Strong Nation Research Articles

Tainted Sources: The Subversion of the Grimms' Ideology of the Folktale in Heinrich Heine's Der Rabbi von Bacherach1

Like Germanistik, the nascent discipline of Volkskunde played a central role in shaping the discourse of German nationalism.2 No one contributed more to defining the parameters of both disciplines than Jacob and Wilhelm most popularly known both in their own day and in ours as the compilers of the Kinder- und Hausmarchen (KHM). Not only were the Grimms' Marchen themselves widely disseminated, but so were their accompanying remarks on folktales as a form of what they, following Herder, call Volksdichtung or Volkspoesie. While the writings of the Brothers Grimm articulate various theories to explain how folktales are transmitted, their preface and introduction to the second edition of the KHM of 1819 advance the influential concept of a pure German folktale tradition passed down to their time. Over the last thirty years, scholars have underscored this strong nationalist current in the Grimms' writings on folktales and other forms of folk expression.3 Surprisingly, though, they have neglected what is arguably the most trenchant critique of the Grimms' nationalist ideology of the folktale: Heinrich Heine's fragmentary novelDer Rabbi von Bacherach, the first chapter of which was composed in 1824, two years after the completion of the second edition of the KHM. The present study explores the terms of Heine's critique, and in the process maps out the discursive field of the folktale in the first half of the nineteenth century as a highly contested terrain. I begin by delineating the Grimms' ideology of folkloric purity as it is distilled in the second edition of the KHM, the edition in which, according to Heinz Rolleke, die 'Gattung Grimm' erst recht eigentlich geschaffen wurde (Rolleke, Zur Biographie 522). I then document Heine's reception of this ideology in Die Harzreise, which he drafted in the same year as the first chapter of Rabbi. Next, I show how the opening chapter of Rabbi depicts the translation of this ideology of folkloric purity into practice, with devastating consequences for the Jewish community of Bacherach. I claim that Heine's text radically subverts this ideology by showing folktale traditions to be always already exposed to what Jack Zipes has termed original from exogenous traditions (Zipes, Cross-Cultural 869). While Rabbi is primarily concerned with the dynamics of diasporic folk culture, that is to say, with the ways in which the Jews of Bacherach intermingle folktales from the dominant community with their own to create hybrid forms, Heine's text suggests that the wellsprings of the host community are indelibly tainted as well. Examining this contamination will lead us both to employ and to question key theoretical assumptions of current diaspora studies. In their preface (Vorrede) and introduction (Einleitung) to the second edition of the KHM, the Brothers Grimm envision a pure stream of folkloric transmission running down to their day, or what Jacob in the preface to his Deutsche Mythologie, terms nie stillstehende Flus lebendiger Sitte und Sage (cited in Bausinger, Formen 24). As they depict it, this stream issues from a purely German source; it carries exclusively German content; protected from outside influences, its course from one generation to the next remains unbroken; finally, it is faithfully preserved by the Brothers Grimm themselves in their KHM. Taken together, these stages amount to a comprehensive ideology of a pure German Marchen tradition. The attribution of a nationalist ideology to the Grimms' writings on folktales has been disputed by Heinz Rollecke, whose critical editions of the KHM have paved the way for contemporary research into the Grimms' collection. In an article on the Marchentheorien der Bruder Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm, Rollecke argues that the Grimms counterbalance any nationalist tendencies with a far stronger internationalist bent (67). He goes so far as to read the absence of the adjective deutsch from the title of their folktale collection as an indication of the extent to which they were aware of the internationality of their tales (68). …

The nation is our mother: Augusto Sandino and the construction of a peasant nationalism in Nicaragua, 1927–1934

This article explores the creation of a nationalist identity in Nicaragua during the guerrilla war of Augusto Sandino against the occupying United States. The social base of Sandino was the mountain peasants of northern Nicaragua; a social sector usually described as unlikely to become the creators and carriers of a national identity. Yet by using a gendered and familial discourse, which described Nicaragua as the ‘madre patria’ (mother homeland) and the members as his army as brothers, Sandino was successful in activating strong nationalist feelings amongst his peasant followers. The article examines both Sandino's discourse, and how it was interpreted by his peasant followers. It is this attempt to bring their perspectives into the discussion that contributes to this new assessment of the construction of a national identity in Nicaragua.

Cognitive cladistics and cultural override in Hominid spatial cognition.

