Historical Criticism Research Articles

GOLDEN CALF NARRATIVE: Deuteronomist Ideology of Jeroboam Reformation

Jeroboam 1st is depicted as the prototype for all future evil kings, who are regularly accused According to the books of Kings. Jeroboam accused of established two sanctuaries; Bethel and Dan to rival the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. These shrines then provoke vehement censure and sin of Jeroboam become paradigmatic of northern apostasy. Underlying the negative depiction of Jeroboam’s cult, however, scholars have found subtle details suggesting that Jeroboam’s cult was traditional and even Yahwistic in nature. His calves may be best understood as familiar Canaanite vehicles for the invisible deity enthroned above them – in this case, Yahweh – comparable to the cherubim in southern cult of Judah. Jeroboam priesthood likely included Levites. And his choices of Dan and Bethel, too, apparently reflected a sensitivity to honor venerable memories of pre-monarchic era. This research aims to explain what Jeroboam did was not a violation of the Yahwistic system of Israel at that time. The establishment of God in Bethel and Dan did not disconcert the status of Yahweh in the treasures of Israel, instead of a form of a political assertion that separated Israel from the arrogance and the power of Judah. By using the method of analyzing historical criticism and literacy, the result is a new perspective of understanding Jeroboam’s reform in Israel - merely a political movement alone. Jeroboam never removed Yahweh from the treasury as the god of Israel. Instead, he retained Yahweh as God who was declared to have led Israel out of Egypt.

We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation

We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation

Hadis Meluruskan Saf Salat: Dari Pendekatan Kritis ke Persoalan Fisiologis-Psikologis

The background of this research stems from the many understanding of the hadith to straighten out this saf of prayer which ultimately leads to divisions among Muslims. This is characterized by a variety of sadistic substance alignment of saf that explicitly looks different, there are hadiths that indicate threats and some indicate utility. But on the other hand as Muslims, belief in the source of Islamic law in the form of al-Quran and as-Sunnah is a mandatory consequence. This research method uses qualitative research with a library study approach (library research) and is descriptive and applied Musahadi Ham's takhrij and ma'anil methods of the hadith include historical criticism, eiditis criticism and praxis criticism. The results of this study indicate that the alignment of the salat saf which means to correct all differences in one unit. saf line frame has no relationship with attachment between several limbs from one mushalli to another. This spirit is proven through physiology and psychology research which proves that someone in the regularity of the series of prayers will can deliver his on significant physical relaxation and prevention from various diseases.

«Порабощенное» и «освобожденное» искусство в эстетической критике Н.Д. Ахшарумова

The article analyzes the key papers and referents of the critic and writer Nicolay Akhsharumov, who appeared in the Russian press as one of the first theoreticians of “enslaved art”. The research concludes tracing the evolution of his views from the “program” article “On the enslavement of art” (1857) to art criticism and abstracts written specifically for the periodical edition of the “Vestnik of Arts” (1884-1885). At the same time, the descriptive-interpretation method, chosen by the critic, is closely connected with Sh. Sainte-Beuve and I. Taine (on whom, in particular, his contemporary, P.D. Boborykin was oriented), but also to F. Schleiermacher, who put forward the idea of the hermeneutic circle, built on a constant return from part to the whole, from the whole to a part. A special attention is paid to the article “ The Tasks of Painting in the Period of the Formation of the Russian National School”. Based on his own memories, testimonies of contemporaries and program articles published earlier in the “Bulletin of Europe”, Akhsharumov recreates the evolution of plastic art in Russia in the XIX century. Following V.V. Stasov, he connects the first triumph of Russian painting - the art paintings of Bryullov - with “blossoming time” A.S. Pushkin, “the first significant successes” Lermontov and Gogol. Talking about the false path of the artist Fedotov and the catastrophe, which, in the opinion of the critic, befell Ivanov'es picture, Akhsharumov draws a parallel with Gogol, recalling the “glory and sense of friends about his great significance,” who so quickly managed to “turn his head”. Akhsharumov shows how literature “outstripped painting” by solving the question of depicting Russian life through the works of Gogol, Ostrovsky, Turgenev and Saltykov-Shchedrin. The central subject of the study is the interpretation by Ahsharumov of N. Ge's “The Last Supper” (1863). Highlighting the canvas Ge in a note reflecting the impressions of 1863, among other paintings of his contemporaries, Akhsharumov differently estimates the picture in the 1880th. In both cases, referring to the meaning of the picture, the critic carries out a revision of his own views, constantly conceptualizing and clarifying the essence of the “enslaved” and “liberated art”. Thus, the Aksharumov'es aesthetic criticism his articles on the history of Russian painting, on the whole correlating with similar works of V.V. Stasova, A.I. Somova, P.D. Boborykin, etc., constitute not only an important testimony of his literary and critical activity spanning more than 30 years, but also open a forgotten page in the history of Russian art criticism. Of course, Akhsharumov was not alone in his aesthetic search. The description of new figures and the reconstruction of a number of articles by critics and art historians constitutes a perspective of interdisciplinary studies that unite the history of Russian criticism and art history.

