Ultimate Symbol Research Articles

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising at the Eichmann trial

ABSTRACT The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943) was the ultimate symbol of Jewish heroism during the Holocaust. This article examines its presence in the trial of Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann (1961) and focuses on three testimonies of survivors of the uprising: Zivia Lubetkin and Yitzhak Zuckerman, senior members of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), and Dr. David Wdowinski, political leader of the Jewish Military Organization (ZZW). Examination of the circumstances of their summons to testify, the dynamics of the testimonies, and the responses to them shows that although this trial was a national consensus event, it was an arena for political clashes; for the revisionists, it was the first step in shifting the story of ZZW heroism from the margins to the center of Israeli public discourse.

Traditional leasehold of land for residential and commercial use in Ghana: Structure and practices from the Golden Stool

In 2019, the Golden Stool, the ultimate symbol of authority and power over land in Kumasi, acted to enforce Ghana’s traditional leasehold policy in the Central Business District (CBD), where lessees had expired or were due to expire. This action highlighted tenure security concerns as little is known about the traditional leasehold model, particularly how the lease is created and enforced upon its expiration. Knowing more about the tenure structure is broadly important: it will guide property owners (lessees) and prospective investors in the market and open grounds to further examine the extent to which this landholding model is a secured, efficient, and equitable market practice. Using the Golden Stool and the city of Kumasi as a case study, this paper examines (i) how leases are created and operationalized, including the terms and conditions, (ii) what happens upon the lease’s expiration and the conditions under which lessees lose their properties, (iii) how the community, for whom the land is held in trust by the Golden Stool, benefit from the leasehold policy, and (iv) whether there are measures to ensure equity as leases approach expiration. The study draws on in-depth interviews with traditional leaders (chiefs), lessees, estate developers and institutions directly involved in the management of lands in the city. The results point to a tenure trusteeship model which works to benefit the leaders (chiefs) and to the detriment of the community. The paper concludes that the Golden Stool’s leasehold model fails to meet the tests of legitimacy and certainty and thus recommends the formalization of practices, such as “drink-money” payments, as well as institution of official payment plans and leasehold interest packages upon lease expiration. These changes would improve land governance, tenure security and property rights for leaseholders in ways consistent with the norms of the Global Campaign for Secure Tenure (GCST).

Indian Time: Temporality, Gender, Mobility

Indian Time: Temporality, Gender, Mobility

Derek Jarman’s medieval blood: Queer devotion, affective medicine, and the AIDS Crisis

In this article I consider medieval blood imagery in the paintings, films and journals of Derek Jarman, focusing on works made between 1989–1993. Taking a transhistorical comparative approach, I analyse Jarman's images alongside his medieval sources, primarily Julian of Norwich's Revelations and Gerard of Cremona's translation of Ibn Sīnā's (Avicenna's) al-Qa'n ū n fī al-tibb (Canon of Medicine). In addition, I find my own commonalities between Jarman and the medieval, for example, juxtaposing his Queer series of paintings with MS Egerton 1821. Critics have explored the medieval as a site of historical precedent for the stigmatisation of disease, providing a reservoir of images of leprosy and plague which inform the discourse of AIDS as immoral pollution. However I follow Jarman's lead in seeking new avenues through the medieval in relation to the AIDS crisis. Refusing to accept the discourses which cast his HIV+ blood as the ultimate symbol of pollution and death, Jarman mobilised the aesthetics and imagery of medieval affective devotion as a powerful alternative. Through the deployment of these traditions, HIV+ blood becomes holy blood, the source of salvation, desire, community and healing.