Current approaches to human cognition often take a strong nativist stance based on Western adult performance, backed up where possible by neonate and infant research and almost never by comparative research across the Hominidae. Recent research suggests considerable cross-cultural differences in cognitive strategies, including relational thinking, a domain where infant research is impossible because of lack of cognitive maturation. Here, we apply the same paradigm across children and adults of different cultures and across all nonhuman great ape genera. We find that both child and adult spatial cognition systematically varies with language and culture but that, nevertheless, there is a clear inherited bias for one spatial strategy in the great apes. It is reasonable to conclude, we argue, that language and culture mask the native tendencies in our species. This cladistic approach suggests that the correct perspective on human cognition is neither nativist uniformitarian nor "blank slate" but recognizes the powerful impact that language and culture can have on our shared primate cognitive biases.

Reflections on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article From the PresidentFull AccessReflections on Hurricanes Katrina and RitaPedro Ruiz, M.D.Pedro RuizSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:7 Jul 2006https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.41.13.0003 Almost a year has passed since hurricanes katrina and Rita crippled New Orleans and nearby areas along the Gulf Coast, but the impact of these natural disasters is still fresh on our minds.Several other natural and manmade disasters have affected this country in the past—for instance, the hurricane that devastated Galveston County in 1900 and the terrorist attacks in New york City and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001—but the sociopolitical and historic impact of a disaster on the scale of these hurricanes has never been observed before in the United States.Recently, I had the opportunity to visit New Orleans to attend APA's Area 5 Council meeting. While there, I toured parts of the city affected by katrina, including the area where Louisiana State University Medical Center and Tulane University Medical Center are located. I saw a children's clinic building totally decimated and a psychotherapy clinic building near Canal Street almost destroyed; I saw houses and other buildings that had been ruined or leveled. Incredibly, people were still living in this almost uninhabitable part of New Orleans. Most of them were African American and probably did not have many assets to fall back on. Frustration, despair, and even anger bubbled inside of me as I watched them. How could the federal government have turned its back on this struggling community?What is the problem with being African American in this country? How can an African-American community in the strongest nation on earth be treated so inhumanely? I have never understood the intense discrimination that African Americans are still enduring in the world's most advanced and prosperous country. I grew up in rural Cuba among descendents of slaves brought to Cuba from West Africa, and I attended medical school in Paris with many African peers. Over the years, I have worked and developed strong friendships with many African-American colleagues, as well as with African Americans in many other walks of life. While I have brown skin, I have never been treated this way, and African Americans deserve the same treatment given me and my Caucasian friends and coworkers.As I reflect on the disgraceful way in which the U.S. government has responded to the needs of katrina and Rita victims, I feel shame for the policymakers who could and should have done so much more for these poor and disadvantaged American citizens but instead ignored them. I am positive that New Orleans will come back, but the African-American influence that gave the city its unique character will never be the same.While our federal government failed miserably in its responsibilities to the people of New Orleans, American psychiatry did not. My respect and sincere thanks go to the many psychiatrists who volunteered their time and expertise to address the psychosocial and psychopharmacological needs of hurricane victims. This group included not only local psychiatrists—many of whom were hurricane victims themselves—but also psychiatrists from throughout the United States. APA's district branches in the regions impacted by the hurricanes also rose to the occasion: Louisiana Psychiatric Medical Association, Mississippi Psychiatric Association, Texas Society of Psychiatric Physicians, Alabama Psychiatric Society, and Florida Psychiatric Society. At the national level, APA's Office of International Activities and the Committee on Psychiatric Dimensions of Disasters provided excellent leadership and designed a series of very effective interventions to address victims' mental health needs. Psychiatry residents and medical students from Louisiana State University and Tulane University also assisted.What happened—or more accurately didn't happen—in the wake of hurricanes katrina and Rita is a reminder to Americans, and the rest of the world as well, that the U.S. government at times shows two faces: one for the rich and wealthy and another for the poor and disadvantaged, most of whom belong to the ethnic minority groups who reside in this country. ▪ ISSUES NewArchived

That Impulse that Bids a People to Honour its Past: The Nature and Purpose of Centennial Celebrations

Although there are instances of significant anniversaries being celebrated as early as the 17th century, it was Britain’s Great Exhibition of 1851 that started the fashion for large‐scale ‘expositions’ that lasted for up to six months. The success of the Great Exhibition prompted other countries to try and replicate it, most notably the USA, which was able to bring together a strong nationalist dimension with an opportunity to make money. By analysing the historiography of centennials and the variety of reasons for holding them from the 17th century to the 21st, this article argues that they continue to instil and promote pride in locality, region and nation despite growing competition from the major international sporting championships.

