Updates, Live

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Diego Olstein and the Globalization of History

Diego Olstein
author of Thinking History Globally
(source: Toynbee Prize Foundation)
no copyright infringement intended


The world living now its Globalization Age, social sciences took the appropriate approaches. And so Global History came into the picture; together with Macrohistory (apparently opposed to Microhystory; actually the latter takes a small unit of research, like a single event, a single community or place, etc, applying on it macrohistory techniques), Big History (taking as unit of research the whole time frame from Big Bang to present, and looking for universal constants, if any), Cliometrics (applying econometric techniques to history); all of them close each other in their meaning.

All this means firstly operating on large temporal and spacial spans, then allying history with anthropology (as on such time frames society can be better understood through the generic individual), also with ecology (as the generic individual has to be placed in its environment - humanoid, fauna and flora as peers), also with economics (approached with the same global eye - aiming perhaps to obtain an objective picture of the facts, devoid of any interpretation).

Well, all this seems pretty different from the history as we were used to. It's a lot to say here (firstly that Global History pretends to be ideology-free, which is not accurate, I think: it just follows the ideology of Globalization Age). I would rather say that Global and Traditional histories are just two separate disciplines, each one with its merits and its challenges.

Actually the traditional history takes sometimes macro-approaches: Spengler (in Der Untergang des Abendlandes) and Toynbee (in A Study of History) are just two examples. However they remain distinct fields, and Global History (along with its avatars, Macro-, Big-, Clio-) is extremely vigorous in declaring the independence from tradition. Thus, we have here a radically new orientation in history, and like any new orientation, it has its manifesto: Thinking History Globally, authored by Diego Olstein and published in 2015.

Diego Olstein was born in Argentine in a Jewish family that had come from Eastern Europe. His first years meant a mixed formative universe: the Yiddish of his grandparents and their memories of the shtetl, along with the Argentinian city with its thrilling life and much larger openness. A book of history that young Olstein came upon while in high school opened the world for him even larger. It was Eduardo Galeano's Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina, and it was connecting the Argentinian history and generally the Latin American world to the whole Atlantic basin. The next opening of perspective came for Olstein while at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where - mentored by Benjamin Kedar - he became interested in studying the universe of the medieval Mediterranean Basin and its inter-cultural relationships. In 2006 Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca published his first book, La era mozárabe: los mozárabes de Toledo (siglos XII y XIII) en la historiografía, las fuentes y la historia.

For a while Olstein was a visiting scholar at several universities in US (Boston, Madison WI, Pittsburgh) and Europe (Jacobs), continuing also to work with the Hebrew University. Eventually he settled at Pitt, becoming the Associate Director of the World History Center and getting fully immersed in the global thing. No wonder with such a background.

His Thinking History Globally suggests twelve possible approaches in tackling big-scale history:

  • Comparative history
  • Relational histories
  • New international history
  • Trans-national history
  • Oceanic history
  • Historical sociology
  • Civilizational analysis
  • World-system approach
  • Global history
  • History of globalization
  • World history
  • Big history
Now, of course this is not a bullet-proof list. Some would not see the reason behind all these points, others could devise different strategies. Anyway Diego Olstein makes his case, illustrating the list with concrete examples, sometimes building unexpected parallels (why is the Egyptian Nasser more similar to the Mexican Cárdenas than to Sadat, the man who followed him at the helm of Egypt), sometimes presenting the same example (the rise to power of Argentinian president Perón, or the unfolding of the First World War) under the lenses of almost all twelve approaches.

Saying all this, will the Global History, or the Big-Scale whatever, take the place of the traditional one? Very recent developments on the world stage seem to demonstrate that we should always put caution in our judgements. I would repeat here that we have two separate domains, each one with its own merits, each one with its own challenges.


