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difference as central organising metaphors in his utopian discourse. Joabin’s commentary on European habits reads like a protestant sermon on marriage,35 whose ideals are only realised in Bensalem. In Joabin’s description, European practice is represented as the opposite to Bensalem’s ideal, in its economic and political manipulation of marriage, its use of courtesans, ‘delight in meretricious embracements’, adultery, ‘deflowering of virgins’, and ‘masculine love’ (477). The objects of Bacon’s critique uncannily echo those voiced by feminists, in particular the double
/knowledge (i.e. spoken language, dance, sports, ritual)’ (2007b: 19, her italics). In pursuing the comparisons between these various kinds of embodiments of memory, Taylor reminds us that it is important to consider the ‘myths attending the archive’: that it is ‘unmediated . . . that it resists change, corruptibility and political manipulation’. Here the issues of hegemonic processes of mediation, those of ‘selection, memorization or internalization, and transmission’ (ibid., 21), become profoundly significant in relation to issues of contested memories. Taylor argues that
necessary to prevent idleness and discontent while also maintaining a stock of healthy cannon fodder in the event of war.69 However, Davenant goes on to argue that performances are not only beneficial as a way to appease boredom (and thereby prevent revolution) but may also be a tool for political manipulation: If morall representations may be allow’d (being without obscenenesse, profaneness, and scandall) the first argument may consist of the Spaniards barbarous Conquests in the West Indies and of their several cruelties there exercis’d upon the subjects of this Nation
Representatives, with key nationalist politicians offered lucrative political positions (such as the town clerkship of Lagos) in return for foregoing a seat in the central legislature. As Richard Sklar argues in his study Nigerian Political Parties, such episodes perversely lent support to Britain’s credibility, in its reticence towards full home rule and with its half-baked model of ‘semi-responsible government’.12 What they also set in train, however, was a culture of political manipulation and corruption that was to dog Nigeria for years after independence. A few pages later