Legitimate Resistance Research Articles

Interpositions: Hope Leslie , Women's Petitions, and Historical Fiction in Jacksonian America

Magawisca, springing from the precipitous side of the rock, screamed--Forbear! and interposed her arm. It was too late. The blow was leveled--force and direction given--the stroke aimed at Everell's neck, severed his defender's arm, and left him unharmed. This heroic moment in Catharine Sedgwick's most popular novel, in which Magawisca interposes her arm to save young Everell Fletcher from death at the hands of her father, the Pequot chief Mononotto, has often been interpreted as rewriting of Pocahontas's intervention on behalf of John Smith. (1) While there are parallels between the two, such an interpretation overlooks the scene's significance as one of many instances of interposition or intervention on behalf of the innocent in Hope Leslie (1827). Magawisca's heroism here is part of pattern of intercessions on behalf of the Fletcher family, in which she interposes herself emotionally, rhetorically, or, as above, physically between the Fletchers and her father. In fact, the novel is framed by reciprocal acts of interposition, since, in its second volume, Everell Fletcher and Hope Leslie interpose on behalf of Magawisca. Interpose is Sedgwick's term, one that she uses no fewer than twenty times in the course of Hope Leslie to suggest an act of intercession between the powerful and powerless to bring about higher justice. (2) Through the novel's repeated configurations of victims, intercessors, and authority figures, Sedgwick explores the overarching theme of broad category embracing range of emotional, rhetorical, or physical intercessory acts with inherently political content, raising questions about the legitimate resistance to authority. (3) Foundational to Sedgwick's concept of interposition is the petition--a specific form her heroines' rhetorical interpositions, using religiously-resonant posture to make palatable requests justice that challenged prevailing power structures. Throughout Hope Leslie, Sedgwick reiterates synonyms petition--supplication, entreaty, appeal, and prayer-and underscores the centrality of the petition's persuasive means of interposing by accentuating her heroines' deferent physical stance in making petitions. Moreover, in using such deferent posture, Sedgwick's protagonists employ elements of the petition that antebellum American women would adopt. Hope Leslie imagines forms women's political interpositions, particularly the petition, and participates discursively in the white women's petitioning campaigns of the antebellum era, illuminating this context today's scholars. In their unprecedented efforts to petition collectively in 1830, white women applied an awareness of petitioning as request for our fellow to their political interpositions on behalf of Native American Indians. From an antebellum theological perspective, the term petition was in fact often understood as kind of interposition, albeit more moderate and rhetorical (whether written or spoken) than Magawisca's dramatic bodily interposition. Frequently called intercession, petition was part of prayer including a desire of deliverance from evil, and request of good things to be bestowed ... not only ourselves but our fellow creatures also. (4) What Hope Leslie imagines as individual, spoken intercessions, white women would take up in collective, written form in their 1830s petitions to Congress on behalf of Native Americans. While there is no direct historical link between Hope Leslie and women's actual petitions, they share remarkable rhetorical similarities. Both fundamentally announced themselves as interpositions on behalf of others' natural rights, initially made use of supplicating stance and humble tone, and ultimately challenged patriarchal structures through their articulation of political opinion, moving women an important step toward citizenship. (5) Their similarities as rhetorical interpositions give them an imaginative continuity worth closely considering. …

De dominante staat. De Gentse opstand (1449-1453) in de negentiende en twintigste-eeuwse historiografie

The dominant state. The Gent revolt (1449-1453) in nineteenth and twentieth century historiographyIn this survey of the historiography of the Gent revolt (1449-1453), the author argues that the position adopted by historians in the nineteenth and twentieth century was largely determined by their own views about government. The romanticists, in their historical accounts, reflected their own time, namely the legitimate resistance of Dutch freedom-fighters against a Francophone oppressor. While nationalistic positivists regarded revolts as a threat to the mediaeval state they adored. In the face of tumultuous events, post-war historians identified undemocratic values in the contemporary constitution and subsequently abandoned the legitimizing discourse of the ‘modern state’. As a result of the tendency in twentieth-century politics towards more consultation and more spectacle, late-mediaeval street violence was assessed in a more positive light. Ritual violence was seen as a social action. The author concludes that the historians’ opinion about the violence executed by the government as well as the collective action of the subjects was dominated by their view of the state under which they themselves were living.

Droit à la vie, fondement contractuel de la paix civile et nécessités de l'ordre public selon Th. Hobbes et J.-J. Rousseau

According to M. Villey, «The rights of man are the product of modern philosophy which blossomed in the 17 th century», with Th. Hobbes. The latter sets out a contractual conception of political power. For the sake of their security, subjects alienate their natural right, source of general strife, by handing it over to the Sovereign, sole judge of the means required for maintaining law and order. Is any irreducible core of natural right left ? It crystallizes around the notion of the right to life, a fragile stay for legitimate resistance to power. Rousseau appears to go even further in the reduction of this core. Freedom replaces life, as an inalienable right to express one's opinion on law, a manifestation of a sovereign will more absolute than that of Hobbes.

The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the “Two Treatises of Government”, by John Dunn

Preface Part I: 1. Introduction: John Locke in history: the problems 2. The developing mind 3. The essays on the law of nature 4. The essay on toleration Part II: 5. The Two Treatises and exclusion 6. Sir Robert Filmer 7. Locke and Hobbes Part III: 8. The premises of the argument 9. The state of nature 10. The creation of the legitimate policy 11. Prerogative 12. Public good and reason of state 13. The conditions for legitimate resistance 14. The law of nature Part IV: 15. The coherence of a mind 1 16. The coherence of a mind 2 17. The coherence of a mind 3 Part V: 18. The calling: tradition and change 19. Conclusion Bibliography Index.

Science's legitimate resistance to extrasensory perception: A reply to McConnell.

Science's legitimate resistance to extrasensory perception: A reply to McConnell.

Science's legitimate resistance to extrasensory perception: A reply to McConnell.

Science's legitimate resistance to extrasensory perception: A reply to McConnell.