(A Life in Books)

Labels:

Friday, June 24, 2016

Argot Dominicano (dedicado a Junot Diaz)

(fuente: la huerta de ana mary)
no copyright infringement intended


¿Qué es una vaina? Es sólo una vaina, nada más, nada menos, la cubierta de los frijoles y guisantes (y de otras cosas así). También la cubierta de los cuchillos y sables, a veces aún de los pistolas y armas. Finalmente una vaina es exactamente una cubierta, para algo y para nada. Y así la vaina se hizo una palabra para llamar absolutamente cualquier cosa, especialmente cuando no se recuerda el nombre de esa cosa, o es demasiado perezoso para llamar la cosa con su nombre exacto. Y como cualquier palabra de este tipo, vaina se acostumbró en toda la clase de maldiciones y obscenidades. Al menos en República Dominicana y generalmente en el Caribeño vaina es el querido del argot. Es ubicuo, es un chameleon: si conoce todos sus significados, no necesita otras palabras para hacerse entendido allí. En el Caribeño, sabe vaina sabe el español, es tan simple.

Dice Laura Restrepo (escritora y periodista colombiana), al extranjero que visita estas tierras, por familiarizarse con el múltiple y versátil manejo de vaina le ahorra tener que aprender español.




Aquí están algunos ejemplos (con sus traducciones inglesas). ¡Diviértete!

(fuente: Urban Dictionary):

¡Me gusta esta vaina! (I like this stuff!)

¿Dónde encontraste esa vaina alla? (Where did you find that thing over there?)

¡Dame esa vaina! (Give me that thing!)

¡Que vaina! (Damn!)

¡Esa vaina! (That's bullshit!)

(fuente: Speaking Latino):

¡Qué vaina! (What a disaster!)

¡Qué buena vaina! (in reference to success or good fortune)

Pásame esa vaina (used together with the demonstrative pronoun "esa" in reference to a thingamajig)

Salí de esa vaina (I am now relieved of that crap)

(fuente: Stuff Dominicans Like):

¿Y que es esa vaina? (What is this crap?)

¡Cuidado con esa vaina! (Be careful with this kind of things!)

¡No te metas en esta vaina! (Don't enter this kind of stuff)

¿Y que la vaina? (And wtf?)

¡Quitame esa vaina! (Change the channel!)

¡Buscame la vaina por favor! (Pick up some rum at the bodega, please!)



(Refranero español)

(Junot Diaz)

Labels: ,

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Gomez Leal (Pessoa - rendido em romeno por Dan Caragea)

António Duarte Gomes Leal
(source: wikimedia)
no copyright infringement intended


Sangra, sinistro, a alguns o astro baço.
Seus três anéis irreversíveis são
A desgraça, a tristeza, a solidão.
Oito luas fatais fitam no espaço.

Este, poeta, Apolo em seu regaço
A Saturno entregou. A plúmbea mão
Lhe ergueu ao alto o aflito coração.
E, erguido, o apertou, sangrando lasso.

Inúteis oito luas da loucura
Quando a cintura tríplice denota
Solidão e desgraça e amargura!

Mas da noite sem fim um rastro brota,
Vestígios de maligna formosura:
É a lua além de Deus, álgida e ignota.





Sângeră trist în unii astrul mat.
Inelele lui trei sunt pe vecie:
Singurătate, chin, melancolie.
Opt luni fatale spațiul îl străbat.

Poetul, de Apolo, fu purtat
În poală, lui Saturn. Iar mâna-i plumburie
Inima tristă-o ridică-n tărie
Și-o strânse până, moale, -a sângerat.

Zadarnice acum opt luni nebune
Când tripla lui centură răspândește:
Singurătate, chin și-amărăciune!

Din noaptea nesfârșită-o urmă crește,
Vestigii de malignă, grea minune:
O lună rece lângă Zeu albește.



