Archaeological museums often came into existence from private collections of curiosities. When official museums were created in the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, the question of which cultures belonged to the ‘ancient world’ (and which not) was hotly debated, as the example of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden shows us. In addition, the role of an archaeological collection in society could be regarded in various ways. In the 19th century the ‘purest examples from antiquity’ were used as models for architects, artists and artisans. Nowadays antiquity seems to inspire many aspects of our culture, but much can be argued against the feeling that the classical spirit is enlightening our lives. An important role can be played by archaeological museums and their curators in a world in which the humanities are severely at risk.

Leaving and returning are two basic themes that permeate the Portuguese symbolic imagination. I will try to follow this movement in one of António Lobo Antunes' novels, The Return of the Caravels, published in 1988. If there is a contemporary Portuguese novelist for whom the unrest and anxiety of identity and belonging are at the very core of their literary project, this novelist is certainly Lobo Antunes, in all 17 novels he has published since 1979. In each, ‘Portugal’ is much more than just the name of the place where characters live: it is a name for an anxiety about place; of course, this is not exclusive to Portugal, but it is given a distinctively Portuguese tinge through a deep reflection on the meaning of belonging. This can sometimes be quite meaningless, which is just another way of thinking about how man experiences his relationship to the earth and land. This is done, in The Return of the Caravels, by way of questioning the past and present connections of the Discoveries. How the present may endure and live up to the glorious experiences of history is at the heart of the story unfolded here, and will also be at the centre of this paper.

I discuss the Dutch maritime and colonial empire in South East Asia (1600–1950) and its literature. Focusing in particular on its absence from most postcolonial debate today, my aim here is to explore why and how this missing Dutch empire and its literature matter to postcolonial theory. I will consider a range of recent reactions to the 19th-century Dutch author Multatuli and his classic novel Max Havelaar or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (1860). The Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer, for example, has expressed the view that it was this novel that ‘put an end to colonialism”. I will also try and assess the continuing relevance of Multatuli's Max Havelaar, considering in particular the issues of justice and humanity raised by this novel about the human cost of coffee production.

Asymmetry is a fundamental aspect of the biology of all organisms, and has a deep evolutionary history. The fossil record contains evidence of both morphological and behavioural asymmetries. Morphological asymmetry is most commonly expressed as conspicuous, directional asymmetry (either lateral asymmetry or spiral asymmetry) in body fossils. Few examples of fluctuating asymmetry, a form of subtle asymmetry, have been documented from fossils. Body fossil evidence indicates that morphological asymmetry dates to the time of the appearance of the first life on Earth (Archaean Eon). Behavioural asymmetry can be assumed to have been concomitant with conspicuous morphological asymmetry, but more direct evidence is in the form of trace fossils. Trace fossil evidence suggests that behavioural asymmetry, including nervous system lateralization, was in existence by the beginning of the Palaeozoic Era.

Women's movements in the late Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey are explored in an international context. The international contacts of individual and organized women in both the first and the second waves of ‘feminist’ activism are considered. It is necessary to determine the influence, on the one hand, of Turkish women on the international scene of the women's movement and, on the other hand, the influence of the international organizations on Turkish policies vis-à-vis women. In this way a little light can be shed on the indirect ways Turkish women, through international networks, were and are able to exert influence on the changing policies of the Turkish government regarding the position of women in their society.

We aim to describe the evolution of the representation of space in the Caribbean novel of the 1950s through to the 1990s. Initially, the rural space of the ‘Habitation’ is seen as a token of indigenous identity, mimetically referring to a regionalist and naturalistic model of space. As Zobel, the first author we discuss, hardly questions the relation between the Creole and the French language, he confirms the nationalist model as it was developed by the European romantics, following the triadic structure of language, nation and territory. The second author, Chamoiseau, interprets urban space as a token of hybrid identity. On the one hand, the new city Texaco, refers to urban models as developed in European and Western cultural geography, and thus seems to replace the model of the ‘Habitation’. On the other hand, the new urban space is understood as a displacement of the centre, since it becomes the meeting place of intersecting cultures. Finally, the role of literature as a constructing force of cultural models will be stressed.

Symmetry is a relevant concept in sociological theories of exchange. It is rooted in the evolutionary old norm of social reciprocity and is particularly important in social contracts. Symmetry breaking through violation of the norm of reciprocity generates strain in micro-social systems and, above all, in victims of non-symmetric exchange. In this contribution, adverse healthconsequences of symmetry breaking in contractual social exchange are analysed, with a main focus on the employment contract. Scientific evidence is derived from prospective epidemiological studies testing the model of effort-reward imbalance at work. Overall, a twofold elevated risk of incident disease is observed in employed men and women who are exposed to non-symmetric exchange. Health risks include coronary heart disease, depression and alcohol dependence, among others. Preliminary results suggest similar effects on health produced by symmetry breaking in other types of social relationships (e.g. partnership, parental roles). These findings underline the importance of symmetry in contractual social exchange for health and well-being.

Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, various European Masonic obediences set up lodges throughout the Ottoman empire, many in Istanbul, while another important centre was Smyrna. Freemasons were also active in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Cyprus and Macedonia. Lodges were established in the main political, economic and cultural centres of the Empire. There was a strong parallelism between the Ottoman Masonic geography and that of European colonial expansion. It is easy to delineate the social and ethnic structure of lodges, but we know less about what was going on behind the walls of Masonic temples. For sure, Ottoman Freemasons, like their brethren in other parts of the world, when not busy with ‘table works’ or ceremonies, dedicated themselves to philanthropic activities. A considerable part of the annual income of the lodges was used to finance various charitable works (assistance to orphans, to brethren in distress …) and to fund educational institutions. The lodges were also places for the discussion and exchange of ideas about current themes: socialism, feminism, venereal diseases, progress of science, etc. Some mingled with politics, displaying a highly nationalistic discourse. The politicization of Ottoman/Turkish freemasonry climaxed during the years of the Young Turk revolution (1908–1914), when an autochthonous obedience was created. One of the goals of the new organization, coldly received by most European freemasonries, was to rid the Ottoman Empire of foreign penetration. After the proclamation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, this national freemasonry continued to flourish, except for 13 years between 1935 and 1948 when Masonic activity was banned.

Postcolonialism is briefly presented as an academic approach in contemporary literary studies, with two opposite currents as far as the study of Latin American literature is concerned. The first constructs the relationship between Latin American and European literature as oppositional, whereas the second focuses in a more harmonious way on their interrelationship. It is argued that both currents cluster around a divergent reading of the ‘cannibal’ metaphor. The article then centres on the position of the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, who covers both postcolonial tendencies. This is shown by focusing upon a specific case, his early novella Aura. Attention is paid to the tension between Europe and Latin America, both on a literary level (intertextuality) and on a historical level (colonization and nation-building).

The painful, unrepresentable event of the holocaust is one of the most salient and defining features of the history and identity of Europe. Its suitability for artistic representation has been the focus of intense debate, largely conducted within Europe (Adorno, Steiner, Ricoeur, Kertész), and fictions about the holocaust were, until recently, the domain of European (and Israeli) authors. In his novel on identity, The Nature of Blood, Caryl Phillips –a British author originating from the Caribbean island St. Kitts, and currently living in the USA, appears to defy this tradition and claims the holocaust as a natural subject for his seemingly disparate narratives that are also concerned with the first ghetto in Europe, the character of Othello, and Zionism in Israel. This unlikely mixture is not a mere postcolonial appropriation of metropolitan history, and cannot be explained by the mechanism of ‘the empire writing back’ that characterizes so much postcolonial fictions of the 1970–1990s. Rather, it explores some of the ideas developed in Frantz Fanon's Peau noire, masque blancs, which in its rhetorical linking of the holocaust with racism and imperialist repression is in turn indebted to Jean-Paul Sartre.

By focusing almost exclusively on the circumstances of British colonialism, postcolonial theory has failed to take into consideration other histories of colonization and other forms of postcoloniality. By considering a few elements from the history of Portuguese colonialism and a few lusophone texts, it is my hope to demonstrate what I consider to be a limited perspective on postcolonial studies, at the same time that one may also ponder the fact that so much in postcolonial literature depends precisely on acts of remembrance. Ruins, all sorts of ruins, form a privileged space for the construction of postcolonial memories and in this essay I will focus especially on one kind, the shipwreck, as a special figure for varied postcolonial memories. In the process, I hope to also make a case for the reconsideration of European literature, via the example of Portuguese literature, from a postcolonial point of view. Germano Almeida's novel, O Testamento do Senhor Napumoceno (1991) and its film version, de-emphasize cultural hegemony and the dichotomy between colony and metropolis. The legacy of Portuguese tradition remains complex.

Symmetry and beauty are often claimed to be linked, particularly by mathematicians and scientists. However philosophers and art historians seem generally agreed that although symmetry is indeed attractive, there is also a somewhat sterile rigidity about it, which can make it less attractive than the more dynamic, less predictable beauty associated with asymmetry. Although a little asymmetry can be beautiful, an excess merely results in chaos. As Adorno suggested, asymmetry probably results most effectively in beauty when the underlying symmetry upon which it is built is still apparent. This paper examines the ways in which asymmetries, particularly left-right asymmetries, were used by painters in the Italian Renaissance. Polyptychs often show occasional asymmetries, which are more likely to involve the substitution of a left cheek for a right cheek, than vice-versa. A hypothesis is developed that the left and right cheeks have symbolic meanings, with the right cheek meaning ‘like self’ and the left cheek meaning ‘unlike self’. This principle is evaluated in pictures such as the Crucifixion, the Annunciation and, the Madonna and Child. The latter is particularly useful because the theological status of the Madonna changed during the Renaissance, and her left–right portrayal also changed at the same time in a comprehensible way. Some brief experimental tests of the hypothesis are also described. Finally the paper ends by considering why it is that the left rather than the right cheek is associated with ‘unlike self’, and puts that result in the context of the universal ‘dual symbolic classification’ of right and left, which was first described by the anthropologist Robert Hertz.

The paper sets out to analyse the mechanisms and functions of the national landscape as a cultural invention through literature, underscoring how literature, more than other media, most clearly articulates its conflictual complexity, being both descriptions of and reflections on identities. The national landscape is part of a more general story of how place and identity are interconnected. Through analyses of texts by Nadine Gordimer, John Michael Coetzee, André Brink and the Danish romanticist and scientist Hans Christian Ørsted, it is suggested how the European reflection on national identity in relation to landscape and language from the period of nation-building in the 19th century is both repeated and criticized in the emerging new nations of the post-colonial era. On the one hand, the parallel between European and non-European reflections helps us to deconstruct the naturalized homogeneity of national identity in Europe and invites us to criticize the attempts to reduplicate this simplicity in the conception of identity in post-colonial conditions.