Getting Around Pyongyang's Hard-Liners

In the standard U.S. image, North Korea is a monolithic, Stalin-style dictatorship controlled by one man, Kim Jong Il. However, the key reason for North Korean intransigence in the crisis with the United States is that Kim does not have unchallenged control over foreign and defense policy. The North Korean power structure is deeply divided between pragmatists who favor a deal with the United States and increasingly assertive hard-liners who argue that a tough posture is needed to stop the Bush administration from pursuing in Pyongyang.My most disturbing finding on a recent visit to North Korea was that a showdown over policy occurred in early February 2005 between the dealers, led by First Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju, the principal foreign policy adviser to Kim, and a coalition of hard-line generals and Workers' Party leaders. The hardliners prevailed. On February i0, 2005, Pyongyang made its pronouncement that it has manufactured nukes and is a nuclear weapons state. Then a March 3i declaration served notice that North Korea will no longer discuss dismantling its weapons capabilities until the United States normalizes economic and diplomatic relations with the Kim regime.The ascendancy of the hard-liners is the direct result of the Bush administration's ideologically driven North Korean policy and can be reversed only if the United States makes a fresh start attuned to the conciliatory engagement approach now being pursued by South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun.In contrast to his father, the late Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il is not a revered, charismatic demigod and must accommodate pressures from his generals. As the son of the Great Leader, he is needed out in front to legitimize the regime, but the armed forces wield growing power, even in the economic sphere.In the February showdown, I was told by several of those involved, the argued in favor of preserving ambiguity concerning the extent of North Korean capabilities as part of a continued effort to get economic quid pro quos in return for step-by-step denuclearization.The hard-liners countered that it would be naive to continue hoping for a beneficial deal with the Bush administration, which in their view is seeking regime change and wants to use the six-party talks in Beijing to drive Pyongyang into a corner. It is demeaning for North Korea to let the United States keep it on the defensive in the six-party talks, they contended, even though Washington has 7,400 operational weapons of its own. The only self-respecting course for North Korea, they said, would be to rule out any discussion of dismantlement for now and to declare unambiguously that North Korea is already a nuclear weapons state in order to make Washington think twice about any military adventure.There is a strong mood of wounded pride and angry nationalism in Pyongyang that cuts across both dealers and hard-liners. It is particularly galling to North Korean leaders that the United States, oblivious to the sensitivity of Chinese-Korean relations throughout history, is attempting to apply pressure through China and to use it as a diplomatic intermediary.This is not the i9th century, one North Korean official commented, an allusion to the servile posture of Korean monarchs toward China during the closing decades of the Yi dynasty, which provoked a strong nationalist reaction. The Kim regime consistently appeals to Korean national pride and has sought friendship with the United States in part as an offset to excessive dependence on its giant neighbor. Thus, attempting to use China to pressure Pyongyang only strengthens the hardliners.It was a red flag to the hard-liners when Bush sent a White House emissary to Chinese President Hu Jintao on Feb. i with a letter calling for a much tougher posture against Pyongyang. To army generals who think of themselves as the guardians of Korean nationalism, it was necessary to show the world that North Korea would not submit to U. …

Parental Discourse and Activism as a Response to Bereavement of Fallen Sons and Civilian Terrorist Victims

ABSTRACT This study is a phenomenological exploration of bereavement among a population of Israeli parents who became demonstratively activist following the death of their offspring either as soldiers in the line of duty or as victims of terrorism. It illuminates how an anger-forgiveness continuum gives a politically charged significance to the bereavement experience regardless of party or ideological orientation. Strong nationalist identification with the armed forces is overlaid with intense personal emotions of guilt and blame assignment. Mourning as a career may follow pathological or normative courses. Political leaders emerge who mobilize similarly situated mourners to protest against military and civilian policy related to the perceived nexus between security matters and the personal loss. The dynamic between factors which assuage personal needs and simultaneously endanger national consensus regarding the performance of leading state institutions–the government and the defense establishment—is underlined in the conditions which both facilitate and impair any transition from anger to reconciliation.

Reflected Glory

God created man and woman as complementary beings to each other.But man decided otherwise and enslaved woman for satisfaction of his own desires. The roles of men and women have undergone little or no change over the ages. A woman's identity has always been with reference to others. She does not have an identity of her own as an individual. Even successful women have had to incorporate masculine characteristics to achieve this The roles of men have also not undergone any change. They continue to be comfortably cocooned in their permanent roles as lord and master. In this scenario our objectives should be to empower women so that they realize their potential and power. A nation which has its women empowered will be the most powerful and strongest nation in the world.

