Cosmologies and Regionalisms from "Above' and "Below' in the Post-Cold War Americas: the Relevance of Karl Polanyi for the 21st Century

Drawing on a Polanyian analysis of the land question, this article aims to analyse both Western and Indigenous cosmologies of Abya Yalathe name that indigenous peoples give to the American continentto understand the relationship between human beings and land and nature. These cosmologies are at the heart of the way in which two distinct societies construct their regional space, one from above', the other from below', and they are therefore key to understanding today's climate change problematique. Following this nexus it is argued that, since the end of the Cold War, a new regional double-movement', unleashed by the quest for land and natural resources has been in the making. This is a superstructural or legal battle between Western transnational regime-making and a law that originated at the centre of the Earth'. The article explains both regionalisms and the dialectical interaction between them and demonstrates that Karl Polanyi's legacy remains relevant for the 21st century.

'Initiators of Discursive Practices': Authorship, attribution, and intent in the debates between philosophes and anti-philosophes

This article focuses on the “social side” of pseudonymity—on how writers and readers compete to influence the critical destiny of a pseudonymous work. By analyzing pseudonymity and attribution in both the specific context of Voltaire’s 1760 staging of the play, Le café ou l’écossaise, and in larger debates in the emerging fields of anonymity, pseudonymity, and attribution studies, I hope to show how literary scholars at present can address the individuality of each pseudonymous case while not letting go of trans-historical, general problems of anonymous strategies. Voltaire’s use of multiple pseudonyms before and after releasing L’Ecossaise, a comédie sérieuse in which Voltaire attacks his enemy Elie-Cathérine Fréron, supports his philosophe friends at a crucial moment in history, and exemplifies his emerging taste for serious comedy and British drama calls into question traditional takes on pseudonymity, anonymity, and attribution by refusing to fit into the binary arguments of anonymous vs. attributed and authorial intent vs. the reader’s control.

Mythologizing Greed and Betrayal in the Strait of Magellan in Juan de Miramontes' Armas Antarticas

Taking as a starting point Antonio Sanchez Jimenez's recent work on the myth of Jason in Lope de Vega's El Vellocino de Oro, this article examines the myths of Jason and Leander in Juan de Miramontes Zuazola's epic, Armas antarticas (1608-1609). After exploring the explicit allusions to the myths in the epic, I analyse an implicit reference to Leander in the portrayal of Tome Hernandez, the only survivor of the failed sixteenth-century Spanish settlements in the Strait of Magellan. As it turns out, Hernandez was rescued by the English pirate, Thomas Cavendish. In evoking the myth of Leander on the southern coast of Chile, Armas antarticas recalls Alonso de Ercilla's self-description in La Araucana (1569, 78, 89) as analysed by Ricardo Padron. However, I contend that the representation of Hernandez is best understood in comparison to Juan Boscan's Leandro (1543), the fullest and most widely disseminated Spanish version of the tale in the sixteenth century. Appealing to the Leander myth allows Armas antarticas to turn away from a focus on the role of greed in colonization. Yet shadows of Jason still lurk behind the portrayal of Hernandez, which raise other serious ethical questions for the Spanish Empire concerning piracy and loyalty as these play out in the Strait of Magellan. This essay shows that the poetic portrayal of Hernandez and Cavendish ends up exhibiting the same ambiguities associated with piracy as analysed by Daniel Heller-Roazen.