«Constitutional Fever»? Constitutional Integration in Post-Revolutionary France, Great Britain and Germany, 1814–c.1835
This article proposes a comparative perspective on the role of constitutions in ...European political cultures from 1814 to c.1835. Through its analysis of constitutions first as a means to legitimising post-revolutionary monarchies, and secondly as a means to integrating the divided societies in France, Great Britain as well as the German states, this article suggests two major results: 1) Constitutions were a central instrument that was imagined by post-revolutionary European societies in order to open up an «evolutionary» path to political progress and thereby finally «end» or «prevent» further revolutionary changes. 2) The major challenges to constitutional integration were posed by the emergence of competing political groups that often demanded a strengthening of certain parts of the constitutions or their further reform. The problems, which were faced by almost all political actors regarding the acceptance of these new imperatives of party politics and the different constitutional «solutions» that they had developed to meet these challenges, provide explanations for the different constitutional paths that were taken by Great Britain, the German states and France during the early 1830s. In Great Britain, a common constitutionalist language enabled a precarious understanding amongst the competing groups, whereas anti-pluralist constitutional conceptions led to constitutional instability in France and even damaged the very idea of constitutional integration in Germany thus benefitting a «unification first»-approach in the German states.
No monolithic vision of the African American novel is offered but, rather, a fair, balanced, and nuanced exploration that pays close attention to the rich diversity of forms, styles, and themes ...developed over time by a broad range of novelists. ...the book is exhaustively researched and fluently written in a crystal-clear style that is happily free of jargon. Morrison and Walker, in turn, helped create new possibilities for female African American writers by creating "black female perspectives" that "shed new light on cultural attitudes toward race and gender" (159). An invaluable part of Babb's book is its second half, which details the development of several important literary genres that African American novelists have employed but that seldom get the scholarly attention they deserve as "serious" literature. Even though the adaptation in 2009 of Sapphire's Push into the film Precious preserved the integrity of the novel, Babb stresses that most African American novelists continue to face serious problems when attempting to have their books converted into films.
Well before Billie Holiday's doleful rendition of "Strange Fruit," African American women playwrights directly confronted the subject of lynching. In addition, Angelina Weld Grimké's Rachel (1916) ...offers a prime example of how Black lesbian writers used coding and nuance to present queer content in lynching dramas. This reading of Grimké's work reveals how the Black lynched body and the Black lesbian body both become culturally abject within the sexual economy of lynching. Taking a holistic view of Grimké's oeuvre, I analyze Rachel alongside her erotic poetry and short stories, establishing multiple connections between the theme of lynching and lesbian longing. Grimké kept her own longings private, submerged in her literary output, yet similarities in themes, figures, and images suggest that Grimké resisted racism and homophobia simultaneously. By listening closely for how lesbian desire appears, often through absence, critics can develop new perspectives on these often overwrought, sentimental writings from the earliest moments of the Harlem Renaissance. I urge a more expansive approach to women's queerness in these incipient years, prior to Nella Larsen's Passing (1929), or the "downlow" coolness of Black women's blues music.
The gift of centering genius and joy in education is one of the many gifts our ancestors left us with. Here, Muhammad explores joy as it relates to the lineage of Black people with the purpose of ...using Black historic teachings as a guide toward advancing the state of education for all youth today.
"Time-Sensitive: Teaching Afrofuturism Through the Nineteenth Century" describes a strategy of teaching Afrofuturism that exposes its long and ongoing history. Borrowing from Tavia Nyong'o's ...anarchaeological historical methodologies, this essay argues that teaching literary history in a non-linear way disrupts students' sense that they exist outside of--that is, at the end of--historical time, inviting students to see themselves as acting within a yet-uncertain, always-developing future and linking in-class instruction to political praxis.
Political moderation is the touchstone of democracy, which could not function without compromise and bargaining, yet it is one of the most understudied concepts in political theory. How can we ...explain this striking paradox? Why do we often underestimate the virtue of moderation? Seeking to answer these questions, A Virtue for Courageous Minds examines moderation in modern French political thought and sheds light on the French Revolution and its legacy.
The period from 1814 to 1848, long considered to be "a gloomy political time" (Pierre Rosanvallon) is nowadays rousing renewed interest. The liberal thought of the time (Tocqueville's, Guizot's, ...etc.) has notably been revisited in depth over the past thirty years. Royer-Collard is one of the least well-known among the Liberals, though he was the principle leader of the
Doctrinaires and the first inventor of governmental liberalism. The reasons of such a relative obscurity are probably to be found in the fact that he never was in power and that his work is reduced, for the main part, to speeches always hard to do a close examination. His political career during the Restoration, however, comes rather as a surprise: although he was the
theoretician behind the Charte, he took a part in the drafting of the Adresse des 221 and presented it to the king in 1830. Is it legitimate to think that he was a man reasoning overcome by the circumstances or must we rather consider that, despite
appearances, he remained faithful to his convictions? While trying to elucidate those questions, we are led to think that, if the
juste milieu policy definitely was an insufficient response to the development of social democracy, it has recovered, albeit rather paradoxically, with the advent of universal suffrage, a certain pertinence when the matter will be to put down roots of
the Republic and even more after, when we shall have the idea of the necessary submission of national will to legal principles.