The Neo-Kantian Sources of Heidegger’s Overcoming of the Encounter Problem

One of Heidegger’s main targets of criticism in History of the Concept of Time is Husserl’s theory of intentionality. This criticism, however, has roots in Heidegger’s earliest thinking over the course of his student years and pertains to what Ernst Tugendhat called the problem of encounter as such. In this article I present how the critical appropriation of Rickert’s and Lask’s ideas shaped a unique interpretation of the subject’s existence in the early stages of Heidegger’s career, contributing to the (dis)solution of the encounter problem and anticipating an independent version of phenomenology more than a decade before the publication of Being and Time. These alternative sources of influence illuminate Heidegger’s own path, which is significantly different from Husserl’s from the very start. In particular, I show in the article how Heidegger’s critical appropriation of Neo-Kantian sources allows him already during the 1910s to see the derivative status of the theoretical subject-object dichotomy and to realize the need to investigate living subjectivity in its embeddedness in the world.

Robin Hood: Legend and Reality by David Crook

Reviewed by: Robin Hood: Legend and Reality by David Crook Mark-Allan Donaldson David Crook, Robin Hood: Legend and Reality ( Woodbridge: Boydell, 2020), 298 pp., 14 ills. Medieval studies is often a difficult place to inhabit. Whether it be a stray lacunae, singed page, or unfinished manuscript, there is an almost constant sense that the information being dealt with and studied comes secondhand or clouded in an esotericism that previous generations of scholars found romantic. This is accompanied by the general fictionalization of the Middle Ages by the periods that follow, with researchers having to simultaneously grapple with the task of getting at the truth of the matter while also figuring out what exactly truth may have meant to the people, objects, and literatures they are studying. It is into this quagmire that David Crook steps with his interrogation into the pseudo-historical/semi-mythical figure of Robin Hood. Crook, an archivist who has been building interest in his subject since incidentally encountering a reference to the thirteenth-century criminal William Robehod, sets out in this work to formulate a distinct approach to discussing the category of medieval personage into which Robin Hood fits. There is a tension throughout the book between previous literary and historical approaches. The former, in Crook's opinion, while giving the canon of Robin Hood texts apt attention, focuses too much on the text as an object removed from its historical contexts in the same way a physicist may ignore friction to make an equation work; while the latter, despite approaching the interrogation of Robin Hood's reality in a more familiar manner to an archivist, tends to write off the interrogation itself as illogical given the minimal hard evidence for the figure's historicity based on the surviving medieval material. This tension is somewhat resolved by the method Crook utilizes, which, while not explicitly labeled, is a type of synergistic approach to literary and historical criticism that utilizes the meticulous nature of archival work to build a supposition based on textual evidence and effect. The text is separated into two main parts, each with its own chapters. The first part, "The Legend and Its Interpreters," is split into chapters that first move chronologically through the significant texts that make up the canon of Robin Hood literature. In this part, Crook manages to create a wonderful and referenceable survey of major works that details when they are thought to have been produced, their significance in terms of what is contributed to the legend textually (characters, locations, plot points, etc.), and how each text aids the development of the literature metatextually. This literary survey is injected with moments of historical analysis wherein Crook discusses elements of various texts that could hint at an accurate dating for a story's composition, or for a possible historical Robin Hood. The only drawback to this part is that Crook does not spend much [End Page 243] time analyzing the nuance of the medieval perspective. For instance, when drawing attention to A Lyttel Gest of Robin Hood's assumption that Robin was a real figure, Crook does not aptly consider the tradition of false truth claims or fictions that begin medieval texts. He does not allow for the medieval text and reader to participate in creating/absorbing fiction; nor is there an acknowledgement of the medieval phenomena of truth as something separate from fact, nor of a text's ability to create and disseminate a truth that is outside of modernity's notion of "objective truth." Following the survey of primary medieval sources, Crook then moves into a similarly chronological overview of the academic interest surrounding Robin Hood and the relative increase or lack of interest in his historicity depending on the time and academic discipline. The final chapter of this part moves away from the predominantly textual foundation of Crook's discussion and into an analysis of place names connected to the Robin Hood legend. Functionally, this chapter explores the possible dissemination of information about Robin Hood and charts the rise of the popularity of his person and legend. More importantly to Crook's methodology, this discussion of places serves as a means of connecting Robin Hood to reality...

