Alexandre 1er et le regime representatif

Summary

Alexander I and Representative Government

This analysis of the attitudes of Alexander I towards representative government is based on fifty years of work on Russian political history, and in particular on a study of the international organization of the post‐Napoleonic peace and, more recently, the reign of Alexander I.

In the light of recent events in Russia, this essay suggests some obvious comparisons between Alexander I and Gorbachev. Both wanted to liberalize the government of their empire without damaging the legitimacy of the new institutions to be created with respect to the existing regime. Both were thrown out of power, the former to put a stop to reforms, the latter to speed them up, at the risk of destroying the legitimacy of the central authority over the various parts of the empire.     

The Death of the Author through False Translation in Mario Bellatin's Orientalised Japan

This article argues that Mario Bellatin's exploration of the potential relationship between writing, translation and physical deformity leads, perhaps unconsciously, to the continuation of exoticising stereotypes about ‘Oriental’ cultures. In El jardín de la señora Murakami, Shiki Nagaoka: una nariz de ficción, and Biografía ilustrada de Mishima, Bellatin resorts to Japanese characters to distance himself from his own writings, as if it were the culture that is the most alien to his own. His lucubrations about reading and writing are sometimes accompanied of exocitising and orientalist overtones, which he mocks at times.     

An extempore government in Syria

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