46 research outputs found
GIFTS AND INTERESTS: JOHN HALIFAX GENTLEMAN AND THE PURITY OF BUSINESS
This essay examines the rhetorical and narrative strategies Dinah Mulock Craik adopts in John Halifax in order to come to terms with a profoundly ambivalent Victorian perception of the process of commodification, the lure of profit and the social status of tradesmen, businessmen, and entrepreneurs. The analysis focuses on the interplay of gifts and interests that constitutes an important feature of this narrative of economic success. First, I briefly rehearse some Victorian arguments on the vulgarity of commercial and industrial modernity by looking at business manuals that evoke the ethic of the gift in order to legitimate money-making activities. I then address the issue of the âdouble truthâ of the gift (Bourdieu). This issue is crucial to an understanding of how Craikâs novel responds to the historical and ideological process whereby instrumental rationality comes to be naturalized. Finally I focus on the interaction between different âregimes of valueâ the novel. The text acknowledges the âsubjectiveâ truth of the gift (the habitus of generosity and altruism), especially through the narratorâs voice. Yet, the plot never fails to reward the pursuit of self-interest with symbolic and material gains. In other words, âsentimentalityâ and âeconomism,â the Scylla and Charybdis of gift theory, are represented simultaneously in John Halifax. My analysis emphasizes the latter because economism was not a dominant or unquestioned paradigm in Craikâs cultural template. That her novel articulates a story in which the pursuit of self-interest is not stigmatized or considered vulgar is significant in historical terms. Equally relevant is the emphasis on disinterestedness that marks the representation of John Halifaxâs upward mobility. Ultimately, the narrative distils the innocence or purity of business by a continuous re-negotiation of the balance between giving and taking, between the virtue of disinterestedness and the logic of maximization
Keywords: gift theory, business, John Halifax, self-interes
"The mind washes its hand in a basin":Walter Bagehot Literary Essays and Impure Criticism
Bagehotâs literary essays provide fertile ground for the exploration of mid-Victorian negotiations with notions of aesthetic impurity. Bagehot looked at the increasing democratization of culture and the changing habits of readers with more excitement than apprehension. His critical perspective was predicated not on an elitist form of detachment from the unrefined philosophies of the commercial classes, but on a kind of respectful proximity to the practicalities affecting the life of what he called the «transacting and trading multitude». In order to bring literature to business, Bagehot brought business into literature. His stance lacks purity and solemnity: standards of value imported from the business sphere co-habit with more traditional notions of aesthetic excellence; a mixture of high-brow and middle-brow concerns inspires his assessments of literary works. As this article demonstrates, Bagehotâs criticism thrives on an impure and sometimes awkward combination of aesthetic and business values.
'Not a mere tangential outbreak':gender, feminism and cultural heritage
The aim of this essay is to provide an overview of recent contributions to the \u201cgender and heritage\u201d debate, focusing in particular on suggestions and recommendations about how to expand and further advance the gender agenda in the heritage field of research. The first section considers the arguments put forward in a series of articles that evaluate the level of knowledge and development achieved in the heritage field, exposing shortcomings and impediments. The second section takes a closer look at the dialogue between feminist theory and museum studies, arguing that feminist interventions in the museum sector, which have a long history dating back to the 1970s, are predicated on a fruitful intermingling of theoretical insights and practical strategies. The final part offers a synthesis of gender-aware proposals and methodological models elaborated, and in some cases tested, in the literature under review
The Disappearing Act: Heritage Making in Charlotte Riddell's Novels
This article examines the strategies of heritage making in Riddell\u2019s City novels, popular in the 19th century, but little known today. Drawing on late Victorian debates about the preservation of the past and its material remains, the article focuses on the
relationship between fictional and non-fictional elements, in Riddell\u2019s urban realism, which frequently pivots on heritage concerns. The main argument is twofold: 1) heritage discourse provides an apt frame for the self-validation of the author\u2019s daring narrative choices; 2) Riddell\u2019s understanding of heritage changes as her vision of capitalism darkens, culminating in a vocal denunciation of the destructive forces at work in the very idea of progress. Her novels generate heritage value in the very gesture of recording the many disappearing acts mournfully witnessed by the narrator
Speculation and Social Progress. Financial and Narrative Bubbles in Charles Lever's Davenport Dunn
