Glasgow Open Journals
Not a member yet
260 research outputs found
Sort by
Was nationalism to blame for the Smyrna fire?
Get PDFThis essay examines the role of Turkish and Greek nationalist ideologies in igniting the flames of ethnic tensions that culminated in the Smyrna fire of 1922. The Greco-Turkish war was propelled forward by the nationalist rhetoric of the ‘Great Idea’ that expressed the fantasy of stretching the Greek state to encompass key areas of ancient and Byzantine Hellenism in Anatolia. This militant ideology was broadly interpreted as a threat to the very presence of Turkish nationals in Anatolia and was thus detrimental to the development of a Turkish counterpart in the form of Kemalist pan-Turkism. As the last event in a cause-and-effect sequence of nationalist conflicts, the Smyrna fire exemplifies the destructive nature of Kemalist nationalism, which was directed against both the human and the material character of Ottoman Smyrna with the aim of purging the city of its non- Turkish elements and creating a tabula rasa on which the history of the newly formed national identity could be rewritten and projected onto the urban fabric
The lower bound on interest rates and ways to overcome it
Get PDFExpansionary monetary policy was traditionally thought to be restricted by the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates. Yet since 2014, some central banks, facing secular stagnation and deflationary traps, have pushed key policy rates below zero. This paper reviews the theoretical literature on the zero lower bound and proposals to overcome it. It concludes that such proposals are primarily designed to discourage cash hoarding, and their success depends on the economic and cultural environment in which they are to be implemented
Nihilist Aesthetics: The Destruction and Salvage of Meaning in the Poststructuralist Novel
Get PDFDrawing upon continental philosophy and literary theory of the 20th and 21st centuries, this article examines the destabilisation of textual hermeneutics under poststructuralism. As meaning in language is destabilised, a crisis occurs in which it threatens to evaporate entirely. The nihilism of Gianni Vattimo is used as a backdrop to a discussion of the nihilist implications of postmodern philosophy. Through an examination of two postmodernist texts – Crash by J. G. Ballard and C by Tom McCarthy – this article seeks to illustrate this central nihilistic crisis of the postmodern condition, as well as the affirmative responses formulated by those who choose to embrace this state of affairs, rather than deny it. Theorists such as Lyotard and Derrida give an account of the emergence of meaning within the destabilised linguistics of poststructuralism, and in doing so they display the potential for an affirmative formulation of nihilism. Through this depiction of the salvage of meaning after its apparent annihilation, this article ultimately attempts to define the key aspects of a distinctly nihilist postmodern aesthetic
Imperialism and Hunting: From the Fur Trade to Colonial Activism
Get PDFHunting is an essential part of socio-economic life for Indigenous peoples worldwide. For many, it allows for cultural continuity and is a source of partial or full income. This article intends to explore how hunting practices have been impacted by European imperial views of “progress” over the past 400 years, and how perceived progress can be destructive to some aspects of social life. To do this, the place of Indigenous hunting practices in global processes is examined. From the 17th century fur trade, to the fall of fur, recent anti-fur campaigns and environmental movements, ‘Western’ views on fur and hunting have grounded Indigenous practices in the global economy. This is seen through the application of world-systems and underdevelopment theory
Life Breaks In: Entropic Modernism in Mrs Dalloway & The Secret Agent
Get PDFThis essay takes as its framework the concept of entropy, a thermodynamic principle which describes the degree of disorder in a system. As entropy is always increasing, so is the intensity of destruction, decay and chaos in the systems of the modernist text. The essay uncovers the entropic compulsions implicit in Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, and Virginia Woolf’s high-modernist work Mrs Dalloway, using theory and criticism from Georg Simmel to J. Hillis Miller. Some of the traditional aesthetic features of literary modernism – epistemological crises, temporal distortion, and the trauma of industrial modernity – are considered in terms of the advancing thermodynamic theory of the fin-de-siècle. Such theoretical scientific innovation is shown to permeate individual and collective consciousness in the literature of the period. The essay posits the presence of an entropic modernist textuality; vibrations beneath the surface which denote a gradual decline into total disorder
