Self-made Man Research Articles

Tapping imaginaries: Guinness, masculinity, and the promise of Africa Rising

ABSTRACT This article interrogates masculinity and the consumer politics of late capitalism in urban Africa. Engaging scholarship on racialized masculinities, branding, and African cities with special attention to the Nigerian context, it conducts a media analysis of three Guinness Africa advertising campaigns: Made of More, Michael Power, and Greatness. Building off of its centuries-long ties between the African male consumer and European capital, in 1998 Guinness created the fictional Michael Power in a marketing coup that was to elevate the brewery to unrivaled dominance over the continent’s beer import market. Subsequent campaigns were to glorify everyday heroes: Greatness declaring a ‘drop of greatness in each man’ and Made of More extolling the sartorial elegance of Congolese dandies. This representational shift reflected the brewery’s recognition of changing models of accumulation in the African urban informal economy and the corresponding aspirations that they ignited in its men. Bypassing scripts of hegemonic masculinity, this new era of Guinness advertising showcased self-made men in a laissez-faire economy, simultaneously celebrating and depoliticizing the racialized global inequalities and gendered politics of contemporary African urbanization. Guinness’s successful appeal to twenty-first-century African male consumers provides a case study of multinational marketing in bottom billion capitalism.

Kant’s Philosophy and the Idea of the Self-Made-Man

Purpose. The authors of this article set the main purpose of understanding the ideological potential of Kant’s philosophical heritage from the viewpoint of its influence on the spread and legitimization of the self-made man idea in the worldview transformations of the modern world. Theoretical basis. Historical, analytical, and hermeneutic methods became fundamental for achieving the goal. The study is based on Kant’s works, as well as on the works of modern researchers of his ideological heritage. Originality. The analysis shows that the idea of the Self-made-man, which originated in the ancient world and gradually spread in the Western culture of the Middle Ages, early Modernism, and especially the Enlightenment, receives significant additional impulses in the context of Kant’s rethinking of the metaphysical foundations in the theory of knowledge and morality. Perhaps, the systematic theoretical substantiation of people’s abilities to use their own mind, their intellectual, and therefore moral autonomy, and freedom of will as the fundamental principles of personal Self-determination and Self-realization became the most important consequence of this rethinking. This, in turn, became the theoretical and moral-legal basis for further legitimization in the modern and postmodern world of the ideal of a person who creates oneself. Conclusions. The importance of Kant’s philosophy in the context of idea generation of the self-made man is hard to overestimate. It is entirely imbued with a leitmotif appeal to the individual to have the courage to use his/her own mind, to be independent and self-sufficient in assessments, choices, and actions, and therefore also responsible for their consequences, in the end, to be primarily an end, not a means. Thanks to this, a person, according to Hegel, finds an unconditionally strong and stable center in oneself. In fact, by strengthening the position of human-centric philosophy, as well as the moral and legal foundations of liberal humanism, Kant’s ideas provided further ideological legitimation in the orientation of an objectively growing individual towards actively placing Self-reliance and Personal responsibility on one’s own destiny as the key principles of the Self-made-man concept.

Milanese antique dealers and the international market

Abstract This article provides two concrete examples of the opening of the Milanese art market to the international stage at the time of Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli. The main focus is on the career of Giuseppe Baslini (1817–1887), the most important art dealer in nineteenth-century Milan. A true self-made man, Baslini entertained close relations with the most eminent Milanese collectors of the time, including Poldi Pezzoli and the Bagatti Valsecchi brothers; his success was secured by the international market on three major axes – London, Paris and Berlin. The second example concerns the family company of the Grandi art dealers, during the same years. In 1877 Baslini’s brothers-in-law Carlo (1842–1914) and Antonio (1857–1923) Grandi inherited the company of their father, Antonio (1810–1877), which originally specialized in Old Master drawings and prints, but extended its interests to paintings and objets d’art soon after Baslini’s death. The Grandi correspondence, preserved by the heirs and recently donated to the Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano, has provided the opportunity to reconstruct their business, which had an international dimension from its inception.

Looking for a Third Way. Tsai Ing-wen and the Taiwanese Nation-Building

Tsai Ing-wen, the president of the Republic of China (Taiwan) in 2016–2024, is one of Asia’s most extraordinary female political leaders. A self-made woman who managed to enter politics independently – she was not born into a political family as is usually the case in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia – and who succeeded in her presidency. Tsai has enhanced the global profile of her country and impressed the world by combating the COVID-19 pandemic in a model way. She has also skillfully handled delicate cross-strait relations despite Beijing’s growing assertiveness. Tsai and her presidency are important for several reasons; the one highlighted here is her role in enhancing and trying to modify Taiwanese nation-building. During her presidency, Tsai Ing-wen advocated a “Third Way,” officially called “21st Century Taiwan’s Overall Cultural Construction”, based on accepting both the Taiwaneseness and the heritage of the Republic of China and merging both of these features. In other words, it emphasizes Taiwaneseness while not rejecting Chineseness. This is an interesting and bold attempt to forge a compromised identity, but one with an uncertain future due to domestic and international variables.

