Brian Victoria* … in Informed Comment … https://www.juancole.com/2024/02/judaism-tribalism-universalism.html…. where the title read thus: “The Battle for the Soul of Judaism: Tribalism, Amalek and the Axial Age Universalism of Isaiah”
Category Archives: cultural transmission
A Matador in Repentence …. & A Forgiving
Michael Roberts
The Bullfights staged in custom-built arenas in Spain and Latin America are spectacular pageants that are said to have held watchers spellbound (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullfighting). Presumably they still do. But someone sent me a striking still-shot that immediately held me spellbound.
This picture reveals an experienced matador in wailing repentence …. with a forgiving bull facing him calmly in stoic sadness.
The “Butterfly Bridge” in Galle
Michael Roberts
Dulip Karunaratne of St. Aloysius (as a boarder) sent this to me. As a resident of Galle Fort and a frequent visitor to the playing fields in front of the Fort, this bridge over a canal leading to the Municipal Park was a familiar sight. Perhaps so familiar as to be taken for granted.
Filed under Africans in Asia, architects & architecture, authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, commoditification, cultural transmission, demography, Dutch colonialism, economic processes, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, modernity & modernization, Muslims in Lanka, photography, politIcal discourse, sri lankan society, transport and communications, Uncategorized, world events & processes
Appreciation: Professor Yasmine Gooneratne
Devika Brendon, in The Sunday Times, 18 February 2024
‘And gladly would she learn, and gladly teach’
My mother, Yasmine Gooneratne, passed away on Thursday night this week. She was 88 years old.
Filed under art & allure bewitching, cultural transmission, education, female empowerment, heritage, historical interpretation, life stories, literary achievements, modernity & modernization, patriotism, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, teaching profession, theatre world, tolerance, unusual people, women in ethnic conflcits, world events & processes
Minette De Silva in Pictures
Sired by George E. De Silva and Agnes Nell on 1 February 1918, Minette De Silva has claims to be one of Sri Lanka’s greatest achievers on the world stage. As the pictures of her with Picasso and others at a conference, the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne, in 1947 reveal, young Minette outshone all the others in presentability and age. She then proceeded to imprint her innovative mark within her beloved island — as some of the photographs and the recent recognition of her extraordinary talent by competent personnel attests. …. Michael Roberts
Pictures of Mahinda Rajapaksa in Moments of Triumph & …. Beyond
Selections by Michael Roberts …. promoted by recent mail exchanges with Gayanthi Ranatunga and her reference to the concept “Asokan Persona” which was coined by me sometime back: Michael
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Minette de Silva: An Ornament of Her Age, I
Jane Russell … presenting A Memoir as one Step in a series and deploying the spelling of “Minette” which Minette favoured (not Minnette)
The whine of Minette’s white Renault as it climbed the steep curves of the driveway to St George’s [in Kandy] could be heard long before the car arrived under the arched porch. The car headlights would be switched off and I’d catch a few words in Sinhala being exchanged between Minette and Punchi Rala, a tall, fair old man, whose thin grey hair was tied in a tiny knot behind his head, a dirty sarong half falling from his slack stomach. Punchi Rala was a semi-alcoholic (kassipu being his favoured beverage) who slept on a donkey bed in the recess of the porch. Under his bed he kept a pike that had surely been purloined from the last King of Kandy’s armoury.
Filed under architects & architecture, art & allure bewitching, cultural transmission, economic processes, education, female empowerment, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, modernity & modernization, patriotism, performance, sri lankan society, travelogue, unusual people, world events & processes
Tamil Women at War as ‘Birds of Freedom’ in the LTTE Cause
Vindhya Buthpitiya: “How to Capture Birds of Freedom: Picturing Tamil Women at War,” Trans Asia Photography (2023) 13 (1) … derived from ………………………………………… https://doi.org/10.1215/21582025-10365016 … with the aid of my Aloysian mate KK De Silva; whilr the highlighting is my imposition.
Abstract: This article examines the uses of images of women fighters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during and after the Sri Lankan civil war (1983–2009) to explore the contrasting mobilizations of visual representations of Tamil women cadres, focusing on the cultivation and framing of contradictory nationalist imaginaries by competing ethnic and state actors. In northern Sri Lanka, portraits of gun-bearing women fighters were wielded to signal revolutionary possibilities for the future of the Tamil nation-state as well as to inform the political socialization of its hopeful citizens. Meanwhile, images of Tamil women cadres were cast as gendered and ethnicized threats by the Sri Lankan state in what constituted a calculated form of visual ethno-political othering and weaponization. This article reflects on the ways in which such appropriations exacerbated the political precarity of and the denial of victimhood to Tamil women.
Malathy was the First Tamil Tigress to face death for the Tamiil for the Tamil Cause
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‘Made’ in Australia: The Journal SOUTH ASIA
SEE … https://southasianstudies.org.au/journal/
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies ranks as the leading academic journal in South Asian studies. It provides a forum for scholarly research, comment and discussion on the history, society, economy, culture and international relations of the South Asian region, drawing on a range of disciplines from the humanities and social sciences. South Asia publishes cutting edge, innovative, conceptually interesting, original case studies and new research, which shape and lead debates in the field.
Professor Kama Maclean: a key figure in the history of the journal
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Captain Cook, the First Fleet & Australia Day: Relevant Facts
Earlson Forbes in Sydney in Email Memo to Michael Roberts, 9 February 2024** as a Comment on this TPS Item viz https://thuppahis.com/2024/02/08/anzac-day-outdoes-australia-day-in-the–scales-of-dinky-die-australian-nationalism/ ……….. Note that the highlights in black are those by Earlson, while the other coloured segments are those of Editor Roberts.
Whilst the author of this email has made many interesting observations, I think clarification is due on some aspects of the contents. The email in question states. ‘The first fleet arrived in Botany Bay on 18th January. The 26th was chosen as Australia Day for a very different and important reason. The 26th of January 1949 is the day Australians received their independence from British Rule’.
The comment regarding the arrival of Captain James Cook is correct. James Cook did not bring the First Fleet to Australia. Many years before the First Fleet arrived in Australia Captain Cook was on a voyage to the mid Pacific. Cook’s voyage took him to Hawaii where there was a fierce encounter with the Hawaiians and Cook was killed in the skirmish on 14 February 1779.
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