Feminist Styles of Immanent Critique: Judith Butler and Denise Riley

Taking up the question of style, I argue that this term provides a generative framework for reassessing the historical challenges of feminist writing and politics. To develop my argument, I read Judith Butler's philosophy alongside Denise Riley's poems, historical criticism, and philosophical prose, proposing that both writers are inventive participants in the tradition of immanent critique. I demonstrate how feminist questioning of linguistic conventions and social norms is enfolded in Butler's paratextual reflections on philosophical grammar and in Riley's poetic and theoretical efforts to acknowledge her uneasy relationship to lyric. Any dialogue between philosophy and poetry returns us to the longstanding debate about the value of these respective disciplines. I conclude by proposing that Riley and Butler encourage us to consider that each demands the other as a supplement—a necessity that emerges from the need to account for the collective life in which language is embedded.

Socialist Realism in Central and Eastern European Literatures under Stalin: Institutions, Dynamics, Discourses ed. by Evgeny Dobrenko et al.

Reviewed by: Socialist Realism in Central and Eastern European Literatures under Stalin: Institutions, Dynamics, Discourses ed. by Evgeny Dobrenko et al. Inessa Medzhibovskaya Dobrenko, Evgeny and Jonsson-Skradol, Natalia (eds). Socialist Realism in Central and Eastern European Literatures under Stalin: Institutions, Dynamics, Discourses. Anthem Series on Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies. Anthem Press, London, 2018. 362 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliographies. Index. £100.00: £175.00. This comprehensive and well-organized volume edited by Evgeny Dobrenko and Natalia Jonsson-Skradol is a major new achievement in the study of both a single method by which literature is institutionalized and globalized, and its lasting discourses. It is an achievement that builds on the strengths of Dobrenko and Thomas Lahusen's Socialist Realism Without Shores (Durham, NC, 1997), the magisterial Sotsrealisticheskii kanon (St Petersburg, 2000) edited by Dobrenko with Hans Günther, and A History of Russian Literary Theory and Criticism: The Soviet Age and Beyond (Pittsburgh, PA, 2011) edited by Dobrenko with Galin Tihanov, and also enters into an illuminating dialogue with Tihanov's award-winning The Birth and Death of Literary Theory: Regimes of Relevance in Russia and Beyond (Stanford, CA, 2019). This new collection features a skilfully arranged set of twenty detailed and lucid chapters by an international group of scholars from Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Great Britain, Germany, Hungary, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia and the United States by Imre József Balázs, René Bílik, Rossen Djagalov, Evgeny Dobrenko, Plamen Doinov, Helen Fehervary, Hans Günther, Anne Hartmann, Nenad Ivic´, Pavel Janáček, Natalia Jonsson-Skradol, Melinda Kalmár, David Norris, Ivana Peruško, Evgeny Ponomarev, Benjamin Robinson, Tamás Scheibner, Vít Schmarc, Tatiana V. Volokitina and Vladislav M. Zubok. This heavily archival and scrupulously theoretical volume is the impressive result of many years' work under the auspices of the research project, 'Literary Pax Sovietica: National Revival and Cultural Unification in Post-War Eastern Europe', based at the University of Sheffield. Prior to publishing these important results, they were showcased at two conferences funded by, amongst others, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the International Visegrad Fund and the Mikhail Prokhorov Fund. [End Page 183] On the cover of the book, Cyrillic typewriter keys capture the eye. Their gold inlaid tops are stuck frozen on their arms, idling and untouched. Nobody is using the typewriter: it is an artifact of an era long gone. Who stopped typing? When and why? What did the dominant ideological spirits of Socialist Realism have to do with the eventual abandonment of these keys? Focusing on the former Warsaw pact countries of Eastern and Central Europe — but omitting Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine — the editors thoughtfully place each contribution under one of the three sequential parts listed in the book's subtitle (institutions, dynamics, discourses). Most closely examined is the fate of Socialist Realism in East Germany, Poland, Croatia, Czecholslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Yugoslavia, with brief mention of Albania and Macedonia. With one exception — the Béla Bartók debates that were to influence the larger process of the development of Socialist Realism in Hungary — and unlike the approach used by Dobrenko and Lahusen in 1997 and Dobrenko and Günther in 2000, the volume covers only the literatures and literary criticism of this multilingual region. The volume's structure enables the reader to accurately track the arrival of Socialist Realism in the newly Soviet-occupied zones of war-torn Eastern Europe following the defeat of Hitler's Nazi Germany. After the extermination of many artists who had been anti-Nazi resisters, the devastations of the Holocaust and the purges in the Soviet Union, far from all the surviving writers were able to immediately return home from their places of displacement and exile. (Anna Seghers, for example, did not return from Mexico until 1947, and lived in West Berlin until 1950.) All the volume's essays are sensitive to the difficult circumstances surrounding the construction of the early institutions and discourses of the proto-socialist and popular-democratic cultural fronts in the region. Although comic in part, this was not a makeshift montage job for 'Kremlin gremlins', as Zubok calls them (pp. 78–82). These were...

