Is violence an intrinsic part of modern queer culture? This book presents compelling new research on how homophobia, suicide, gender violence, abuse, racism, and the impact of war and colonialism shaped the emergence of modern homosexual rights activism. It examines forgotten writings by Magnus Hirschfeld, the influential sexologist who is best known today for his homosexual activism and foundational transgender work. In 1919 he opened the world's first Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin. Attracting international visitors including doctors, artists, writers and political activists, it was destroyed by the Nazis in 1933. Attacks against queer life play a formative role in modern same-sex culture. Yet remembering the victims is only part of the task of queer history. The Hirschfeld Archives attends to the queer dead and injured, but it also demonstrates that the development of homosexual rights politics in the West had gendered and racialized limits.
Nineteenth-century Vienna is well known to medical historians as a leading centre of medical research and education, offering easy access to patients and corpses to students from all over the world. This article seeks to explain how this enviable supply with cadavers was achieved, why it provoked so little opposition at a time when Britain and the United States saw widespread protests against dissection, and how it was threatened from mid-century. To understand permissive Viennese attitudes we need to place them in a longue durée history of death and dissection, and to pay close attention to the city's political geography as it was transformed into a major imperial capital. The tolerant stance of the Roman Catholic Church, strong links to Southern Europe and the weak position of individuals in the absolutist state all contributed to an idiosyncratic anatomical culture. But as the fame of the Vienna medical school peaked in the later 1800s, the increased demand created by rising student numbers combined with intensified interdisciplinary competition to produce a shortfall that professors found increasingly difficult to meet. Around 1900, new religious groups and mass political parties challenged the long-standing anatomical practice by refusing to supply cadavers and making dissection into an instrument of political struggle. This study of the material preconditions for anatomy at one of Europe's most influential medical schools provides a contrast to the dominant Anglo-American histories of death and dissection.
This dissertation explores the ways in which sutura--a Wolofized Arabic concept that can mean discretion, modesty, privacy, or protection--mediates the production of the boundary between gendered life and ungendered death in Senegalese literature and popular culture. In the ethics of the Wolof caste system, the order of slavery, and local Sufism, the unequal distribution of sutura produces a communal "inside" of those who possess a refined, ideal form of life and humanness, and an abject "outside" comprised of subjects who possess a bare form of life that is exposed to social and moral death. While sutura is one of several concepts that constitute the Wolof code of honor, it serves as the very membrane between the state of honor and the state of shame. The inherent lack of sutura attributed to subjects like the slave and the griot reproduces their permanently shamed state, and sutura's transgression exposes the previously honorable, high-status subject to a publicly visible dishonor, a death-like state worse than physical death. The gender hierarchy is one of the many overlapping hierarchies that comprise Wolof society, thus entangling the possession of a legible gender with the possession of sutura in the production of normative humanness and virtuous life. This study tracks this entanglement in its investigation of the production of ungendered, socially dead subjects in contemporary Senegalese culture, revealing that inclusion in the honorable community of the nation is predicated on the possession of a gendered legibility mediated by sutura. The chapters are organized around media scandals that exemplify this dynamic and suggest that contemporary figures of bare life--rogue wives of Sufi sheikhs, maids, prostitutes, gay/trangendered men--are abjected through a mechanics inherited from older Wolof ethical orders. However, as the novels and video melodramas that I foreground as a counterpoint reveal, the ethics generating those mechanics are contested. Indeed, the ethics of sutura are challenged by various liberal-secular, feminist, and Muslim ethical orders currently vying for dominance in the Senegalese public sphere. The new regime of exposure that has taken hold of the media in the wake of the mass democratic movements of the 1990s provides a stage not only for unprecedented scales of abjection via the generation of moral panics, but also for popular contestation of that abjection and the production of new inclusive humanisms. In the midst of the raging pro-sutura versus anti-sutura debate, I propose that a recasting of sutura within a progressive Muslim ethos would disarticulate sutura from social hierarchies, thus enabling the formation of an ethics of communal care and protection that could still be coded as Wolof and Muslim.
The decadence question in the Ottoman Empire became a common ground for intellectual debates about language, translation, and authenticity at the turn of the century. It was part of the manifold translational processes among French, high Ottoman, and the rising Ottoman vernacular, as well as the unexpected circulations of literary movements and genres in the Ottoman literary field. The decadents and the conservative modernizers – who were all cosmopolitan author-translators – negotiated and transformed Eurocentric norms of literariness and, by using local forms, introduced new genres and styles into the emergent field of modern Ottoman-Turkish literature. This study discusses decadent aesthetics in relation to the burgeoning performance scene in Istanbul at the turn of the century. It analyses two domestic family dramas written by prominent authors of the time, Recaizade Mahmud Ekrem's Vuslat (1874) and Muallim Naci's Heder (1909), by recontextualizing them within the literary history of fin-de-siècle pessimism and decadent aesthetics. It revisits Ottoman literary historiography, which typically follows conservative views on decadence as degeneration and over-westernization, by discussing aesthetic decadence in Ottoman Turkish literature. It reorients Naci's work within innovative currents and offers a uniquely nuanced reading of both Ekrem's and Naci's plays. Finally, this study introduces decadent performance of the late Ottoman Empire to global decadence studies, underlying its inner social, political and aesthetic dynamics.
