The Creative Recuperation of “Blind Tom” Wiggins in Tyehimba Jess’s Olio and Jeffery Renard Allen’s Song of the Shank

MELUS ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 175-196
Author(s):  
Emily Ruth Rutter
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Racial Stratification ◽  
Indirect Discourse ◽  
Performance Career ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Persona Poems

Abstract This essay examines Tyehimba Jess’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry collection Olio (2016) and Jeffery Renard Allen’s acclaimed novel Song of the Shank (2014), focusing specifically on their creative recuperations of “Blind Tom,” a famed pianist who remained in bondage throughout a performance career that spanned the antebellum and postbellum periods. Citing and interpolating archival documents about “Blind Tom,” Olio and Song of the Shank denaturalize what Jennifer Stoever terms the “sonic color line,” whereby music and other forms of aural production became inextricably bound up with racial stratification. Through contrapuntal persona poems, which may be read vertically, horizontally, and diagonally, Jess also pays tribute to Tom’s musical dexterity while implying the myriad possible interpretations of the musician’s life and art. Alternatively, Allen’s nonlinear novel makes use of free indirect discourse, not to reimagine Tom’s interiority but instead to focalize the largely undocumented interior thoughts of those who controlled Tom’s life, underscoring the famed musician’s lack of agency and self-determination. Not purporting to recover the “real” Tom, Allen and Jess employ distinct but decidedly self-reflexive methodologies, suggesting the ways in which historical accounts are similarly constructed to emphasize particular perspectives and silence others. As they advance counternarratives to archival accounts of “Blind Tom,” Jess’s Olio and Allen’s Song of the Shank also elucidate cultural through-lines between the nineteenth century and our own time, especially unsettling teleological readings of the nation’s steady progress toward racial equality.

scholarly journals The Wilsonian Moment of the Azerbaijani Delegation in Paris (1919-1920)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Pommier
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
Personal Archives ◽  
Paris Peace Conference

The delegation of the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference fought for the international recognition of its country and for admission to the League of Nations. The analysis of mostly unpublished archival documents from the personal archives of head of delegation Əlimərdan Ələkbər oğlu sheds new light on the history of Azerbaijani diplomacy. Topçubaşov could rely above all on the tools of influence of public opinion, such as books, publications and magazines which were written in large numbers in Paris. The adoption, in Azerbaijani political communication, of languages and contents adapted to the Wilsonian culture was meant to justify the aspiration to self-determination, as other anti-colonial non-European elites attempted to do during the Paris Peace Conference.

Historical Account or Discourse on Identity? A Reexamination of Fulbe Hegemony and Autochthonous Submission in Banyo

1998 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 93-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quentin Gausset
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Local Populations ◽  
Northern Cameroon ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Military

Traditional accounts of the nineteenth-century Fulbe conquest in northern Cameroon tell roughly the same story: following the example of Usman Dan Fodio in Nigeria, the Fulbe of Cameroon organized in the beginning of the nineteenth century a “jihad” or a “holy war” against the local pagan populations to convert them to Islam and create an Islamic state. The divisions among the local populations and the military superiority of the Fulbe allowed them to conquer almost all northern Cameroon. They forced those who submitted to give an annual tribute of goods and servants, and they raided the other groups. In these traditional accounts the Fulbe are presented as unchallenged masters, while the local populations are depicted as slaves who were powerless over their fate; their role in the conquest of the region and in the administration of the new political order is supposed to have been insignificant.I will show that, on the contrary, in the area of Banyo the Wawa and Bute played a crucial role in the conquest of the sultanate and in its administration. I will then re-examine the cliche that all members of the local populations were the slaves of the Fulbe by distinguishing the fate of the Wawa and Bute on one side from that of the Kwanja and Mambila on the other, and by showing the importance of the Fulbe's identity in shaping the definition of slavery. Finally I will argue that, if the historical accounts found in the scientific literature invariably insist on Fulbe hegemony and minimize the role played by the local populations, it is because those accounts are often based on Fulbe traditions, and because these traditions are remodeled by the Fulbe in order to correspond to their discourse on identity.

