Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

Lodovica Braida, Anonymity in Eighteenth-Century Italian Publishing. The Absent Author, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2022

This book focuses on the different forms in which authorship came to be expressed in eighteenth-century Italian publishing. It analyses both the affirmation of the “author function”, and, above all, its paradoxical opposite: the use of anonymity, a centuries-old practice present everywhere in Europe but often neglected by scholarship. The reasons why authors chose to publish their works anonymously were manifold, including prudence, fear of censorship, modesty, fear of personal criticism, or simple divertissement. In many cases, it was an ethical choice, especially for ecclesiastics. The Italian case provides a key perspective on the study of anonymity in the European context, contributing to the analysis of an overlooked topic in academic studies.

The introduction focuses on the aim of the book: to analyse the development of the “author function” (defined as such by Michel Foucault in 1969)…

Alekseeva-Karnevali, O.A.
India’s Strategic Culture: In Search of a Systemic Element
(2022) Russia in Global Affairs, 20 (3), pp. 134-156.

DOI: 10.31278/1810-6374-2022-20-3-134-156

Abstract
India is emerging as a global power, but its strategic culture remains largely understudied. Expert literature calls into question the very existence of India’s own “systemic” strategic thinking. The article probes into the validity of this viewpoint, postulates that India has its own strategic culture, and highlights its key elements. With the help of Michel Foucault’s genealogical method, the genealogy of the concepts of ‘war’ and ‘power’ in Indian political philosophy is examined and, on this basis, the central conceptual elements of India’s military-political system are determined. This approach shows that India’s strategic culture is distinguished not only by its own systemic strategic thinking, but also by an original (different from the Western one) way of structuring and coding the conceptual space of ‘society,’ ‘politics,’ and…

Antarctica’s George VI Ice Shelf [image credit: CIRES Colorado Univ.]

Interesting, but too many uncertainties at this time to reach any firm conclusions. The river system is ‘beneath kilometers of thick ice’.
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Scientists at Imperial College London, the University of Waterloo, Canada, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, and Newcastle University have discovered an unexpected river under the Antarctic ice sheet, says Tech Explorist.

The discovery of this 460km-long river shows the ice sheet’s base has more active water flow than previously thought, which could make it more susceptible to changes in climate.

The river is believed to affect the flow and melting of ice, contributing to the acceleration of ice loss during climate warming.

Co-author Professor Martin Siegert, from the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, said: “When we first discovered lakes beneath the Antarctic ice a couple of decades ago, we thought they were isolated from…