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Joachim Koester's Message from Andrée consists of a display table, two large posters and a 16mm film projection. The work was shown for the first time in the Danish pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale, and is based on archival material from the late nineteenth-century Andrée expedition. 1 This historical event has all the ingredients of a good story: against-the-odds adventure, a remote and inhospitable location, nationalist hubris, romance and mystery. Numerous books, articles, films and
3 Reading materially: John Lydgate’s ‘Soteltes for the coronation banquet of Henry VI’ Allone as I went vp and doun, I ane abbay wes fair to se, Thinkand quhat consolatioun Wes best in to aduersitie, On cais I kest on syd myne e And saw this writtin vpoun a wall: ‘Off quhat estait, man, that thow be, Obey and thank thi God off all’. Robert Henryson, ‘Abbey Walk’1 Like other texts addressed in these chapters, the short lyric poem ‘Abbey Walk’, by the late fifteenth-century Scots poet Robert Henryson, engages the work of reading in ways that facilitate and even
Introduction Since the material turn in the social sciences, researchers have been exploring new ways to engage with the objects and materials of everyday life. Such methods aim to overcome subject–object binaries, placing the very substance of materials at the core of their inquiry (Gregson and Crewe, 1998 ). This chapter takes one such approach – object interviews – to explore how objects and materials structure our everyday lives and relationships. This method involves not only unearthing the significance of objects to their owners, but also
In 1528 master armourer and active citizen William Vynyard presented a spectacular gift to his guild, originating from his own workshop. He gave to the Armourers’ Company a polychromed oak sculpture of St. George and the Dragon, with the saintly hero clad in an exceptionally intricate miniature steel armour (see Plate 12 ). Vynyard's material gift went on to play a significant role in the ceremonial life of the guild, as when the company travelled by boat to Greenwich in 1540 to celebrate the marriage of Henry VIII to Anne of Cleves, ‘with
4 Gothic materialities: Regina Maria Roche, the Minerva Press, and the bibliographic spread of Irish gothic fiction Evocative of the nationally transformative potential of travel sketched in The old Irish baronet (1808) and The tradition of the castle (1824), Regina Maria Roche's The castle chapel (1825) establishes the global journey of one of its two protagonists as the key to restored and refreshed identities at home. Compelled by his dependent status to conciliate the favour of a rich uncle by travelling first to India and then
1 Material backgrounds: print, dissent, and the social society How did Hood become a writer and illustrator whose every utterance is liable to play? Answering this question means looking afresh at Hood’s background and the route he followed into the literary profession. The first two chapters of this book are particularly concerned with three aspects of Hood’s upbringing and apprenticeship: his early exposure to the burgeoning marketplace of printed products, the culture of dissent that shaped his family life and schooling, and the social and political
Medicine was transformed in the eighteenth century. Aligning the trajectories of intellectual and material wealth, this book uncovers how medicine acquired a new materialism as well as new materials in the context of global commerce and warfare. It studies the expansion of medicine as it acquired new materials and methods in an age of discovery and shows how eighteenth-century therapeutics encapsulates the intellectual and material resources of conquest. Bringing together a wide range of sources, the book argues that the intellectual developments in European medicine were inextricably linked to histories of conquest, colonisation and the establishment of colonial institutions. Medicine in the eighteenth-century colonies was shaped by the two main products of European mercantilism: minerals and spices. Forts and hospitals were often established as the first signs of British settlement in enemy territories, like the one in Navy Island. The shifting fortunes on the Coromandel Coast over the eighteenth century saw the decline of traditional ports like Masulipatnam and the emergence of Madras as the centre of British trade. The book also explores the emergence of materia medica and medical botany at confluence of the intellectual, spiritual and material quests. Three different forms of medical knowledge acquired by the British in the colonies: plants (columba roots and Swietenia febrifuga), natural objects and indigenous medical preparations (Tanjore pills). The book examines the texts, plants, minerals, colonial hospitals, dispensatories and the works of surgeons, missionaries and travellers to demonstrate that these were shaped by the material constitution of eighteenth century European colonialism.
8 Materialities of displacement: borders in contemporary Macedonia Rozita Dimova The 246 km long border between the Republic of Macedonia (hereinafter Macedonia) and Greece sets off at Lake Prespa, crosses the fertile Pelagonia valley, runs across the steep mountainous wedges of the Nidze and Kozuf mountains, cuts short the valley of the river Vardar, and ends north of the Dojran Lake in eastern Macedonia (see Figure 8.1). The two countries are connected by three border crossings: Medzitlija-Niki near the towns of Bitola-Florina, Bogorodica-Evzoni near
With Didi-Huberman’s anti-Platonism firmly established in Confronting Images , the following decade was dedicated to examining the image’s material existence. This has been traditionally regarded as a minor concern for art historians, who have maintained a hierarchical privileging of the form over matter and signified over signifier. In this chapter I will examine Didi-Huberman’s concern with matter and materiality as he participates in the broader critique of representation underway at EHESS. It is critical to recognise that Didi-Huberman is part of the
4 Recycling materials, recycling lives: cardboard publishers in Latin America Lucy Bell Latin American editoriales cartoneras are small, independent publishers that make their books by hand out of recycled cardboard and aim to sell them at prices lower than those of large publishing houses. This cultural movement first began in Buenos Aires in the wake of the 2001 economic crisis, during which unemployment rates soared and people had a home one week but were homeless the next. One of the most visible impacts of the deep recession was the appearance of thousands