It came to pass

Peter Booth`s apocalyptic Burning City and Head stemmed from wartime experiences in Britain. Employing Friedrich`s Wanderer in the Sea of Fog as a portent of Germany`s imperialism, my painting collapses vision into nightmare, drawing in German artists Beuys and Rauch, caught up in a horrendous and inescapable legacy.

Empire in British girls' literature and culture: imperial girls, 1880-1915

While the gender and age of the girl may seem to remove her from any significant contribution to empire, this book provides both a new perspective on familiar girls' literature, and the first detailed examination of lesser-known fiction relating the emergence of fictional girl adventurers, castaways and 'ripping' schoolgirls to the British Empire.

Trajectories of desire in Genet and Wittig

At their most extreme Jean Genet and Monique Wittig stage revolutionary desire through their practice of language as material, embodied productivity in scenographies that decentre the ‘human' through a volatile mix of semiotic violence and iconoclastic eroticism. In fact, both writers strategically universalise homoerotic desire, plotting its trajectories to disrupt, deconstruct, or explode in parodic hilarity the cultural practices subtending patriarchal imperialism. This paper will be looking at the ceaseless productivity of desire in their texts as it moves through abjection and animal-becoming and finds serial ignition throughout its metonymic relay, arousing obstruction itself as its medium. Evidently these tropes and the concept of desire as productive come from Deleuze and Guattari (Deleuze & Gauttari 2008a; 2008b). While these subversive poetics are inseparable from the project to storm and overthrow what Timothy Mathews (Mathews 2000) calls the ‘image-fortresses' of patriarchal imperialism, they are less about utopian arrival than about the endlessly renewed performance of desire as metamorphic.

Nationalism, Britishness and Australian history: the Meaney thesis revisited

In 2001 Neville Meaney published a landmark article which questioned the place of nationalism in Australian historiography. He argued that up to the 1960s Britishness, not nationalism, was the hegemonic marker of identity for Australians, and warned that nationalist historians had fallen into the trap of writing their histories through nationalism’s own teleological imperative. This article revisits Meaney’s hegemonic claim for the role of Britishness in Australian history by arguing that he went too far. By leeching out nationalism as an ideology at play in Australian politics in the mid-twentieth century historians are in danger of taking Australian history out of its world historical context: the Age of Decolonisation.

Spinoza/space/speed/sublime: Problems of philosophy and politics in the post-colonial fiction of Gerald Murnane

This article takes account of the ‘spontaneity’ of the post-colonial fiction of Gerald Murnane within the ‘dominating space’ of the philosophy of Spinoza. My use of Paul Carter’s terms here is strategic. The compact of fiction and philosophy in Murnane corresponds with the relationship of spontaneity to the dominating organization of desire in Carter’s rendering of an Aboriginal hunter. Carter’s phrase “‘a figure at once spontaneous and wholly dominated by the space of his desire’” worries Ken Gelder and Jane M. Jacobs, who suggest that it subjugates the formation of Aboriginal desire (incorporating spontaneity) to impulses of imperialism. The captivating immanence of Spinoza’s philosophy in Murnane’s fiction, which I will demonstrate with various examples, puts pressure on the fiction to occupy the same space as the space of the philosophy. Here is a clue to why Murnane’s post-colonial thematics have been little explored by critics with an interest in post-colonial politics. The desire of Spinoza’s philosophy creates a spatial textuality within which the spontaneity of Murnane’s fiction, to the degree that it maximizes or fills the philosophy, is minimized in its political effects. That is to say, the fiction shifts politics into an external space of what Roland Barthes calls “resistance or condemnation”. However, the different speeds (or timings) of Murnane and Spinoza, within the one space, mitigate this resistance of the outside, at least in respect of certain circumstances of post-coloniality. It is especially productive, I suggest, to engage Carter’s representation of an Aboriginal hunter through the compact of coincidental spaces and differential speeds created by Murnane’s fiction in Spinoza’s philosophy. This produces a ceaseless activation of desire and domination, evidenced in Murnane’s short story ‘Land Deal’, and indexed by a post-Romantic sublime. What limits the value of Murnane’s fiction in most contexts of post-colonial politics, is precisely what makes it useful in the matter of Carter’s Aboriginal hunter.