Interpolation as Critical Category

Interpolation as Critical Category Hannah Weaver (bio) Abstract Maligned by ancient Alexandrian librarians and twentieth-century philologists alike, interpolation has a long history of negative criticism that obscures its ubiquity and utility in the medieval period. This article first tells the story of criticism of interpolation, using the Latin verb interpolare as a through-line across centuries of commentary. In this vision, the consensus is that interpolations must be detected in order to be eliminated. The trouble with this story is that deleting interpolations suppresses the very idea that texts were open to such interruptive revisions; by erasing embedded texts, these editors quietly do away with an important part of medieval textual culture. To get around this problem, the article then proposes an alternative story in which medieval practices of interpolation reflect flexible attitudes toward authorship and textual unity. Drawing on Derrida's idea of the parergon, I argue for the inextricability of so-called extraneous material from the work itself. Ultimately, interpolation is revealed to be an indispensable aspect of medieval textual culture that has been unjustly sidelined because of a long history of misunderstanding it as an attack on textual integrity, rather than as a deep form of interpretive engagement. Interpolation, defined simply as nonauthorial material inserted into another text, literally and figuratively disturbs the work into which it intervenes. The embedding of foreign material reshapes the work itself. In this way, interpolation is literally disturbing. It equally troubles any certainty about the status of the textual object, figuratively disturbing those who cherish textual integrity and authorial prestige as markers of authority. Indeed, the practice is often associated with falsification and harm, particularly since sticklers insist that true interpolations attempt to fool readers by passing off the inserted material as authorial.1 A mass of ancient and medieval evidence points to interpolation as something destructive to the integrity of the text, similar to other literary "crimes" such as forgery, plagiarism, and pseudepigraphy. In his entry for the Latin verb interpolare (to interpolate), the seventeenth-century lexicographer Charles Du Cange sums up the opinion that dominated for some two thousand years when he writes, "Interpolations … are said to be additions or insertions, which in their insertion harm the books, because the originals were not copied faithfully and carefully, whether this was done on purpose or not."2 Worry over textual authority and purity of transmission exudes from this definition. Interpolation has the power to change something essential to a work––a change that Du Cange reads as invariably harmful. Perhaps because of such tenacious negative evaluations, interpolation has not received much scholarly attention to date.3 Disdainful criticism notwithstanding, interpolation was in fact a common practice in the manuscript culture of the western Middle Ages, when large-scale interpolations of dozens or even hundreds of lines appeared in works as generically diverse as histories, chivalric romances, fabliaux, lays, allegories, and the Bible, in Latin and in various vernaculars. The habit of interpolation persisted into the early print period, when pages and quires could still be added easily to books sold unbound.4 For nonspecialists, the tremendous adaptability that characterizes medieval textuality might come as a surprise, since nowadays these works are usually encountered in tidy editions that physically resemble any other large print run. Medievalists, however, have long investigated the flexibility of the [End Page 1] manuscript culture of the Middle Ages.5 Texts have been recognized as fundamentally open systems, susceptible to intervention by named and unnamed contributors. Over the last half-century, critics have described the immense mutability of medieval textualities with a suite of nonidentical but related terms, notably mouvance, variance, and "mutable stability."6 From this perspective, the amount of revisionary energy a text attracts can indicate its continuing relevance and high status, rather than lack of respect and degradation.7 Yet, although it participates in the textual flexibility characteristic of the period, medieval interpolation has not lost the shadow of critical opprobrium. Interpolation has a close kinship with many more celebrated compositional practices, including compilation, continuation, and citation, which can be performed by a number of people around the text.8 But it differs fundamentally from these in that an interpolation is always...

А.П. ЧЕХОВ «РЕКОМЕНДАТЕЛЬНЫЙ»: БИБЛИОГРАФИЧЕСКИЕ СПИСКИ КАК ФАКТОР ФОРМИРОВАНИЯ ЛИТЕРАТУРНОЙ РЕПУТАЦИИ А.П.ЧЕХОВА В 1920–1950-Х ГГ.

