The Anxiety of Ascent: Middle-Class Narratives in Germany and America

German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship

The purpose of this research is to reconstruct the clothing culture of 19th century Spanish Philippines and to discover the importance of dress in Philippine colonial society. This study explores the unique and complex interplay of clothing and appearance with race, class and culture in the context of the social, cultural and economic changes that took place between 1820 and 1896. The objective is to recreate an impression of colonial life by turning to clothes to provide insights on a wide range of race, class, gender and economic issues. For the first time, this uses the study of clothing to understand the socio-cultural and economic changes that took place in 19th century Philippine colonial society. The different racial and social groups of the Philippines under Spanish colonization were analyzed in light of their clothing. This locates the study of Philippine clothing practices in the context of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural colonial society. After centuries of colonization, 19th century Philippines was – and continues to be- an amalgam of indigenous, Western and Chinese cultures. This study of clothing practices as an element of colonial life points to a broader study of cultural interactions, colonial lifestyles, human relations and social behavior. Clothing and appearance were analyzed to understand the ethnic, social and gender hierarchies of that period. This work crosses the frontiers between the disciplines of Philippine studies, colonial history and costume studies.

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Clothing and the colonial culture of appearances in nineteenth century Spanish Philippines (1820-1896)

Cultural homogenization, ethnic cleansing, and genocide can be seen as part of a continuum. Throughout the modern era, states have forced their citizens to conform to common standards and cultural patterns. The goal has often been to seek congruence between ethnic and political boundaries; that is, to forge cohesive, unified communities of citizens under governmental control. Cultural homogenization is defined here as a state-led policy aimed at cultural standardization and the overlap between state and culture. As the goal is frequently to impose the culture of dominant elites on the rest of the citizenry, it consists basically of a top-down process where the state seeks to nationalize “the masses.” Modern history abounds with examples of discriminatory legislation directed against specific cultural practices and minority languages (see Fishman 1997; Romaine 2002). These have often verged on “linguistic genocide” or linguicide (Skutnabb-Kangas 2000). Cultural homogenization needs to be distinguished from homogeneity. Whereas cultural homogenization is a historically documented occurrence, homogeneity per se is an ideological construct. The idea of human homogeneity presupposes the existence of a unified, organic community and does not describe an actual phenomenon. In the eyes of many leaders, conformity and standardization meant not only functionality and efficiency, but also obedience to common laws. In the early twentieth century many governments began to see assimilation as an inadequate measure. Plans for population transfers and the physical elimination of communities were conceived. They were conjured up by “nationalizing” states, particularly in times of war. Typically, this process has been facilitated by totalitarian rule. Majoritarian democracies have also embraced assimilationist agendas, sometimes endorsing population transfers. Genocide and ethnic cleansing can be described as a form of “social engineering” and radical homogenization. This is supported by evidence that the elimination of entire communities was often accompanied by the destruction of their cultural heritage. Terms like eliminationism (see also Carmichael 2009) or eradicationism are used to encompass various forms of state-led homogenizing practices.

Cultural homogenization, ethnic cleansing and genocide

This article explores the implications of Hegel’s Philosophy of World History with respect to colonialism. For Hegel, freedom can be recognized and practised only in classical, Christian and modern Europe; therefore, the world’s other peoples can acquire freedom only if Europeans impose their civilization upon them. Although this imposition denies freedom to colonized peoples, this denial is legitimate for Hegel because it is the sole condition on which these peoples can gain freedom in the longer term. The article then considers whether Hegel’s basic account of freedom can be extricated from his Eurocentric and pro-colonialist interpretation of the course of history. The article argues that matters are more complicated because that interpretation has significant connections with Hegel’s conception of freedom as self-determination.

