Early Twentieth-century Europe Research Articles

“Educating children to follow the voice of their conscience” – a comparative study of the Dutch educationalists Philipp Abraham Kohnstamm (1875–1951) and Martinus Jan Langeveld (1905–1989) within the context of early twentieth-century Europe

ABSTRACT Two of the greatest Dutch educationalists of the twentieth century, Philipp Abraham Kohnstamm (1875–1951) and Martinus Jan Langeveld (1905–1989), believed that education meant, above all, the formation of a conscience. They developed their ideas in a time full of developments within Europe: the rise of fascism, two world wars, and pioneering theories on human development by Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), among others. Kohnstamm’s and Langeveld’s educational theories were also influenced, to a greater or lesser extent, by optimistic ideas about the spontaneous development of the child and the unique personality of humankind, as expressed in movements such as New Education, New Psychology, and the philosophy of Henri Bergson (1859–1941). This article aims to compare these two Dutch educationalists on conscience formation to contextualise their differences and similarities and subsequently understand them within European developments, such as New Psychology, and specifically the Dutch context of the twentieth century.

White Erethism: Beckett, Crevel, and Negro: An Anthology

From 1931–1933, Samuel Beckett translated nineteen French-language texts for Nancy Cunard’s Negro: An Anthology. Adding up to more than 63,000 words, Beckett’s translations for the anthology are his most extensive single publication. Focusing on his translation of René Crevel’s essay “The Negress in the Brothel” (“La Négresse des bordels”), this essay shows how Beckett injects Crevel’s original text with a critique of the ideology of racial purity by foregrounding the panic over racial purity, degeneration, and “generation hygiene” in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe. This critique resurfaces in his later works Murphy (1938), First Love (1946), and Happy Days (1961).

The Doubling Self

Abstract The Tunisian state and Tunisian cultural systems that predate it dictate social and material realities for Tunisian women. Where these systems of authority conflict, a woman may feel that she is herself in the reality she inhabits, yet she is also an other who surveils herself, resulting in a self/other dichotomy. Surrealism, while frequently associated with early twentieth-century Europe, is a liberatory approach that stretches across global art, poetry, and literature. One of its primary objectives is to challenge accepted realities. This article argues that artworks by the contemporary Tunisian artists Meriem Bouderbala and Najah Zarbout invoke the aesthetics and ideologies of surrealism to mediate the ground between the embodied self and the observer self through portrayals of female sexuality as constituted by multilayered selves. In doing so, they evoke a surrealist history of vision, doubling, and mirroring, reframing the female body as an absent presence that eludes surveillance and regulation.

Ancient Art and its Commerce in Early Twentieth-Century Europe: The John Marshall Archive. A collection of essays written by the participants of the John Marshall Archive Project

Ancient Art and its Commerce in Early Twentieth-Century Europe: The John Marshall Archive. A collection of essays written by the participants of the John Marshall Archive Project

