrificed by the Shang and marauding hordes who toppled the Western Zhou dynasty. In early Chinese writings, food plays a key role in accentuating the ‘sino-barbarian’ dichotomy believed to have taken root over 3000 years ago, with the Qiang and Rong described as nomadic pastoralists who consumed more meat than grain and knew little of proper dining etiquette. To date, however, little direct archaeological evidence has allowed us to reconstruct the diet and foodways of the groups who occupied the Loess Plateau during this pivotal period. Here we present the results of the first ceramic use-wear study performed on the Siwa ma’an jars from the site of Zhanqi, combined with the molecular and isotopic characterization of lipid residues from foodcrusts, and evidence from experimental cooking. We report molecular data indicating the preparation of meals composed of millet and ruminant dairy among the Siwa community of Zhanqi. Use-wear analysis shows that Zhanqi community members were sophisticated creators of ceramic equipment, the ma’an cooking pot, which allowed them to prepare a wide number of dishes with limited fuel. These findings support recent isotope studies at Zhanqi as well as nuance the centrality of meat in the Siwa period diet.

Fascinating Flesh: Revealing the Catholic Foucault

The Catholic dimension in Foucault’s examination of the Church Fathers is featured because neglect of it may misrepresent the very notions of virginity and of flesh in Confessions of the Flesh. Failure to appreciate the tension between a seditious flesh and an incarnational flesh implicitly confines the Patristic vision to the limited modern field of “sexuality.” The fourth volume might be best interpreted against the background of the investigations that prompted Foucault to immerse himself in religious texts and spiritual experiences: his early writings on literature; the later interest of his lectures in pastoral technologies; and his witnessing of the political-spiritual movements both in Islam (the Iranian revolution) and in Catholicism (the anti-military protests in South America and the anti-Communism denunciations of Pope John Paul II).

ERASMUS AND JUAN LUIS VIVES ON RHETORICALDECORUMAND POLITICS

AbstractThe article analyses the emergence ofdecorum(appropriateness) as a central concept of rhetorical theory in the early sixteenth-century writings of Erasmus and Juan Luis Vives. In rhetorical theory,decorumshifted the emphasis from formulaic rules to their creative application in concrete cases. In doing so, it emphasized a close analysis of the rhetorical situation (above all the preferences of the audience) and underscored the persuasive possibilities of civil conversation as opposed to passionate, adversarial rhetoric. The article argues that the stress put ondecorumin early sixteenth-century theory is not just an internal development in the history of rhetoric but linked to far wider questions concerning the role of rhetoric in religious and secular lives.Decorumappears as a solution both to the divisiveness of language in the context of the Reformation and dynastic warfare of the early sixteenth century and as an adaptation of the republican tradition of political rhetoric to a changed, monarchical context. Erasmus and Vives maintained thatdecorumnot only suppressed destructive passions and discord, but that it was only through polite and civil rhetoric (or conversation) that a truly effective persuasion was possible in a vast array of contexts.

Schools of management thought: a text analysis of management books published in the first half of the twentieth century

ABSTRACT The first half of the twentieth century saw the emergence of a variety of management ideas and various schools of thought that occurred during this time. While there are commonalities, these schools are far from absolute. They often intertwine and use different terminology making distinctions difficult. To better understand how management thought developed, 27 management books from well-known authors published between 1903 and 1949 were analyzed using text analysis and quantitative techniques. A plot showing the semantic similarity among the books was produced. Inspection of the plot revealed seven groups of books: Scientific Management I, Scientific Management II, Psychology, Labor Relations and Personnel, Human Relations, Social Organization, and Administration. The plot also showed a progression over time with the earliest books taking a mechanistic task and worker-level perspective. Later authors expanded this to consider group-dynamics, psychology, sociology, structural aspects of organization, and the functions of management and general management as a whole. Each book and author is described providing an understanding of its location in the plot and the relationship with others. This is the first study to apply quantitative text analysis techniques to early management writings and to simultaneously examine so many books and authors.

Filippo Pananti’s Algeria

ABSTRACT The Tuscan poet, playwright and democratic activist Filippo Pananti (1766–1837) was captured by Algerian corsairs in the Mediterranean on his way back to Italy from England in 1813 and was briefly held captive before being released thanks to the intervention of a British diplomat. He published a highly coloured and melodramatic account of his sufferings, together with a description of the country, in 1817; the work, called Avventure ed osservazioni sopra le coste di Barberia, went through several editions and was translated into English, French and German. This article studies Pananti’s extremely hostile view of Algeria, which draws on many earlier writings about the country and reproduces contemporary racial, political and religious stereotypes about the Muslim world. It also throws light on the contemporary international context of his call for a European expedition to free the Mediterranean of North African pirates and liberate the Christian ‘slaves’ in Algeria.

A Comparison of Wolff’s and Kant’s Receptions of Emanuel Swedenborg

Abstract Kant’s Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (1766) did not provide the sole perspective through which Emanuel Swedenborg’s work was known in Germany in the eighteenth century. Before Kant, another German philosopher was interested in Swedenborg from a completely different perspective: Christian Wolff. On the one hand, this paper analyzes the meaning of Wolff’s anonymous reviews of Swedenborg’s early writings published in Acta Eruditorum, the authorship of which was only recently discovered, in order to show Swedenborg’s intertwinement with German scholars during the 1720s. On the other, I juxtapose Kant’s and Wolff’s evaluations of Swedenborg’s work at the origins of their different attitudes towards fundamental problems such as the nature of the soul and immortality.