Orientalist Ambivalence Lucas van der Deijl
Early modern low countries,
12/2022, Letnik:
6, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This article compares the first two Dutch translations of the Qur’an printed in the Dutch Republic: De Arabische Alkoran (1641) published by Barent Adriaensz Berentsma and Mahomets Alkoran (1657) ...published by Jan Rieuwertsz. It builds upon previous bibliographic research by quantifying the abbreviation of the Surahs in the two editions, identifying the sources of the paratexts, and describing the different strategies for translation. This analysis reveals how different editing choices reflect contradictory ideological attitudes among the publishers and translators involved. These producers of the first Qur’an translations echoed the widespread hostility towards Islam in Western discourses while also highlighting the peaceful nature of Muhammad and the similarities between the Bible and the Qur’an. This ‘Orientalist ambivalence’ not only resonated in local debates about freedom of conscience among Amsterdam Mennonites, but also signalled a more fundamental epistemological uncertainty following the rise of Cartesianism in the Dutch Early Enlightenment.
G. M. Hamburg, Russia’s Path Toward Enlightenment: Faith, Politics, and Reason, 1500–1801. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016, 912 p. ISBN: 9780300113136
This is the first volume to consistently examine Soviet engagement with world literature from multiple institutional and disciplinary perspectives: intellectual history, literary history and theory, ...comparative literature, translation studies, diaspora studies. Its emphasis is on the lessons one could learn from the Soviet attention to world literature; as such, the present volume makes a significant contribution to current debates on world literature beyond the field of Slavic and East European Studies and foregrounds the need to think of world literature pluralistically, in a manner that is not restricted by the agendas of Anglophone academe.
In the last 30 years, historical research has intensively focused on early modern practice of note-taking and the compilation of commonplace-books. In this respect, headings choice is a still ...poorly investigated theme. This choice is crucial for the organization of access to information when knowledge is stored in external repositories. In this paper, I would like to show that early modern learned men addressed this technical problem and tried somehow to tackle it. By means of sources mostly from the 17th century, I show that scholars formulated both theoretical and practical rules to create a working indexing system as a tool to discriminate between remembering and forgetting. My hypothesis, in this respect, is that the novelty in the choice of subject headings for early modern commonplace-books and filing cabinets lies in the fact that subject headings became a choice. This paved the way to an epoch-making transition from a universal topics to a universal index upon all authors.
This essay elucidates the deep affinity between the political theories of E.H. Carr and Reinhold Niebuhr. Central to this affinity was their shared advocacy of an ongoing dialectic between vision and ...critique, or (in their words) utopianism and realism. The immediate justification for this essay is the surprising dearth of extended comparisons of Carr and Niebuhr, even though Carr in The Twenty Years’ Crisis acknowledges a particular debt to Niebuhr and cites Niebuhr seven times in that work. Comparing Carr and Niebuhr also reveals the Marxist roots of their dialectical approach and highlights their adamant refusal to proclaim themselves ‘realists’. The essay thus encourages the discipline of international relations to seek its genealogy in the tradition of radical political thought and to reassess the common assumption that Carr and Niebuhr are founders of the modern realist approach. In the author’s view, the ‘ultimate optimism’ of Carr and Niebuhr, though widely underappreciated, is compelling.
Founded in 1969 by Dr. Harold “Hal” Linstone and re-named in 1970, Technological Forecasting & Social Change is one of the oldest journals in the field of technology/innovation management. Today ...TF&SC is the field's highest-cited journal, and the one with the highest Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) rating. Dr. Linstone and his circle provided the foundation for a 21st century elite academic journal. We use early materials from Dr. Linstone's private files, and early papers published in TF&SC, to trace the origins of the journal and to investigate the evolution of its focus. We find that the original focuses of the journal are still relevant today, though the set of tools used has evolved and must continue to evolve. The article fills gaps left by the recent bibliographic studies of the journal's development.
•The Founding Editor created a thriving journal and an important academic discipline.•Persisting themes include K- waves, complexity, forecasting techniques, technology assessment and futures, and collaborative research.•The tool set for technology assessment and forecasting has evolved and will continue to do so.•Many of the mathematical techniques promulgated early on proved impractical for 21st-century problems.•Breezes of energy shortages, environmental damage, and other detriments, felt in the journal’s earliest years, are now full-blown storms.
•This article explores the interesting speculations of Vladimir Odoevsky, a nineteenth-century Russian prince.•He prognosed various trajectories for human civilization, including both big wins and ...fail states.•He imagined immense benefits from future technology; but also imagined that its progress could imperil our species.•Envisioning climate control and planet-wide cities, he suggested lunar prospecting to avert resource depletion on Earth.•Attempting to critique suffering-focused ethics, he also provided an interesting precursor to ‘world-exploder’ arguments.
The interesting and under-appreciated contributions of the 19th century Russian Prince, Vladimir Odoevsky, are explored. Odoevsky provided a number of speculations on the long-term futures and trajectories of human civilization. His case is interesting because he was sensitive to both the potential for technological progress to garner huge benefit, but also the risks it poses to our species. Indeed, he provides a very early speculation upon an omnicide scenario.
Inspired by contemporary scientific predictions that a comet will collide with Earth at a set date in the far future, Odoevsky was compelled to attempt to predict as to what civilization might look like at that time.
Not only were his answers surprisingly prescient for a 19th century writer, but many of the themes he dealt with remain pertinent within contemporary future studies. Not only did he envision geoengineering, climate control, and planetary defense against near-Earth objects, but he also speculated upon the expansion of humanity’s resource footprint beyond the Earth. Elsewhere, through a critical engagement with utilitarianism, he provided an early example of the so-called ‘benevolent world-exploder’ arguments against suffering-focused ethics.
Canons of intellectual “greats” anchor the history and scope of academic disciplines. Within international relations (IR), such a canon emerged in the mid-twentieth century and is almost entirely ...male. Why are women thinkers absent from IR’s canon? We show that it is not due to a lack of international thought, or that this thought fell outside established IR theories. Rather it is due to the gendered and racialized selection and reception of work that is deemed to be canonical. In contrast, we show what can be gained by reclaiming women’s international thought through analyses of three intellectuals whose work was authoritative and influential in its own time or today. Our findings question several of the basic premises underpinning IR’s existing canon and suggest the need for a new research agenda on women international thinkers as part of a fundamental rethinking of the history and scope of the discipline.
This is a study of ekphrasis, the art of making listeners and readers 'see' in their imagination through words alone, as taught in ancient rhetorical schools and as used by Greek writers of the ...Imperial period (2nd-6th centuries CE). The author places the practice of ekphrasis within its cultural context, emphasizing the importance of the visual imagination in ancient responses to rhetoric, poetry and historiography. By linking the theoretical writings on ekphrasis with ancient theories of imagination, emotion and language, she brings out the persuasive and emotive function of vivid language in the literature of the period. This study also addresses the contrast between the ancient and the modern definitions of the term ekphrasis, underlining the different concepts of language, literature and reader response that distinguish the ancient from the modern approach. In order to explain the ancient understanding of ekphrasis and its place within the larger system of rhetorical training, the study includes a full analysis of the ancient technical sources (rhetorical handbooks, commentaries) which aims to make these accessible to non-specialists. The concluding chapter moves away from rhetorical theory to consider the problems and challenges involved in 'turning listeners into spectators' with a particular focus on the role of ekphrasis within ancient fiction. Attention is also paid to texts that lie at the intersection of the modern and ancient definitions of ekphrasis, such as Philostratos' Imagines and the many ekphraseis of buildings and monuments to be found in Late Antique literature.
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