Jewish Cultural Studies by Simon J. Bronner

Reviewed by: Jewish Cultural Studies by Simon J. Bronner Jacqueline Laznow Simon J. Bronner. Jewish Cultural Studies. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2021. xix + 458 pp. In Jewish Cultural Studies, Simon Bronner summarizes his long and prolific academic trajectory. The book consists of updated versions of his published work with additional new material dealing mainly with the digital world and COVID-19. Bronner focuses on three folklore and ethnographic themes, conceptualization, ritualization, and narration, while interrogating objects, patterns, frames, and practices identified as Jewish in North America. His aim is to discern what makes them Jewish, why, and by whom. By doing so, he draws the boundaries of what he conceptualizes as Jewish cultural studies, a separate but complementary entity to traditional Jewish studies. In addition, Bronner argues that general American cultural studies do not recognize Jews as an ethnic group and points to the struggles of Jewish cultural studies in North America to find its place in academia since the twentieth century. Bronner considers the book an example of what he calls “the Chutzpah of Jewish Cultural Studies” (1). Through case studies and personal narratives, he points to the complexity of defining what Jewish culture is nowadays, raising the need to dare to examine Jewish daily praxis and rituals while considering the local context and the outsider’s gaze. He points to the fact that Jews, outside of Israel, have always been a minority group concerned with the maintenance and representation of their heritage, which makes them a unique cultural group with its own frame of mind. Reference to contemporary Israel as a multicultural Jewish center where folklore and ethnography researchers face different challenges from those faced by American researchers adds some depth to the otherwise American-centered arguments. Nevertheless, the description in chapter 4 of the history of Jewish folklore research, with an emphasis on S. An-sky’s collection of Jewish folktales in early twentieth-century Europe, Dov Noy’s work in Israel, and Haya Bar-Yitzhak’s description of their legacy, lacks reference to any of today’s prominent Israeli folklorists who engage in Jewish cultural studies in Israeli academia. Moreover, from his American and postdiasporic perspective, Bronner states: “In America the tension between tradition and modernity is especially evident” (xiii). This determination is problematic, since in our digital world, well described by the author in chapter 10, Jewish communities mirror each other and appropriate modern traditions and rituals that suit their own cultural context, thus the tension between tradition and modernity affects all Jewish communities. One example of this tension is the debates over mixed-gender prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem between ultra-Orthodox and progressive Jewish streams. Another example is the issue of conversions performed by the Conservative and Reform movements in today’s Argentina despite a historic religious ban from 1927. The book consists of three parts. Part 1 discusses the formation of beliefs and ideas in the academy and in everyday life while pointing to the tangle between opposites: continuity and change, tradition and modernity, and past and future. Bronner argues that in the modern world, keeping and passing on tradition takes place to a great degree at home, while the media help promote traditions and rituals, sometimes altering them. He correctly argues, as many folklorists around [End Page 224] the world have shown, that ethnographic research on home praxis is enlightening. Thus, Bronner conducts an in-depth analysis of the dualities of “House” and “Home” while pointing to the cultural construction of the term “domestic” and the role of the stereotypical Jewish mother in Kitchen Judaism. Finally, he introduces the term: “Livingroom Judaism,” an exposition of Jewish symbols at home (79). Part 2 focuses on the ways rituals have been adapted, created, and imagined in modern Judaism. Bronner points to the traditional role of women in Jewish rituals but does not discuss gender issues in depth nor the leading part North American Jewish women took in breaking religious gender roles, mirrored in all Jewish communities around the world. Interpreting the bar mitzvah as a celebration that connects father and son, he portrays the ritual as a masculine expression of tradition in spite of the actual feminized synagogue. Bronner further...

Els viatges dels incunables del Tirant (1490 i 1497) fins a la Hispanic Society of America

Inside and outside covers, ex-libris, supralibris, stamps, are elements that give us valuable clues to reconstruct what we call the external history of old books. Preservation of old sale catalogues with manuscripts’ and early printed editions’ prices of acquisition written down by buyers, among other data, is an invaluable resource for tracing a rich past of collections and bibliophilia, and the reception that certain works got. In this article we focus on Joanot Martorell’s novel Tirant lo Blanc , published twice in the incunable period, first by Nicolau Spindeler in Valencia in 20/11/1490 and then by Pere Miquel in Barcelona in 16/09/1497. We reconstruct the history of those copies preserved in the library of New York’s Hispanic Society of America. These copies’ journey from the old continent to the United States of America allows us to explore the small and restricted market of antiquarian book dealers in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe, which reveals that the preservation of these copies was made possible by the interest of European booksellers working to meet demands of American bibliophiles wishing to fill their libraries with prestigious medieval works.

Marketing coup or paradigm shift? Reflections on the Dutch media interpretations of the 2017 ‘Mata Hari: de mythe en het meisje’

Following the major Fries Museum exhibition about Margaretha Zelle MacLeod aka Mata Hari (1876–1917), this article explores how Dutch arts journalism reflected its successful balance of commercial appeal, subject complexity, and contemporary relevance. The curators aimed to balance research with aestheticism to offer a more sympathetic view of this historically controversial subject. This article furthermore investigates how Dutch arts journalists shaped and responded to this new narrative through an analysis of relevant media reviews and reports. The resulting discourse reflected how the Fries Museum’s use of artefacts created a narrative of Mata Hari which could comment on the broader challenges for women in early twentieth century Europe. We argue that the exhibition and its reportage built upon and reflected advances in recent historiography to offer a fresh perspective on Mata Hari. Moreover, the review analysis suggests that the exhibition successfully balanced seemingly paradoxical needs, as set out in its prospectus, through the creation of such nuanced narratives.