WOS: 000508133700029 ; A new Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project brings together multiple strands of investigation to probe the relationship between ritual, violence, and early state formation. David Wengrow and Brenna Hassett will coordinate an international team combining biomolecular analysis (stable isotopes, ancient DNA), bioarchaeology, and archaeology to examine a remarkable set of Early Bronze Age funerary deposits (c. 3100-2800 BC), excavated at the multi-period site of Basur Hark, in South-eastern Turkey. They include evidence of extraordinary wealth combined with radically new cultural practices, such as mass death pits and burials of retainers or other human victims. Such findings add to a growing body of archaeological data from the Middle East, which is now prompting researchers to rethink key aspects of social and political change at the start of the Bronze Age. ; Arts and Humanities Research Council UK Research Grant; BIAA ; Initial support for the physical anthropological investigation at Basur Hoyuk was provided by the BIAA Study Grant Scheme. Ongoing funding is provided by the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK Research Grant, and small grants from the BIAA.
Abstract Background In 2007, 95% of women in Botswana delivered in health facilities with 73% attending at least 4 antenatal care visits. HIV-prevalence in pregnant women was 28.7%. The maternal mortality ratio in 2010 was 163 deaths per 100 000 live births versus the government target of 130 for that year, indicating that the Millennium Development Goal 5 was unlikely to be met. A root-cause analysis was carried out with the aim of determining the underlying causes of maternal deaths reported in 2010, to categorise contributory factors and to prioritise appropriate interventions based on the identified causes, to prevent further deaths. Methods Case-notes for maternal deaths were reviewed by a panel of five clinicians, initially independently then discussed together to achieve consensus on assigning contributory factors, cause of death and whether each death was avoidable or not at presentation to hospital. Factors contributing to maternal deaths were categorised into organisational/management, personnel, technology/equipment/supplies, environment and barriers to accessing healthcare. Results Fifty-six case notes were available for review from 82 deaths notified in 2010, with 0–4 contributory factors in 19 deaths, 5–9 in 27deaths and 9–14 in nine. The cause of death in one case was not ascertainable since the notes were incomplete. The high number of contributory factors demonstrates poor quality of care even where deaths were not avoidable: 14/23 (61%) of direct deaths were considered avoidable compared to 12/32 (38%) indirect deaths. Highest ranking categories were: failure to recognise seriousness of patients' condition (71% of cases); lack of knowledge (67%); failure to follow recommended practice (53%); lack of or failure to implement policies, protocols and guidelines (44%); and poor organisational arrangements (35%). Half the deaths had some barrier to accessing health services. Conclusions Root-cause analysis demonstrates the interactions between patients, health professionals and health system in generating adverse outcomes for patients. The lessons provided indicate where training of undergraduate and postgraduate medical, midwifery and nursing students need to be intensified, with emphasis on evidence-based practice and adherence to protocols. Action plans and interventions aimed at changing the circumstances that led to maternal deaths can be implemented and re-evaluated.
First ed. published in 1918 under title: Reflections on war and death. ; Translation of Zeitgemässes über Krieg und Tod. ; Mode of access: Internet. ; 2
Death and the macabre have always been deeply entrenched in Irish culture: one of its most celebrated sons, Bram Stoker, has granted Ireland a central place in the Gothic literary tradition. The wake and the funeral have a prominent place into the Irish obsession with death and all its paraphernalia. In their book about Irish funerary tradition, Nina Witoszek and Patrick Sheeran state how those traditions are a mark of identity and might be seen as politically charged since the history of Ireland is one of a country divided by opposing loyalties and religious affiliations. Poetry has been regarded as one of the most effective vehicles for the transmission of death traditions in the rich Irish culture, and the modern and contemporary Irish poetry is a remarkable depository of death imagery. By recalling the distinction by Vivian Mercier, who identifies 'macabre' and 'grotesque' as two types of humour typical of the Irish comic tradition (along with the fantastic), the essay discusses the cultural and anthropological matrix of the Irish macabre through examples from contemporary Irish literature, focusing in particular on novels by Patrick McCabe and John Banville.
Recent actions by French military forces in Niger and the global prominence of terrorist groups such as Al Shabaab and Boko Haram, have highlighted the growing counter terrorist focus on the countries of Sub Saharan Africa. Additionally in a post Bin Laden world and with the immanent withdrawal of coalition combat troops from Afghanistan, there is the possibility of Africa as a continent becoming the new front in the Global War on Terror (Mben et al., 2013). However, it is a mistake to assume that Africa's story is uniformly one of violence and death. Vibrant cultures and a rugged entrepreneurial spirit have combined with a robust Internet backbone, to create the embryonic emergence of high tech hotspots across Africa. With rising IT literacy levels, more and more Africans are becoming connected to the information super highway on a daily basis (Graham, 2010). A tiny minority of these Africans are terrorists.
