E. P. Thompson: Last of the English Radicals?

Historian, activist and campaigner Edward Thompson is seen as an exemplar of an English radicalism which some see as a lineage with which the contemporary Labour party might fruitfully reconnect. This article examines how Thompson himself understood and characterised the ‘English radical idiom’ and traces his use and then abandonment of this idea in the middle years of his career. It offers some wider reflections about what the insights and lessons associated with his historical writings and reflections on the distinctive nature of English cultural and social thought.     

In Memoriam: C. C. Aronsfeld (1910–2002)

ABSTRACT

Enoch Powell's ‘rivers of blood’ speech, delivered forty years ago, in April 1968, had a significant impact on British politics. Commentators are divided between those who have defended Powell's remarks and those who have condemned them. Hillman evaluates the responses, and reassesses the speech. He focuses on five key issues: Powell's motives; whether the speech was racist and/or racialist; the relationship between the speech and Conservative Party policies; Powell's electoral impact; and his forecasts with regard to numbers of people with minority ethnic backgrounds within the population.     

The terrorism of the other: towards a contrapuntal reading of terrorism in India

This article advances an argument for a contrapuntal reading of terrorism using the case study of India. In recent years, the work of Edward Said has received some attention in the field of international relations. As yet, however, most readings of terrorism, either in its traditional form of terrorism studies or in the guise of critical terrorism studies, have not addressed the interface between terrorism and security, drawing on the work of Said. We take his work as a point of departure, enabling the analysis in this article to critique the ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis whilst also exploring the relationship between mass casualty terrorism and crowded places. In doing so, we draw attention to the instantiation of a series of attacks in India. The final section of this article pulls the analysis together so as to question the relationship between poverty and resilience.     

“东方主义”的另一种解读——艺术的东方主义

爱德华.W.萨义德(Edward.w.Said)于20世纪末阐发的东方主义理论作为后殖民主义文化批评理论之一引发了东西方学者的共鸣,因而风靡世界。在这一理论热潮的背景下,不免会出现套用或者误用的嫌疑,生搬硬套地阐释某一具体文本或作家的现象;或者出现以偏概全,完全被东方主义理论而障目,不见更丰富的文本含义等现象。为此,有必要阐明萨义德东方主义理论的缘起,从而明确"东方主义"理论具体的使用语境;通过对西方唯美主义思潮中表现出来的"日本风"等文学文化现象的解析,从另一个角度来阐释"东方主义"的丰富内涵;对唯美主义者追求的东方艺术与萨义德的东方主义理论进行比较研究,从而为同行们提供一个新的视角来理解唯美主义乃至东方主义。     

论杨德昌的诚意电影及其美学特征

杨德昌始终诚实地用胶片书写着自己对人生和社会现实入木三分的观察、敏锐的思考和无情的批判，并以深刻的思想内涵和卓越的艺术技巧，创造了华语电影的一座高峰。他有强烈的社会责任感和历史使命感。其电影不是类型片、娱乐片、商业片，而是一种诚意电影，具有独立制片的美学特征。     

Cuban Anti‐slavery Narrative through Postcolonial Eyes: Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s Sab

Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s Sab (1841) has come to be regarded as an iconic work in the canon of nineteenth‐century Cuban fiction, celebrated as much for its literary pedigree as for its radical combination of anti‐slavery and feminist ideas. Yet it has been the subject of very divergent critical appraisals. This essay sets out to breathe new life into Avellaneda’s novel by interpreting it through a postcolonial optic. Drawing on ideas from the scholarship of Edward Said and Frantz Fanon, as well as the ideas of literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, these pages explore the implications of its nationalist, racial, sexual and feminist politics for Sab’s anti‐slavery meaning. This postcolonial reading provides a possible solution for the conflicts between its various interpretations.     

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.     

Bellamy’s Looking Backward, 2000–1887, Globalism,and Race

This essay first considers the type of world that Edward Bellamy envisioned for the future and then holds his vision up for review. His society’s good points are discussed as well as the areas where Bellamy retains some of his 19th‐century limitations, especially where it comes to women’s role in the future. Because Bellamy did briefly turn to the international scene, the essay puts his version of international relations into the context of 21st‐century globalization. It is in this realm that Bellamy admits that his utopia is incomplete, a striking statement. Yet it is in the final realm of analysis—race—that Bellamy’s utopia is most swiftly criticized, since there are no people of color in America but they are to be found elsewhere on the planet. Finally, the article finishes with a few thoughts on the value of writing and reading fiction of this kind.     

Disrupting civility: amateur intellectuals,international lawyers and TWAIL as praxis

Abstract

This paper is a reflection on the role of intellectuals in engaging with Palestinian solidarity movements and liberation discourses, and on the place of international lawyers specifically within that context. The paper considers ‘the question of Palestine’ as a rigorous test for intellectuals in the Global North today, and examines particular debates over free speech, civility and balance that unfolded in the wake of Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza. It considers the interventions of international lawyers in these debates with reference to Edward Said’s ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ intellectuals, and explores ways in which anti-colonial international lawyers (as amateur intellectuals) can transcend prevailing professional orthodoxies to deploy language, arguments or tactics that rupture liberal legal processes and narratives on Palestine.     

Egyptian Cinema as a Tool in the Struggle Against Islamic Terrorism

The cinema has been used by Egyptian regimes, from the monarchy until Mubarak, to resist the political agenda of Islamic radicals and terrorists. Edward Said and others describe Islamic terrorists’ images in the Western media as “Western fantasies.” Nevertheless, for Egyptian intellectuals, terrorists were and remain a stark reality. In Egypt, the entire state apparatus was set in motion to fight Islamic terrorism. The state was unprepared for the massive popular uprising of 2011. While the direction that Egyptian culture will follow after Mubarak remains unclear, an important objective is to study pre-revolutionary Egyptian cinema and to understand its ideological tendencies.