The Mimetics and Discontents of Empire (original) (raw)
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The present book is the result of the conference ‘Renovatio, inventio, absentia imperii. From the Roman Empire to Contemporary Imperialism’, held in Brussels at the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Academia Belgica in Rome (September 11-13, 2014). At the heart of the conference was the ‘reception’, ‘Nachleben’ or ‘permanence’ of the Roman Empire, of an idea and a historical paradigm which since classical Antiquity has supported the most widespread claims to obtain and consolidate power. The volume’s focus is on culture in a broad sense, i.e. including besides the arts, philosophy, religion and, most importantly, discourse. As such, a wide array of themes are subjected to academic scrutiny. Whereas the main focus is on Europe and North America, some contributors also reach out towards non-Western contexts, whether or not directly related to the Roman example. A theoretical and sociological dimension is also added thanks to the discussion on methodological issues. More specifically, the following question(s) receive particular attention: what is our position as researchers, embedded in a contemporary, often Western, democratic and capitalist context; what about the notion of empire itself, its constituent elements and the kind of ideological prerogatives to which it is generally subjected; in other words, apart from the many historical variants and instances of reception of empire, through which filters can, and inevitably do, we approach this topic? A question that has become ever more pregnant since the beginning of the twenty-first century, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the events of September 11, which have revivified what could be called American ‘imperialism’, and at a time when an essentially economic variant, driven by ‘emerging’ powers such as China, has increasingly contested existing power structures. In light of such meta-historical awareness, this book touches as much on the nature of the Roman Empire as it does on its historical legacy and, more importantly so, on who claims the latter inheritance throughout the most diverse epochs. By discussing some highly contrasting views upon this topic, participants explore issues that are of fundamental importance to the writing, not only of cultural history, but also of history itself.
The present book is the result of the conference ‘Renovatio, inventio, absentia imperii. From the Roman Empire to Contemporary Imperialism’, held in Brussels at the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Academia Belgica in Rome (September 11-13, 2014). At the heart of the conference was the ‘reception’, ‘Nachleben’ or ‘permanence’ of the Roman Empire, of an idea and a historical paradigm which since classical Antiquity has supported the most widespread claims to obtain and consolidate power. The volume’s focus is on culture in a broad sense, i.e. including besides the arts, philosophy, religion and, most importantly, discourse. As such, a wide array of themes are subjected to academic scrutiny. Whereas the main focus is on Europe and North America, some contributors also reach out towards non-Western contexts, whether or not directly related to the Roman example. A theoretical and sociological dimension is also added thanks to the discussion on methodological issues. More specifically, the following question(s) receive particular attention: what is our position as researchers, embedded in a contemporary, often Western, democratic and capitalist context; what about the notion of empire itself, its constituent elements and the kind of ideological prerogatives to which it is generally subjected; in other words, apart from the many historical variants and instances of reception of empire, through which filters can, and inevitably do, we approach this topic? A question that has become ever more pregnant since the beginning of the twenty-first century, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the events of September 11, which have revivified what could be called American ‘imperialism’, and at a time when an essentially economic variant, driven by ‘emerging’ powers such as China, has increasingly contested existing power structures. In light of such meta-historical awareness, this book touches as much on the nature of the Roman Empire as it does on its historical legacy and, more importantly so, on who claims the latter inheritance throughout the most diverse epochs. By discussing some highly contrasting views upon this topic, participants explore issues that are of fundamental importance to the writing, not only of cultural history, but also of history itself.
Enchantments of modernity: empire, nation, globalization - Edited by Saurabh Dube
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2010
Arnold, Dean E. Social change and the evolution of ceramic production and distribution in a Maya community. xxx, 351 pp., maps, tables, figs, illus., bibliogr. Boulder: Univ.
Shifting interpretations of empire (co-authored with J. McAleer)
This special collection takes the broad theme of 'shifting interpretations' to highlight the dynamics at play in the acquisition, documentation and exhibition of objects in museums. The articles gathered here use the issue of 'empire' to discuss objects and institutions with global connections, analysing the consequences and legacies of 'empire' for such institutions. In some cases, the artefacts themselves have been used in a range of contexts, invoking diverse interpretations in different settings; in other instances, the theme of 'empire' is subject to changing discussion and debate. The inspiration for bringing together scholars working on these issues emerged during the conference held in October 2009 at the British Museum and the National Maritime Museum on 'Museums, Material Culture and Empire'. The resulting publication took the theme of 'Curating Empire', but it was clear from discussions at the conference that there were other exciting avenues of research which lay beyond the scope of that particular publication. 1 The Museums History Journal seemed the ideal forum in which to expand these stimulating discussions and to probe further the complexities of museums, representation and empire.