‘Kicking out the Vietminh’: How Britain Allowed France to Reoccupy South Indochina, 1945-46

Why were British troops accused of supporting French imperialism in southern Indochina (Vietnam) during the months following Japanese surrender in August 1945? This article reassesses the roles of Major-General Douglas D. Gracey, the Commander-in-the-Field, Lord Louis Mountbatten, the head of South-east Asia Command, and the British Labour government, in allowing the French to reoccupy first Saigon then the rest of the south, despite a strong communist-led nationalist movement. In particular, it examines the influences on and the choices available to Allied military and political decision-makers in the crucial period before significant French re-entry into Saigon and its surrounding area. Gracey has been unfairly accused by American and other commentators of violating orders by taking it upon himself to restore the French to power, primarily through a joint military takeover in Saigon on 23 September 1945. Evidence suggests that consent to the recovery of French Indochina was an underlying component of British foreign policy. Gracey’s individual culpability hence becomes of little consequence, since he was evidently acting in accord with the postwar reinstallation of European imperialism in south-east Asia.

Farewell to idealism: mapping China's university students of the 1990s

This article portrays China's university students of the 1990s and the differences between these youths and earlier generations. Corresponding to the political apathy and commercial ardor of post‐1989 China, the once appealing political idealism and activism of the 1980s was quickly replaced by a sort of fast‐food consumer culture that dominated Chinese society and campuses in the 1990s. Many students chose to distance themselves from sensitive political issues, though they still followed current affairs closely and held a strong nationalist outlook. They learned how to reconcile with existing social conditions and made their decisions, on career or politics, based on the principle of individual interests. Being compelled to shift their status from the ‘proud children of heaven’ to ordinary members of society, students readily went to great lengths to merge in and be submerged by the secular world.

Conference Review: Evolvable Hardware 2004

About 100 or so people were present at the conference, which was a bit up on earlier years (e.g., 70, 90, etc). There were 36 talks, a panel discussion, 12 posters, and at least 7 group posters. The first authors of papers, both invited and solicited, came from 13 different countries (US 13, UK 7, Germany 3, Mexico 3, Brazil 2, and 1 each from Czech Republic, Romania, Japan, Switzerland, Spain, Norway, France, Italy, or as is done increasingly lately, the EU (European Union 14)). From these sustained numbers, it is clear that the research field of evolvable hardware is now well established and is a stable component in other conferences such as Evolutionary Computation (EC), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Neural Networks (NNs), Evolutionary Systems (ES) etc. There is already a journal dealing with the field (”Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines”) and probably about 100 researchers in the specialty, spread worldwide over at least 16 countries (according to Adrian Thompson’s list, to be found at http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/adrianth/EHW groups.html, last updated, September 2003!). The UK is still the strongest nation in the world in EH with at least 16 groups, closely followed by the US with at least 14 groups, then Germany 5, Italy 3, 2 each for Canada, Japan, Norway, and 1 each for Denmark, Czech Republic, Israel, Holland, Switzerland, Romania, Mexico, Brazil, Australia. The conference was spread over 3 days with 4 invited speakers who spoke an hour each, and 32 ordinary speakers of 25 minutes each. The first evening, a poster session (12 posters) included an additional group poster session (7 of them) that allowed the major EH research groups around the world to show off what they do. The paper sessions were grouped into 7 categories: Evolution of Analog Systems (2 sessions), Evolution of Digital Systems (2 sessions), Revolutionary Technologies for Space (2 special sessions), Fault Tolerance and Survivability, Embryonics and

America as empire: global leader or rogue power?

America has become not only the strongest nation in the world but the strongest nation in the history of the world. Americans need to understand both why this has happened and what their responsibilities are as the world's dominant power. In this timely and telling book, Jim Garrison, president of the San Francisco-based State of the World Forum, argues that the preoccupation with military expansion is a fatal mistake, citing both FDR and Harry Truman as models for combining military power with institution building. Part of the book is devoted to the Roman empire as another important model, with cautionary lessons about incorporating fairness and respect for other cultures into the governing process. Rome's empire endured for 1,000 years; America's may end far sooner, says Garrison, unless it finds a way to balance might with right. This book provides a blueprint for that balance.

