The Imaginary

About: The Imaginary is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4807 publications have been published within this topic receiving 87663 citations.

Elements of international political theory

Abstract: This book demonstrates five approaches to the theory of world politics and shows how these lead to distinct attitudes on critical issues. Portraying five imaginary spokesmen--a Natural Law theorist, a Realist, a Fideist, a Rationalist, and an Historicist--Donelan outlines various perspectives on world affairs and then debates the positions. The discussion covers five main aspects of world politics: conflict, alliances, intervention, war, and commerce. Using a classical philosophical approach to engage the reader in this lively debate, Elements of International Political Theory provides a basic understanding of the philosophical ideas that underlie opinions and decisions on world problems.

The castrato as history

Abstract: One of the final scenes of Farinelli, I Castrato, dir. Gerard Corbiau (Sony Pictures Classics, 1994), shows a solar eclipse witnessed, eighteenth-century style, by members of the court of Philip V of Spain around 1740. Restless spectators squint through pieces of tinted glass prepared in the smoke of a small fire. It is a precious visual detail, a jot of history in this sumptuously though often inaccurately detailed film that offsets the melodrama to follow. Without warning, a wind, helped along by corny, time-lapse photography, ushers in a sea of Goya-like clouds. A murmur passes through the entourage; eerie blackness falls on the court. The King is shrouded in another kind of darkness: his famous, chronic melancholy (we would call it 'clinical depression'). He pronounces the whole earth a tomb, makes the sign of the cross, then calls for a dose of his personal pain reliever the voice of Carlo Broschi, known as Farinelli: 'Bring back the sun', he demands. Without hesitation the singer intones in a thin soprano the mournfully exposed opening phrase of 'Alto Giove', an aria from Nicola Porpora's Polifemo. Farinelli is known to have performed the work at the Haymarket Theatre in 1735, a few months after his London debut. An unseen orchestra enters as if from that other, distant theatre, pulling the castrato and his song into a brighter place, an illuminated region beyond the eclipse, an imaginary world of music. The whole, lush scene serves not only as welcome interlude but also as telling reminder, in the midst of a self-consciously 'historical' film, of the problem of history itself, of how frightfully dim it can be for those who would glimpse it. The sight of so many spectators straining to view one of nature's aberrations through clouded lenses seems to comment on the very obscurity of the film's historical narrative, not to mention our own peculiar status as viewers peering into the past it represents. Indeed, the image of the eclipse according to its etymology, a moment when something 'fails to appear' stands as a symbol for the history offered in this film, the 'true story of a world-famous castrato', as it has been billed. For the story of the castrato, that figure eclipsed almost two centuries ago, is certainly a shadowy tale in the history of music, a story that must always be about something that 'failed to appear'. If the truth of history can reside in such empty spaces, those impossible gaps that separate present from past, then the figure of the castrato offers a kind of chilling embodiment of that truth, a poignant testimony to things that can never be recovered. One of those unrecoverable things is music. The very genre of opera seria, not to mention its composers, depended on the castrati as a kind of raison d'etre. No wonder Corbiau's Farinelli makes such an issue of the relationship between these star performers and the men who wrote for them. The film presents the charged collaboration in two complementary case studies. We witness on the one hand the disgust of a self-assured Handel, who resents the attention paid to all such male divas, and on the other the envy of the singer's insecure brother, the composer

"Raza": variables historicas

Abstract: This article addresses “race” as a social practice, a construction, and as an idea that has been developed through the power of discourse. This category, rather than a biological reality, is an intellectual and social construction which has had a variety of meanings attributed to it through history. The concept of “race,” however, has preserved its functionality: to differentiate, segregate, and distort otherness. In this way, it has racialized social relations through biological determinism. To substantiate this hypothesis, the article undertakes a historical analysis to demonstrate the dynamics and variability of the racial imaginary. It sketches the outline of a history of race that includes the Spanish idea of the “Purity of Blood” (16-17th centuries), the legitimizing discourses of the French nobility (17-18th centuries), the ambivalence of the Enlightenment, as well as 19th century scientifi c racism as a prelude of the Holocaust or Shoah. The article concludes with some refl ections derived from genetics as additional proof of the fi ctional nature of the concept of “race.”

The beach of 'The Beach' - the politics of environmental damage in Thailand.

Abstract: Tourism-related environmental politics in Thailand are examined in a case study of the controversy surrounding the shooting of the film version of he Beach,' a hook on a backpacker commune on an undiscovered 'island paradise' by Alex Garland (1996). The article focuses on the paradox of the film-maker's insistconco to transform Maya beach, a spectacular pristine beach located in a national park on Phi Phi Lae island in Southern Thailand, to suit the stereotype of a 'tropical island beach' on Garland's imaginary island. The various stages of the protracled struggle between the opponents of the project, and the producers of the film and the authorities who permitted the changes to Maya beach are described The composition of the contending camps, their motives and interests are examined, as well as the discourses and counter-discourses by which they presontrd their case. The changing strategies of the opponents of the project, from protest, to appeals and finally lengthy litigation, leading from initial failures to eventual partial success, are detailed. The permanent damage to the teach, despite efforts to reostitute it after the filming, are assessed. The authorities policies after the event to 'regulate' tourism to the teach are noted. In conclusion, the manifold absurdities, of possibly wider significanet', invok L''d in the transformation of a 'real' pristine beach to suit an imaginary 'ideal' one are expounded.

Memory and Pedagogy

Abstract: 1. Introducing Memory and Pedagogy Claudia Mitchell, Teresa Strong-Wilson, Kathleen Pithouse and Susann Allnutt. Section 1: Memory and Place 2. Making Place Susann Allnutt 3. Secrets of Play: Child-Centered Spaces and the Literary Imagination Elizabeth N. Goodenough 4. The Case of the Imaginary Frozen Fish and the Mean Boy Tony N. Kelly 5. Formative Touchstones: Finding Place as a Teacher Through an Indigenous Learning Experience Michele T. D. Tanaka Section 2: Revisiting Childhood 6. Readers Remember: Text, Residue, and Periphery Margaret Mackey 7. "She's a Beauty Queen, Deal With It!": Online Fan Communities as Sites for Disruptive Pedagogies Tammy Iftody and Dennis Sumara 8. Learning to Live With Ghosts: Multimodal Archaeologies of Storied Formation as Palimpsestal Inquiry Lisa K. Taylor Section 3: Legacies of Political Conflict 9. Re-Memoring Colonial Spaces of Apartheid and the Holocaust Through Imaginative Fiction Ingrid Johnston 10. Narrating Displacement: The Pedagogy of Exile Hourig Attarian 11. History Teaching, 'Truth Recovery', and Reconciliation Allan McCully 12. "The Future of our Young Children Lies in our Hands": Re-Envisaging Teacher Authority Through Narrative Self-Study Kathleen Pithouse Section 4: Memory and Embodiment 13. Culture, Nostalgia, and Sexual Education in the Age of AIDS in South Africa Relebohile Moletsane 14. Looking Back: Women Principals Reflect on Their Childhood Experiences Pontso Moorosi 15. Object-Memory, Embodiment, and Teacher Formation: A Methodological Exploration Amy L. Cole 16. Dressing Memory: Clothes, Embodiment, and Identity Sandra Weber Section 5: Intergenerationality and Looking to the Future 17. "I Remember When I Was Your Age ... ": Productive Remembering Through Crossover Literature Maija-Liisa Harju 18. Threading Voices: Telling Intergenerational Digital Stories Teresa Strong-Wilson 19. Our Stories: Memory, Displacement, and the Politics of Children's Writing Lara Bober