Коронація Анни Болейн як королеви Англії та церемонія коронації у Великій Британії.

This year marks the 500th anniversary of the coronation of Anne Boleyn as Queen of England, on 1 June 1533. The paper devoted to the coronation of Anne Boleyn as Queen of England. She was the Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 and the second wife of King Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn would come to be one of the stalwarts of the historical drama. Anne Boleyn was one of the most powerful women in the world in the 16th century. She was that rare phenomenon, a self-made woman. The author presents the event of Tudor history: Anne Boleyn’s coronation procession, Anne Boleyn’s coronation, the crown of St. Edward, with which Anne was crowned, the Imperial Crown and the Tudor Crown. The British coronation ceremony at Westminster Abbey is a time-honored tradition that has been taking place for over a thousand years. The coronation is steeped in pageantry, religious significance, and symbolism, with many ancient traditions being observed during the ceremony. This paper is explored some of these traditions and their significance. Remembered The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, Henry VIII by Shakespear, coronation music by Thomas Tallis and Handel, Anne Boleyn’s coronation ballad The White Falkon.

Everyone can make mistakes, but not everyone can fail: a response to Price & Jaffe

In Born losers: a history of failure in America (2005), historian Scott A. Sandage traces how, through the course of the nineteenth century, business failures gradually morphed into personal failures. Where losing money initially meant just that by the later nineteenth century, as the narrative of the ‘self-made man’ took hold, it came to be seen by society as a personal shortcoming and framed as a moral judgement. Fast-forward to the big-tech era of the twenty-first century and failure has become a trophy rather than a scar. Silicon Valley's credo of ‘fail fast and fail forward’ entrenches failure not only as a standard element of business practice—start-ups are expected to fail, their founders slated to move forward on their path to success—but also as a commendable addition to a CV or resumé thought to reflect ambition, innovativeness and resilience (see critique in Myers 2019). This admittedly truncated narrative of failure in America, closely intertwined with capitalist profit-seeking, serves to illustrate that failure is not a neutral concept but rather a social phenomenon, the reality and valence of which are context dependent. Moreover, like all social phenomena, failure has a history.

Imagining a Man “More Exactly what He Ought to Be”: Jane Austen’s Revolutionary Masculinities

Jane Austen’s canon has been expertly combed through for its moral implications, whether radically feminist or extremely conservative. Writing during the Napoleonic Wars, Austen was no stranger to politics, the military, or the implications both had on her life and her role in society. In the paper that follows, I posit that Austen channeled many of her opinions on England’s state of affairs through her male characters, who were the acting socio-political agents of the day. Through various caricatures of masculinity, Austen portrays masculine ideals and failures, both of which were rapidly evolving during her time. This research focuses on Austen’s portrayal of the “self-made man,” a form of masculinity which emerged following the American and French Revolutions, and grew to prominence in England following the Napoleonic Wars. These men quickly made places for themselves in society, particularly through the British Navy. They grew to rank and status through their own merit and skills, instead of high birth and landed title. Their increasing prominence threatened the very foundations of British society as Austen knew it. However, as this paper explores, Austen took care to present these men - and the changes they brought - in a positive light, showcasing the value in their revolutionary social movement. In the following essay, I demonstrate how, in doing so, Austen’s later novels, Mansfield Park and Persuasion, act as political tools which reveal how Austen’s opinions about England’s fragile state were revolutionary.

‘Arriving at moral Perfection’: Benjamin Franklin und seine russischen Nachfolger (Andrej Turgenev, Vasilij Žukovskij, Dmitrij Begičev)

Summary The article examines how Benjamin Franklin’s ideas of self-improvement were adopted in Russia. The concept of the new creation of the self is one of Benjamin Franklin’s the most popular ideas. Since the first publication of Franklin’s Autobiography the idea of self-improvement became a genuine part of the very American ideology of the self-made man. After Andrej Turgenev published his translation of Franklin’s Autobiography in Moscow in 1799, Franklin’s method went on to enjoy a widespread triumph in imperial Russia. Andrey Turgenev’s and Vasilij Zhukovskij’s diaries, Alexander Griboedov’s comedy Gore ot uma (1825) and Dmitrij Begichev’s novel Semeystvo Kholmskikh (1832) can help us to trace this Russian history of Franklin’s method and show how Russian followers of Franklin modified and adapted his concept.