The Difference that Citizenship Makes: Civilian Crime Prevention on the Lower East Side

At the December 1997 meeting of Manhattan’s 9 th Precinct Community Council, a group that brings together police officers and the public to discuss crime, the leader of a block association that serves a mostly white middle-class block stood up to encourage others to become more involved in neighborhood crime prevention. She suggested that they join the precinct’s block watch program, in which they would help to prevent and report crimes on their blocks, and she promised that by signing up they would be “treated with much more credibility” by the precinct. Crime is persistent and entrenched, she acknowledged, but citizens should take responsibility for improving their own lives and neighborhoods, and not rely on the police to fight crime: “it’s not their [the precinct’s] fight, it’s our fight.” In contrast to this appeal for civic duty and civilian–police cooperation, Angela Mendez, 1 a tenant association president from a section of the precinct with mostly poor black and Latino residents, became active in crime prevention only because she believed the police did not do an adequate job of controlling crime. She blamed the precinct for neglecting poor and minority areas in favor of wealthier white blocks, and she argued for her right to equal law enforcement. Angela did not want to devote her spare hours to crime prevention, but she felt that high crime rates and police neglect left her no choice. At a time when leaders of both major political parties ask Americans to serve their country and their communities as volunteers, and when prominent scholars such as Robert Putnam worry that Americans are turning away from a tradition of civic participation that builds vibrant communities and a stronger nation (Bellah et al. 1996; Etzioni 1996; Putnam 2000), civilian crime prevention offers ways to understand and evaluate community participation, citizenship, and locality in the United States. As Susan Hyatt has observed, the growth of new ideologies of volunteerism in the United States has accompanied late twentieth-century welfare-state retrenchment, as “good citizens,” not the state, increasingly are called upon to build and maintain the public sphere (Hyatt 2001). In this paper I draw on fieldwork conducted during 1997–1998 in Manhattan’s 9 th Precinct, located on the city’s Lower East Side, to examine how civilian crime prevention reflects and produces citizenship, race and class difference, and spatialized belonging at the boundary of the state and the civil sphere. 2 Civilian policing occupies only a small slice of civic participation in New York City, but an ethnographic investigation of participants’ discourses and practices of citizenship and place illustrates larger processes of volunteerism and citizenship in a city where policing is a major locus of public debate about the proper role of the state. Why Page 114

Against "Post-Ethnic" Futures

Where rationality is measured by the ability to distance oneself from one's cul tural and religious traditions, the preemptive commitments of seem counter to the ideal of a rational life. Arthur Schlesinger's The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society gives a typical account of this view. Schlesinger paints a picture of a past America happily moving toward the melting pot that Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, author of the widely read Letters from an American Farmer, thought he could perceive in the 1700s, a United States where individuals were losing their old identities and forming what he called a new race of men. This marked progress, not simply because a homogeneous nation would be a stronger nation, but because what these indi viduals left behind included ancient prejudices and manners, or backward ways of life, clearing the way for them to adopt a more advanced way of life based on democratic ideals (Schlesinger 1991, 1). Schlesinger suggests that the cult of ethnicity that derailed this move toward a post-ethnic future by the 1960s actually began to emerge in the early 1900s, not as a product of the grassroots but of intellectual elites who presumed a right of cultural and political leadership as spokesmen (34). Schlesinger claims that these intellectuals were moved by real concern for distinctive eth nic values [but] also by real if unconscious vested interest in the preservation of ethnic constituencies (34). Thus, according to Schlesinger, the opposition to ethnic assimilation was not an expression of the spontaneous will of the masses but was promoted by leaders motivated by their own desire for power, a charge that he continues to maintain against the political leadership of ethnic commu nities today. Here, then, is the picture: authoritarian elites ramming down the throats of gullible citizens for their own narrow purposes. And here is the effect:

Mikhail Bakhtin, Vyacheslav Ivanov, and the Rhetorical Culture of the Russian Third Renaissance