The new normal: Activist handmaids and cosplay choreographies in Trump’s America

Though in production before Trump’s election, streaming service Hulu’s serial adaption of The Handmaid’s Tale premiered to acclaim in April 2017. Audiences denoted parallels between ultra-conservative, fictional Gilead and the United States’ own political climate. In response to women’s issues in particular, international groups utilized the central Handmaid’s Tale image as their costume – a crimson robe, a white ‘wing’ bonnet – then occupied public spaces to protest silently. WIRED dubbed the garb the ‘Viral Protest Uniform of 2019’, while online lifestyle/culture magazine Quartz named it the ‘ultimate symbol of women’s rights’. The activists’ presence is critical to their work. Mirroring their fictional handmaid counterparts, cosplay activists employ a bowed head, a slow steady gait and equidistant spacing to evoke the harrowing restrictions Gilead’s women face – what ideologically fervent aunts call Gilead’s ‘new normal’. Activists’ physicality generates a doubleness: as they perform submissiveness and literally fall into line, they also craft solidarity via resistance. Likewise, the fiction hints at revolution, which may be why, in the #MeToo and Time’s Up era, the emancipatory potential of cosplay choreographies steeped in popular culture offer their own ‘new normal’, disrupting patriarchal paradigms modelled by the Trump administration while offering feminist fan activism as strategies that promote creative, inclusive political action.

British Environmental Orientalism and the Palestinian Goat,1917–1948

British colonial understanding of arid Mediterranean environments was characterised by the idea of degradation: these environments were seen as an aberration from the ‘norm’ of the lush and fertile British forests and grasslands. The struggle against desertification was central to British efforts to model the people and environments of their colonies according to their own ideals. The goat played an important role in the British understanding of arid landscapes as degraded, desertified and generally ‘lacking’, as it became the ultimate symbol for destruction. Nomadic goat-herding, a practice with hundreds of years of history, was singled out as the most destructive form of land use. Connected to the negative image of the goat was the stereotypical image of its owner: nomadic and semi-nomadic lifestyles were deemed not only unproductive but outright reckless. Sedentarisation of the nomad was one of the main goals of British colonisers as a form of population control and maintenance of colonial power. This article examines the British colonial belief in Ruined Landscape Theory as applied to arid Mediterranean environments and tries to uncover the goat’s role in British environmental orientalism, focusing on Palestine during the British Mandate period, ca. 1917-1948.

Patterns of Russia: History, Culture, Spaces by Robin Milner-Gulland

Reviewed by: Patterns of Russia: History, Culture, Spaces by Robin Milner-Gulland Sergei Bogatyrev Milner-Gulland, Robin. Patterns of Russia: History, Culture, Spaces. Reaktion Books, London, 2020. 237 pages. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Further reading. Index. £25.00. In his book, Robin Milner-Gulland seeks to build up a distinctive portrait of Russia through the study of a few themes and moments in its history. He is particularly interested in locations and landmarks that witnessed the development of Russia and its culture. The methodology of the book is diverse. Milner-Gulland draws on Bakhtin's concept of the 'chronotope' as a dynamic interaction between space and time. By way of analogy, Milner-Gulland offers the notion of 'cultural spaces' which implies the intersection between geography and history. The book has been also influenced by the Tartu-Moscow semiotic school (Iu. M. Lotman, D. S. Likhachev, B. A. Uspenskii) and scholarship on the creation and exploitation of sacred space (Mircea Eliade, A. M. Lidov). Finally, Milner-Gulland engages Anthony D. Smith's concept of 'ethnoscape' ('landscapes endowed with poetic ethnic meaning through [End Page 188] the historicization of nature and the territorialization of ethnic memories'). Milner-Gulland interprets Russia's ethnoscape as its cultural consciousness. Chapter one seeks to define Russia in terms of the four cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) and the great rivers that articulate the Russian space. In Chapter two, the author looks at the built environment, including wooden architecture, medieval churches, and some later palaces, but not fortifications (apart from the Golden Gates in Vladimir). Chapter three deals with art and artists in Old Russia. The author dwells on the social status of icon painters as craftsmen because Old Russia lacked the overarching concept of 'art'. Chapter four is devoted to art and place. It examines some famous works of art from different periods, including two sixteenth-century objects which have the word 'place' in their established names: the so-called 'Tsar's Place' (i.e. Ivan IV's pew) in the Dormition Cathedral and the Place of the Skull in Red Square, both in Moscow. In chapter five the author discusses the sacred places of Russia which are usually associated with various representations of Jerusalem. The author treats the subject in the context of the notion of Holy Russia, though the origin of this idea is as obscure as its meaning. In chapter six, 'Petersburg: Foundation and Fate' Milner-Gulland notes that there was a combination of practical and ideological motifs behind Peter I's project of the new capital. The author calls our attention to the legends about the foundation of Petersburg which are usually dismissed by historians as fantasies. Here Milner-Gulland develops a cultural approach to the history of St Petersburg advanced by Lindsey Hughes (1949–2007), his former student and a leading specialist on Peter I. The author movingly acknowledges Hughes as a source of his inspiration. In chapter seven, the author returns to the north to reflect on the Solovki Transfiguration Monastery as an ultimate symbol of Russia. He traces the history of the monastery from its foundation in the fifteenth century through the Soviet period, when the Bolsheviks turned the monastery into a concentration camp, to the post-Soviet revival of the religious institution. Smith has introduced his concept of 'ethnoscape' in an attempt to strike a balance between two approaches to ethnicity, one that posits that ethnic connections are universal, natural and primordial (hence, primordialist approach) and another that sees ethnicity as a tool whose configuration changes depending on its various uses, a strategic choice, a construct (thus, constructivism). Milner-Gulland clearly leans towards primordialism as he assumes the existence of some perennial structures or patterns in Russian culture. This is why his chapters often end with forays into Soviet culture to demonstrate alleged continuity from the middle ages to the twentieth century. But can we really assume that culture and identities have remained unchanged since the period of Kyivan Rus'? The best parts of the book are based on Milner-Gulland's personal experience of visiting different parts of Russia. The publisher, Reaktion Books, [End Page 189] did a great of job on visualizing Milner-Gulland's...