Sexual Emancipation

2019 ◽  
pp. 156-184
Author(s):  
Joan Wallach Scott
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Women’S Sexuality ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
Racialized Gender ◽  
As If

This chapter explores the complex uses of feminism and appeals to “sexual democracy” in the new discourse of secularism. The story is anything but straightforward and involves the insistence on sex as a public matter, and on women's sexuality (and by extension, nonnormative sexualities) as a right of individual self-determination. The emphasis on individualism is a part of neoliberalism's “rationality;” it is not the same as its nineteenth-century antecedent. At the same time, the difference of sex and its heteronormative claims has not disappeared, confusing woman's status as a desiring subject with her status as an object of (male) desire. The contemporary discourse of secularism, with its insistence on the importance of “uncovered” women's bodies equates public visibility with emancipation, as if that visibility were the only way to confirm women as sexually autonomous beings (exercising the same rights in this domain as men). The contrast with “covered” Muslim women not only perpetuates the confusion between Western women as subjects and objects of desire, it also distracts attention from (or flatly ignores) persisting racialized gender inequalities in markets, politics, jobs, and law within each side.

Ireland: Realm of the Four Masters

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Rowley-Conwy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Irish History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Manuscripts ◽  
To Come ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Or History

On 9 January 1843, Richard Griffith addressed the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) about some antiquities found in the River Shannon. The river was being dredged to render it navigable, and the artefacts were discovered during the deepening of the old ford at Keelogue. Griffith was the chairman of the Commissioners carrying out the work, and his expertise was in engineering rather than ancient history. He stated that the finds came from a layer of gravel; in its upper part were many bronze swords and spears, while a foot lower were numerous stone axes. Due to the rapidity of the river’s flow there was very little aggradation, so despite the small gap the bronze objects were substantially later than the stone ones. The river formed the border between the ancient kingdoms of Connaught and Leinster. The objects had apparently been lost in two battles for the ford that had taken place at widely differing dates; stressing that he was no expert himself, Mr Griffith wondered whether ancient Irish history might contain records of battles at this spot (Griffith 1844). This was probably the earliest non-funerary stratigraphic support for the Three Age System ever published, but it did not signal the acceptance of the Three Age System. Just as telling as Griffith’s stratigraphic observation was his immediate recourse to ancient history for an explanation; for, as we shall see, ancient history provided the dominant framework for the ancient Irish past until the end of the nineteenth century. The Irish had far more early manuscript sources than the Scots or the English, although wars and invasions had reduced them; the Welsh scholar Edward Lhwyd wrote from Sligo on 12 March 1700 to his colleague Henry Rowlands that ‘the Irish have many more ancient manuscripts than we in Wales; but since the late revolutions they are much lessened. I now and then pick up some very old parchment manuscripts; but they are hard to come by, and they that do anything understand them, value them as their lives’ (in Rowlands 1766: 315). In the seventeenth century various Irish scholars brought together the historical accounts available to them. Geoffrey Keating (Seathrú n Céitinn, in Irish) wrote the influential Foras Feasa ar Éirinn or ‘History of Ireland’ in c.1634, and an English translation was printed in 1723 (Waddell 2005).

Contesting Self-determination in the Wake of Empire: Sovereignty, Human Rights and Economic Justice

2020 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-93
Author(s):  
Miriam Bak McKenna
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
International Economic Order ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
East West ◽  
Individual Human

This article considers the ways in which geo-political and legal concerns materialised in debates over self-determination in the years following decolonisation, and how they impacted on its’ possibilities, objectives and conception. During this period, self-determination was not, as some scholars have argued, a declining norm, but one central to the competing visions of reinventing international law after empire. These varying articulations were largely shaped by the experience of colonialism and its ongoing effects, along with the ideological confrontation between East-West and North-South. One articulation stressed the primacy of political and economic sovereignty, prominently seen in calls for the establishment of a New International Economic Order. The other sought to integrate self-determination into the elevation of democratic governance and individual human rights protection. Examining these alternative formulations of self-determination, underlines the incompleteness of mainstream historical accounts, and may throw light upon continuing anxieties over its current legal status.

Nationalism and Freedom

Worldview ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 7 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 7-12
Author(s):  
George Shepherd
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
John Locke ◽  
World History ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
The Right

The flower of human freedom blooms seldom and precariously in world history. One such occasion was the period of the Enlightenment when philosophers from Rousseau to John Locke and Jefferson proclaimed new conceptions of natural rights. Inspired by these new ideas of freedom, revolutions spread from America, France and England through Europe. New nations arose throughout Europe of the nineteenth century as a wave of new nationalism spilled across the Continent. The right of nationhood and self-determination was one of the new doctrines of freedom.

John Sarbah, the elder, and African mercantile entrepreneurship in the Gold Coast in the late nineteenth Century

1973 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 653-679 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond E. Dumett
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Ivory Coast ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Commercial Development ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Distinguished Group

The trading career of John Sarbah of Ghana is illustrative of the activities of a distinguished group of independent African coastal merchants in the late nineteenth century, and an analysis of his business methods helps to cast light on the general problems and operations of mercantile entrepreneurship in West Africa. The rise of the African merchants was the result of an interaction between indigenous and external factors. It would be a mistake to exaggerate the importance of the coastal trading sector in the development of the total economy of the country in the late nineteenth century; but it would appear that the major African merchants, led by John Sarbah, F. C. Grant, J. W. Sey and others, played a larger part in commercial development, 1865 to about 1895, than is commonly recognized in historical accounts. Sarbah's entrepreneurship was mainfested in his ability to manage with competence a network of stores and trading stations, to extend the market for manufactured merchandise, to open up new sources for cash export, and to assess risks and invest capital in his firm's expanision. Of particular importance were Sarbah's efforts to stimulate the collection and processing of palm kernels, to help lay a groundwork for the development of the rubber trade in Asin and Lower Denkyera in the early 1880s, and to extend the orbit of his trading operations to the southeastern Ivory Coast.

Social Revolution in Russian Female Monasticism: The Case of the Convent of the Intercession, 1700–1917

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marlyn Miller
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
General Population ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
Social Composition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Female Monasticism ◽  
Economic Need

Focusing on central Orthodox regions in post-Petrine Russia, Marlyn Miller investigates the changing social composition of nuns in Orthodox convents from 1700 through 1917 through a case study on the Convent of the Intercession in Suzdal. Primarily based on a careful study of archival documents, Miller reveals a dramatic drop in the percentage of noblewomen among the ranks of the nuns in Russian convents and a growing predominance of women from the ranks of the peasantry—a “democratization”, as Marlyn characterizes it, among the social composition of female monastics. This trend was already in place following Catherine II’s secularlization policies and continued throughout the nineteenth century. In post-reform Russia, this accompanied a general growth in the number of female monastics, which tripled from 1869 to 1914, in part following general population trends, but also corresponding to the spiritual revivalism of this era. Intriguingly, however, Miller finds that key motivations for women to enter monasteries remained largely unchanged and centered on economic need, dedication to their faith, or personal reasons of family or marriage avoidance up to 1917.

scholarly journals Listening to Emerson's “England” at Clinton Hall, 22 January 1850

2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 641-662
Author(s):  
TOM F. WRIGHT
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
Transatlantic Relations ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Public Speech ◽  
Performance Culture ◽  
Urban Riots ◽  
Performance Career ◽  
The Press ◽  
Anglo American

Ralph Waldo Emerson's delivery of his essay “England” at Manhattan’s Clinton Hall on 22 January 1850 was one of the highest-profile of his performance career. He had recently returned from his triumphant British speaking tour with a radically revised view of transatlantic relations. In a New York still in shock from the Anglophobic urban riots of the previous winter, media observers were prepared to find a great deal of symbolism in both Emerson's new message and his idiosyncratic style of performance. This essay provides a detailed account of the context, delivery and conflicting newspaper readings of this Emerson appearance. Considering the lecture circuit as part of broader performance culture and debates over Anglo-American physicality and manners, it reveals how the press seized on both the “England” talk itself and aspects of Emerson's lecturing style as a means of shoring up civic order and Anglo-American kinship. I argue for a reexamination of the textual interchanges of nineteenth-century oratorical culture, and demonstrate how lecture reports reconnect us to forgotten means of listening through texts and discursive contests over the meaning of public speech.

scholarly journals Феномен самоубийства в России XVIII в.

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Александр Каменский
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Emotional Perception ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Military

The history of suicide in Russia, especially prior to the nineteenth century, remains understudied. While in most European countries the process of decriminalization and secularization of suicide was underway, in Russia, with the introduction of the Military Article of 1715, it was formally criminalized. On the basis of the study of more than 350 newly examined archival cases, this article examines how the transfer of suicide investigations to secular authorities also entailed secularization, while the peculiarities of the Russian judicial and investigative system, as well as lacunae in the legislation, actually led to the gradual decriminalization of suicide. At the same time, although among Russians, as well as among other peoples, a number of superstitions were associated with suicide, there is no evidence in the archival documents studied in this article of a particularly emotional perception of suicide. The phenomenon of suicide in eighteenth-century Russia, when compared to early modern Europe, did not have any significant, fundamental differences. However, the features of the Russian judicial-investigative system made this phenomenon less public, less visible and less significant for public consciousness.  

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