The Vanishing Native

The thematic foci of the Franco-Algerian war films of decolonization have shifted in the last few decades from evoking triumphalist discourses and redemptive fictional narratives to producing powerful transnational antiwar stories. While being critical of the violent history of colonization, defying earlier French governments’ oppressive forms of censorship, and addressing the history of colonial barbarity in Algeria, many French documentarians and filmmakers have skillfully used moving images to critique and expose colonial transgressions. In their efforts to reimagine the horrors of violent encounters between the French army and Algerian guerilla fighters, their narratives cover daring eye-witness accounts of war crimes, including acts of torture at times described by the perpetrators themselves while catering to the expectations of a global audience. Florent Emilio Siri’s L’ennemi intime (2007) and David Oelhoffen’s Far from Men (2014) are among these transnational productions that accomplish both tasks. In the stories told by the two films, the plots show evidence of a fundamental thematic transformation in filmic representations that collapses the differences between colonizer and colonized, situating both as victims of colonization. The article argues that even though both films consistently reproduce the conventional portrait of the colonized as weak, passive, and deeply reliant on French guidance, Far from Men introduces the myth of the vanishing native, a theme that helps legitimize and normalize the settler’s “right” to occupy the colonized space.

La storiografia subalterna in prospettiva globale

After briefly considering the influence of Gramsci's thought on the founders of Subaltern Studies in India, the author outlines the theoretical and thematic transformation which the approach went through since the mid eighties, under the inspiration of the "cultural turn". In the second part of her essay Scarfone traces the spread of Subaltern Studies to other parts of the world, such as East Asia, Latin America and Europe, thanks also to the multiplier function of American and European universities. Whereas its influence on post-colonial and cultural studies is sizable, Subaltern Studies never became a widely recognized model to the practice of historiography, partly because of its later full immersion in postmodern waters. However, its contribution to the theory of history as a discipline and as practice should not be underestimated.

The Snake Bites Its Tail: Cyclic Processes in Brahms's Third String Quartet, op. 67

Brahms's Third String Quartet, op. 67 in Bb Major, represents one of his greatest efforts in cyclical form, but has been neglected in the analytical and critical literature, which has focused on the Third Symphony, the Schicksalslied, and the German Requiem. Brahms's cyclic techniques fall between the procedures of Beethoven, who aims for thematic unity or coherence across a work, and French composers at the end of the 19th century, who use extensive, intricate thematic transformation to bind a piece. Brahms designs the finale of his Bb Quartet, a theme and variations, to evolve toward the reappearance of the main thematic material of the first movement. In the coda of the finale, the themes of the two outer movements are superimposed in ways that reveal their latent kinship.