Shavian Perspectives on the Cusp of Change and War (Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, and St. Joan)

Shavian Perspectives on the Cusp of Change and War (Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, <i>and</i> St. Joan)

Rugged Individualism Revisited: Herbert Hoover's Adaptation of Individualism in the 1928 Election

Abstract With Trump's election in 2016 prompting us to reflect on what qualifies one to the U.S. presidency, I turn to the 1928 election to consider the only other candidate who became president without having held elected office or a military position: Herbert Hoover. I argue that Hoover was able to establish his presidential qualifications by articulating a vision of “rugged individualism” as an American value, one that was not linked to traditional political experience but instead to a distinctively American character that combined past myths of the frontier and the “self-made man.” In so doing, Hoover adapted “individualism” into a “rugged individualism” connected to twentieth-century conservative economic policies. Through this discourse, Hoover was able to establish himself as the heir to previous Republican presidents while pushing the boundaries of presidential qualifications and the use of individualism as a rhetorical appeal. Beyond providing the first article-length critique of Hoover's 1928 campaign, my analysis adds to the scholarship on the use of rugged individualism as a rhetorical appeal, one that foreshadows the Republican response to the Great Depression and later conservative economic rhetoric.

Domination, social norms, and the idea of an emancipatory interest

Domination, social norms, and the idea of an emancipatory interest

The Year’s Work in American Humor Studies, 2021

The Year’s Work in American Humor Studies, 2021

“Self-made Man”: the Experience of A.A. Zinoviev

In the article the author attempts to reveal the phenomenon of the “self-made man” introduced by A.A. Zinoviev that renders the tradition of studying the polar nature of man in Russian thought.

Conciliation, Co-operation, and Consensus: The One Nation Conservative Approach to Industrial Relations and Trade Unions, 1945-1990

Although the relationship between the Conservative Party and the trade unions has often been characterised by mutual distrust and hostility, there was a unique period, from 1945 until the early 1960s, when senior Conservatives pursued a conciliatory and constructive approach to the trade unions, and insisted that harmonious industrial relations could not be secured by punitive legislation or political diktats. Instead, the paternalistic One Nation Conservatives who dominated the Party during this time, such as Rab Butler, Joseph Godber, Ian Macleod, Harold Macmillan, and Walter Monckton, emphasised that peace in industry could only be secured by developing trust via closer co-operation, dialogue and industrial partnership. This reflected the One Nation view that industrial conflict was often a consequence of workers feeling alienated, insecure and under-valued in large-scale, and impersonal, industries, where a growing gulf between workers and managers developed, and minor grievances smouldered. It was envisaged that this consensual and conciliatory strategy would result in reduced trade union militancy, and thus fewer strikes in pursuit of inflationary wage increases. This, in turn, would reduce the pressure from right-wing Conservatives for repressive legislation against the trade unions. From the 1970s onwards, though, this cohort of conciliatory One Nation Conservatives was superseded by a new generation of Conservative MPs and Ministers who heralded an ideological transformation in the Party. Often emanating from lower middle class or petit bourgeois backgrounds, many of these newer, younger, Conservatives were self-made men and women, and saw themselves as representatives or symbols of small businesses, individual entrepreneurs, and the self-employed especially. They were openly hostile towards trade unions, believing that they and their industrial militancy were responsible for many of Britain’s economic problems, such as excessive wage increases, high inflation, low productivity, and management’s inability to take tough commercial decisions, including the introduction of new working practices and technologies, due to the likelihood that these would prompt strikes by trade unions concerned with defending jobs. The decline of the One Nation Conservatives was therefore accompanied by a much more combative and confrontational approach by the Conservative Party towards workers and trade unions since the 1970s.

Lula and His Politics of Cunning: From Metalworker to President of Brazil

Lula and His Politics of Cunning: From Metalworker to President of Brazil

Edward Hopper and Ernest Hemingway: Problem of Creative Connections

This paper focuses on revealing connections between the creative work of two representatives of the US realism of the early 20th c.: the painter Edward Hopper (1882–1967) and the literary artist Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961). This problem has received studied, only if superficially. Yet Hopper and Hemingway were “key” personalities of the epoch which built them: both of the artists were expatriates, absorbed experience of “European” aesthetic trends, witnessed two world wars; that led to the existentialism concepts becoming central ideas in their creative work. Being self-made men, Hopper and Hemingway went through a similar path of personal growth, were recognized in the 1920s when their artistic style developed; the artists were devoted to it despite domination of different movements in art. Regardless of difference between the artists’ “temperament”, the form of their works is mostly similar in the application of realistic method, influence of impressionist and modernist trends, the desire for simplicity, as well as the focus on light and darkness. The pictorial and thematic affinity of Hopper's and Hemingway's several works is so great that a direct mutual influence between the artists seems very likely.

