Imagined and imaginary whales: Benedict Anderson, Salman Rushdie and George Orwell

George Orwell, anticipating many of the arguments made by Benedict Anderson in the “Patriotism and Racism” chapter of Imagined Communities, illuminated patriotism and nationalism as shifting aspects of a wider dialectical interplay between an identification with imagined communities and a loyalty to humanity. Orwell's essay “Inside the Whale” can be seen, contrary to Salman Rushdie's criticism that it advocates quietism, as an essay about imaginary homelands. In this reading the whale is a metaphor for a dialectical space created by a writer in order to gain purchase on the unceasing dialectic of history. Analysis of The Lion and the Unicorn in this article links Orwell's work with that of Anderson and Rushdie by exploring in his vision of a classless England the relationship between the personal imaginary homeland and the political imagined community

Sueños y delirios

Edward Said, uno de los máximos exponentes de la cultura palestina y continuo observador del proceso de paz en Medio Oriente, falleció el 24 de septiembre de 2003. En estas páginas se reproduce uno de los últimos artículos del que fuera, durante más de 40 años, profesor de literatura comparada en la Universidad de Columbia.ITESO, A.C

Javna uloga pisaca i intelektualaca

Prevela: Tanja Vučkovi

Dragons in the Drawing Room: Chinese Embroideries in British Homes

Chinese embroideries have featured in British domestic interiors since at least the seventeenth century. However, Western imperial interests in China during the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century created a particular set of meanings around Chinese material culture, especially a colonial form of nostalgia for pre-nineteenth century China, with its emperors and 'exotic' court etiquette. This article examines the use of Chinese satin-stitch embroideries in British homes between 1860 and 1949, and explores how a range of British identities was constructed through the ownership, manipulation and display of these luxury Chinese textiles

A Haptic User Interface to Assess the Mobility of the Newborn's Neck

A virtual reality program has been developed to assess the strength and flexibility of a computer based model of a term fetus or newborn baby's neck. The software has a haptic/force feedback user interface which allows clinical experts to adjust the mechanical properties, including range of motion and mechanical stiffness of a newborn neck model, at runtime. The developed software was assessed by ten clinical experts in obstetrics. The empirically obtained stiffness and range of motion values corresponded well with values reported in the literature

Le Caire. Entretien avec Edward Said

Dans un entretien accordé à deux anciens étudiants, Edward Said évoque la façon dont sa jeunesse au Caire lui a permis de se penser d’Ailleurs sans l’éprouver comme un manque. Le Caire est une ville multiple dont la dualité elle-même se dédouble : la vieille ville offre à l’Occident le rêve archéologique qu’il désire, la ville moderne a été modelée par la présence coloniale mais aussi par des formes diverses de résistance anticoloniale. Mégalopole qui accepte l’inachèvement, Le Caire constitue une grande alternative à la civilisation urbaine de l’Occident. Des collectivités très hétérogènes coexistent dans un tissu urbain beaucoup moins obsédé par l’ordre et la cohérence visibles que la ville type européenne. Sans souci de construire une leçon historique univoque, la cité offre un écheveau d’itinéraires historiques inachevés, dont chacun peut tirer un fil s’il accepte un désordre (des archives, des traces, de la mémoire…) finalement plus libérateur que destructeur. Le Caire est « une ville qui permet d’être étranger », « out of place », comme aime à se définir Edward Said

Humanism as resistance

Hace nueve años escribí un epílogo para Orientalismo en el que, al intentar aclarar lo que había dicho y no había dicho, no sólo subrayaba los numerosos debates suscitados desde la aparición de mi libro, en 1978, sino el modo en que una obra sobre las representaciones de «Oriente» se prestaba a creciente tergiversación. Que ello me provoque hoy más ironía que irritación muestra lo que he envejecido. Los recientes fallecimientos de mis dos grandes mentores intelectuales, políticos y personales, Eqbal Ahmad e Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, me han producido, además de tristeza y sentimiento de pérdida, resignación y una especie de terco empeño en seguir adelante. En mis memorias, Fuera de lugar (Grijalbo, 2001), hablaba de los extraños y contradictorios mundos en los que me eduqué y ofrecía a los lectores un relato detallado de las circunstancias que me formaron en Palestina, Egipto y Líbano. Pero era un texto muy personal, que se detenía justo antes de mis años de compromiso político, iniciado tras la guerra de 1967 entre árabes e israelíes.Nine years ago wrote an epilogue to Orientalism in which, in trying to clarify what I had said and not said, I highlighted not only the many debates that had arisen since the appearance of my book in 1978, but the way in which a work on the representations of "the East" lent itself to increasing distortion. That this causes me more irony today than irritation shows how much I have aged. The recent deaths of my two great intellectual, political and personal mentors, Eqbal Ahmad and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, have produced in me, in addition to sadness and feelings of loss, resignation and a kind of stubborn determination to move on. In my memoirs, "Out of Place" (Grijalbo, 2001), I spoke of strange and contradictory worlds in which I was educated and offered readers a detailed account of the circumstances that shaped me in Palestine, Egypt and Lebanon. But it was a very personal text, which stopped just before my years of political engagement, which began after the 1967 war between the Arabs and Israelis