Mikhail Bakhtin, Vyacheslav Ivanov, and the Rhetorical Culture of the Russian Third Renaissance Filipp Sapienza Although Mikhail Bakhtin figures centrally in multiculturalism, community, pedagogy, and rhetoric (Bruffee 1986; Welch 1993; Zebroski 1994; Zappen, Gurak, and Doheney-Farina 1997; Mutnick 1996; Halasek 2001, 182; see also Bialostosky 1986) many of his major ideas remain enigmatic and controversial. The elusive aspects of Bakhtin's theories exist in part because rhetoricians know little about Bakhtin's own rhetorical culture. Theorists recognize this problem and call for a reworking of Bakhtin more on his own terms. This call has been made to resolve concerns about Bakhtin's ambivalence toward rhetoric. Since Bakhtin disliked rhetoric, any use of Bakhtin in rhetorical theory is largely a hybrid synthesis of his distinct ideas on poetics, prose, satire, the epic, the novel, and so forth. John Murphy proposes a reconception of Bakhtin closely built around his ambivalence and guided by the question, "what do we [rhetoricians] mean by the concept of a rhetorical tradition?" (2001, 259). The suggestion encourages rhetoricians to take Bakhtin more on his own terms than has been done in the past. Unfortunately, as the word "we" indicates, Murphy reworks Bakhtin primarily in terms of Western ideas about rhetoric. Slavists and "Bakhtinologists" in Russia argue that when talking about Bakhtin, "we" has often meant Western, obscuring the Russian cultural roots of his theories (Kozhinov 1993; Miller and Platter 1993, 118). The privileging of Western perspectives has also been criticized by scholars of other discourse cultures. Discussing American Indian rhetoric, Malea Powell argues that "we" means a Rhetorical Tradition that begins "with the Greeks, goes Roman, briefly sojourns in Italy, then shows up in England and Scotland, hops the ocean to America and settles in" (2002, 397). Differences in interpreting Bakhtin also proceed from translation difficulties between Russian and English. The Russian reader views Bakhtin in more essentialist ways as opposed to the "post-modern give-and-take" theorist of many Western [End Page 123] interpretations (Emerson 1990, 113). Read in the Russian language and from that cultural context, Bakhtin's vocabulary contains "conspicuous" elements of Orthodox Christianity and Slavic nationalist ideas (Kozhinov 1993; Mihailovic 1997) that reveal a Russian theological subtext to his ideas about community and dialogue. In this essay, I provide a reading of Bakhtin against the background of his own rhetorical culture. More specifically, I offer an analysis of an intertextual dialogue about language and community between Bakhtin and the symbolist writer Vyacheslav Ivanov. Scholars identify Ivanov as a poet, philosopher, and teacher who profoundly impacted Bakhtin (Mal'chukova 1992, 55). The Russian symbolists upheld strong nationalist ideals and a linguistic theory rooted in metaphysics (Mirsky 1972, 188). Many Slavists and Russian readers of Bakhtin suspect that Ivanov strongly influenced Bakhtin's rhetoric even though, for reasons unknown but that are suspected to be political, Bakhtin understates his debt to him (Ivanov 2001, 3). Bakhtin was not unlike his contemporaries in sharing an interest and vocabulary that addressed the major threads of symbolism. Read side by side with Ivanov's essays in Russian, Bakhtin's rhetoric displays a mixture of the European, Slavic, and Christian ideals that were in parlance among many Russian theorists in early twentieth-century Russia. Bakhtin and Ivanov give us a glimpse of this rhetorical culture. More specifically, they help us to better understand our appropriations of Bakhtin based on an elucidation of the meaning of specific terms as they existed among Bakhtin's contemporaries. The method that I use requires translation of specific Russian passages into English. Terms and phrases are interpreted against the usage background of others in early twentieth-century Russia. Bakhtin's Slavic-theological connections become evident through the elucidation of these intertextual references. Through this method, a common and accepted practice in Slavic literary studies, the use of key words and phrases are traced in and among texts to identify a discourse among authors and explicate its meaning.1 As Steven Mailloux points out, a "rhetorical hermeneutics" focuses on "the historical sets of topics, arguments, tropes, ideologies, and so forth" that give meaning to rhetoric (1988, 15-16). The approach is necessary due to the unique political and artistic circumstances during the early...

