Master Narrative Of History Research Articles

Cultural migrancies: Provisional thoughts on two song-dramas in the ‘matter of Zimbabwe’

ABSTRACT If ‘struggle’ is the foundation of the new postcolonial literature and state, ‘the matter of Zimbabwe’ secures unquestioned tenancy to literatures of the folkways of yore. In this article, this false binary is disputed in favour of fusions and continuities. The article discusses the ‘matter of Zimbabwe’ via two Shona song-dramas, whose construction and visions border on the timeless and mythopoetic. The two song-dramas, Chomtengure and Uyo Ndiani, are indeed the epitomes of the indestructibility as well as vulnerability of master narratives of history. The two songs represent the creative possibilities of this tension that ripples through the rather viscous content of the ‘matter of Zimbabwe’.

The Black Sea: A History by Charles s> King (review)

REVIEWS 529 expanding research on that poet. Ewa Thompson provides a thoughtprovoking study of the post-Soviet 'master narrative of history', where 'in Russia, memories are still grievances calling for action against the Other, ratherthan being signalsto commemorate the eventsof thepast'(p. I63), thus offeringa highly productive theoretical frameworkfor the study of literature and particularlyfilmafter I99I. A minor irritant remains on the level of copy-editing. There is a high incidence of typosand misprintsthathave been allowed to creep throughinto the publishedtexts, aswell as errorsof punctuation.That quibbleaside, a final word should be reserved for the piece by Professor McMillin himself, on musical renditions of Gogol' by Shostakovichand Shnittke,distinguishedby itscharacteristicwit and elegance, aswell asitssheererudition.The Festschrift is a most fittingtributeto a man of many talents. Department ofEuropean Studies andModem Languages DAVID GILLESPIE University ofBath King, Charles. TheBlackSea:A Histogy. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York,2004. xxi + 276 pp. Maps. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography and furtherreading.Index. C20.00. THIS is a fine book. The quotation from Orlando Figes on thejacket is both testimony to this and yet, it is more than merely a 'masterfulaccount of the ever-changingtradebetween thepeoples andpowersof thiscrucialwaterway'. 7heBlackSeagoes beyond trade and embraces the various realms of culture, politics, society, war, geography and the environment, as well as, of course, creating an integrated history of a region that is both a region and not a region, as such. Charles King perhaps indicates as much at the end of the book, when he looksat the experience of the BlackSea Economic Community, created in the I99os, following an initiative by the Turkish government. Although that body had developed by the startof the twenty-firstcentury to have a permanent organization and parliamentaryassociation, its only real achievement otherwise concerned shared study, concern and approaches to the environmentalissuesthat had emerged to killthe sea in the second half of the twentieth century. That achievement, in itself,was significant.But it was limited. And with other developments such as the building of oil pipelines from the Caspian Sea more likelythan not, in King'sjudgement, to have only a limited economic orpoliticalimpact,given thatmost of the BlackSea'sports will be bypassed, then the prospectsfor real development, he argues,are also limited. Outward migration from the littoral might be expected, though the sea and its multiculturaland multiethnictraditionswill live on, he suggests(as they do already)wherevermigrationleads the peoples of the eleven countries along its coastline. And, of course, there will always be some who remain to live and workon and by the sea. This conclusion is a little disappointing, even if its sombre character fits with much of the immediate evidence at the end of this consummate history. It is also maybe a little misplaced, if one considersnot so much the trajectory of the past as that of the future.The historian'ssound conclusion might have 530 SEER, 83, 3, 2005 benefited from the glance of the securitypolicy analyst.In that way, the very importance of undertakingthisfirstreal historicalsurveyof the BlackSea as a regionwouldhavebeen markedandthemeritinthebookreallydemonstrated. In a sense, King's book is potentially far more significantthan his conclusion allows it to be, for the factors that lead him to conclude that something like the end of a historicalphase might have arrivedare precisely those, it seems to me, that create the imperatives for further development and a regional future.These aretheprocessesofNATO andEU partnershipandenlargement that began in the I99os. These have an inherent logic towards continuing enlargement. But the scope of that enlargement is likely to engenderjust the kind of regional cooperation and identity within a Europe of regions, partnershipsand alliances that Charles King sees the BSEC as having failed to accomplishbecause of the greaterprizes and real issuesattachedtojoining NATO and the EU. That is why thisbook is not only so good, but important. It gives a past to something that has a future, where the shared elements of that past have not previously been perceived, in general. This is the case whether these elements are the bonds of trade and migration, navigationand preservation of eco-culture, or the north-south security stand-off across the sea between one version or another of Russia and Turkey that was present over hundredsof years. To have concentrated,thusfar,on the conclusionin...