The study of bibliographic indexes of literature about A.P. Chekhov, published in the 1920–1950s, are an integral part of the source studies of all modern Chekhovian scholars who are interested in this period in the history of Russian literary criticism. The auxiliary potential of these sources is high. However, a view on the lists of references as a valuable and in many ways indicative source allows us to regard these indexes as an important factor in the formation of the literary reputation of A.P. Chekhov in the post-revolutionary period. On the one hand, bibliographies were a consequence of the work of Chekhovian studies carried out by Soviet literary scholars and critics: this included methodological searches, the selection of books and articles that corresponded to the Marxist aesthetic paradigm etc. On the other hand, most recommendatory bibliographies were oriented towards the mass reader, and for them, acquaintance with the work and biography of A.P. Chekhov began precisely with recommendations on which articles and monographs are worthy of attention, and which should be taken critically, as examples of "bourgeois", "liberal" and other views. As Soviet Chekhovian studies developed, the lists were transformed, and as a result, the image of A.P. Chekhov transformed in the eyes of readers who were guided by these lists. This article is devoted to the peripeteias, logic and results of these literary and reputational transformations.

Dhvani Theory in Indian Aesthetics

Two texts have made significant contributions to Indian Aesthetics throughout the history of Indian literary criticism: Dhvanyāloka by Ānandavardhana and Locana, a commentary on the first text by Abhinavagupta. Both works have had a direct or indirect influence on all Indian Sanskrit critics. One of Ānandavardhana’s significant contributions is that he incorporates emotions and other association meanings into language meaning. As a result, the poetics expanded on conceptions of primary and secondary meaning. Given that Ānandavardhana was influenced by Bharathari, the proponent of the sphota theory, he highlighted the need of considering the entire utterance as an important unitary linguistic symbol. He had also demonstrated that the meaning of an utterance is influenced by context, and that the logical interpretation of meaning of a sentence based on individual word meanings is often fallacious. He also asserted that the overall meaning of an utterance may differ from the meaning of the individual words. Bharathari influenced Ānandavardhana to build his theory of language, but his attempt was limited to poetic meaning. In this research article, we shall make an attempt to comprehend the suggestive sense, also known as dhvani, along with its various forms, as described by Ānandavardhana.

Wartime creative work of M. A. Sholokhov in the history of Chinese criticism and journalism during 1941-1945

Wartime creative work of M. A. Sholokhov in the history of Chinese criticism and journalism during 1941-1945

The new historical politics and criticism of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi in contemporary Indian press

To successfully modernize the country and mobilize Indian society and to eventually implement ambitious plans for economic development, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sets itself the task of achieving national unity. The BJP in the face of its leader Narendra Modi is forced to conduct constant polemics with their main political opponent - the Indian National Congress. Having come to power in 2014, the BJP representatives use a number of management methods aimed at changing the historical memory of the peoples of India, which can be characterized as "historical politics". The authorities are trying to back up their actions to mobilize Indian society with a new historical rationale, using Hindutwa as a "new ideology". A new official version of the past is being formed, history and historical mythology are actively used to solve political problems of the present. The historical memory of society undergoes transformation and becomes an arena for the struggle against a political enemy. In the Indian press, every memorable date, every historical event becomes the basis for broad discussion and polemics with its historical predecessors and political competitors. After coming to power, Bharatiya Janata Party constantly refers to recent historical events, considering them from a certain ideological angle. This controversy, which has spilled over into the pages of the Indian press, allows us to talk about the BJP pursuing a new historical policy aimed at creating comfortable interpretations of controversial historical events for itself.

Amerikan Aristocracy

Leftist political theory remains trapped between two dominant conceptions of sovereignty: the liberal conception of popular sovereignty and the decisionist conception of sovereignty as the power to declare a state of exception. This essay offers a historical critique of the liberal and decisionist conceptions of sovereignty and develops a descriptive theory of aristocratic sovereignty, which is more suited to the history and the needs of radical political theory and praxis. By tracing the genealogy of sovereignty through early modern European political thought to the founding of the United States, this essay reveals the debilitating shortcoming of notions of sovereignty derived from both Carl Schmitt and the liberal tradition and provides a basis for a distinctively radical analysis of the sovereign aristocracy in Amerika.

Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity

Darryl Leroux’s Distorted Descent provides a fascinating glimpse into the broader colonial structural issues at play in what he calls the “race-shifting” or “self-Indigenization” phenomenon that has taken hold over the last decade or so in the United States and Canada. Leroux spends the majority of the book focused on white settlers of French descent in various communities across eastern Canada and the United States, breaking down the methods and justifications they use to craft a contemporary Indigenous identity. For the most part, Leroux’s focus is on white people who either claim Métis identity using genealogical methods that connect them to an Indigenous (usually First Nations) relative as far back as twelve generations or claim Indigeneity for a distant non-Indigenous relative. It is important that Leroux distinguishes between white settlers claiming Indigenous heritage when there is none to be found and Indigenous people struggling to reconnect to communities after US and Canadian assimilationist policies and institutions, such as the “sixties scoop” and residential/boarding schools, severed ties.Leroux’s intensive research into online French genealogy message boards yields a series of patterns through which white settlers make fraudulent claims to Indigeneity. Distorted Descent offers names for these patterns; for example, settlers using an Indigenous relative three hundred years in the past are manufacturing Indigeneity through “lineal” descent. Settlers attempting to claim Indigeneity by rewriting a distant settler relative as Indigenous do so through “aspirational” descent.Much of the book serves as a well-researched and astutely historical critique of settler focus on blood quantum and generational cut-offs as sole indicators of Indigeneity. It traces the ways in which settler concepts of genetics have been used to erase Indigeneity and claims to territory in both Canada and the United States. Importantly, blood quantum models of determining Indigeneity have served to undermine Indigenous systems of kinship, and this trend continues in the recent upswing in white claims to Indigenous identity. Leroux draws on the work of esteemed Métis scholars Chris Andersen and Brenda Macdougall, for example, to outline how settler ideas of Indigeneity have ignored structures of kinship and claiming in the Métis nation, actively threatening Métis sovereignty as a result.The crucial part of Leroux’s argument is not in his study and description of the phenomenon itself but in his framing of race shifting and the self-Indigenization movement as part of broader patriarchal white supremacist structures of colonial dispossession, even beyond Leroux’s identification of the roots of many of these so-called Indigenous groups in white supremacist organizations. In claiming a false Indigenous identity, many settlers have used their invented status to actively undermine and dispossess living Indigenous groups. Leroux brilliantly frames this as “[facilitating] white futurity in response to conventional reconciliation frameworks” (219). Leroux places this “new” phenomenon in context, thus presenting it as a continuation of centuries of colonial oppression—just with a different face.It is important to note that Leroux is not a historian—his roots in sociology and anthropology are clear in this book—but it is precisely the importance of a historical framing of many of the topics in Distorted Descent to which I would like to turn. While most of the book is dedicated to white settlers claiming Métis identity, there are sections where Leroux discusses settler claims to First Nations/Native American identities for similar purposes. The quick shift between two very different groups of Indigenous peoples at points throughout the book—the individuality of single nations aside—risks conflation of unique circumstances and historical and contemporary relationships with colonial power. Various nations and Indigenous groups have different practices of kinship and claiming that get lost in Leroux’s contemporary analysis of the issue and heavier focus on fake Métis claims without making the book solely about claims to Métis identity.While the book does talk about some differences between assimilation policies in the United States and Canada, it misses an opportunity to look at how historical differences between Indigenous relationships with US and Canadian settler states in place impact the kinds of rhetoric used to dispossess Indigenous peoples and how settler recognition—and de-recognition—are shaped by these contexts. These factors need to be considered when discussing issues of fake claims to Indigeneity, particularly in the northeastern United States, where there is a much longer history of colonial dispossession than in western regions. Indigenous nations like the Mashpee Wampanoag, for example, have continued to struggle for federal recognition in the face of a centuries-long attack on their sovereignty and claim to their home territory. While there are indeed white settlers taking advantage of this, the conversation is a great deal more nuanced than the scope of this book could address.Overall, Distorted Descent joins the ranks of important works, such as those of Kim Tallbear, about colonial attempts to control Indigeneity, and it will inform what will no doubt remain a robust and crucial conversation in this contemporary moment.