Patriotism versus Imperialism

Patriotism has been a concern in all societies as citizens contemplate making special sacrifices for their nations. In existing literature, patriotism is usually understood as one's feeling for his or her community, devotion to the nation, or allegiance to the state. In general, patriotism can be interior or exterior depending on whether the commitment is for ensuring national progress internally or for protecting national interest from external forces. The exterior mode of patriotism often takes the form of nationalism, emphasizing the priority of collective national interest over fragmented individual or group interests. Although patriotism or nationalism in the former colonies became a means of liberation, in many instances it has been used as a pretext or rhetoric to suppress minorities, practice social exclusion, deny human rights, and dominate powerless nations. When nationalism is used to legitimize international domination, it often constitutes imperialism, which is rationalized as the duty of stronger nations to enhance progress in weaker, backward nations. This is accomplished through various forms of control based on consent or coercion. In short, the concepts of nationalism and imperialism are related—beyond the purpose of national liberation, nationalism can be used for legitimizing the imperialistic mission of international hegemony.The incidence of patriotism and nationalism intensified during the two worldwars, the anti-colonial movements, and the Cold War. But the last quarter of thetwentieth century saw the diminishing signi.cance of patriotic or nationaliststances, when the process of globalization made national borders less relevant,the demise of the Cold War led to the delegitimation of state-centric nationalsecurity, the rise of neoliberal free trade rendered national economic protectionism almost obsolete, and the denationalization of state enterprises increased foreign investment and ownership. Gradually there emerged issues and concerns—including environmental disorder, unsustainable development, poverty and unemployment, and gender inequality—which required international cooperation and a global agenda beyond national self-interest.Recently, however, there has been a resurgence of patriotic sentiment in theU.S. in response to the national insecurity induced by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and reinforcedby political leaders, policy experts, and media networks. These disastrous attacks generated an intense world reaction, increased the sense of vulnerability, provoked anti-terrorist legislation and security measures, and transformed world order and interstate relations. Such reactions, according to some scholars, can be interpreted as patriotic or ideological expressions.

Return to the Primal Noir: Two Modern Authors on the Black Dahlia

The unsolved 1947 murder of a beautiful young woman nicknamed the haunts American popular culture1 and has, in the past fifteen years, inspired two of today's best crime authors to each write a historical novel using the murder as its central event. On first reading, Max Allan Collins's Angel in Black (2001) and James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia (1987) could hardly be more different, offering vivid contrasts in prose style, use of historical material, and authorial attitude toward the topic. But deeper consideration reveals some interesting similarities-for example, both books' employment of the conventions of film noir to recreate the context of the post-World War II United States. Even more important, both authors see the death of the beautiful victim, Elizabeth Short, as an indication of where our country was headed in 1947. For these two authors, writing about the Black Dahlia represents a probing of the modern United States at the moment it became the modern United States-a return to the primal noir. Film Noir and the Black Dahlia Murder In 1947, the United States found itself prosperous and at peace, the wealthiest and strongest nation in the world. Paradoxically, however, intense anxiety bubbled under the surface. The memory of the ubiquitous slaughter of World War II, fear of the atomic bomb, communist coups in Eastern Europe, the loss of China, anticommunist paranoia-all lurked in the recent past, the uneasy present, or the immediate future. One way this postwar anxiety revealed itself was in the popularity of the film noir genre. Inspired by the fiction of authors such as Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, Hollywood movies like The Big Sleep (1946) and Double Indemnity (1944) portrayed marginalized protagonists-usually private eyes or low-level hoods-struggling alone through a landscape of criminal treachery and police corruption, a shadowland that might explode into violence at any moment. Truth was ambiguous m film noir, the heroes were compromised, and many noir classics were set in Los Angeles, which even in the 1940s was seen as America's premiere existential terrain. Today it is easy to interpret the ambiguous heroes of the great films noirs as stand-ins for the United States itself, a country warily confronting a dangerous world and dealing with suppressed guilt for its part in the international bloodshed of the 1940s. Chandler's private eye Philip Marlowe, for instance, played by Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep, maneuvers through an LA underworld populated by grifters, gangsters, pornographers, and seductive women. The Big Sleep's shadowy criminal milieu is analogous to the violent and uncertain international situation that faced our country following World War II, and the film renders this underworld with such compelling atmosphere that it has evolved into a subject of parody. Compared to corrupt insurance agent Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity, however, Bogart is a shining knight errant. MacMurray, a fast-talking womanizer when his film begins, by the climax allows his lust for a femme fatale to turn him into a scheming murderer. The compromised protagonist is a recurring feature of film noir that shows up in both modern novels. It was in this queasy context that film noir met reality on January 15, 1947, when the mutilated corpse of the was discovered near the corner of Norton Avenue and 39th Street in Los Angeles.2 Elizabeth Short, a strikingly beautiful twenty-two-year-old drifter, had been tortured, murdered, exsanguinated, bisected at the waist, and dissected. The crime touched off a media frenzy and a long-term mystery. During succeeding weeks, Sgt. Harry Hansen, the Los Angeles Police Department's best detective, led a task force that attempted to trace Elizabeth Short's movements and contacts in the days prior to her death. Scrambling reporters both aided and impeded the investigation, digging up vital facts but encouraging hundreds of false tips. …