INNOVATORY CONSERVATISM IN ULTRA-ORTHODOX TYPOGRAPHY IN ISRAEL

The purpose of the article is to explore the differences in perceptions and approaches to typographic design among the various communities that make up Haredi society. In general, the shape of the letter will be affected by the division between religious and non-religious genres, as well as by the intra-Haredi social division between “Hasidim” and “Lithuanians”, the two dominant groups that make up the Haredi society, whose lifestyles differ in several areas. The proposed article is an additional tier to previous studies and investigates the Hebrew letter and its role in the world of journalism as conveying a message in the social-educationalideological context, even without referring to what is actually written. The study reveals and deciphers the power struggles and relations that exist in the ultra-Orthodox world through the images and through the mechanisms activated through them and their results, as part of the visual culture. The research methodology is based on the integrated use of general scientific methods: analytical, systematic, historical, and comparative. Conclusions. The daily and weekly Haredi press is considered as something that “under the circumstances” is needed and yet is a major player in the Haredi visual world. The Ashkenazi Haredi press is divided into defined sectors. The newspapers of the Hassidic communities preserve a long-standing typographic, advertising, intra-community tradition, based on the design style of Jewish newspapers from early twentieth-century Europe. The newspapers of the Lithuanian communities reflect the character of the public who read them, who are more modern in their lifestyle. Even though there is strict control over the content, these newspapers reflect modernism in their typographic layout and letter style selection. The newspapers in both groups undergo strict editing in both content and form, and their respective rabbinical councils work hard to adapt them to their respective readership. The choice of letter, colour, and composition are borrowed, among other things, from the world of clothing, which has many rules, and reflects what is happening within the community. The differences between the Hasidic and Lithuanian groups are evident in their attitude to the visual elements in the various types of printing and advertising. The Haredi public are proficient readers and are aware of the subtleties of the shape and size of the letter from an early age. Therefore, the letter serves both as content and form, and its use in the visual world is varied. In addition to being a tool for content, the letter will be used for an image, a Hebrew date, gematria and to create an atmosphere of sacred or secular, depending on the typographic choice.

Note from the Editor

Note from the Editor Sem Vermeersch, Editor-in-chief This issue of the Seoul Journal of Korean Studies opens with a theme issue on "Hallyu Storytelling in the Americas." It is the outcome of a panel organized by Wonjung MIN for the fourteenth Kyujanggak International Symposium on Korean Studies (Nov. 4–6, 2021). Together with Dal Yong JIN, Professor Min introduces the fruits of this panel in a guest editors' introduction, so I do not need to add anything here on the contents of the four articles from the panel that made it to publication. It is exciting to see the development of critical Hallyu studies as a distinct field within Korean Studies, and I look forward to the future results of Symposium panels in these pages. This issue also includes four other articles. The first of these is by Maurizio RIOTTO, who has carved out his own niche in Korean Studies: Namely, the exploration of ancient connections between Korea and the West. Earlier, in Volume 33, no. 1 (2020) he explored the similarities between the legend of King Gyeongmun's donkey ears and the famous King Midas. Here he turns his attention to the legend of Aryeong, the consort of Pak Hyeokgeose, one of the progenitors of Silla. According to the Samguk yusa version of her legend, she was born from the left side of a dragon and had the beak of a hen rather than a mouth—hence the term "hen-dragon" (gyeryong). However, the author shows that this element of the legend may have derived from stories about the basilisk, a mythical animal already found in Greco-Roman sources with possible earlier antecedents, that somehow made their way to Silla. The second article, by Dylan MOTIN, questions traditional explanations of Korea's loss of sovereignty in the early twentieth century. Rather than blaming this on the failure to modernize, the author uses international relations theory to explain how a weak state such as Joseon Korea sought to shift the burden of its protection to a foreign ally. This strategy, which the author refers to as "buck passing," was successful for much of the initial period of the forced opening of Korea in the second half of the nineteenth century. However, after the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War, there was no one left to pass the buck to. The [End Page v] author points to the shifting geopolitical situation of early twentieth-century Europe, where the rise of Germany preoccupied all the other Western powers, as a reason for the eventual failure of this strategy. The third article also seeks new methodologies to explain a long-standing point of debate, namely, how was it possible that Hahoe alone managed to preserve its traditional buildings and environment where the rest of Korea's traditional villages were erased? The authors, Chong Min KIM, Tae Gyun PARK, and Ju YIM, turn to game theory to explain how and why the actors involved make decisions in the debate over whether or not to preserve the village. The authors divide the people concerned into market-oriented and tradition-oriented agents, and postulate a theoretical framework that explains the crucial tipping points in favor of preservation during the transition period from traditional to modern society. Finally, Eunhee PARK looks at the way the Vietnam War impacted the "home front." While the horrors and trauma of the war were not openly discussed in media or literature, the underlying tensions were projected onto the women who stayed behind. While the men who return from the war reveal little of the psychological impact of the war, they return to find their partners had not been faithful. This stereotypical image of the unfaithful wife offers them a chance at redemption, yet it obliterates the agency and subjectivity of women in their media and literary representations. This will be the last "Note from the Editor" I write. From the next issue, Professor John DiMoia (History Department, Seoul National University) will take over as editor-in-chief. I started writing these notes when assuming editorship for Volume 30 (2017). I am not certain why, but, perhaps inspired by the example of the Journal of Asian Studies, it...