Substitution of synthetic waxes by plant-based waxes in lipsticks

The ultimate symbol of femininity, lipstick is often a brand’s most attractive makeup product. First created several thousand years ago, its composition has evolved a great deal since then, particularly in the 20th century, when petroleum and its derivatives were discovered. But today, with the emergence of Clean Beauty, customers are looking to go back to more natural compositions that respect the environment and their health. However, the total substitution of synthetic waxes has inevitably brought with its problems of product stability, lipstick solidity, sweating, incompatibilities and oxidation, which today’s ever more demanding consumers are not ready to accept. Beyond stability, the sensoriality and the performance of lipsticks can be altered by such substitution. The objective of this study is therefore to find plant-based substitutes for synthetic waxes, which do not reduce the stability and the overall quality of lipsticks. To this end, the physicochemical properties of plant-based waxes will first be measured, and the best candidates will then be introduced into an all-natural lipstick formula. Some waxes tested have a value equivalent to synthetic wax on one physico-chemical parameter but are less efficient on another. The mixtures of waxes with oils of different polarities show that no wax is as ubiquitous as petroleum wax. To conclude, none of the waxes evaluated can substitute the synthetic wax weight for weight in a formula.

Assessing Customer Attitudes towards Zero Waste Shopping in Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa

In any modern society, waste is the ultimate symbol of inefficiency and represents a total misallocation of resources (Zaman and Lehmann 2013, 123). Waste generation is one of the greatest challenges facing society. By the year 2050, global waste will increase by 70% if action is not taken. According to Babayemi and Dauda (2009, 83), waste is defined as a product of human activities which is regarded as being useless. The South African Waste Information Centre (2016) elaborates that waste is any substance, object or material that is unwanted and discarded, regardless of whether it can be reused, recycled or recovered. In order to slow waste generation and prevent the depletion of global resources, a concept of sustainable consumption and living is required (Song, Li and Zeng 2015, 199). The conceptualisation of zero waste is the most visionary idea for addressing global waste issues. Zaman and Lehmann (2011, 177) state that zero waste involves designing and managing materials, products and processes in such a way as to avoid and eliminate all waste, thus conserving and recovering every resource from waste streams Keywords: Sustainability; waste; waste management; zero waste shopping