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Hegel and Colonialism

Peter Burger reflects on the reception of his Theory of the Avant-Garde
	 
	and crafts a spirited response to his critics, while expanding on and refining his original claims. For Burger, what continues to distinguish the avant-garde are two interrelated principles: the attack on the institution of art and the revolutionary transformation of everyday life. Underscoring the explicitly theoretical, rather than merely historical, thrust of this definition, he defends this generalizing strategy as a necessary means of achieving clarity about the changing role of art in society. He reiterates his argument about the failure of the historical avant-garde (to overcome the distinction of art and life), while placing a new emphasis on its equal measure of success (in transforming the internal logic of the art institution). The avant-garde’s appropriation of outdated and popular materials, for example, played a key role in challenging the norms of the art world, helping to bring about the leveling of distinctions often associated with postmodernism. On the one hand, the avant-garde failed in its attempt to revolutionize social reality; on the other hand, its impact on the norms and values of the art institution was significant and far-reaching. Contemporary or neo-avant-gardes remain caught on the horns of this contradiction, insofar as their aesthetic experiments—whatever the explicit intentions of the artist—only shore up the walls of the institution rather than breaking them down.

Avant-Garde and Neo-Avant-Garde: An Attempt to Answer Certain Critics of Theory of the Avant-Garde

The Tyranny of Elegance: Consumer Cosmopolitanism in the Era of Goethe

Purdy, Daniel. The Tyranny of Elegance: Consumer Cosmopolitanism in the Era of Goethe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998. 301 pp. $48.00 hardcover. Daniel Purdy's admirable study of the "tyranny of elegance" at the turn of the nineteenth century examines the ways in which what was familiar in London and Paris as material reality entered the sphere of elite culture in Germany through the mediation of literature. In texts ranging from the Journal des Luxus and der Moden to Christian Garve's essay Ober die Moden and from sumptuary laws to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther, he analyzes the semiotic and disciplinary operations of clothes. Inspired by Roland Barthes' reading of fashion and by Michel Foucault's discourse theory, he first examines the imaginary relationship between reader and text and then investigates how the desires created in these discourses affected the organization of public life. This approach offers refreshing perspectives on how discussions of European fashion and luxury redefined the bourgeois understanding of the body, its relation to personal identity and to public occupation. The first three chapters concentrate on Germany's most successful fashion periodical, the Journal des Luxus and der Moden, which we see to be more than simply a source for fashion history. Purdy shows precisely how the medium instilled in both male and female consumers new, rapidly changing desires for luxury goods. The journal provided a means for the German bourgeoisie to view itself as rational and pragmatic consumers for whom fashionable products would enhance physical and mental productivity. This utilitarianism mixed with sentimentalism to create the hybrid figure of the German consumer who also sought products that would respond to a need for selfgenerated illusions. Through the mediation of the journal, a reader could enter an amorphous, international institution called fashionable society. The journal's reiteration of foreign trends thus both fostered the expansion of fashion culture and transformed an economic critique of luxury into a regime of productive consumption by regulating the flow of information. In chapters four to six, Purdy examines the organization of behavior. To explain how fashionable society produced conformity in a self-defined bourgeois community he suggestively invokes the rhetorical figure of the queen of fashion-a despot whom the wise ridicule and obey. As the trope lost its rhetorical uniqueness, it became naturalized as a female characteristic per se, inalienably located within the female body, even constituting a psychological profile of a fashionable woman. By contrast the disciplinary regimes of state institutions, the sumptuary laws, had employed coercive force to curb actual consumption and to stabilize visual distinctions in dress and ceremony as signs of rank within a hierarchically defined community. …