Victorian novels of finance have garnered much critical attention in recent years. Yet Lever\u2019s Davenport Dunn has been largely overlooked. This essay investigates Lever\u2019s imaginative engagement with finance capitalism, casting new light on his unique take on the appeal of speculation in an Irish context. Set both on the Continent and in Ireland, Davenport Dunn deviates significantly from the standardised tales of financial felony that circulated widely in Victorian print culture. Attending closely to the novel\u2019s formal features and narrative strategies, this essay argues that the logic of financial speculation is internalised on the formal level. The novel accords a degree of legitimacy to financial speculation by multiplying lines of divisions between gambling and speculation and by shifting attention to the role of a female character, who stands to win from her commitment to speculative schemes. Notable for its realistic particularity, Lever\u2019s representation of the Irish speculator and his entourage probes the limits of moralistic understandings of finance in ways that have hitherto been unacknowledged
Descriptions and evaluations: The Victorian man of business revisited
This paper addresses the twin issues of âdescriptionâ and âevaluationâ with reference
to Victorian discussions of the business ideal. The first section offers a brief
overview of novelistic portrayals of businessmen, notable for their villainy. Scholars
have repeatedly commented on the marked anti-business bias, the denigration
of business and trade, that is an integral part of the critique of capitalism articulated
in many a canonical Victorian novel. Did the same animosity permeate discussions
of business in the periodical press? How was the businessman described and
evaluated in the pages of Victorian periodicals? My investigation is an experiment
in distant or vertical reading: using as database the ProQuest digital archive of
British periodicals, I analyze the occurrences of three text segments (âman of businessâ,
âbusiness habitsâ and âbusiness lifeâ) looking for repeated associations of
words and recurrent phraseology. The final section discusses the tentative results
of my investigation: although clusters of positive evaluations can be detected, the
structural limits of this experiment call for some caution
The science of fiction: human-robot interaction in McEwan's Machines Like Me
This article focuses on human-robot interaction and anthropomorphism in Ian McEwanâs Machines Like Me. After considering the novelâs reception among scientists, reviewers and readers, the first section analyzes the uses of digression in the text, the counterfactual mode, and how they affect the representation of human-robot interaction. The second section explores the tension between the myth and reality of AI, arguing that the novel provides salient commentary on âdishonest anthropomorphismâ while parading the idea of machine consciousness, via the diegetic presence of Alan Turing
Good practices of social participation in cultural heritage
The REACH repository of good practices related to social participation in cultural heritage is a fundamental component of the Social Platform established by the REACH project. Carried out with the contribution of several project partners, this collection currently comprises 110 records of European and extra European participatory activities in the field of cultural heritage, with an emphasis on small-scale, localised interventions, but also including examples of larger collaborative projects and global or distributed online initiatives.
This document provides a critical reflection on the results obtained in this mapping exercise carried out during the first year of the projectâs life. Its aim is threefold: 1) to explain in detail the methodology adopted for the collection of good practices; 2) to offer a quantitative reading of the data gathered in the repository so far; 3) to analyse the most recurrent participatory approaches and public engagement strategies that emerge from the records included in the REACH dataset.
The REACH repository has a global geographic scope and a multifocal thematic orientation. Due to this expansive reach, a variety of initiatives are recorded which capture the nuances of participation in action. Both quantitative and qualitative assessments of these records are included in this deliverable. While Chapter 2 is devoted to a detailed presentation of the overall approach, accounting for methodological choices, Chapter 3 contains the core of the analysis. It highlights five emerging patterns of participatory approaches, identifying areas of commonality that characterise a sizable proportion of the collected records. These areas are de fined in relation to specific groups of beneficiaries (minorities, indigenous communities and women) or in relation to modalities of participation (the role of the arts, digital platforms and archaeology).
The results of the activities charted in this document can be summarised as follows:
The REACH repository is vast but uneven: some countries are very well represented, others are underrepresented or absent. To address this imbalance more records will have to be created, while others are streamlined. However, even in its present shape, the REACH dataset provides illustrative examples of social participation that can be a source of inspiration to many.
Through an attentive scrutiny of the participatory activities mapped in the repository, it was possible to identify some common tendencies that reveal how participation is implemented in a fairly broad selection of cases.
The dataset of good practices has been published as an Open Data collection at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3415123, under the Free Culture Creative Commons License âAttributionShareAlike 4.0 Internationalâ, as a catalogue of resources that can support and stimulate other peopleâs work.European Commission:
REACH - Re-designing access to CH for a wider participation in preservation, (re)use and management ofEuropean culture (769827