New Materialisms, Familiar Challenges

New Materialisms, Familiar Challenges

Ghosted: Jewishness and the Haunted Hegemony of Racial Modernity

In this article, I introduce affect as a theoretical paradigm for describing and understanding the logic of racialization by focusing on the late nineteenth and early twentieth century discourses of religion, Orientalism, and civic equality, and the specific case of Jewish racialization. Describing racialization primarily in affective terms, I focus on the case of Jewish “racial affect”—the unseen circulation of feelings about Jews, about what Jewishness makes Europeans feel—as a spectral and haunted discourse of European racial modernity. I suggest that Jewish racial affect can help illuminate how racialization and racial formation, more generally, form “affective economies” that help the idealized citizen-subject of national identities orient themselves, feeling their way past those negative carriers of racial impurity and disgust and securing borders and banners in the name of their own likeness. Thus, the spectral figure of the Jew provides a figure of a living death (to conjure Leon Pinsker’s description), an undead past that continues to haunt an increasingly secular modernity in which race organizes presence in order to mark religion as a necessary exclusion. Focusing on the negative affects attributed to Jews in the Enlightenment discourse of “civic improvement,” the imagined role of the “Semite” in Orientalist literature, and the anxiety triggered by Jewish persistence in historical exile, I outline the spectral role of the Jew in the shifting discourse of religion and secular historical thought in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe.

The Reception of Pistis Sophia and Gnosticism

Abstract This article surveys the reception of the Gnostic text Pistis Sophia in esoteric milieus in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe. The first part of the article contains an overview of the text and scholarship on it. Then follows a study of the reception of Pistis Sophia in a broader array of esoteric circles. It becomes clear that the text was hailed as an example of ancient and great spiritual wisdom, although seldom discussed in detail theologically. Next, this is compared to the academic reception at the same time where it was, as previous scholars have made clear, discarded due to what was understood as a discrepancy with “Gnostic” characteristics. This article shows that Pistis Sophia was not discarded in esoteric circles but rather read in light of already established esoteric trajectories, for example Blavatsky’s, Krumm-Heller’s, or Papus’ particular spiritual evolutionary perspectives. Lastly, it is argued that the understanding of Gnosticisms that both these receptions reflect is still very much active today: academics and esoteric groups are guided by similar trajectories vis-à-vis Gnosticism, seeing it as a representative of a “universal religious essence” associated with progressive attitudes (for example regarding sex and gender), which allows/forces them to renegotiate the ancient sources themselves.

УКАЗАТЕЛИ МОТИВОВ В ЭПОХУ ИНТЕРНЕТА

In the early twentieth-century Europe, international indexing systems and typologies were developed for folklore archives and research. Later, these indexes formed international standards. As an illustrative example of such international systems, mention may be made of such as the Thompson motif index of folk literature, and the Aarne-ThompsonUther folktale type index. The problem presented in my article is to ponder, how to combine the traditional indexes of narrative folklore with the methodology of computer-based research. The problem with using the traditional motif indexes is that only very rare cases e.g. of Thompson’s index represent Caucasian, Siberian, Central Asian or East Asian traditions, and in general only a few non-European traditions are well represented. Luckily there exists the index developed recently by Yu.E. Berezkin and E.N. Duvakin, entitled “Thematic classification and distribution of folklore and mythological motives by area. Analytical catalog”2 . This index encompasses massive corpuses of myths and other materials of folklore from all parts of the world. An important direction of future research will involve advances from traditional typologies to cross-cultural digital typologies. In the era of digital humanities’, it is possible to enrich the motif indexes to include more traditions, so far not well represented in the previous indexes. Large datasets of “Big Data” offer great potential for developing new computational models. One way to combine modern computing network technology with traditional methods is to use web-ontologies as linked data. The advantage of the digital motif index is its universality: the digital code is language-independent. Digital, annotated corpuses combined with Internet-based type indexes can create a completely new tool for research of oral traditions

Exhibition as Art Historical Space: The 1933 Chinese Art Exhibition in Paris

The 1933 Chinese Art Exhibition in Paris, the first large-scale Chinese art show in France, played a critical role in establishing the category of “modern Chinese painting” in early twentieth-century Europe. Close visual and textual analysis reveals three factors that shaped the exhibition: the shifting international politics between France, Japan, and China; the complex social network among Chinese artists; and the personal vision and aspiration of the exhibition’s curator. It was through the interaction and competition among different agents and institutions that the category of modern Chinese painting was created.