Cocos Malay language since integration with Australia

The Cocos (Keeling) Islands are a remote Australian territory in the Indian Ocean and arehome to the Cocos Malay people, who have developed a distinct dialect. It waspredicted over 30 years ago that the Cocos Malay language faced extinction, perhapseven within the timeframe of one generation. Two possible threats to the Cocos Malaylanguage were identified. It was felt that English, as the language of power, may replacethe Cocos Malay language. The other possibility was language convergence, whereCocos Malay would be subsumed by another, larger Malay dialect. With these issues inmind, I explore developments in the Cocos Malay language since the Islands’ fullintegration with Australia in 1984. Drawing from extensive ethnographic work andlinguistic research into Cocos Malay I also refer to the work of other researchers toanalyse how the Cocos Malay language has developed over the past 30 years, in a timeof great social change. I argue that integration with Australia and attempts atassimilation have resulted in social dynamics where Cocos Malay language remains adefining marker of Cocos Malay identity positioning. In this social environment, CocosMalay therefore remains viable and, despite language change, does not face immediateextinction.

Feminine freakishness: Carnivalesque bodies in Angela Carter’s nights at the circus

Angela Carter described herself as being in the “demythologisingbusiness” (“Notes”, 38) and in her 1984 novel Nights at the CircusCarter’s interrogative scope is both broad and complex. The wingedaerialiste Fevvers and the rag-bag of circus freaks with whom shejourneys evoke the Rabelaisian carnivalesque that Bakhtin cites as apowerful challenge to the spatial, temporal, and linguistic fixities of themedieval world. The transformative and regenerative potential ofRabelais’ grotesque is evident in Nights' temporal setting, whichforegrounds the possibilities of birth through death. Set at the “fagend” of the nineteenth century (19), the characters are witness tohistory on the cusp as “[t]he old dying world gives birth to the newone” (Bakhtin, 435). Here Carter has shifted the point of historicalregeneration from Rabelais’ subversion of the Neo-Platonic medievalcosmology to, rather hopefully, symbolize the demise or at least thederailment of the Age of Reason, industrial progress, Imperialism, andtheir respective ideologies of misogyny. For Fevvers and Walser theexcess of the carnivalesque prompts a crisis of subjectivity thatsignals both the redundancy of restrictive ideologies of demarcationand hierarchy, but also the playful possibilities of corporeal fluidity andreferential relativism.

Transforming narratives of colonial danger: imagining the environments of New Zealand and Australia in children's literature, 1862–1899

Nineteenth-century British children’s literature set in Australia and New Zealand fixates on the dangers of colonial environments. This chapter examines four British novels of the period, observing the ways in which they manifest elements of ecological imperialism and environmental racism in order to depict successful settlement. It compares these novels with fantasy fictions by Australian and New Zealand children’s authors that constitute more complicated attempts both to understand and co-exist with the natural environment. The chapter proposes that by the 1890s earlier British anxieties had dissipated in popular Australian and New Zealand fiction, in which child protagonists were newly charged with the ability to interpret and control nature.

Patentes como instrumento de aumento de dependência tecnológica e econômica: estudo da indústria farmacêutica