In Foucault's Wake

In Foucault's Wake James I. Porter (bio) With his elegant new study, Foucault's Seminars on Antiquity: Learning to Speak the Truth, Paul Allen Miller offers a comprehensive and much-needed guide to Foucault's views of antiquity down to his last lectures at the Collège de France. Foucault was a prolific writer, lecturer, and thinker during the final half-decade of his life when he made his abrupt turn, or rather return, to Greece and Rome.1 We are only now beginning to digest this complex legacy. The question I want to raise in this essay is what it would mean to reassess, reincorporate, or move beyond Foucault's approaches to self-care, the self, and the human in the study of Greek and Roman antiquity at the moment we find ourselves in today. The question, in my mind, has three parts. First, how can we situate Foucault's work on antiquity in the context of his other prodigious accomplishments in the field of modernity? Second, is there a way to historicize Foucault—to place him in his moment in time, and above all his own sense of the historical present that he found himself in? And third, what use can be made, in future studies of the premodern past, of Foucault's writings prior to his final shift to antiquity? I see a contrast and a tension here. Foucault's focus in his study of antiquity—the history of sexuality tied to questions about practices of the self—was narrow even by his own standards. It cannot match the brilliant sweep of his previous projects, which mapped out huge historical critiques that analyzed some of the ways in which modern culture in the European West organized itself on an institutional level by establishing normative structures in the areas of the human sciences, medicine, psychiatry, surveillance, incarceration, security, governmentality and law, neoliberalism, and the biopolitical. Perhaps more than that of any of his peers and contemporaries, his work was not just transformative. It was generative. It gave rise to whole new fields of inquiry in the humanities broadly conceived, not just in the interstices and forgotten margins but across their reassembled surface. Unlike with these other intellectual trends, to be a Foucauldian today is not to have a preestablished method. It is to work in Foucault's deep wake and to break new ground. Can the same be said of his work on antiquity? I am not sure it can. [End Page 395] The rupture with his earlier projects occurs after the first volume of The History of Sexuality from 1976 (La volonté de savoir), which established how discursive regimes, intertwined with regimes of institutionalized power, positivize what they repress; they produce desiring, sexualized subjects. Returning to antiquity in 1980–81 with his lectures on Subjectivity and Truth while preparing the second and third volumes of The History of Sexuality (1984), Foucault looked for the same kind of phenomenon, discursive regimes that produced desiring, sexual subjects. But it is here that things go a bit off the rails. With no institutions to target (there were none comparable to the clinical or administrative environments of the nineteenth century when sexuality was produced by sexology), Foucault had to come up with something to take their place. And what he settled on were individuals, bodies, pleasures, anxieties, and problematizations that were, so to speak, suspended in mid-air, belonging as they did to an eclectic mix of practices that were private, public, and philosophical but were overseen by no institutional frameworks. In a telling moment in volume 3 of The History of Sexuality, he teases out a notion of "the subject's 'style of activity'" that, he suggests, is more telling and powerful than any system of rules, codes, or conduct: it operates independently of any "natural structure" or "positive regulation" (Foucault 1986, 35). This kind of self-stylization Foucault calls a "form of experience" (1986: 36). Its agent and object are said to be the ancient "self," le soi, always understood as a first-personal moi. In taking this approach, Foucault was abandoning his strong suit: institutional and cultural critique. He was occasionally explicit about this precise set of...

System efficiency on mobile learning system user satisfaction at Egerton University, in Kenya

The study was confined to find out the outcome of curriculum implemented in the target schools from1964 to 1985. This study adopted Critical Policy Sociology (CPS) otherwise referred to as Critical Policy Archaeology which was postulated by Trevor Gale in (2001) to excavate the sites and analyze the contents/subjects of the curriculum, how actors enacted policy, and their outcomes at the target sites. The study adopted a historical research design. Data collection involved a critical review of relevant literature; including several curriculum reforms documents and oral interviews. Snowball sampling was adopted to select 12 participants. Data analysis and interpretation were done through internal and external historical criticism. Based on the literature review and documentary analysis, there was overwhelming evidence for Kenya to review education at independence since Kenyan education has its roots in the colonial past. From the findings of this study, the following conclusions were made: First, curriculum reforms/subjects enacted in the target schools were foreign subjects from English Grammar School of UK. They were rather irrelevant to the needs of the majority of Kenyans after independence. Secondly, the State-controlled policy enactment process through MOE, KIE and TSC excluded practitioners’ voices. Hence, the State had power over teachers on policy formulation and implementation. Based on the findings of objective one, there is need to improve our curriculum policy (but caution should be taken especially with imported education policies and ideologies/values. Even when policies are culturally relevant, locally mediated and re-contextualized the result of transfer remains unpredictable.

КЛЮЧОВІ ІСТОРИЧНІ НАРАТИВИ ФОРМУВАННЯ НАЦІОНАЛЬНОЇ ІДЕНТИЧНОСТІ УКРАЇНЦІВ У ПРОПАГАНДИСТСЬКОМУ ДИСКУРСІ НІМЕЦЬКИХ ОКУПАЦІЙНИХ ЗОН УКРАЇНИ (1941–1944 рр.)