From ‘salt of the earth’ to ‘enemy within’: How the defeat of the 1984-85 miner’s strike reframed the relationship between the British state and its workers
Get PDFThe aim of this paper is to examine the defeat of the 1984-1985 miners’ strike and assess whether an alternative strategy could have yielded a successful outcome for the miners, or if the writing was on the wall from the outset. It will look at the consequences of the government’s ideological neoliberal victory and the long-term ramifications for the relationship between the British state and worker, arguing that the Thatcher government purposefully dismantled and discredited the trade union movement, entrenching the values of meritocracy and a flexible labour market in the British economy. The legacy of these events can be seen in the suppression of wages and stagnation in improvement of living standards, greatly damaging the economic autonomy and community integrity of working class communities in the initial aftermath. The result of this was widespread intergenerational poverty, extending also to encompass middle class professionals in the 21st century
James Ensor: Anarchism, Spirituality and Degeneracy in the Belgian fin de siècle
Get PDFThe article aims to outline the motifs present in works of James Ensor, a Belgian artist, whose art relates to the Symbolist approach to painting. By iconographical analysis combined with the examination of social factors, this article will evaluate Ensor’s contribution to the Symbolist practice during the end of the 19th century. Neglected for a long time by the discipline of art history, his flamboyant visions depicting masks and skeletons are now thought to constitute important emblems allowing for the exploration of the fin-de-siècle soul, troubled by progress and uncertainty and manifested in anarchism, degeneracy as well as spiritualism. This article will argue that the choice of iconography was not solely determined by the artist’s inner life, but its foundation can be found in the dramatic social changes occurring in the late 19th century Belgium and Europe
The Casualties of Industrialisation in Glasgow: Juvenile Delinquents and Magdalene Girls
Get PDFThe Victorian era saw the colossal growth of Glasgow as an industrial city; some prospered but many more suffered the ravages of industrial capitalism. This paper will focus on a figure that came to symbolise the social dislocation of this era - the ‘prostitute’. The definition of the ‘prostitute’ far exceeded a meaning of ‘sex worker’ and encompassed a meaning of a working class woman who subverted middle class norms without necessarily being sexually active. We will explore who the ‘prostitute’ was in practise and argue that ‘juvenile delinquents’ were politically ‘prostitutes’. We will draw parallels between preventative industrial schools and adult reformatories such as Magdalene Homes, arguing that they had the same functionality. The paper aims to highlight the resistance of working class women to these attempts at social control and ultimately concludes that they retained a morality that was distinctly their own
An Economic Crisis In Perspective: The Currency Debate and Uncertainty
No full textUncertainty is a powerful concept in many ways, particularly so for economic ideas. The convictions before the financial crisis in 2007-8 that business cycles had been tamed was not the first time neglect of uncertainty proved devastating. This essay discusses the famous Currency controversy in mid-19th century Britain and the failure to take uncertainty into consideration, which ultimately lead to the banking crisis of 1847. The unintended consequences of the Bank Act of 1844 revealed themselves spectacularly in 1847, in the same way convictions about the Great Moderation fell apart in 2007-8
Reconstructing men from the operating table to the gallery: A study on the shifting context of male identity in Henry Tonks\u27 pastel portraits of wounded soldiers
Get PDFThis study explores the changing interpretations of Henry Tonks\u27 pastel drawings of disfigured soldiers from the aftermath of World War I. As the context evolved from a clinical environment to art historical, concerns developed not only regarding the reconstruction of the male body, but also the restoration of manhood after the First World War. The pre-War construction of masculinity, which turned man to machine, must also be evaluated in order to understand how Tonks’ images might reinstate the wounded men’s identities. The study examines the collective identity of British men during the First World War, focusing on those who were injured in battle. It compares Tonks’ pastels with other sources, in order to understand the changing and fragile definition of masculinity from the aftermath of war, and the reconstruction of manhood and identity of disfigured soldiers