A dependência brasileira, na indústria farmacêutica/farmoquÍmica, em relação aos interesses e capitais estrangeiros é extremamente elevada e incompatível com as dimensões de mercado que o país representa e com os interesses nacionais. Por outro lado, é praticamente, nulo o trabalho de pesquisa básica no setor, aqui realizado, seja por empresas nacionais ou, principalmente, estrangeiras. Comumente,alega-se que a falta de pesquisa no setor' é decorrência do não reconhecimento de patentes de produtos e respectivos processos de produção. Este trabalho procura demonstrar que a causa básica da dependência tecnológica e, consequentemente, econômica no setor não tem relação significativa com a legislação que não reconhece tais patentes. Ao contrário, o sistema de patentes pode conduzir a um maior grau de dependência para os países em desenvolvimento. Além disto, constata-se que, apesar de o Brasil ser o principal país sob o processo de desenvolvimento dependente, no setor farmacêutico/farmacoquímico nos encontramos ainda num estágio de total dependência, sem desenvolvimento significativo, porque os capitais estrangeiros são para cá dirigidos com o fim de simplesmente explorarem o mercado local, sem o intuito de transferir "know-how" e equipar tecnologicamente a base industrial a qui existente. Tais aspectos, abordados à luz dos conceitos da Teoria Geral do Imperialismo e da Teoria do Desenvolvimento Dependente, são analisados conjuntamente com a evolução histórica do setor no Brasil e com os fatores determinantes dessa atual situação de dependência econômica e tecnológica.

Apocalypse now e o coração das trevas: o embate entre indivíduo e sociedade

O filme Apocalypse Now (1979), de Francis Ford Coppola, inspirado no romance O Coração das Trevas (1902), de Joseph Conrad, discute o conflito entre indivíduo e sociedade no contexto da Guerra do Vietnã, nos anos 60 e 70 do século XX. Este trabalho pretende mostrar, embasado pela Semiótica francesa, as estratégias utilizadas pelo diretor para explicitar essa oposição na linguagem cinematográfica e preservar a fidelidade temática em relação às questões abordadas pelo livro, passado durante o Imperialismo britânico na África, no século XIX.

Os embates entre ciência e política na experiência parlamentar de Josué de Castro

This study want to know how Josué de Castro, the two terms of a congressman, participated in the Brazilian political-ideological debate of the 1950s. For this, search the 61 speeches in the plenary of the House of Representatives and its 14 projects, analyzing them as historical documents that describe an experience, which enables the central category amalgamated the subject and his time, which breaks up the possibilities of new social practices. Unity of action and reflection, the experience of Castro in the Brazilian parliament has got on the basis of a previous flow experiences in the political-institutional and scientific. Together with the personal history, the political intellectual scenario of his time was another variable considered in the first chapter of this work. In the second chapter did an analysis of 32 speeches and projects of the first term of Josué de Castro, grouping them by thematic affinities. The 43 for the second term were discussed in the third chapter, leaving the final considerations answer the research objectives: What are the main interlocutors? What are your political positions? What are the points of rupture and continuity in his political career? Josué de Castro spoke to the Brazilian state directly to the president, some ministers and to the SUDENE, the ONU appears indirectly through the reports of his participations. His political position was a national-developmentalist who embraced the cause of self-determination of the countries, anti-imperialism, agrarian reform and regional planning, strongly inspired by Celso Furtado and San Tiago Dantas. Castro often has blended a liberal and Marxist terminology, relying on different ideologies to do support his fight against hunger

Os Estados Unidos e as relações internacionais contemporâneas

O artigo analisa a posição dos Estados Unidos nas relações internacionais pós-Guerra Fria, tomando como referência as controvérsias sobre os alcances e limites da sua postura hegemônica, que adquirem maior impulso a partir da formulação da chamada doutrina Bush, sistematizada no documento A Estratégia de Segurança Nacional dos EUA. No tratamento da temática proposta, enfatizam-se os seguintes aspectos: estabelecimento de um paralelo entre a transição dos séculos XIX-XX e XX-XXI, situando as características do imperialismo de cada época; uma análise da atual política externa dos Estados Unidos, enfocando o debate entre unilateralismo e multilateralismo, com destaque para as reações geradas pela intervenção no Iraque; uma discussão crítica das abordagens que visualizam na agenda de segurança da administração Bush um indicador de perda de hegemonia, que imporia a substituição da busca do consenso pela dominação aberta.