Academic literature on the topic 'North-American messianism'

Abstract This paper is concerned with the messianic construction of manhood within African American communities in North America and its normative imprint in shaping and measuring masculinity among African Americans. In this essay, messianic manhood is treated as a utopian construction of masculinity that is found in liberal and conservative constructions of Protestant Christianity. In examining this tradition of manhood, representative messianic men are interrogated who have participated in and have been shaped by this tradition. Overall, messianic manhood is inconceivable apart from an oral tradition of preaching and singing where the person of Jesus is understood as Lord, savior, and ally of the oppressed.

AbstractBased on ethnographic and archival research conducted on North American Judaism and Messianic Judaism, this article argues that each group uses DNA in what appear to be sociologically similar ways but that actually differ profoundly at the theological level. Our analysis moves beyond DNA testing per se to focus on what anthropologist Kim Tallbear calls “gene talk,” referring to “the idea that essential truths about identity inhere in sequences of DNA.” Contrasting Jews and Messianic Jews, we demonstrate clearly what scholars have only begun to recognize: how theological commitments may drive investments in genetic science and interpretations of it. Further, we show how religiously significant identities associated with race, ethnicity, or lineage interact with DNA science, coming to be viewed as inalienable qualities that reside in the self but move beyond phenotype alone. Finally, we argue that gene talk in these contexts is a religiously inflected practice, which serves to binds communities and (implicitly or explicitly) authorize existing theological ideals.

Whether native-born or immigrants from the United States, Caribbean Basin, or Africa, Black people have made Canada an integral – although still largely overlooked – site in the Black Atlantic and African Diaspora. This article examines interwar Pan-Africanism, a movement that enjoyed a popular following in Canada. Pan-Africanists considered knowledge of history and love of self as foundational to resisting anti-blackness and inspiring Black liberation. In North America, they fortified themselves with the memory of their ancestors and awareness of an ancient African past as requisites for racial redemption and community building. African-American and Caribbean immigrants embraced Ethiopianism – a messianic Pan-Africanism of sorts – which they mythologized on Canadian soil. Not only was this Black racial renaissance new in Canadian society, but also its quasi spiritualism and revanchism reveals the zeal and militance of interwar Black agency. Pan-Africanists in North America sowed the seeds of twentieth-century Black liberation in the interwar period, which helped germinate postwar Caribbean and African decolonization, and civil and human rights struggles in the United States and Canada.

Victory over Spain in 1898 provided the United States with the opportunity to pursue the various options that imperial status now offered. Indeed, under the influence of the strategic precepts of an Alfred Thayer Mahan, the messianic expansionism of a Josiah Strong, the extended frontier concept of a Frederick Jackson Turner, and the now seemingly obtainable economic aspirations of a James G. Blaine, North Americans looked to their newly established imperial arena with anticipation and confidence. It would be the adjacent circum-Caribbean region, for the most part, where the United States government would attempt to create the appropriate climate for the attainment of its strategic, economic, and altruistic goals. Acquisition of the Canal Zone in 1903 served in particular to focus U.S. attention on the isthmus. Accordingly, whenever revolutionary violence erupted in Central America, the United States government more often than not took vigorous action to ensure the survival or emergence of governments and factions which were supportive of North American interests.

The article investigates the impact of Great Britain on the evolution of colonialism in the late ХІХ and early ХХ centuries. It is analyzed the sources and scientific literature on the policy of the United Kingdom in the colonial question in the late ХІХ – early ХХ century. The reasons, course and consequences of the intensification of British policy in the colonial problem are described. The process of formation and implementation of London’s initiatives in the colonial question during the period under study is studied. It is considered the position of Great Britain on the transformation of the colonial system in the late XIX – early XX centuries. The resettlement activity of the British and the peculiarities of their mentality, based on the idea of racial superiority and the new national messianism, led to the formation of developed resettlement colonies. The war for the independence of the North American colonies led to the formation of a new state on their territory, and the rest of the “white” colonies of Great Britain had at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries had to build a new policy of relations, taking into account the influence of the United States on them, and the general decline of economic and military-strategic influence of Britain in the world, and the militarization of other leading countries. As a result, a commonwealth is formed instead of an empire. With regard to other dependent territories, there is also a change in policy towards the liberalization of colonial rule and concessions to local elites. In the late ХІХ – early ХІХ centuries the newly industrialized powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) sought to seize the colonies to reaffirm their new status in the world, the great colonial powers of the past (Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands) sought to retain what remained to preserve their international prestige, and Russia sought to expand. The largest colonial empires, Great Britain and France, were interested in maintaining the status quo. In the colonial policy of the United Kingdom, it is possible to trace a certain line related to attempts to preserve the situation in their remote possessions and not to get involved in conflicts and costly measures where this can be avoided. In this sense, the British government showed some flexibility and foresight – the relative weakening of the military and economic power of the empire due to the emergence of new states, as well as the achievement of certain self-sufficiency, made it necessary to reconsider traditional foreign policy. Colonies are increasingly no longer seen as personal acquisitions of states, and policy toward these territories is increasingly seen as a common deal of the international community and even its moral duty. The key role here was to be played by Great Britain, which was one of the first to form the foundations of a “neocolonial” system that presupposes a solidarity policy of Western countries towards the rest of the world under the auspices of London. Colonial system in the late ХІХ – early ХІХ century underwent a major transformation, which was associated with a set of factors, the main of which were – the emergence of new industrial powers on the world stage, the internal evolution of the British Empire, changes in world trade, the emergence of new weapons, general growth of national and religious identity and related with this contradiction. The fact that the First World War did not solve many problems, such as Japanese expansionism or British marinism, and caused new ones, primarily such as the Bolshevik coup in Russia and the coming to power of the National Socialists in Germany, the implementation of the above trends stretched to later moments.