Carnal Spirit: The Revolutions of Charles Péguy. By Matthew W. Maguire

Debate has long raged over whether the writings of Charles Péguy writing should be characterized as part of a nationalist and anti-Semitic tradition that contributed towards the development of fascism, or whether it should be seen in opposing terms. Despite having been a Dreyfusard and a socialist, Péguy’s brand of exclusionist, spiritualist nationalism led to his writing being used by collaborationists during the Second World War. It is against this backdrop that Matthew W. Maguire seeks to revive Péguy from recent neglect and to persuade scholars to re-evaluate his work through closer reading. Maguire argues that at the core of Péguy’s work were questions about modernity. Péguy rejected notions of a linear, subjective temporality, conceiving it rather with reference to ‘philosophical commitments and practices’ (p. 85). Yet he also saw it as more than simply an ‘epistemological or metaphysical project’ considering it in terms of ‘political and rhetorical practices’ (ibid.). Drawing particular attention to the influence of Blaise Pascal’s thinking on the orders of body, mind, and charitable love, Maguire suggests that Péguy reconceived being modern as the neglect of the latter: the ‘ambition to achieve a loveless mastery and control over others and over experience through intellect’ (p. 87). Much of the book explores Péguy’s conception of the body in spiritual terms. Having been shaped by the Catholicism and secularism of his upbringing, Péguy criticized both cultures for excluding the spiritual from the body and misunderstanding the relationship between the body and the soul. Maguire analyses in depth Péguy’s ideas on the relationship of space and time with the body, especially the influence of Henri Bergson’s thinking. The relationship of the body with the past led Péguy to reflect on memory and history, considering the former in terms of involvement in an event and the latter as ‘passing alongside’ events (p. 99). Examining Péguy’s famous formula that ‘tout commence en mystique et finit en politique’ (p. 164), Maguire argues that, for Péguy, the moral and spiritual corruption of mysticism was inevitable. While he believed that suffering sanctifies mysticism, unlike Renan and Nietzsche, he did not think that mythologized memories of suffering or violence generate mystical love. Rather, he maintained that love precedes suffering. Maguire concludes that Péguy was a writer who spanned the seemingly irreconcilable in his political and cultural outlook, religious ideas, and concepts of modernity. In so doing, Maguire offers a complex and nuanced study of Péguy’s work and life. He writes with a sympathy that sometimes veers towards a defensiveness in response to criticisms of Péguy’s nationalism. While he concedes that Péguy sometimes expressed nationalist views, he suggests that this aspect of Péguy’s writing has been overstated. Maguire also offers broader reflections on historical methodology, making some thought-provoking arguments about the nature of historical scholarship in which he appears to be writing with an eye on the present as much as on Péguy’s own time. This is therefore an important book with wider significance for scholars’ understanding not just of the intellectual environment of late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe, but of historical scholarship today.

‘A crooked, passion-laden mirror’: ‘Jews’ and ‘Muslims’ as a European question beyond religio-secularism

ABSTRACT In this article, Jansen attempts to demonstrate that addressing the religious practices of Jews and Muslims from the perspective of a religio-secular framework in today’s European context underestimates the complexity of semiotic relations between Muslims, Jews and other Europeans. She discusses this complexity in terms of ‘intercultural semiotics’ between the three groups. In particular, she focuses on what she calls ‘mirroring relations’, drawing on an expression from Yirmiyahu Yovel about a ‘crooked, passion-laden mirror’ characterizing the ways in which modern Europeans imagined their Jewish neighbours in early twentieth-century Europe. In order to further explain this, Jansen analyses a passage from Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time, which concerns a group of people in late nineteenth-century France, following the Dreyfus Affair, who are perceived by the narrator as Jewish. Thereafter, drawing on Gil Hochberg’s notion of the ‘re-membering’ of the Semite, Jansen analyses semiotic mirroring in the work Projet Deburkanisation (2017) by the Belgian author Rachida Lamrabet, which she reads as a contemporary meta-reflection, involving Muslims, on the mirroring relations between Jews and other Europeans first discussed via her reading of Proust.