Slavonic Journeys across Two Hemispheres: Festschrift in Honour of Arnold McMillin. New Zealand Slavonic Journal, 37, 2003 by Irene Zohrab (review)

528 SEER, 83, 3, 2005 symbolism, specific lexicon and realia (such as national flags) that recur in variousformsin many of the poems. The anthology'ssingletheme as treatedin the poems featuredhereis broad enough to make a satisfying entity, and the present reviewer, barred by convention from quoting examples, can only recommend the volume warmly as an admirablebilingualintroductionto contemporaryBelarusianpoetry.As the translatorexclaims,withanappropriatepun attheend ofherIntroduction: 'Chaj zyvie svaboda! Chaj zyvie Bielarus!' (Long live liberty! Long live Belarus!)(p. I2). School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies ARNOLD MCMILLIN University College London Zo)hrab,Irene (ed.). Slavonic Journeys AcrossTwoHemispheres: Festschrift inHonour of ArnoldMcMillin. New ZealandSlavonicJournal, 37, 2003. Victoria University of Wellington and the University of Otago, New Zealand, 2003. xiv + 332 pp. Illustrations. Notes. NZ$5o.oo (paperback subscription). THIS is the second volume of NZSJ dedicated to ProfessorArnold McMillin. The first,publishedin 2002, was so overwhelmedwith proposalsthata second was required. There can be no one in Slavonic Studies who would argue against the need for such a wealth of material, and no one would surely begrudge two Festschriften for such an internationally distinguished and popularscholar.Contributionsare not only fromhis formerstudents,but also fromsome very respectedfriendsand colleaguesfromaroundthe globe. The volume's contents not only reflectand complement ProfessorMcMillin 's own teaching and researchinterests(articleson Dostoevskii, Belarusian literatureand Russianmusic),but alsoprovide insightsinto otherareaswhere Slavonic Studies has developed in recent years, such as film and literary postmodernism.There are also contributionsthat reflectthe traditionsof the journal (Russian-Australasianaffinities),and a major translation of correspondence between PrinceMeshcherskiiand GrandDuke NikolaiAlekseevich I863-64, with facsimilereproductions. Of the two dozen contributions, the following stand out as being of particularmerit. Zina Gimpelevich on Aleksei Skaldin (I889-1943) offersa fascinatingaccount of a writerwho is known to have written nine novels and a number of shortstories,of which only one novel has survived(therestwere confiscated during his several arrests, and are now assumed to be lost or destroyed). Donald Rayfield's fittingly uncompromising condemnation of Stalin's 'poet and hangman' Viacheslav Menzhinskii is never less than riveting, and the final judgement damning: 'Though never celebrated, Viacheslav Menzhinsky has never been disgraced. It is high time he was. Among all the heads of the Cheka-NKVD he was the most educated and most privileged and the least traumatised,and for him there can be no mitigation' (p. Io8). Alexandra Smith's essay on Tsvetaeva's 'female dandyism' and her relationship to the theatre is a well-researchedcontribution to the currently REVIEWS 529 expanding research on that poet. Ewa Thompson provides a thoughtprovoking study of the post-Soviet 'master narrative of history', where 'in Russia, memories are still grievances calling for action against the Other, ratherthan being signalsto commemorate the eventsof thepast'(p. I63), thus offeringa highly productive theoretical frameworkfor the study of literature and particularlyfilmafter I99I. A minor irritant remains on the level of copy-editing. There is a high incidence of typosand misprintsthathave been allowed to creep throughinto the publishedtexts, aswell as errorsof punctuation.That quibbleaside, a final word should be reserved for the piece by Professor McMillin himself, on musical renditions of Gogol' by Shostakovichand Shnittke,distinguishedby itscharacteristicwit and elegance, aswell asitssheererudition.The Festschrift is a most fittingtributeto a man of many talents. Department ofEuropean Studies andModem Languages DAVID GILLESPIE University ofBath King, Charles. TheBlackSea:A Histogy. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York,2004. xxi + 276 pp. Maps. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography and furtherreading.Index. C20.00. THIS is a fine book. The quotation from Orlando Figes on thejacket is both testimony to this and yet, it is more than merely a 'masterfulaccount of the ever-changingtradebetween thepeoples andpowersof thiscrucialwaterway'. 7heBlackSeagoes beyond trade and embraces the various realms of culture, politics, society, war, geography and the environment, as well as, of course, creating an integrated history of a region that is both a region and not a region, as such. Charles King perhaps indicates as much at the end of the book, when he looksat the experience of the BlackSea Economic Community, created in the I99os, following an initiative by the Turkish government. Although that body had developed by the startof the twenty-firstcentury to have a permanent organization and parliamentaryassociation, its only real achievement otherwise concerned shared study, concern and approaches to the environmentalissuesthat had...