Special Edition Issue - Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Sub-Saharan Africa ; Recent actions by French military forces in Niger and the global prominence of terrorist groups such as Al Shabaab and Boko Haram, have highlighted the growing counter terrorist focus on the countries of Sub Saharan Africa. Additionally in a post Bin Laden world and with the immanent withdrawal of coalition combat troops from Afghanistan, there is the possibility of Africa as a continent becoming the new front in the Global War on Terror (Mben et al., 2013). However, it is a mistake to assume that Africa's story is uniformly one of violence and death. Vibrant cultures and a rugged entrepreneurial spirit have combined with a robust Internet backbone, to create the embryonic emergence of high tech hotspots across Africa. With rising IT literacy levels, more and more Africans are becoming connected to the information super highway on a daily basis (Graham, 2010). A tiny minority of these Africans are terrorists. ; Publisher PDF
Sudden, violent and otherwise unexplained deaths are investigated in most western jurisdictions through a Coronial or medico-legal process. A crucial element of such an investigation is the legislative requirement to remove the body for autopsy and other medical interventions, processes which can disrupt traditional religious and cultural grieving practices. While recent legislative changes in an increasing number of jurisdictions allow families to raise objections based on religious and cultural grounds, such concerns can be over-ruled, often exacerbating the trauma and grief of families. Based on funded research which interviews a range of Coronial staff in one Australian jurisdiction, this paper explores the disjuncture between medico-legal discourses, which position the body as corpse, and the rise of more 'therapeutic' discourses which recognise the family's wishes to reposition the body as beloved and lamented.
The violations of Human Rights remain spread in all over the world until now. There are violations of Human Rights in all the countries in this universe. It is not possible to find a country, which free from this violation. It is very terrible, such as the professional killing and systematic murder. It will cause to grow the culture of dead. This culture does not respect on the human life. The professional killing and systematic murder are real social fact, which are not distinct and justly resolved. This criminal actions will grow more terrible, if the official organs of the government provoke and take apart in this matter, do not want to obstacle and stop them, although they are capable to do it. The culture of Human Rights can be built, if the culture of life has been respected, the people, especially the organ of the government takes care and respect to Human Rights and promote them as well as possible. So the human life will grows to the directions of the welfare for the people and more civilized. If the people develop the culture of Human Rights, the human civilizations will grow for respect them. We have task to develop the culture of Human Rights.
The subject of analysis in this article comprises folkloric motives related to death and funeral in the late Lithuanian military-historical folksongs. The scope of investigation embraces the songs that became popular approximately in the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century, chiefly related historically to the Russian–Japanese War and the World War I, in which Lithuanians had to participate as soldiers of the Tsarist Russian army. The main attention is paid in the article to the following folkloric motives of the songs: the seeing of the soldier off to the war and saying farewell to him; death in the battlefield, far away from home; the soldiers' graves; the nameless mass burials; death without funeral. The farewell motives found in some of the examined songs contain reflections of certain rituals of farewell and seeing the man off to the war, existing in the traditional Lithuanian culture. The foreboding of death is very distinctly expressed here. In the late military-historical folksongs, image of the battlefield emerges as the specific space of death, becoming a popular folkloric motive. The poetics of the death 179 in the battlefield is subtly supplemented by quite frequently used Christian religious images. Among numerous realistic and sometimes even openly naturalistic motives, the much more lyrical poetic parallel of bullet and bee could be discerned, encountered not only in Lithuanian, but also in Latvian military songs. A special place in the late. [to full text]
The subject of analysis in this article comprises folkloric motives related to death and funeral in the late Lithuanian military-historical folksongs. The scope of investigation embraces the songs that became popular approximately in the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century, chiefly related historically to the Russian–Japanese War and the World War I, in which Lithuanians had to participate as soldiers of the Tsarist Russian army. The main attention is paid in the article to the following folkloric motives of the songs: the seeing of the soldier off to the war and saying farewell to him; death in the battlefield, far away from home; the soldiers' graves; the nameless mass burials; death without funeral. The farewell motives found in some of the examined songs contain reflections of certain rituals of farewell and seeing the man off to the war, existing in the traditional Lithuanian culture. The foreboding of death is very distinctly expressed here. In the late military-historical folksongs, image of the battlefield emerges as the specific space of death, becoming a popular folkloric motive. The poetics of the death 179 in the battlefield is subtly supplemented by quite frequently used Christian religious images. Among numerous realistic and sometimes even openly naturalistic motives, the much more lyrical poetic parallel of bullet and bee could be discerned, encountered not only in Lithuanian, but also in Latvian military songs. A special place in the late. [to full text]