The purpose of the study: to identify information arrays, that reconstructed and interpreted the historical past of Ukrainians, based on the source analysis of the content of German occupation periodicals, thus forming an appropriate model of historical memory, in fact, turning the Ukrainian people into a historical process. The methodology and methodology of research involves a combination of the principles of historicism, objectivity and consistency, as well as historical criticism of the selected basic reconstructions of the past of Ukrainians widely promoted in the occupation period. The study systematizes various publications in the occupation periodicals, highlighting their thematic blocks, specific content, forms of presentation of the standard information materials, which, contrary to the strategic visions of the Third Reich leadership, were directed at the formation of the historical memory of Ukrainians. The author, on a systemic and comprehensive level, investigated the information potential of the main periodicals that were published in all occupation zones of Ukraine, namely: the District «Galicia», the Reichskommissariat «Ukraine» and the Military Zone of Occupation. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the first in modern domestic historiography complex selection of the model of historical memory of Ukrainians, which was formed during the establishment of the German occupation regime. A detailed analysis of the information potential of the content of occupation periodicals indicates that the historical past of Ukrainians was interpreted in terms of the gravity of state tradition and the constant struggle against external enemies. The basic information and thematic blocks that were used in all the occupation zones of Ukraine were the reproduction of the history of Kievan Rus’, Khmelnytsky region and liberation movements of the Cossack era. At the same time, an exclusively negative image of neighboring Moscow and Poland was formed. The internal enemy of Ukraine was declared to be the Jews, against whom the Ukrainians fought in the same way as they fought the Poles and Russians. The events of 1917–1920, when the Ukrainian state perished and was torn apart by neighboring Poland and Bolshevik Russia, were voiced in the context of betrayal by the democratic countries of Europe. The construction of a new national identity for Ukrainians in the context of their spiritual, psychological, historical, cultural, economic, and territorial unity, as well as the reinterpretation of the historical past, consolidated society at that time. This important process for Ukrainians was carried out in unison with the history of the people’s unceasing struggle for their own statehood and their desire to achieve synodality. By successfully manipulating historical facts, German propagandists actually reformatted the historical memory of Ukrainians, programming for the future, constructing and correcting national identity markers that even the following Soviet occupation of the country was unable to erase. However, the historical narrative widely promoted in periodicals downplayed regional differences and social contradictions of Ukrainian society, represented its internal national unity, and was presented equally in all German occupation zones of Ukraine.

‘Keen to Foul Their Own Nests’: Contemporary and Historical Criticism of the Permanent Joint Board on Defence of 1940

On 17 August 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt met with Canada’s Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King in the town of Ogdensburg, which lies just across the Canadian border in upstate New York. There the two leaders agreed on the formation of the Permanent Joint Board on Defence (PJBD) to advise on policies for the defence and security of the North American continent. The PJBD was commended on all sides, in public at least, not only in the United States and Canada but also in Britain, where the new prime minister, Winston Churchill, speaking in the House of Commons on 20 August, compared the trend towards growing cooperation between the British Empire and the United States to the relentless flow of the Mississippi river. He also referred approvingly to the Permanent Joint Board in his post-war Fulton speech, delivered on 5 March 1946, as an important element in the ‘special relationship’ between the British Empire and the United States. Later commentators, including John Bartlet Brebner, have also seen the Joint Board as a significant part of the ‘North Atlantic Triangle’. However, as this article shows, the PJBD has also attracted plenty of criticism – both contemporary and historical.

Официальная религиозная жизнь православного Прикамья в документах фонда уполномоченного по делам религий

The author proposes to reconstruct the religious life of the Orthodox Kama region in the period after the Great Patriotic War through the prism of documents contained in the fund of the regional commissioner for religious affairs. To analyze the information, the method of historical criticism of sources is used. Reconstruction of the realities of local Orthodoxy is carried out taking into account the political context of the post-war period, government decrees of that time and the specifics of the profession and worldview of those who compiled the documents. The features of drawing up documents for official use are taken into account. The reconstruction was based on annual information reports, service notes and materials of participant observations in the temples of the region from 1948 to 1990, which made it possible to trace the dynamics of quantitative changes in participation in cult practice. The object of the research was the official ritual activities during the daily period and holidays. The main research issue of the article is to identify the specifics of the religious life of the local Orthodox community under constant pressure from atheistic ideology. This presupposes the identification of the most popular forms of participation of believers in ritual activities and the establishment of strategies for religious behavior that would make it possible to realize the faith under pressure from the state. To verify the data obtained, both the interview data contained in the fund and the author's modern research materials, characterizing the current situation in Orthodoxy, were used. The study revealed trends in the extinction of traditional ritual activities against the background of changes in the behavior of believers and the formation of new principles of attitudes towards religion and the church. The main factors influencing the transformation of religious behavior of believers have been identified. The available statistical data on the participation of Orthodox citizens in official religious practice are analyzed. The special status of Orthodoxy in late Soviet society as a position of the synthesis of religious and Soviet behavior for believers is determined. Two trends in the culture of the population of the region are highlighted: the success of the policy of atheization of citizens and the strengthening of cult activity at the level of individual forms of religious behavior.