A Qualitative Analysis of the Poem “The Waste Land” to Investigate Spiritual Sterility, Moral Degradation of the Post-war Modern People and the Path of Salvation

This paper’s overriding concern is to analyze the moral degradation, spiritual sterility, fragmentation, damaged psyche of humanity, the disillusionment of early twentieth-century post-war modern Europe and of course the path of salvation that are enormously manifest in the Thomas Stearns Eliot’s poem ‘The Waste Land’. In the question of regeneration or salvation, Eliot in this poem instructs the morally and spiritually sterile modern man to follow the Indian philosophy, Vedas and Upanishads, the storehouse of knowledge, relief, and source of spiritualism, redemption and salvation. And also he concludes the poem with the sense that if they practise them in their life as instructed, there will be nothing but Shantih, shantih, shantih (peace and tranquility) in their life. This paper thus attempts to dissect how the poem develops exerting the acute sense of spiritual infertility, moral degradation, sexual perversion, meaninglessness in the human relationship of the post-war-devastated and dysfunctional world and concludes with the instruction of the path of salvation.

20220112

The authors of this manuscript are interested mainly in meta-scientific studies, particularly in historical reflection on biology. Species in the Age of Discordance being the main theme of this special issue, and taking inspiration from the idea that “biological lineages move through time, space and each other”, we find it thought-provoking to show that just as biological lineages have histories, diverse conceptual categories have also been historically constituted. Moreover their visual representations have been discordant at different levels, such as the concepts of species and race. This article presents how the struggle to achieve a human taxonomy in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe had a fundamental visual component that reflects the discussions and theories that led to important discordances in the racial classification of Homo sapiens and in other species of hominins. Using as main visual artifacts the representation of evolutionary trees, the painting of castes, as well as the natural classification tree of the Mexican naturalist Manuel Ortega from 1877, the authors will show on the one hand how European ideas about human species and race in the scientific mainstream were deployed in the very distinctive situations of Mexico. On the other hand, it will be shown that visual culture was fundamental and decisive in establishing and disseminating scientific accounts of species and race, and how both concepts have interacted in the visual characterization of human diversity, both to define it and to restrain it.

Self-reflection and projection in Jungian ‘spirituality’: Carl Gustav Jung’s encounter with India and his critique of Indian psy-sciences

ABSTRACTIn Jung’s encounter with India, projection and self-reflection play a major role on various levels. In this essay, I explore these levels from different angles. I argue that this specific constellation of topics, which includes Jung’s critical assessment of yoga and meditation, strikes at the very heart of Jung’s therapeutic approach. My analysis will highlight the different directions of Analytical Psychology and traditional spiritual-therapeutic techniques from India as perceived by Jung and his contemporaries in early twentieth century Europe. In order to understand the Jungian approach properly, I argue that it is necessary to take into account indigenous European spiritual traditions, e.g. the Protestant spiritual diary and related forms of self-inquiry, including ancient practices such as divination and shamanic soul-journeys, which might have survived in medieval visionary literature, making a re-appearance in Jung’s spiritual diary-illuminated manuscript, the Red Book. The paper might serve as a reminder of the fact that it is important to understand the implications and the specific cultural contexts of therapeutic techniques before we export or import them to or from other parts of the world.

Between imagination and experience: Creole travellers in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Europe

During the so-called century of travelling, many Creole travellers went on a journey from Latin America to Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. This article outlines the travellers’ impact on the construction of (supra)national identities, by highlighting the often alleged duality between “European civility” and “Latin American barbarism” within their travelogues. After a brief description of processes of nation-building in Latin America, the article focuses on the distinction between “civility” and “barbarism”, as reflected in the travellers’ observations of educational concepts. The travellers emphasised the need to distinguish between the notions of “education” and “instruction”. The analysis of the travelogues revealed that many travellers were influenced by pre-conceived “ideas of Europe”. This article highlights instances in which the circumstances in Europe conformed to the travellers’ expectations, as well as instances in which the travellers suffered disappointment and irritation due to unexpected and non-conforming experiences. Particularly the non-conforming experiences possess an immense potential for further investigations. To outline this productive potential, this article will critically examine Rainer Kokemohr’s theory of “Bildung”. Kokemohr defines the processes of handling and converting experiences of crisis as “Bildung” if they lead to profound modifications of the experiencing subject’s self- and world-conceptions.