Ousted Possibilities: Critical Histories in James Joyce's Ulysses

In what follows want to put forward the argument that is preeminently a critique of historical conventions. All of Joyce's texts (the letters, the critical works, the fiction) consistently remind us that all conventions - be they historical, religious, aesthetic - are anathema to the artist. As early as 1905, in a letter to his brother Stanislaus, Joyce is able to state, The struggle against conventions in which am at present involved was not entered into by me so much as a protest against these conventions as with the intention of living in conformity with my nature (Letters II 99). This statement is revealing principally because suggests that Joyce is not interested in subverting or destroying conventions; rather, his interest - and is evident in all of his later work - is in finding a way to articulate his own moral In the above quoted letter, Joyce is referring specifically to the kind of conventional reactions he might expect for his Dubliners stories. To be judged properly, he writes, I should not be judged by 12 burghers taken at haphazard, judging under the dictation of a hidebound bureaucrat ... but by some jury composed partly of those of my own class and of my own age presided over by a judge who had solemnly forsworn all English legal methods (100). This desire for justice is linked with a desire for freedom not merely from conventions but from the historical situation which obtains in Ireland - a situation characterized by extreme chauvinism, bourgeois mendacity, and imperialistic injustice. And rather than protest this situation, Joyce excuses himself from it: For either Sinn Fein or Imperialism will conquer the present Ireland. If the Irish programme did not insist on the Irish language suppose would call myself a nationalist. As is, am content to recognise myself an exile: and, prophetically, a repudiated (187). Joyce's position vis-a-vis Ireland and the narratives of history imposed upon by British masters is remarkably like that of Nietzsche's virtuous man who swims against the tide of history, whether by combating its passions as the most immediate stupid fact of its existence or by dedicating itself to truthfulness as falsehood spins its glittering web around it (Uses 106). In both cases we find not so much protest as the exertion of a nature, and in that exertion the opening up of new possibilities for the artistic expression of that nature. In this essay wish to make clear that Joyce's struggle against history (which is, more precisely, a struggle against the master narratives of history which determine social conventions of all kinds) is not a rejection of history per se but rather an agonistic relation with history whenever functions as a monological, authoritarian legitimation of social power.(1) will argue that Joyce's primary goal is to critique this mode of history by a number of narrative (even anti-narrative) strategies, all sharing one significant characteristic: a resistance (sometimes fierce, sometimes playful) against the tendency of historical points of view to converge and dissolve in the absolute logic of a master discourse. In the past twenty years or so Joyce's texts have been analyzed largely in linguistic or stylistic terms. Most analyses of this sort imply that historical knowledge of an empirical world is impossible or at best incidental to the process of deriving textual meaning; history as a of experience dissolves in the infinite semiosis, without boundary or telos, of a radically self-reflexive text. Colin MacCabe exemplifies this tendency when he writes, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are concerned not with representing experience through language but with experiencing language through a destruction of representation (4). This interpretive strategy, ably handled by people like Marilyn French, John Paul Riquelme, Karen Lawrence, Patrick McGee, Michael Gillespie, Ramon Saldivar, and a host of others, presupposes that can only be about itself, the writing of a story that is the story of a writing. …