In this article I rematerialize discourse that is articulated in the shape of commemorative visitor book entries, in a national-military commemoration site in Jerusalem, Israel. The materiality and communicative affordances of the commemorative visitor book, the physical environment in which it is situated and which grants it meaning, and the modes of interaction and inscription that it affords are examined. Located in a densely symbolic national commemoration site, the impressively looking book does not merely capture visitors' reflections. Instead, it serves as a device that allows participation in a collective-national rite. While seemingly designated as a visitor book, the discursive device functions performatively as a portal or interface between visitors, on the one side, and the nation and the dead and living soldieries, on the other side. Expectedly, the inscriptions that populate the book's pages are instances of iconic discourse (texts with graphic additions of sorts), that embody one of the heightened ideological and experiential moments of "civil religion" (Robert Bellah). They illustrate the resources used by nationalism in establishing sacred contexts and rituals. Also, they illustrate how different discourses of sanctity (and profanity), are juxtaposed on the same (Jewish) space. Specifically, while local Israeli sightseers present their appreciation for and participation in commemoration of the nation-state in terms of "civil religion," most of the international tourists, who are mostly north American Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jews, perform their notions of sanctity and sacredness in messianic and primordial terms, which look through or beyond the nation state.

A presente tese busca compreender o processo de Comunicação das características da cultura norte-americana a partir da leitura e interpretação de textos midiáticos fílmicos de diferentes épocas. O apoio teórico parte da noção de memória textual e código-texto segundo estudos de Iuri Lotman, um dos pesquisadores da Semiótica da Cultura. Nessa perspectiva, as produções do cinema são consideradas como um sistema de signos inseridos na semiosfera correspondente. A descrição do sistema da cultura norte-americana é feita pela identificação de suas narrativas míticas fundacionais, de origem judaico-cristã, latina e egípcia. Os mitos são estudados como elementos encadeadores dos textos da cultura considerados relevantes para esta pesquisa, desde o Descobrimento (século 16) até o período da independência norte-americana (século 18). Uma vez descrito o sistema da cultura norte-americana, por meio da memória textual, procede-se à leitura de dois textos cinematográficos nos quais se verificam configurações desses elementos mitológicos. A tese comprova seu objetivo de demonstrar como o mito da nova ordem repercute em textos do cinema norte-americano do final do século XX, e como esse mito é reiterado na atualidade reforçando o papel preponderante da América como nação renovadora do mundo.<br>This thesis seeks to understand the process of communication of north-American cultures features from the reading and interpretation of filmic media texts of different periods. The theoretical support starts from the notion of \"textual memory\" and \"code-text\" according to studies of Iuri Lotman, a researcher of Culture Semiotics. From this perspective, the productions of cinema are considered as a system of signs inserted in corresponding semiosphere. The description of the system of north-American culture is made by identification of its founding myths of Judeo-Christian, Latin, and Egyptian origin. The myths are studied as linker elements of culture texts considered relevant to this research, since the \"Discovery\" (16th century) until the period of American independence (18th century). Once described the system of American culture, through the textual memory, it proceeds to read two film texts in which there are settings of these mythological elements. The thesis proves his goal to showing how the new order myth reflects in texts of north-American cinema of the late twentieth century, and how this myth is repeated in the present strengthening the role of America as a nation renewing of world.