Longtemps considérée comme "un temps politique morne" (Pierre Rosanvallon), la période 1814-1848 suscite à nouveau l'intérêt ; la pensée libérale du moment a notamment fait l'objet d'un important réexamen depuis une grosse trentaine d'années (Tocqueville, Guizot, etc.). Mais Royer-Collard est un des libéraux les moins connus, alors qu'il fut la figure principale des doctrinaires et le premier concepteur d'un libéralisme de gouvernement. Sans doute faut-il chercher les raisons de sa moindre considération dans le fait qu'il n'exerça jamais directement le pouvoir et que son oeuvre politique est réduite, pour l'essentiel, à des discours dont l'examen est toujours plus difficile. Quoi qu'il en soit, son itinéraire sous la Restauration peut surprendre : bien qu'il eût été le théoricien de la charte, il prit pourtant une part à la rédaction de l'Adresse des 221 qu'il présenta au roi en 1830. Faut-il penser qu'il fut un homme de raisonnement dominé par les circonstances ou doit-on admettre, qu'en dépit des apparences, il resta fidèle à ses convictions? En cherchant à répondre à ces questions, on tentera de montrer que si la ligne de juste milieu fut certainement en son temps une réponse insuffisante au développement de la démocratie sociale, elle trouva par la suite, non sans quelques paradoxes, après l'établissement du suffrage universel, une nouvelle pertinence quand il s'agira d'enraciner la République et quand on croira nécessaire de soumettre la volonté nationale au respect de principes juridiques.
In this article, I examine the patterns of black female mobility as represented in three African American mulatta novels: William Wells Brown’s Clotel (1853), Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Iola ...Leroy (1893), and Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins’s Hagar’s Daughter (1901-1902). First of all, I discuss their protagonists’ movement into bondage and forced travel resulting from the withdrawal of their father’s protection. Such imposed mobility is countered by the self-determined action undertaken by the black heroines not only to free themselves but also to reunite their families. As a result, their itineraries are circular rather than linear and frequently take the form of a homecoming. In contrast to the paradigm of the traditional slave narrative, which focuses on a single individual, the novels I analyze simultaneously follow two or three generations of family members. Such representations result in a chaotic aesthetics that successfully depicts the unpredictability of the fate of black families under slavery, and it foregrounds the relationality of the novels’ characters.
Aspiring thinkers require a stage for their performance and an audience to help give their actions distinction and meaning. To be made durable and influential, their charismatic stories have to be ...framed by supporting ideals, practices, and institutions. Although the biographies of the Empire's most famous thinkers have a comfortable platform in modern Russia's printed record, scholars have yet to explore fully the intimate context surrounding their activities in the early nineteenth century. There is, as a result, a certain homeless quality to our understandings of Imperial Russian culture, which this history of one extremely productive home will help us correct.—from The House in the Garden The House in the Garden explores the role played by domesticity in the making of Imperial Russian intellectual traditions. It tells the story of the Bakunins, a distinguished noble family who in 1779 chose to abandon their home in St. Petersburg for a rustic manor house in central Russia's Tver Province. At the time, the Russian government was encouraging its elite subjects to see their private lives as a forum for the representation of imperial virtues and norms. Drawing on the family's vast archive, Randolph describes the Bakunins' attempts to live up to this ideal and to convert their new home, Priamukhino, into an example of modern civilization. In particular, Randolph shows how the Bakunin home fostered the development of a group of charismatic young students from Moscow University, who in the 1830s sought to use their experiences at Priamukhino to reimagine themselves as agents of Russia's enlightenment. Some of the story Randolph tells is familiar to historians. The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, whose early philosophical evolution Randolph describes, was born at Priamukhino, while the radical critic Vissarion Belinsky claimed to have been transformed by his experiences there. When Tom Stoppard sought to portray the spiritual history of the Russian intelligentia in his trilogy, The Coast of Utopia , he chose Priamukhino as the scene for act 1. Yet Randolph's research allows us to watch this drama from a radically different perspective. It shows how the culture of Russian Idealism—so long presumed to be a product of alienation—actually relied on the support provided by the cult of distinction that the Russian government had built around noble homes. It also allows us to see the other actors and agents of private life—and most notably, the Bakunin women—as participants in the creation of modern Russian social thought. The result is a work that revises our understanding of Russian intellectual history while also contributing to the histories of women, gender, private life, and memory in nineteenth-century Russia.
Notwithstanding America's sullied origin story, prominent African Americans like First Lady Michelle Obama would be taken to task for her redemptive comment, that she is proud of her country, whether ...or not for the first time in her life (Becoming 2018). Barnard argues that the quote "works against its own purpose" (1) because its original reference is to Nisus and Euryalus, who are on the hero Aeneas's side but whose midnight raid might be regarded as an act of terror. Alternatively, the problem might be in power itself, so that in the case of Obama, the paradox of being black (formerly a subjugated position in the U. S.) and president (the seat of power) leads to an "enabling of the rhetoric of empire" (173).
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