Literature of Empire: Difference, creativity, and cosmopolitanism
The Oxford World History of Empire, 2021
This chapter considers imperial and anti- imperial literatures in terms of the representation and dramatization of difference, as well as its subversion and interrogation. The first half of the chapter consists of three sections. The first considers literature’s key role in the education of imperial elites in Rome, China, the Middle East, and the Persianate world in the premodern era. The second section discusses how imperial literatures imagined the boundaries between the civilized self and the barbarian other, but it also shows how they illustrated the porosity of those boundaries. In the third section I examine how the idea of the “classical” was important to imperial literatures and civilizations, and how in the modern era Greek and Latin classics were appropriated by Asian and American writers and thinkers for their own political and cultural purposes. These appropriations signal how empires were sites for intellectual, linguistic, cultural, and literary exchange and hybridization, albeit in contexts of racial and gendered oppression. The second half of the chapter considers how the multilingualism of empires created linguistic choices for writers. By bringing together cultures, languages, and literatures, empires also produced distinctive cosmopolitanisms, which straddled the colonial-nationalist divide, and led to the authoring of texts that were simultaneously nationalist and cosmopolitan in orientation. These cosmopolitan nationalisms are indicative of how the shaping of political imaginations within and against empires were more complex than simply a move from empire to the nation- state. For some writers, becoming national was a burdensome process, sometimes intolerably so, and they give expression to the messiness of becoming national in their novels and short stories. One form of cosmopolitan politics was communism; the political imagination of socialist- inspired anti- colonial writers was formed within and against empires and by its very nature this imagination was transregional and internationalist, as was the literature it produced. Thus, while empires were politically and economically oppressive, they also expanded the range of literary traditions, aesthetic possibilities, linguistic choices, and creative opportunities for authors and poets, both imperial and colonized, for whom the dramatization of difference and its subversion became significant components in their writing.
The disappearance of the concept of empire
The Empire is a wife without dowry, a resounding and majestic word that is neither of any use nor any advantage. Neither Ferdinand II nor any of his predecessors possessed any province, any fortress, or even a palace in the entire empire in his capacity as Emperor.
Empires, Modernisation and Modernities
International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity, 2:1 2014
in examining four recent books, this essay explores some key facets of contemporary scholarship on empire and the making of the modern world. drawing on dipesh Chakrabarty's arguments about the often contingent relationship between modernisation as a set of material and institutional transformations and modernity as a cultural sensibility, it argues that the unfolding of the modern was messy, uneven, and remained in process until the age of decolonisation. The essay suggests that the range of modern formations that emerged out of empire-building were profoundly imprinted by local socio-political patterns and the weight of precolonial cultural traditions, meaning that modernisation never played out as an entirely homogenising force.
Ethics & International Affairs, 2011
In 2001, Frederick Cooper wrote that 'globalization talk is influential-and deeply misleading-for assuming coherence and direction instead of probing causes and processes'.(1) Burbank and Cooper heed this warning and focus very clearly and ably on the causes and processes of global empire building in this new book. They join a flurry of recent books linking empire, imperialism, and global or world history. Building on the groundbreaking works in this genre (2), this book differentiates itself by beginning in ancient Rome, rather than the 15th or 16th century, and expressly stating that it does not want to explain 'the expansion of Europe' (p. 5). While this may be strictly true, the traditional 'expansion of Europe' has here been replaced with 'the expansion of Eurasia' and the book does not really touch in great detail on the African empires (with which Cooper is undoubtedly familiar), or the pre-Columbian American empires. However, the book is successful in expanding the traditional story to encompass a wider Eurasian scope, drawing, undoubtedly, on Burbank's expertise in Russian history. The authors' unique contribution is that they 'focus instead on how different empires emerged, competed, and forged governing strategies, political ideas, and human affiliations over a long sweep of time' (p. 2).