Nazlı's photographic games: Said and art history in a contrapuntal mode

ABSTRACT

Through a focus on photographic portraits commissioned in the late nineteenth century by the Ottoman-Egyptian Princess Nazl? Han?m, Roberts analyses the ways they tested Ottoman and western conventions. An examination of Nazl?'s strategic engagement with photography in this period positions her within the often-separated domains of Egyptian nationalism, Ottoman political reform, western Orientalist art and a proto-feminist moment of Egyptian women's history. One of the striking things about the Nazl? portraits is their transgressive inventiveness. This is transgression as Edward Said defines it, with an emphasis on crossing boundaries, testing and challenging limits, and cutting across expectations. Nazl?'s inventiveness is apparent through her canny experimentation with the codes of portrait photography and the ways she deploys her portraits as tokens of exchange within her culture and with her European interlocutors. Roberts argues that Nazl? Han?m's use of photography operates in a contrapuntal mode in the Saidean sense of a simultaneity of voices that sound against, as well as with, each other. Over the last three decades Said's writings have provided a crucial methodological framework for the critique of western Orientalist visual culture. Recently art historians have repositioned this corpus of western imagery in relation to art by practitioners from the region and addressed cultural exchanges. Said's seminal text Orientalism has been pivotal within these debates. Yet it is not so much this landmark book, but rather Said's writings on music, in which we can find an alternative approach to cross-cultural exchange. By transposing this model into the domain of art history, Roberts engages with his notion of reading contrapuntally. Said was interested in the broader applicability of this term, although its potential as an interpretive model for the visual arts remains unexamined. Through this case study of Nazl? Han?m's photographs, Roberts reassesses the value of Said's writings on music for understanding nineteenth-century visual culture.     

Cambodia's uncertain future

Japanese government interests in Southeast Asia continue to expand. Official speeches refer to the growth of a ‘community that acts together’, while institutional linkages have been strengthened with the creation of the ASEAN Plus Three process and by a proliferation of bilateral arrangements. These developing networks raise questions about Japan’s future orientation towards its wider region. This article assesses recent developments, by challenging some of the fundamental assumptions about Japan’s regional behaviour. First, it examines how a tendency to render mutually exclusive bilateral and multilateral forms of behaviour serves to obfuscate a focus on the fundamental processes of regional engagement. Second, this article delineates Japan’s changing orientation towards the region as part of a process of ‘complex regional multilateralism’, in which a range of often ad hoc engagements have resulted in a loose framework for interaction. In so doing, it suggests that Japan’s current policy-making approach towards Southeast Asia may be regarded as a continuation of policy that is, nevertheless, being buffeted by a range of – primarily regional – external influences. The resulting set of perceived strategies demonstrates not an either/or approach to regional engagement but, rather, shows how the Japanese government manages changing circumstances to carve out a new role for itself in Southeast Asia.     

The Limits of Control: The Market State,Divided Power,and the Response to 9/11

ABSTRACT

The 9/11 attacks demanded a response from the U.S. government, but designing and executing that response was not easily done. The United States is an advanced market society in which power is highly dispersed. Federal policymakers were confronted with challenges that we now regard as typical of the network form of governance. Their ability to act decisively was constrained by public law, by the political influence and superior knowledge of private industry, and by widespread skepticism about the legitimacy of federal authority. While many commentators worried about the excessive concentration of power in the federal executive branch after 9/11, it might be more accurate to say that the post-9/11 period was typified by a prolonged, and often unsuccessful, effort to induce cooperation and coordination by a range of public and private actors.     

Using Paint to Investigate Fires: An ATR‐IR Study of the Degradation of Paint Samples Upon Heating

Fire investigation is a challenging area for the forensic investigator. The aim of this work was to use spectral changes to paint samples to estimate the temperatures to which a paint has been heated. Five paint samples (one clay paint, two car paints, one metallic paint, and one matt emulsion) have been fully characterized by a combination of attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared (ATR‐IR), Raman, X‐ray fluorescence spectroscopy and powder X‐ray diffraction. The thermal decomposition of these paints has been investigated by means of ATR‐IR and thermal gravimetric analysis. Clear temperature markers are observed in the ATR‐IR spectra namely: loss of ν(C = O) band, >300°C; appearance of water bands on cooling, >500°C; alterations to ν(Si–O) bands due to dehydration of silicate clays, >700°C; diminution of ν(CO₃) and δ(CO₃) modes of CaCO₃, >950°C. We suggest the possible use of portable ATR‐IR for nondestructive, in situ analysis of paints.     

The role of criminal record in the federal sentencing guidelines

In this paper my concern is with the collective moral responsibility of criminal investigators for the outcomes of their investigations, bearing in mind that it is important to distinguish collective moral responsibility from, and relate it to, individual moral responsibility. In what sense, if any, are police detectives individually and collectively morally responsible for their success (or, for that matter, their failure) in gathering sufficient evidence to identify, arrest, and charge an offender who has committed a serious crime? Alternatively, in what sense are they morally responsible in cases where they identify, arrest, and charge an innocent person? And in what sense, if any, are police detectives individually and collectively morally responsible for the ultimate outcome of the trial, the finding by the courts of someone they have investigated and charged with a serious crime to be guilty or innocent?     

MWB Business Exchange Centres Ltd: The Practical Benefit Doctrine Marches On

In MWB Business Exchange Centres Ltd v Rock Advertising Ltd the Court of Appeal held that when an ongoing contract is varied so that one party's obligation to pay money is reduced, the variation is binding as long as the other party receives a practical benefit. In doing so, the Court of Appeal effectively confined the rule in Foakes v Beer to one‐off payments. This raises serious questions about the continued survival of Foakes v Beer. On the other hand, the Court of Appeal ensured that Foakes v Beer would not be killed off via equity by moving away from the suggestion in Collier v P & M J Wright (Holdings) Ltd that an agreed part‐payment of a debt by a debtor will always raise an estoppel preventing the creditor from demanding the remainder of the debt.     

An archival exploration of homicide--suicide and mass murder in the context of 19th-century American parricides

There has been little attempt to integrate contemporary studies of suicide and mass murder to homicide-suicides. The current research attempts to do so in the context of 19th-century parricides in America. This project uses archival records from The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, 1851-1899, resulting in a total of 231 incidents. Our results indicate that parricides, mass murders, and suicides tended to originate as spontaneous acts, usually during the course of an argument, gathering momentum as the interaction unfolded. We contend that suicide is one way of alleviating threats to offender's loss of self-identity.