take up a whole chapter or book, falls off a cliff after one column. While Cohen expressly aimed for a “series of crosssections through the various theatres of the war” (15), they read more like rapid sketches. This could be the result of thinking through the project as an exhibition— it was staged at the Canadian Centre for Architecture—where the organization was spatial rather than bookishly linear and where text humbly assists rather than boldly asserts. The result is something that can feel reportorial rather than analytical: wood was reinvented as a material; “tempos,” otherwise known as temporary buildings, appeared in cities; architects turned to camouflage; new visual languages appeared; prefabrication became essential; and so forth. It also means that readers have to be resourceful: Ernst Neufert’s contributions are decentralized to no less than eleven different places in the book, Louis I. Kahn’s to ten. Where literary shape seems to have been self-consciously jettisoned, tension and beauty in the telling come through the unexpected juxtaposition of episodes—as in an exhibition. Several pages on Edwin Bergstrom’s Pentagon Building in Washington directly abut a short piece on Auschwitz, all as part of an investigation of the new scale the war brought into being. The implications remain tacit, but no less poignant, especially in a moment when so many scholarly texts telegraph their every intellectual move. Still, one could wish that this sort of explosive comparison were not left to dangle without comment. Is the Pentagon really comparable to Auschwitz, or to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which comes later in the chapter? The cross-section, to take up Cohen’s architectural analogy, is meant to reveal structure, and perhaps it does, but the book lacks the sort of horizontal cut—or plan—that would reveal the circulation of characters, ideas, and interpretations into a cohesive argument. The writing is elegant and the object is handsome, but it lacks the comforts and purposefulness of narrative. The text, moreover, infrequently talks to the images, reinforcing the sense of museological reserve. Why does this matter? Narrative is not the only way to tell a story and historians have played with nonlinear or thematic structures with great success. One reason is that the war—perhaps all war—is a moment of narrative intensification, of rapidly rising and falling plotlines and crescendos. As much as any human activity, war is fought to make it end, giving its every twist a sense of narrative traction, as David Kennedy’s Freedom from Fear makes abundantly clear.3 Choosing to mismatch representation with reality in this way makes it nearly impossible to carry an argument beyond a paragraph or two. On the other hand, a different kind of reading results: one can enter Cohen’s book at any point without having to backtrack to pick up the gist. Fascinating tidbits appear on every page. Perhaps it is fairer to treat the book as a catalog. Taken as such, it is full of sensational illustrations and exposition. Readers familiar with the author’s work will not be surprised to find several astonishing images by Le Corbusier. Less familiar will be Yakov Rubanchik’s image of anti-aircraft balloons in the streets of Leningrad or the wonderful diagram detailing Japanese air raid guidelines, where architectural graphics meet proto-anime. Those who appreciate Gordon Cullen’s lovely drawings for The Concise Townscape will be fascinated by his drawings describing the “design, construction, and everyday life in anti-aircraft shelters.” Even a photograph of Albert Kahn’s factory-like drafting room, with draftsmen lying over sprawling drawings as they work, brings home the altered scale brought on by war. Sections on the architecture of mobility, occupation (including “aesthetic purification”), and the proposed Soviet war memorials are, for their brevity, fresh and poignant. In the section on camouflage, while drawn almost entirely from publications, Cohen deftly shows how camouflage was part of a much larger practice of simulation and deception, including a faux Paris along a geographically similar bend of the Seine built to trick the Luftwaffe into unloading their bombs prematurely. Just the list of modernists who tried their hand at camouflage is impressive: Louis I. Kahn, Le Corbusier, Ernö Goldfinger, Norman Bel Geddes, Percival Goodman, László Moholy-Nagy, György Kepes, George Fred Keck, among others. Hugh Casson’s analysis of the paradox of modernists hustling to learn the illusionism of camouflage is among the most insightful statements about this moment in architecture (204). Whatever quibbles one might have with it, Architecture in Uniform is a book of extraordinary range and keen insight. It will remain essential for anyone working on architecture and war in the twentieth century. andrew m. shanken University of California, Berkeley

On the Ruins of Babel: Architectural Metaphor in German Thought

Abstract:This article examines how Goethe places his reading about a Jesuit disputation with a Buddhist monk in seventeenth-century China within the context of German philosophical debates. Goethe immediately draws an analogy connecting Weimar debates between Kantians and idealists to the earlier Nanjing debate about Jesuit and Buddhism metaphysics. His inclination to perceive parallels between philosophy in China and Germany anticipates his later comments to Eckermann about the similarities between the Chinese and European novels that served as the basis for his pronouncements about Weltliteratur (world literature). A careful reading of Goethe and Schiller's letters shows that as a heretical thinker, Goethe was inclined to identify with the Buddhist dismissal of Christian theism; however, the emerging atheism controversy surrounding accusations made against Fichte's lectures at the University of Jena led him to cautiously avoid entering into yet another Enlightenment debate about religion.

Daniel Purdy

Papers

Avant-Garde and Neo-Avant-Garde: An Attempt to Answer Certain Critics of Theory of the Avant-Garde

The Tyranny of Elegance: Consumer Cosmopolitanism in the Era of Goethe

The Tyranny of Elegance: Consumer Cosmopolitanism in the Era of Goethe

On the Ruins of Babel: Architectural Metaphor in German Thought

Between Nanjing and Weimar: Goethe's Metaphysical Correspondences