The Hesitant European? The Constitutional Foundation of Denmark’s EU Membership and Its Material Reality

The establishment of a supranational legal order in Europe and powerful European courts like the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Luxembourg, constitutes a rather dramatic challenge to the Danish legal and political tradition. In Denmark, the Parliament has the upper hand compared to other branches of government and is regarded as the ultimate symbol of democracy. Similar to other Nordic countries, Denmark has no tradition of judicial review and few national politicians, judges or civil servants have over the years questioned this state of affairs despite the process of European integration. Denmark has similarly been regarded as a bastion of Scandinavian legal positivism where statutes and political decision-making together with judicial self-restraint on part of the national judiciary are absolutely central. In this light the European constitutional development has been close to a revolution and profoundly challenged the Danish majoritarian tradition. The article digs into the Danish dilemmas, Denmark’s legal and democratic tradition, its EU opt-outs and not least its hesitant acceptance of the supremacy of European law.

Soldiering as an obstacle to manhood? Masculinities and ex-combatants in Burundi

ABSTRACT The image of the warrior as the ultimate symbol of manhood is familiar across cultures and countries. There is a large quantity of research that demonstrates the connection between militarism and masculinity, and militarized masculinities have been argued to be the hegemonic form of masculinity, particularly in conflict-affected areas. Recently, however, there has been a call for the rethinking of the connection between masculinity and violence. In this article, I explore the construction of masculinities among ex-combatants in Burundi. Based on participant observation, 18 individual interviews and four focus-group discussions, I argue that having served in an armed group has not had a significant impact on the masculinity ideas of my interlocutors. There is a weak connection between ideas of what makes a good soldier on the one hand and manhood in civilian life on the other. Marriage, fatherhood, and being the provider are the most important factors in masculinity construction in Burundi. These all require economic capital. In addition, socio-economic status is important for the power and respect that it brings. The focus on socio-economic status as the locus of masculinity construction also applies to ex-combatants, but many of them are struggling to adhere to it. My interlocutors presented their time spent in the armed group as time wasted, that would otherwise have been used on education or starting a career – in other words, on the path to achieving manhood. The narrative given was thus one of soldiering being not an avenue but an obstacle to manhood.

Crime and Punishment in the Russian Revolution by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa

Reviewed by: Crime and Punishment in the Russian Revolution by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa J.-Guy Lalande Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi – Crime and Punishment in the Russian Revolution: Mob Justice and Police in Petrograd. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. Pp. 351. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's Crime and Punishment in the Russian Revolution opens with a brief history of St. Petersburg (renamed Petrograd in 1914), a city with real and powerful social divisions and one plagued, as a result of recent decades of industrialization and urbanization, by increased criminality. With the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, law and order in the imperial capital eroded rather quickly; things deteriorated even further when, following the abdication of Nicholas II in March 1917, the Provisional Government decided to dismantle the tsarist criminal justice system and its much-hated police force. Furthermore, all incarcerated prisoners were freed, and a large number of weapons fell into the hands of hooligans and criminals. Drug abuse, theft and robbery, gambling, prostitution and venereal disease, alcoholism, kidnapping and rape, and murder became rampant. Lastly, the acute shortage of consumer goods, above all food, a housing crisis, skyrocketing inflation, the decline in real wages, as well as the roaming and brawling of drunken sailors and soldiers—both psychologically brutalized on an unprecedented scale by the carnage of the First World War—also accounted for a significant increase in the crime rate and fostered social disintegration. The Provisional Government, whose authority was eroded by incessant political crises, failed to establish a new, centralized, and coherent legal order that would be accepted and respected in Petrograd. The same fate befell a municipal government (the city duma) that soon found itself confronted with escalating problems. Since the latter was broke, it could not provide essential social services to its citizens; for example, the city militia that replaced the tsarist police force was poorly trained and provisioned, badly coordinated across districts, too often lacking self-control, and occasionally infiltrated by former criminals; unsurprisingly, it proved to be ineffective. The fact that workers chose to patrol their own neighbourhoods through their own militias (a class-based, politicized police that revealed the powerful force of decentralization spawned by the Revolution itself) did not help either. Unable to rely on higher authorities to protect their property and their lives, frustrated city dwellers, as they came to appreciate their own vulnerability, reacted with anger and violence. Insecure, deprived, and desperate, they turned to vigilantism; they took the law into their own hands. Mob justice (samosud), a symbol of their fleeting empowerment, thus became "the ultimate symbol of February's hopes dashed" (p. 167). This violence, frequent and extraordinarily brutal, was directed against merchants, political opponents, medical personnel, even simple thieves and robbers. Predictably, not only did it fail to stem the crime rate, but it also contributed to escalating lawlessness and violence. Lawyers and journalists, who argued that mob justice represented a serious danger to the creation of a genuine civil society, could not contain the fury of the crowd. Thus a vicious cycle of fear, rage, and violence was created—one that alienated the people from politics, contributed to the disintegration of society, and set the stage for [End Page 430] Lenin's October coup d'état, a takeover that was largely ignored by Petrograders consumed by their daily struggle for survival. Criminality, Hasegawa concludes, had fostered conditions for state failure. Once in power, though, the Bolsheviks were immediately challenged by the very breakdown of social order that they had helped unleash before October. Actually, social disintegration accelerated as robberies and murders increased in quantity and intensity to the point, for example, where even a funeral procession turned into a shootout. The destructiveness of the so-called alcohol pogroms (from November 1917 to January 1918) as well as a significant escalation of mob justice—a mayhem that resulted in hundreds of lives lost, property stolen, and cultural treasures ruined—affected the Bolsheviks' attitude toward crime, police, and governance in general. They convinced them that the infestation of crime in the capital had to be dealt with coercively. Lenin's government ultimately restored order by establishing the Cheka, a centralized and state-driven police force that, by using unprecedented...

Inside the World of the Eunuch: A Social History of the Emperor's Servants in Qing China by Melissa Dale

Reviewed by: Inside the World of the Eunuch: A Social History of the Emperor's Servants in Qing China by Melissa Dale Ellen Soullière (bio) Melissa Dale. Inside the World of the Eunuch: A Social History of the Emperor's Servants in Qing China. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2018. xi, 223 pp. Hardcover $55.00, isbn 978-988-8455-75-1. This is the first book-length study of Chinese eunuchs in English since Henry Shih-shan Tsai's 1996 study of eunuchs in the Ming dynasty. Dale has accessed [End Page 193] a number of new sources for the study of Qing dynasty eunuchs, including archival records of legal cases in which eunuchs were involved. She has looked at the eunuch institution from multiple perspectives: legal, medical, social, and historical, effectively supplementing her text-based account with photographs of eunuchs in the early twentieth century. With the best will in the world, those of us who have grown up steeped in modern Western liberal traditions struggle to understand the social, political, and economic circumstances that enabled one group of human beings to routinely subject another group of people, in this case boys and men, to an operation that robbed them of their external genitalia and their opportunities to engage in ordinary sexual activity and to have biological children. As our guide into the world of Qing dynasty eunuchs, Dale's authorial voice is calm and she does not flinch from recording the details of the operations these boys and men endured and the mortality or lifelong morbidity that were often the result. Dale highlights dramatic contrasts between the histories of eunuchs in the Ming and Qing while at the same time illustrating some areas where continuity is apparent. She estimates that about 3,000 eunuchs were working in the Qing imperial palace at the end of the dynasty, very significantly fewer than estimates of their numbers under the Ming. She identifies the employment of bondservants as a key structural difference between the Ming and Qing courts. Qing bondservants were men who had a special relationship with the emperor and took on many of the more prestigious roles that eunuchs had fulfilled under the Ming. Qing dynasty eunuchs did not fill important military positions as eunuchs had during the Ming. In addition, at least initially, the Qing emperors sought to limit eunuchs' literacy more than the Ming had done. Nevertheless, there were opportunities for Qing eunuchs to learn to read and write in both Manchu and Chinese, and their literacy was one of the skills they had to offer in their service to the imperial women. Empress Dowager Cixi was known to prefer to employ literate eunuchs. By the end of the dynasty, the most senior eunuchs held positions in the imperial household that were as high as the second and third rank in the bureaucracy. As the ultimate symbol of imperial power and authority, these senior eunuchs were respected and feared. Their generic designation (tàijiàn 太監) signalled both their administrative responsibilities and their closeness to the throne. While the justification for turning boys into eunuchs was often articulated in terms of the need to have servants in the imperial palaces who could never threaten the purity of the imperial patriline, Dale provides abundant evidence that looking after the women of the palace was far from the only activity that Qing dynasty eunuchs characteristically undertook. They led religious services, serving as lamas, chanting the scriptures, and praying for the souls of the dead. Their religious activities encompassed Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucian [End Page 194] sacrifices to the ancestors and some were converts to Christianity. Eunuchs also served the court and the imperial elite as actors and theatrical performers, musicians, physicians, and men of all work. They looked after imperial collections, transmitted edicts, managed documents, gardened, kept the imperial seals, and were in charge of the protocols for imperial audiences for officials and visitors. Expected to perform as the perfect servants of the imperium, they often obliged. Dale found that under the Qing dynasty most eunuchs were Han Chinese who came from the northern provinces of Hebei, Shandong, and Zhili, the directly administered region surrounding the capital...

