British discourses on Europe: self/other and National identities

Britain’s stormy relationship with the European Union is a frequently cited illustration of a Eurosceptic state par excellence. Possessive of a strong national identity, a unique island status, a plethora of wartime experiences and a tenacious hold over its sovereignty, Britain has long been invested with an ‘awkward partner’ status. This dissertation seeks to unravel such presuppositions to answer the central research question: how has British national identity been forged and constructed by competing political elite visions of Europe? I deploy a discourse analytic approach and the Self/Other nexus to examine elite configurations of Europe over three critical events in European integration history. The empirical findings suggest three things. Firstly,discursive constructions of Europe play a fundamental role in determining perceptions of national identity. Secondly, the emerging trend in poststructuralist discourse analysis that views the Other not as a single, radical, hostile adversary, but as a whole array of much subtler and less easily defined Others is pertinent to identity construction. Finally, although national identities are perceived as contingent on previous conceptualisations and shifts in identity are subsequently slow and incremental, the case of Britain actually reveals a range of discontinuities in its nationhood over the historical events

The regional geopolitics of the strait of Gibraltar

Security of passage of the Strait of Gibraltar is an imperative for the world community. To achieve this, there must be stability on the northern and southern shores of the Strait. Peace in the region is currently threatened by the "creeping jurisdiction" which both Spain and Morocco wish to exert over the waters of the Strait. Other factors which threaten stability are the historical rivalry which exists between Spain and the Islamic southern shore; the legacy of disputed sovereignty in the Crown Colony of Gibraltar and the Spanish Plazas in North Africa; the economic divide betwen the EC and Maghreb along the Strait axis; and the possible threat of militant Islam. Contentions also exist between Morocco and Algeria, eg the Western Saharan War. The re-establishment of a strong "power hierarchy" in the area must be supported by such international instruments as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982). The Crown Colony and the Spanish Plazas must be decolonized once Spain is firmly integrated into the EC and NATO, and once Morocco has reached a level of economic and political development that is condusive to closer ties with Western institutions

A Tale of Two Paradigms: How Genealogical and Comparative Historical analysis can help reset the intractable debate over the causation of ideological violence

This study responds to the endemic lack of clarity and consensus afflicting academic and policy discussions on the causes of ideological violence and, by extension, the appropriate means for preventing/containing it. I trace, conceptualise, and problematise the long-standing debate between two deeply entrenched oppositional camps or ‘paradigms’ – heuristically dubbed the ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’ paradigms of ideological violence, respectively – that propose competing explanations for the causation of ideological violence; the former considering it a product of irrational individual dysfunction, the latter viewing it as a rational (if often misguided) response to societal dysfunction. Further, I show that extant attempts at reconciling/synthesising these paradigms have, to date, proven problematic. I explore how and why these opposing paradigms emerged and why debate between them persists. I argue that they are shaped, perpetuated and marred by multiple extra-academic dynamics and naturalised assumptions and conclude that clarity and consensus is unlikely unless we can ‘reset’ the debate, making a conscious decision to ‘step back’ from our extant paradigms/assumptions and approach the phenomenon with fresh eyes. I propose and demonstrate two methodological approaches that – used in conjunction – can contribute towards this end. Firstly, I propose that – and demonstrate how - Genealogical Analysis can aid in this ‘stepping back’ by denaturalising our entrenched assumptions on the causes of ideological violence (i.e., our extant paradigms) by uncovering how and why those assumptions came to be held and reified. Secondly, I propose and demonstrate Comparative Historical Analysis’ utility as a tool that can aid in re-approaching the phenomena with fresh eyes by helping - gradually and collaboratively - to construct a new set of more methodologically-rigorous assumptions (i.e., a new paradigm) upon which extant research built upon either extant paradigm can be resituated, reinterpreted, de-limited, and synthesised, and further research can be premised

THEMES IN MODERN AFRICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE Festschrift for Tekeste Negash

none2Modern African Historiography State and Society Reflection on Basis Themes in African Studies and MethodologiesopenLars Berge; Irma TaddiaLars Berge; Irma Taddi

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes, supplement 129, June 1974

This special bibliography lists 280 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in May 1974

Subjectivity Regained? German-Language Writing from Eastern Europe and the Balkans through an East-West Gaze

This project uncovers the role of recent German-Balkan works in articulating transnational identity in and through literature. Drawing on social and political models of European identity representations as well as on studies on stigma, trauma, and diasporic cultures as distinct historical formations, I contend that migrant fictions from Eastern Europe and the Balkans not only illuminate the concepts and demarcations operative in European collective imaginations but also introduce an Eastern European/Balkan dimension regarding the formation of modern identities beyond a national focus. To investigate this process, I focus on three Eastern European expatriates: the Bulgarian-born German and Austrian writers Rumjana Zacharieva and Dimitre Dinev and the Russian-German Wladimir Kaminer. The dissertation begins with an overview of postcolonial and Western theories of subjectivity and hybridity within the context of German literary-critical discourse on alterity, migration, and Turkish-German writings to argue that the historical and cultural context from which Eastern Europe/the Balkans have developed as Europe's "Other within" requires a reconfiguration of present theoretical models. In historiographic fashion, this thesis emphasizes the role of Ottoman and Soviet legacies and Western domination on the formation of Balkan subaltern identities. Attending to a tradition of Balkanist discourse that engages the internal bipolar demarcation of Balkan identities as part Western, part Oriental, I reconsider in chapters 3 and 4 how Dinev and Zacharieva's writings negotiate the experience of migration from East to West and articulate particular kinds of Balkan identities as a response to competing representations of the Balkans and the West. In the fifth chapter, my application of the Russian discourse on itself and Europe in examining Kaminer's works transcends the discussion of migration and Balkan identities to offer a related, yet differentiated, account of the manifold processes that surround other Eastern European writings in German. By analyzing these narratives through an East-West lens, the study shows how thinking about identity and migration in literary and historical perspectives proves useful for understanding the shifting identities and borders in Germanic Europe and beyond

The American Western in Canadian Literature

The Western, with its stoic cowboys and quickhanded gunslingers, is an instantly recognizable American genre that has achieved worldwide success. Cultures around the world have embraced but also adapted and critiqued the Western as part of their own national literatures, reinterpreting and expanding the genre in curious ways. Canadian Westerns are almost always in conversation with their American cousins, influenced by their tropes and traditions, responding to their politics, and repurposing their structures to create a national literary phenomenon. The American Western in Canadian Literature examines over a century of the development of the Canadian Western as it responds to the American Western, to evolving literary trends, and to regional, national, and international change. Beginning with Indigenous perspectives on the genre, it moves from early manifestations of the Western in Christian narratives of personal and national growth, and its controversial pulp-fictional popularity in the 1940s, to its postmodern and contemporary critiques, pushing the boundary of the Western to include Northerns, Northwesterns, and post-Westerns in literature, film, and wider cultural imagery. The American Western in Canadian Literature is more than a simple history. It uses genre theory to comment on historical perspectives on nation and region. It includes overviews of Indigenous and settler-colonial critiques of the Western, challenging persistent attitudes to Indigenous people and their traditional territories that are endemic to the genre. It illuminates the way that the Canadian Western enshrines, hagiographies, and ultimately desacralizes aspects of Canadian life, from car culture to extractive industries to assumptions about a Canadian moral high ground. This is a comprehensive, highly readable, and fascinating study of an underexamined genre