(Gomez Leal)

(Fernando Pessoa)

(Dan Caragea)

Labels: , ,

Friday, June 17, 2016

António Duarte Gomes Leal

António Duarte Gomes Leal
caricaturado por Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro
(source: wiki commons)
no copyright infringement intended

poeta e crítico literário português (1848-1921)


Dan Caragea sobre Gomes Leal:

L-am citit în original. Făcea parte din programa de literatură, dar, pe vremea aceea, îl aveam la inimă pe Cesário Verde. Pe el l-am ales și pentru lucrarea de diplomă. La Gomes Leal m-am reîntors abia după vreo doi ani, după ce am citit poemul omonim al lui Fernando Pessoa. Am tradus puține poeme de Leal, toate pe alese. Totuși, Claridades do Sul (1875) ar fi meritat tradus integral. Scriitori români apropiați de spiritul lui Leal? (Cred că) trebuie căutat în școala și discipolii lui Macedonski, pentru că el este, la noi, înnoitorul.
(interviu publicat în Egophobia)





(Una Vida Entre Libros)

(Dan Caragea)

Labels: ,

Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca

firma de Federico García Lorca
(fuente: wiki commons)
no copyright infringement intended





(Una Vida Entre Libros)

Labels:

Thursday, June 16, 2016

¿Cómo evitar argumentos innecesarios?

The Monster Squad (Una Pandilla Halucinante), 1987
(fuente: Aquí Vale Todo)
no copyright infringement intended


No lo entiendo por qué la gente discute, con lo bonito que es decir que si a todo y hacer lo que te sale de los cojones

(variante: No entiendo por qué la gente discute, con lo bonito y lo fácil que es decir que sí a todo y luego hacer lo que te salga de los huevos)


(Refranero español)

Labels:

Friday, June 10, 2016

Argot Castellano: La Palabra Más Usada

(fuente: Drunkabilly Records)
no copyright infringement intended

Aquí están 33 frases con la palabra argótica más usada en España:







(Refranero español)

Labels:

Friday, June 03, 2016

Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond
(photo source: Jared Diamond's web site)
no copyright infringement intended


While in high school Jared Diamond believed he would become a physician, to follow his father's path. However he chose the Greek classes rather than sciences. And he remained with a great passion for foreign languages since then: while in his sixties he began studying Italian - that being his twelfth tongue.

But let's come back to his young years. He went to Harvard, considering again a scientific career. And again he studied anything rather than sciences: Russian, German, music, oral epic poetry and the like. He thought that anyway he would work in some scientific field for the rest of his life, so why not doing at least in college something really for his soul? And he remained with a great passion for music. Some years later he would propose to his wife by playing the Brahms Intermezzo in A minor.

After Harvard he went to Cambridge University in England, where he finally devoted his time fully to sciences and earned a PhD in physiology. It was the case, you'd say.

After finishing his studies, Jared Diamond returned to US and started working in the field of laboratory research, specializing in the physiology of gall bladder, at Harvard (as a Junior Fellow) and then at UCLA (as a professor at the Medical School). A summer trip to New Guinea brought him the big picture of life and the big meaning. He started a second career that took a more and more precise shape in the years that followed, embracing such fields as ecosystems, evolutionary biology, geographic determinism, anthropology, macrohistory.

He is talking about all this in his books: The Third Chimpanzee (1991: how did humans evolve from being just another specie of big animals to what distinguishes them radically from all other animals?), Guns, Germs and Steel (1997: how did Eurasians - rather than people from the other continents - become the masters of the world?), Why Is Sex Fun (1997: why is human sexuality so radically different from all other animals?), Collapse (2005: why did so many past societies disappear, leaving behind ruined temples, pyramids and palaces?), Natural Experiments of History (2010: can we elaborate a sort of experimental laboratory by comparing different historical events evolving under similar conditions while having different outcomes?), The World Until Yesterday (2012: can we learn from present-day traditional societies for our own good?). The method, as we can see, is to formulate clearly the question and then to advance some possible alternate answers, if any. Each of these books deserves a short discussion. Maybe I should come back to it.


(A Life in Books)

Labels: