Greek and Roman in dialogue: the pseudo-Lucianic Nero

1999 ◽  
Vol 119 ◽  
pp. 142-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Whitmarsh
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Aegean Island ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Colonial Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Of Greece

The short dialogue entitled Nero or on the digging of the Isthmus, preserved in the manuscripts of Lucian, is an intriguing piece. The contents are quickly summarised. Nero's abandoned attempt to dig through the Isthmus of Corinth is discussed by the two interlocutors, a certain Menecrates and the philosopher Musonius Rufus, who is said to have taken part in the digging (1). The scene is apparently the rugged Aegean island of Gyara to which the historical Musonius was exiled. The discussion broadens out to include Nero's tour of Greece, with a particular focus upon his singing; and it concludes as the news breaks of Nero's death (11). Menecrates' role in the discussion is limited to that of ‘prompter’, while Musonius assumes the authoritative, pedagogic role in the dialogue. Is there any unified meaning to this text? And why the dialogue form (given that Menecrates' role in it is so perfunctory)? This paper proposes one set of answers to these questions, by siting the Nero in the context of the cultural history of Greco-Roman relations, an area that has attracted much attention over the years (and has been further reinvigorated in the light of post-colonial theory).

scholarly journals Matrices of ‘Love and Theft’: Joan Baez Imitates Bob Dylan

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
MIMI HADDON
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
First Century ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Third ◽  
Bob Dylan ◽  
Colonial Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Asymmetrical Power ◽  
American Popular Music

Abstract This article uses Joan Baez's impersonations of Bob Dylan from the mid-1960s to the beginning of the twenty-first century as performances where multiple fields of complementary discourse converge. The article is organized in three parts. The first part addresses the musical details of Baez's acts of mimicry and their uncanny ability to summon Dylan's predecessors. The second considers mimicry in the context of identity, specifically race and asymmetrical power relations in the history of American popular music. The third and final section analyses her imitations in the context of gender and reproductive labour, focusing on the way various media have shaped her persona and her relationship to Dylan. The article engages critical theoretical work informed by psychoanalysis, post-colonial theory, and Marxist feminism.

A Cultural History of Objects in the Modern Age

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
New Materials ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

A Cultural History of Objects in the Modern Age covers the period 1900 to today, a time marked by massive global changes in production, transportation, and information-sharing in a post-colonial world. New materials and inventions – from plastics to the digital to biotechnology – have created unprecedented scales of disruption, shifting and blurring the categories and meanings of the object. If the 20th Century demonstrated that humans can be treated like things whilst things can become ever more human, where will the 21st Century take us? The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Objects examines how objects have been created, used, interpreted and set loose in the world over the last 2500 years. Over this time, the West has developed particular attitudes to the material world, at the centre of which is the idea of the object. The themes covered in each volume are objecthood; technology; economic objects; everyday objects; art; architecture; bodily objects; object worlds.

Religion in the Making? Animality, Savagery, and Civilization in the Work of A. N. Whitehead

2000 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 287-304
Author(s):  
Clare Palmerl
Keyword(s):  
Writing Process ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
Colonial Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Behaviors

AbstractConstructions of the animal and animality are often pivotal to religious discourses. Such constructions create the possibility of identifying and valuing what is "human" as opposed to the "animal" and also of distinguishing human beliefs and behaviors that can be characterized (and often disparaged) as being animal from those that are "truly human." Some discourses also employ the concept of savagery as a bridge between the human and the animal, where the form of humanity but not its ideal beliefs and practices can be displayed. This paper explores the work of the influential scientist, philosopher, and theologian A. N. Whitehead in this context. His ideas of what constitutes "the animal." the "primitive" and the "civilized" are laid out explicitly in his now little-used history of religions text, Religion in the Making.This paper explores these ideas in this history and then considers how the same ideas permeate his currently more popular philosophical and theological writing Process and Reolity. Drawing on some work in post-colonial theory the paper offers a critique of this understanding of animality, savagery, and civilization and suggests that using Whitehead to underpin modern theological work requires considerable caution.

How Do You Solve a Problem like Horace?