Allure of the Abroad: Tiffany & Co., Its Cultural Influence, and Consumers

Allure of the Abroad: Tiffany & Co., Its Cultural Influence, and Consumers

Divine Memory and Still Point in Four Quartets

T. S. Eliot implied that “memory is indispensable for contemplating still point” in Four Quartets (Manganiel 105). In the light of this memory, divine memory and still point in Four Quartets are the ultimate symbols of the experience of God described by the paradox as the contradiction. The way to meet God in Four Quartets suggests the internal and dark world of mind like humility and negation. However, it is impossible for human being to reach still point because his desire is too strong. In Four Quartets, memory is a key to reach divine memory and still point. Divine memory gives us some messages of the relation between God and man. Even though “Eliot was influenced by Bergson’s pure memory” in writing poetry, he chose the tradition of divine memory inherited from western philosophy including Augustine and Dante. Divine memory suggests “to expand love beyond desire” in Four Quartets. Divine memory that can cause the liberation do not move itself, is like still point that is itself still but moving others.

Ambivalent Narratives of Traditional African Womanhood as Normalising Discourse in Ama Ata Aidoo's The Dilemma of a Ghost

SummaryFeminist critics of African literature have observed that the domination of African literary outputs by male writers has led to romanticised and negative portrayals of the female character in contemporary African literature. Male writers have been accused (and often rightly so) of valorising and projecting the female character as not only docile and passive, but largely dependent on menfolk for her basic sustenance and survival (Ajayi 1997; Nfah-Abbenyi 1997).According to these critics, African literature written by men has predominantly robbed the female character of the power of agency, often idealising and romanticising her as fragile and weak. The female character is often conflated with Mother Africa as she is also presented as the ultimate symbol of human fecundity. In those rare instances when she has been credited with the power of agency, she has been portrayed as rebellious, evil and constitutive of mortal threats to stability and social equilibrium.Be that as it may, a considerable number of contemporary African women writers have striven to circumvent these negative portrayals of the female character. They seek to offer more dynamic representations of female subjectivity in African literature. In this paper, however, I argue that Ama Ata Aidoo's The Dilemma of a Ghost presents the reader with striking narratives of traditional African womanhood, which are at once nearly equally progressive and regressive. I argue that whereas Aidoo's play challenges traditional patriarchy by subverting certain discriminatory female stereotypes and normative perceptions of women that are prevalent in traditional African societies, the play nevertheless exudes an ambivalent attitude towards female emancipation. I also argue that this ambivalent attitude unwittingly reinforces the very negative images of the female character which Aidoo sets out to subvert.

