Review of Javier Moreno-Luzón and Xosé M. Núñex Seixas, eds. Metaphors of Spain: Representations of Spanish National Identity in the Twentieth Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Jose Hierro
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Spanish National Identity

Faeries, Aliens, and Leviathans: Science and Fantasy in Ian McDonald's King of Morning, Queen of Day

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-303
Author(s):  
Richard Howard
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Irish Studies ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
Unexplored Area ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Cultural Movement

Irish science fiction is a relatively unexplored area for Irish Studies, a situation partially rectified by the publication of Jack Fennell's Irish Science Fiction in 2014. This article aims to continue the conversation begun by Fennell's intervention by analysing the work of Belfast science fiction author Ian McDonald, in particular King of Morning, Queen of Day (1991), the first novel in what McDonald calls his Irish trilogy. The article explores how McDonald's text interrogates the intersection between science, politics, and religion, as well as the cultural movement that was informing a growing sense of a continuous Irish national identity. It draws from the discipline of Science Studies, in particular the work of Nicholas Whyte, who writes of the ways in which science and colonialism interacted in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Ireland.

Howling “A Hot Time”: The Paradoxical Anthem of the Progressive Age

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
DEIRDRE O'CONNELL
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Black Culture ◽  
Time Served ◽  
Musical Traditions

This study investigates the shifting meanings invested in the ragtime song “A Hot Time in the Old Time, Tonight” at the turn of the twentieth century. Complicating the tune's place in the canon of military, political, and national anthems was its associations with “vice,” black culture, and white supremacy. By mapping the ritual and representational uses of the song, this investigation demonstrates how “A Hot Time” served paradoxical functions that simultaneously affirmed and unsettled American exceptionalism. In doing so, this article traces the processes of obfuscation whereby black musical traditions and white supremacy defined America's distinctive national identity.

A Tower of Tangled Histories: The Upper Silesia Tower in Poznań and the Making of an Unromantic Poland, 1911–1955

Slavic Review ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 566-590
Author(s):  
Patryk Babiracki
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Cold War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Material Structure ◽  
World War ◽  
Upper Silesia ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The City ◽  
Over Time

Engaging with regional, international, and spatial histories, this article proposes a new reading of the twentieth-century Polish past by exploring the vicissitudes of a building known as the Upper Silesia Tower. Renowned German architect Hans Poelzig designed the Tower for the 1911 Ostdeutsche Ausstellung in Posen, an ethnically Polish city under Prussian rule. After Poland regained its independence following World War I, the pavilion, standing centrally on the grounds of Poznań’s International Trade Fair, became the fair's symbol, and over time, also evolved into visual shorthand for the city itself. I argue that the Tower's significance extends beyond Posen/Poznań, however. As an embodiment of the conflicts and contradictions of Polish-German historical entanglements, the building, in its changing forms, also concretized various efforts to redefine the dominant Polish national identity away from Romantic ideals toward values such as order, industriousness, and hard work. I also suggest that eventually, as a material structure harnessed into the service of socialism, the Tower, with its complicated past, also brings into relief questions about the regional dimensions of the clashes over the meaning of modernity during the Cold War.

scholarly journals Problematizing Olympic Nationality

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 374-379
Author(s):  
Peter J. Spiro
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
Sports Teams ◽  
Olympic Athletes ◽  
Nation States ◽  
International Solidarity

One can hope that the convening of the Tokyo Olympics will be a cause for global celebration. Tokyo could prove a focal point for international solidarity, a moment of relief and release after all of humanity faced down an insidious, invisible, and largely indiscriminate attacker. Unified as we otherwise may be, athletes will still come to the Games as representatives of nation-states. That may be an unavoidable organizing principle. Less justifiable will be the requirement that athletes be nationals of the states they play for. Under the Olympic Charter and the rules of particular sporting federations, athletes are subject to a non-state nationality regime that restricts the capacity of individuals to compete for countries for whose delegations they would otherwise qualify. This regime looks to maintain the putative integrity of Olympic competition by maintaining the unity of sporting and sociological national identity. But that legacy of the twentieth century no longer works in the twenty first. Nationality and associated criteria for participant eligibility undermine the autonomy of athletes and the quality of participation. The rules can no longer guarantee any affective tie between athlete and nation, instead arbitrarily enabling some, but not all, to compete on the basis of citizenship decoupled from identity. We don't require that athletes playing for our professional sports teams hale from the cities they represent. There's no reason why we need to require more of our Olympic athletes.

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s Essentials of Hindutva: A Study of Its Philosophical Elements to Hindu Nationalism

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-160
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Hindu Nationalism ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Rhetorical Style ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Jawaharlal Nehru ◽  
Extended Essay

In the early twentieth-century, the concepts of Hindutva, Samyavada or Nationalism and national identity, reconstructed amid currents of globalization and neo-colonialism. During this period, the calls for an independent India reached its height. While, Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru believed modern India’s strength depended on incorporating the solidarities of all Indians as they stood on the precipice of the postcolonial age, Veer Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966), an ethnocentric nationalist, held that a strong Hindu nation was the only way to guarantee India’s security against the Muslim other and the British imperialism. Being the philosopher of Hindutva, Savarkar represented the ethno-nationalistic component to Hindu nationalism and looked to cultural motifs in order to unify the “true” people of India. He, therefore, wrote glorified histories of India and its millennia-old cultural traditions in his essays. This article analyzes and historically contextualizes the timing and the rhetorical style of V. D. Savarkar’s infamous extended essay “Essentials of Hindutva”. Received 9th December 2020; Revised 2nd March 2021; Accepted 20th March 2021

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