Invented Knowledge

This incredible exploration of the murky world of pseudo-history reveals the mix of proven facts, informed speculation, and pure fiction behind lost continents, ancient super-civilizations, and conspiratorial cover-ups—as well as the revisionist historical foundations of religions such as the Nation of Islam and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Drawing on the best scholarship available, Ronald H. Fritze shows that in spite of strong, mainstream historical evidence to the contrary, many of these ideas have proved durable and gained widespread acceptance. As the examples in Invented Knowledge reveal, pseudo-historians capitalize on and exploit anomalies in evidence to support their claims, rather than examining the preponderance of research as a whole.

Almost forty years after the publication of Hobsbawm and Ranger’s The Invention of Tradition, the subject of invented traditions—cultural and historical practices that claim a continuity with a distant past but which are in fact of relatively recent origin—is still relevant, important, and highly contentious. Invented Traditions in North and South Korea examines the ways in which compressed modernity, Cold War conflict, and ideological opposition has impacted the revival of traditional forms in both Koreas. The volume is divided thematically into sections covering: (1) history, religions, (2) language, (3) music, food, crafts, and finally, (4) space. It includes chapters on pseudo-histories, new religions, linguistic politeness, literary Chinese, p’ansori, heritage, North Korean food, architecture, and the invention of children’s pilgrimages in the DPRK. As the first comparative study of invented traditions in North and South Korea, the book takes the reader on a journey through Korea’s epic twentieth century, examining the revival of culture in the context of colonialism, decolonization, national division, dictatorship, and modernization. The book investigates what it describes as “monumental” invented traditions formulated to maintain order, loyalty, and national identity during periods of political upheaval as well as cultural revivals less explicitly connected to political power. Invented Traditions in North and South Korea demonstrates that invented traditions can teach us a great deal about the twentieth-century political and cultural trajectories of the two Koreas. With contributions from historians, sociologists, folklorists, scholars of performance, and anthropologists, this volume will prove invaluable to Koreanists, as well as teachers and students of Korean and Asian studies undergraduate courses.

This incredible exploration of the murky world of pseudo-history reveals the mix of proven facts, informed speculation, and pure fiction behind lost continents, ancient super-civilizations, and conspiratorial cover-ups—as well as the revisionist historical foundations of religions such as the Nation of Islam and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Drawing on the best scholarship available, Ronald H. Fritze shows that in spite of strong, mainstream historical evidence to the contrary, many of these ideas have proved durable and gained widespread acceptance. As the examples in Invented Knowledge reveal, pseudo-historians capitalize on and exploit anomalies in evidence to support their claims, rather than examining the preponderance of research as a whole.

A rallying manifesto for the innovative problem-solving we need to build a better, more verdant, and sustainable planetary existence. Academics are letting Africa down. With all that we know, what do we have to show for it? Whose lives have been changed for the better by it? What have we done for and with our communities lately? In this provocative book—the first in a trilogy—Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga argues that our critical thinkers must become actual thinker-doers. Taking its title from one of Thomas Sankara’s most inspirational speeches, Dare to Invent the Future looks for moments in Africa’s story where precedents of critical thought and knowledge in service of problem-solving are evident to inspire readers to dare to invent such a knowledge system. Mavhunga revisits insights from Edward Wilmot Blyden, Booker T. Washington, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Amílcar Cabral, Julius Nyerere, and Thomas Sankara to illustrate how the academic disciplines have been, and could be, deployed in the service of and through problem-solving, building on what people are doing and know. At its core, he writes, knowledge in the service of and through problem-solving derives from reading the past for new questions, doing due diligence in the present, and contriving an anticipatory approach toward the future. Questioning the fundamental premises of Western and white knowledge production, especially regarding science and technology, Mavhunga proposes in this book refreshingly new approaches to thinking-doing that stem from African realities, in the hopes of inspiring a generation that will run toward, not away from, problems to solve them.