Searching for Woody Guthrie: A Personal Exploration of the Folk Singer, His Music, and His Politics

Searching for Woody Guthrie: A Personal Exploration of the Folk Singer, His Music, and His Politics

(Un)Making it in Rapture The Critique of the Myth of the Self-Made Man, of Ayn Rand, and of Objectivism in BioShock (2007) and in BioShock: Rapture (2011)

Thispaper attempts to prove that BioShock(2007), a science fiction video game set in 1960, and BioShock: Rapture(2011), the novel published in its wake which starts in 1945,present a powerful critique of the myth of the self-made man, conveyed via the depiction of the fall of Rapture. Rapture is the dystopian, underwater citycreated by Andrew Ryanin which boththe video game and the novel take place. Thecityisbuilt in an art deco style reminiscent of the1927 movie Metropolis. A Russian-born American tycoon, Ryan believed that nuclear annihilation was at hand and despisedanything resembling socialist-like policies, which is why he decided to seclude himself and a few chosen ones somewhere underneath the Atlantic Ocean. The place he selected, Rapture, was based on Objectivism and closely related to Ayn Rand, an American-Russian writer who promoted an extreme version of individualism and laissez-faire capitalism, namely on one of her novels, entitled Atlas Shrugged(1957), in which she presents the capitalist utopia called Galt’s Gulch. Although they are never explicitly mentioned in the texts analysedhere, both Rand and Galt’s Gulch provide Ryan and Rapture with their ethos, given that Ryan clearly resembles Rand and Rapture is strikingly similar to Galt’s Gulch. Despite promising that those willing to work hard enough would be able to fulfilthe promises of the myth of the self-made man, Rapture ends up falling, largely because of its defenceof Rand and Objectivist-inspired capitalist ideals, with the myth of the self-made man failing to be fulfilled. As a result, both themyth and, by extension, Rand and Objectivism, are called into question by BioShockand BioShock: Rapture, clearly located within the context of Cold War era and American culture and history.

MINDSET LANGUAGE IN LITERARY PROSE BY LINA KOSTENKO

Lina Kostenko, a representative of the Ukrainian creative intelligentsia from the 1960s cohort, recorded her vision of the historical time of Ukraine at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries in the original prose work “Notes of a Ukrainian Self-made Man”. The work of a unique linguistic and stylistic genre, in which the themes of state formation, globalization and family, psychological problems alternate, is saturated with artistic, cultural, literary information, precedent names of world history. The volume of various information, conditionally structured according to time headings, is perceived as a certain model of a chaotic digitalized society, in which stylistic varieties of language become blurred, interchangeable. One of the key ideas of the work is language. The thoughts of the main character about the connection between language and the worldview of the people are unfolded in mini-texts of journalistic-evaluative, analytical-historical, humorous and everyday narrative. Language as an indispensable agent of social protests declares itself in its own way. The kaleidoscopic text of the notes combines different information about the concept of identity. The topic of the linguistic identity of Ukrainians is related to the conditions of survival of the Ukrainian language in various empires, numerous prohibitions, and assimilation processes that did not contribute to the full functioning of the Ukrainian language. Narration of the artistic narrative, reproduction of its emotional and expressive shades (humor, satire) is carried out using various language game techniques. Varieties of paronomasia are the most common in the author's style. Along with lexical innovations in an individual style, an important linguistic and aesthetic function is performed by syntactic-intonational units – isolated syntagms that emphasize the ironic-satirical perception of someone else’s opinion. A characteristic feature of Lina Kostenko’s individual style is the use of foreign vocabulary of terminological origin. Words from various scientific fields are organic in modern intellectual text. They not only testify to the level of the multi-style Ukrainian literary language, but also express and visualize the syntactically-intonationally and lexically-semantically linguistic portrait of the narrator, the main character of the novel. Various styles and genres of the modern Ukrainian literary language are integrated into the artistic text. It is this text-creative function of the language of the beginning of the 21st century in Lina Kostenko’s work that testifies to the active process of creating a new aesthetic and socio-cultural canon of the Ukrainian literary language.

An excursion regarding women's impediments in Austen's Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice is a novel of manners. In the novel Jane Austen characterises the complex conditions of women in nineteenth-century England. A woman's happiness is associated with marriage. Her social status is being guided by a man whom she chooses as her husband. Happiness and love are the secondary themes in the marriage, what carries weight is the wealth and the property of the man or groom. A woman tries to mould her identity at the optimum level to deem fit for married apparel because unmarried daughters are considered a burden on their parents. Women's priorities and choices are often ignored. The patriarchal civilization has always dominated the female counterparts through their authoritative voices. Women play a submissive role in society, their voices are crushed and they are compelled to follow in the footsteps of their husbands and fathers. In the novel, there is not a single self-made woman. All women are tied to societal constraints.