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2 Both benevolent and brutal: the two sides of provincial violence in early modern Burma Michael W. Charney During a Buddhist festival in Rangoon at the Shwe Dagon Pagoda in 1809, the viceroy of Pegu (Min-Hla-Nawrahta), intent on providing a lesson that would prevent disloyalty spreading among his troops, had given orders for the execution of a number of men and their families. Four families were arrested: five men, four women, and three children. They were to ‘suffer cruel death’, having their bellies slit open and their legs removed at the knees. Although the
Haslam reads The Bondwoman‘s Narrative through the lens of the gothic literary tradition, as framed by Jerrold Hogle, and its relations to slave narratives, as discussed by Teresa Goddu. Specifically, the novel uses the gothic, in part, as slave narratives traditionally do: to depict the brutality and horror of the violence of slavery. But Crafts transforms this use of the gothic into a direct attack on the slave owners themselves. Crafts situates the generalities of the gothic tradition within American slavery, writing a gothic narrative that - to transform Hogle‘s analysis - exposes the ‘brutal concreteness’ of slavery while depicting the ‘pervasively counterfeit existence’ of white superiority.
that freedom entails. But let’s not forget that what is resistive can also become violent in response. This in turn creates a brutal dialectic, which appearing as war by everyday means, creates a unifying reciprocity where both parties end up fighting over the same object of desire – a violence based on similitude not differentiation. Hence, in revolution, everything changes so that everything remains the same. Rather than seeing violence as the privilege of absolute power, it is better to see it as the outcome of asymmetric freedom. The freedom to punish or
systematically move in closer to the refugee subject as the pictures change from wide-angle views of ‘long processions’ of animals, carts, and people, to medium-distance images of elderly men and women riding atop hay wagons, to finally culminating in close-up pictures of individuals receiving ARC care. The photo-essay enabled the magazine’s readers to virtually travel with the refugees on their journey from the ‘brutal and merciless’ Germans toward the benevolent ARC. According to Judith Butler, ‘there are ways of framing that will bring the human into view in its frailty
more overt and brutal in the geographical peripheries of PMs (which are often also socially marginal areas). Elite at the centre often delegate authority over localities to provincial elites (tribal leaders, militia commanders, political-military entrepreneurs) who then engage in competitive bargaining for resources provided from the centre in an updated version of the old divide-and-rule strategy. From the perspective of the centre, adopting such
obviously be very, very useful to have a much better sense of what it was like to be on the receiving end of this aid. Related to this, I also think we need to do a lot more to recover the gender dynamics of the Biafran crisis. On the one hand, we know that this was quite a brutal conflict, in which violence against women was a prominent tactic. On the other, reading the crisis through a gender studies/gender history lens might also help to recover the role played by nuns
Jim Richards thought that architects should be anonymous experts who served their communities, not ‘giants’ designing buildings to express their own individual creativity. He pursued this idea throughout his forty-year career as an architectural critic, journalist and editor. This book traces Richards’s ideas about anonymity and public participation in modern architecture and how they weathered the changing contexts of architecture in the mid-twentieth century. This is a story of shifting relationships between the architectural profession, public audiences and the media. The Architectural Review (AR) was first published in 1896 and by the 1930s was closely aligned with modern architecture. James Maude Richards (Jim to his friends) was the longest serving editor of the AR working from 1935 to 1971, with colleagues including Hubert de Cronin Hastings, Nikolaus Pevsner, Hugh Casson and Reyner Banham. Richards developed a specific approach to architectural criticism, which was based on promoting architecture to a public audience. He used criticism as a bridge between architects and their patrons and users. This book explores the changes and continuities in Richards’s work in the context of broader cultural shifts between experts and the public during this period. This is a history of modern architecture told through magazine articles, radio broadcasts and exhibitions, rather than buildings. Richards’s career and his position among a network of journalists, architects and artists, shows the centrality of media and promotion to architecture. It also shows how ideas about public participation, vernacular design and popular culture were key to defining modern architecture.
's poetry, adding a lyricism to the film that, juxtaposed with a brutal narrative of not only homophobic but also politically motivated murder, echoes Jarman's own autobiographical approach in The Last of England and The Garden (which I discuss in Chapter 6 ). Both filmmakers insist on the inseparability of art from the personal and the political. The poems also elevate the narrative from a possible interpretation as a sordid, dispiriting account of the poet's downfall. This role marks a definitive shift from Jarman's presence in Caravaggio as a careful onlooker
-assertion in Libya could not, however, rely upon the counter-example of a more or less brutal “deculturation” brought about by proactive secularization—such as the process led by Tunisia’s “Supreme Combatant,” President Habib Bourguiba. Bourguiba, as we have seen, had been ready to bring the long tradition of the prestigious Muslim Zitouna university to a sudden close, and to grant explicit priority to the needs of economic development over those of respect for religion, such as the Ramadan fast. At the fringes of the Arab world, Atatürk and the Shah of Iran, those rulers
these challenges exist has had some success in the Balkans and in Guatemala, two areas that have experienced brutal civil wars for a number of years. More recently, the analysis of elemental and osteometric measures on the body have demonstrated potential in attempts to reassociate remains. Ultimately however, technological developments complement extensive ante-mortem investigation and the two cannot be utilized independently if the required end result is to successfully identify victims. The search for and identification of corpses and human remains in post