Quebec Nationalism and Canadian Federalism

My purpose in this paper is to try to explain why there is, within Quebec, a strong nationalist movement seeking independence and a renewed partnership with Canada. At first, this might seem surprising since Canada is after all a federal state and Quebec is a province within that state. Therefore, Quebec enjoys some level of self-government and it is, for that reason, in a better situation than Scotland, Wales, Catalonia, Gallicia or the Basque Country. Some of these nations would love to be federated states in a true federation. So how do we explain Quebec nationalism? Does the example of Quebec prove once and for all that nationalists, in general, are never going to be happy with less than full sovereignty, no matter how hard we try to accommodate their needs? This is what I want to refute in what follows. I want to show that the choice for independence can be explained despite the fact that Quebec seems to enjoy a certain amount of self-government as a province within Canada. I shall make these observations in order to explain what appears to be a very puzzling situation. How do wc account for the fact that Quebec is still unhappy within Canada even if it is a federated state?

Response to critiques

In my target paper, I attempted to build on the work of a number of excellent investigators, several of whom were invited to critique my paper. It is a privilege and an honour to respond to my critics, from whom I have learned so much. In their thoughtful commentary, Slater and Quinn cite a body of work that collectively suggests that newborns can discriminate among different faces, and show preferences for the mother’s face and for attractive faces. In all three sets of findings, the authors initially argue for a rapid learning mechanism. Although I do not disagree with their conclusion, I am troubled by the observations they cite. For example, to discriminate between a mother and a stranger, or to prefer an attractive versus an unattractive face must require access to subtle differences between/among faces; in addition, it is likely that such information is coded in higher spatial frequencies. Given the remarkably limited visual ability of the newborn infant (including the very impoverished contrast sensitivity function; see Dannemiller, 2001, for review), how are to we account for these findings? One possibility is that infants are basing their discrimination/ preferences on different cues than the adult, and/or employing different neural and perceptual mechanisms. If true, it may well be that the phenomena observed in newborns is qualitatively different than what is observed in the older infant or adult. Furthermore, we know that, even in the adult, there are individual differences in facial preferences. For example, Perrett et al. have demonstrated that the phase of a woman’s menstrual cycle will influence her judgment of male face preferences (Perrett et al., 1998; Penton-Voak et al., 1999). My point is that the mechanisms that guide newborn facial preferences may be fundamentally different than what guides such preferences in the older infant, no less the adult. Therefore, it may be misleading to suggest that newborn preferences for certain faces is a result of a face ‘module’ per se. Of course, a relatively simple way to evaluate whether faces represent a special class of objects is to see if they show comparable preferences for some non-face objects over others. If they do, would we conclude that there is an object module? Most likely, not. Rather, we would attempt to account for what distinguishes (perhaps psychophysically) one object from another. Nonetheless, it would be a slippery slope indeed if we began to add modules to the brain every time one object was found to be preferred over another. Would we, as Charlie Gross once reflected, have a module for recognizing our grandmother’s face? Slater and Quinn go on to conclude that infants ‘enter the world with a detailed representation of the human face’. Thus, despite their previous arguments about learning, here they appear to argue for a strong nativist position.

Founding Friendship: George Washington, James Madison, and the Creation of the American Republic

Although the friendship between George Washington and James Madison was eclipsed in the early 1790s by the alliances of Madison with Jefferson and Washington with Hamilton, their collaboration remains central to the constitutional revolution that launched the American experiment in republican government. Washington relied heavily on Madison's advice, pen, and legislative skill, while Madison found Washington's prestige indispensable for achieving his goals for the new nation. Together, Stuart Leibiger argues, Washington and Madison struggled to conceptualize a political framework that would respond to the majority without violating minority rights. Stubbornly refusing to sacrifice either of these objectives, they cooperated in helping to build and implement a powerful, extremely republican constitution.Observing Washington and Madison in light of their special relationship, Leibiger argues against a series of misconceptions about the two men. Madison emerges as neither a strong nationalist of the Hamiltonian variety nor a political consolidationist; he did not retreat from nationalism to states' rights in the 1790s, as other historians have charged. Washington, far from being a majestic figurehead, exhibits a strong constitutional vision and firm control of his administration.By examining closely Washington and Madison's correspondence and personal visits, Leibiger shows how a marriage of political convenience between two members of the Chesapeake elite grew into a genuine companionship fostered by historical events and a mutual interest in agriculture and science. The development of their friendship, and eventual estrangement, mirrors in fascinating ways the political development of the early Republic.