Up Against the Wall: Re-Imagining the U.S.-Mexico Border by Edward S. Casey and Mary Watkins

Reviewed by: Up Against the Wall: Re-Imagining the U.S.-Mexico Border by Edward S. Casey and Mary Watkins Jillian Báez Up Against the Wall: Re-Imagining the U.S.-Mexico Border U of Texas P, 2014 by Edward S. Casey and Mary Watkins Central to President-Elect Donald Trump's platform is building a wall on the Mexico-U.S. border and holding Mexico responsible for the expenses. Although a wall already exists on many parts of the border due to the Secure Fence Act of 2006, the wall was never completed due to a lack of funding. Nevertheless, people crossing from Mexico into the U.S. are still policed by border patrol and drone surveillance. In addition, [End Page 304] during the Obama administration over two million people were deported, more than ever in the history of the U.S. Reflecting nativist anxieties across the nation, the prospect of fortifying the wall clearly appealed to many voters. Edward S. Casey's and Mary Watkins' book Up Against the Wall: Re-Imagining the U.S.-Mexico Border intervenes in the current debate over immigration and offers a timely meditation on the significance of the wall for both sides of the border. Up Against the Wall argues that building walls between nations erodes our humanity and environment. Casey and Watkins assert that the U.S.-Mexico wall is self-defeating because "walls beget walls" (252). In other words, the presence of the wall stands in stark contrast to people, animals, and botany that reside on the borderlands and for whom crossing the border is a matter of survival. On a material level, the U.S. constantly needs to add more policing and surveillance as migrants find new ways to cross borders. On a symbolic level, the wall also engages in "walling out others" (252). A wall is the ultimate symbol of exclusion. Casey and Watkins urge us all to pause before building the wall. They implore us to reflect on the history of U.S.-Mexican relations, consider the consequences of colonization, and imagine new possibilities for living in relation to one another. The book offers an interdisciplinary perspective guided by Casey's training as a philosopher and Watkins as a psychologist. This interdisciplinary contribution should not be overlooked. Philosophy and psychology are fields that are currently not very prominent in border studies, especially in work on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Most of the work in this area is situated in history, anthropology, sociology, English, Spanish, Chicana/o Studies, and Latina/o Studies. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is written by Casey and illustrates how the wall divides communities (sometimes literally people's backyards), animals, plants and water. This part of the book offers case studies of three border cities: Nogales, Tijuana, and Brownsville in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Watkins penned the second part of the book, which offers a historical and sociological overview of Anglo-Mexican relations in the Southwest. This section also includes a chapter on border art (on the Mexican side of the border) and a chapter that offers concrete ways ordinary people can foster "hospitality" across borders. Part I, which makes important distinctions between walls, borders and boundaries, is notably much more theoretical than Part II which is more historical and engages in praxis. The book's strength lies in its treatment of the wall as both a material and symbolic border and boundary. In regards to the wall's material function, Casey and Watkins demonstrate that the wall not only serves to enclose people on opposite sides of the border, but also it disrupts an eco-system that spans across and in between the border. Thus, there are grave ecological effects of the wall on animal migration, plant life, and water supplies. This ecological perspective is rare, but much needed, in studies of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Up Against the Wall also seriously considers the symbolic weight of the wall, that is, it serves to exclude and dehumanize poor and working class Mexicans. Fortifying the wall to keep out unwanted immigrants also erases the history of colonization in the U.S. In these ways, the...

The Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon: Toward a Political History of Madness, by Laure Murat

The Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon: Toward a Political History of Madness, by Laure Murat, translated by Deke Dusinberre. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2014. xiii, 288 pp. $45.00 US (cloth). First published in French in 2011, Laure Murat's highly acclaimed work has been translated and published for an English readership. The Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon is a story of the manifestations and interpretations of madness amidst the political turmoil of France between 1789 and 1871. As she states, revolution provided not only a screen for the projection of delusion but also a space for its translation (p. 158). On the surface, this might seem like a simple truth; nineteenth-century psychiatry was notoriously subjective at best, and moralistic at worst. And yet the text quickly reveals itself as an impressive attempt to uncover the political history of madness. Taking a middle ground between the extremes of anti-psychiatry and Whiggish apologists, Murat's text outlines how both psychiatrists and their patients were deeply implicated in the dramatic political events of their age. After a brief and useful Foreword by David A. Bell, the work begins with a Preamble that functions both as a love letter to the archives and as an explanation of methodology. A cultural historian, Murat is comfortable with the limitations of the psychiatric archives, including its gaps, its coded language, and inconsistencies. Instead of crunching the numbers, she explores a personalized selection method that follows the more detailed and original cases of delusions (p. 15). The first chapter begins with how the spectre of the Terror and its ultimate symbol, the guillotine, plagued the nightmares of the mad. Murat details the many inmates of the asylum haunted by images of the guillotine, and notes that modern psychiatry in France was born at the same moment as the guillotine (pp. 33-34). Vivid depictions of victims' balls and images of guillotine earrings help situate the asylum within its social and cultural context (pp. 26-27). Asylum or Political Prison interrogates the relationship between these two institutions, and explores the politics of how people were institutionalized by the revolutionary state. While Murat does not follow a simple Foucauldian interpretation in her work, it is clear that despite the elimination of the infamous lettres de cachet, asylums were still used to incarcerate society's more problematic citizens. Yet for many of those citizens, freedom was already forfeit. The infamous Marquis de Sade, for example, entered the Charenton asylum only after a series of prisons (pp. …

USE OF COLOURS IN POST-MODERNIST INDIAN CREATIVE ADVERTISEMENTS

Post Modernism in India is believed to have evolved after Indian Independence in 1947 and continues till the early 20’s. When we talk about Post Modernism in context to India, it is often connected to the country’s modernization and decolonization. After the Indian independence, advertising developed with the development of forms of media at each decade. Since the beginning, colours have stirred our emotions. White chalk was a precious tool in the hands of Palaeolithic artists. Gold from the very first civilisations reminded us of the sun. A desire for the mysterious and exotic blue changed the course of history. Colour was definitely grabbing worldwide attention as the civilizations advanced, but it certainly wasn’t easy to get hold of. This is why it became the ultimate symbol of luxury. Those who could afford it, used favourite hues to decorate their surroundings. Today, not so long since the beginning of the Digital Revolution, we have free access to any colour we can possibly think of, and more and we use it in abundance and variances in Indian Advertising, basically since 1950’s when colour ads occupied special importance amongst the people who were only confined to black and white images and ads. Colour is powerful because it can change our mood – the mood of potential customers. Advertisers and designers are well aware of, the fact that customers are not guided entirely by logic when making purchases, but tend to be driven by less identifiable factors such as emotions. Through colours we can control reactions of an audience and provoke them to certain behaviours. Creativity in one word can be described as being different, i.e. different from the quo. The designer’s role is to build clear and understandable communication through the impact of colour. Creative advertisers use more dramatic mixture of colours in those ads to differentiate them from the general clutter of the ads and also to produce stronger communicative effect. The following paper presents examples of ads from mid 1990’s till the onset of 21t century and description of its colours. This paper will also present the aesthetics related to those colours and their suitability in designing those ads, to attract maximum consumers by appealing their senses.

The practice of constraint in psychiatry: emergent forms of care and control.

The work of psychiatry has always revolved around the twin imperatives of care and custody. In an older model of psychiatric power, confinement and coercion were accomplished through isolation from society. The asylum became the ultimate symbol of such power. It arose in the long historical process Foucault termed ‘‘the great confinement,’’ and it reached its ultimate expression in the ‘‘total institution’’ exposed by Goffman in the mid-20th Century. As the landscape of mental health shifted, anthropological attention turned away from the asylum to focus on other topics: psychiatry’s contribution to social control in the neo-liberal state, as practices of governmentality (Foucault 2012), new technologies of the self (Rose 1996) and