2018 ◽  
pp. 29-48
Author(s):  
Sebastian Matzner
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Critical Knowledge ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Cultural Paradigm ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Methodological Considerations

Taking its cue from Horace’s paradoxical dictum that ‘Greece took captive its brutish conqueror and brought its arts to rustic Latium’ (Ep. 2.1.156–7), this chapter explores parallels between the history of Latin literature and theoretical models elaborated by scholars of post-colonial literature. Continuing the first chapter’s broader methodological considerations, it models a post-colonially inflected reading strategy to analyze more lucidly the inter- and intracultural dynamics and politics of Latin texts shaped by (and, in turn, shaping and sustaining) the fraught Greco-Roman cultural relationship: how, where, and to whose (dis-)advantage does Greece work—and is made to work—as a silent referent in Roman literary and literary-critical knowledge? Horace’s Letter to Augustus serves to illustrate the insights this approach can generate in the study of individual Latin texts, of Roman philhellenism as a cultural paradigm, and in current debates on the status of European literature within post-colonial frameworks of world literature.

Religion in the Making? Animality, Savagery, and Civilization in the Work of A. N. Whitehead

2000 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Writing Process ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
Colonial Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Behaviors

AbstractConstructions of the animal and animality are often pivotal to religious discourses. Such constructions create the possibility of identifying and valuing what is "human" as opposed to the "animal" and also of distinguishing human beliefs and behaviors that can be characterized (and often disparaged) as being animal from those that are "truly human." Some discourses also employ the concept of savagery as a bridge between the human and the animal, where the form of humanity but not its ideal beliefs and practices can be displayed. This paper explores the work of the influential scientist, philosopher, and theologian A. N. Whitehead in this context. His ideas of what constitutes "the animal," the "primitive" and the "civilized" are laid out explicitly in his now little-used history of religions text, Religion in the Making. This paper explores these ideas in this history and then considers how the same ideas permeate his currently more popular philosophical and theological writing Process and Reality. Drawing on some work in post-colonial theory, the paper offers a critique of this understanding of animality, savagery, and civilization and suggests that using Whitehead to underpin modern theological work requires considerable caution.

On Broken Glass: For a Semiotics of Anti-Materiality

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Leone
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Antiquity ◽  
Damaged Materials ◽  
Initial Exploration

AbstractScholars have mostly focused on “positive materiality,” studying the meaning of materials and techniques in the production of artifacts. Matter, however, means not only when it is shaped into materiality but also when it is destroyed. The essay that follows is meant to represent a first tentative enquiry into the meaning of anti-materiality. The study of destroyed artifacts aims at pointing out that matter is always materiality. It always conserves a shadow of meaning, independently from how profoundly its earlier form was disintegrated. The crepuscular significance of damaged materials has mostly escaped the attention of scholars. The essay attempts an initial exploration of it, proposing a condensed cultural history of broken glass. It therefore seeks to combine, in the same exposition, a chronological and a structural overview of broken glass, from Greco-Roman antiquity until early modernity.

The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Asia and the Pacific

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
International Order ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Asia Pacific Region ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Colonial Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law

The growing economic and political significance of Asia has exposed a tension in the modern international order. Despite expanding power and influence, Asian states have played a minimal role in creating the norms and institutions of international law; today they are the least likely to be parties to international agreements or to be represented in international organizations. That is changing. There is widespread scholarly and practitioner interest in international law at present in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as developments in the practice of states. The change has been driven by threats as well as opportunities. Transnational issues such as climate change and occasional flashpoints like the territorial disputes of the South China and the East China Seas pose challenges while economic integration and the proliferation of specialised branches of law and dispute settlement mechanisms have also encouraged greater domestic implementation of international norms across Asia. These evolutions join the long-standing interest in parts of Asia (notably South Asia) in post-colonial theory and the history of international law. This book analyses the approach to, and influence of, key states of the region, as well as whether truly ‘Asian’ trends can be identified and what this might mean for international order.

scholarly journals Writing on the earth: Early European travellers to South Africa

Literator ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Sienaert ◽  
L. Stiebel
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Spatial History ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Colonial Theory ◽  
History Of

The issue of land in South Africa has always been problematic. This is to be expected in a country whose history has been one of colonisation, contested borders and, in the more recent apartheid past, of legalised removals of people from the land. In recent post-colonial theory too, the notion of spatiality has proved to be significant: to write a history of a country and its people is to write a spatial history through the processes of naming, mapping, classifying and painting. Our project in this article is to explore some of the ways in which early European travellers to South Africa traced their presence in this country, and in so doing began a chapter of “writing on the earth", the ideological marks of which linger on into this century.

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