a. (Introduction, p. 10) Besides toying with the promise and pitfalls of technological determinism – or the idea of the Europeanized nation-state as an artefact of the printed book – Marshall McLuhan was an enthusiastic and assiduous reader of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. In The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) he described it as ‘an entirely new form of expression’ designed ‘to capture the complex interplay of factors’ that underpinned his own central thesis, namely, that ‘print and nationalism are axiological or co-ordinate, simply because by print a people sees itself for the first time’ (246-47). He also traced his own critique of the way the ‘West’ privileges the visual, at the expense of the ‘audile-tactile’, back to Joyce and understood the Wake as a revolutionary experiment in writing designed to awaken the ‘mesmerized and homogenous servants’ of print and the nation from their ‘Night’ (297-98). In War and Peace in the Global Village (1968), which McLuhan co-produced with the graphic designer and inventive book artist Quentin Fiore, he used extensive quotations from the Wake as a gloss on his own text. As the blurb puts it, the ‘marginal quotes’ are ‘a tribute to the man who was first to write about the electrical retribalization of the West.’ War and Peace, which focuses on the propensity of the new media to fuel violence and division, is a less sanguine appraisal of the electronic age than Gutenberg Galaxy. The rise of the internet in the 1990s saw a revival of McLuhanite technological utopianism perhaps best exemplified by John Perry Barlow’s ‘Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace‘ (1996) which articulated a new anti-statist vision of a digital ‘Republic of Letters’. As Timothy Garton Ash shows in Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World (2016) that dream did not survive the first decades of the new century when corporate and then state interests began to refashion and in some cases re-nationalize the web for their own commercial and political purposes. For a summary account of my own take on Finnegans Wake and the modern state, see Fourth Proposition. (I have cited the 2011 Toronto University Press edition of The Gutenberg Galaxy and the 2001 Gingko Press edition of War and Peace here.)
b. (Introduction, p. 16) For more on Tagore’s educational ideals and Visva-Bharati, see L. K. Elmhirst and Rabindranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore: Pioneer in Education (London: John Murray, 1961); K. C. Mukherjee, ‘Tagore: Pioneer in Education’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 18.1 (1970): 69–81; Uma Das Gupta, ‘Using a Poet’s Archive to Write the History of a University: Rabindranath Tagore and Visva-Bharati‘, Science and Culture (July-August 2013), 266-72; Martha C. Nussbaum, Political Emotions (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013); and Ranjan Ghosh, Aesthetics, Politics, Pedagogy and Tagore: Towards a Transcultural Philosophy of Education (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Also worth consulting in this context is Michael Collins, Empire, Nationalism and the Postcolonial (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012).
c. (Introduction, p. 20) The first image below shows the statue of the enthroned, book-bearing King James I (1566-1625) on the tower on east side of the Bodleian Quad in Oxford. James is flanked by figures representing fame on his right and the university on his left. The second shows the inscription bearing Sir Thomas Bodley’s (1545-1613) initials above the main entrance on the west side. The Quad was completed in 1619. The translations of the inscriptions come from Reginald H. Adams, Latin Inscriptions in Oxford (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2015), 3-4. As Adams notes, ‘Republic of Letters‘ can also be translated as ‘the commonwealth of the educated or learned’.


d. (Introduction, p. 21) For a fuller history of English studies and the modern university, see D. J. Palmer, The Rise of English Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965); Chris Baldick, The Social Mission of English Criticism, 1848-1932 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983); Gerald Graff, Professing Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Ian Hunter, Culture and Government (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988); Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989); Franklin E. Court, Institutionalizing English Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992); John Guillory, Cultural Capital (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Lawrence Goldman, Dons and Workers: Oxford and Adult Education since 1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); J. B. Harrison, ‘English as a University Subject in India and England’, Transmission of Knowledge in South Asia, ed. Nigel Crook (New Delhi: Oxford University press, 1996), 155-89; Stefan Collini, ‘Cambridge and the Study of English’, Cambridge Contributions, ed. Sarah J. Ormond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 42-64; Christopher Hilliard, English as a Vocation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); and Alexandra Lawrie, The Beginnings of University English: Extramural Study, 1885-1910 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014).
e. (Chapter 1, p. 37) Paper always has a story to tell. In the case of Matthew Arnold’s ‘Culture and its Enemies‘ (1867), the last lecture he gave as Oxford Professor of Poetry, the sheets on which he drafted the manuscript say something about the circles in which he was moving and the roles he was juggling at the time. They also cast a new light on his defence of classical culture and state-sponsored national Bildung. As the manuscript images below reveal, he began writing on official Education Department stationary and then switched to paper bearing the embossed letterhead of the Anthenaeum, the prestigious London club to which he and his chosen adversary John Bright both belonged. A private members’ club founded in 1824, the Athenaeum was, and still largely is, for eminent men of ‘science, literature or the arts’ – it first admitted women as equal members in 2002. In Ancient Athens, the Athenaeum was a temple in which poets, philosophers and orators met to read and discuss their work.
Like Literae Humaniores, nineteenth-century Oxford’s flagship undergraduate course, which Arnold studied at Balliol College in the early 1840s, the club embodied the classical ideals he espoused and the nineteenth-century elite generally shared – hence the provocative force of Bright’s comments about ‘a smattering of the two dead languages of Latin and Greek’. As the statue above the main portico, the mosaic flooring, and the embossed letterhead indicate, it was named in honour of the Greek goddess Athene, and the palatial clubhouse on Pall Mall in London, completed in 1827, was designed in the neoclassical style. Like many such buildings scattered across the globe (see a and b), it gives architectural expression to a once dominant way of thinking interculturally: treating one culture, or idea of that culture, as standard-setting and making its forms and ideals a definitive part of your own (see Fifth Proposition). As the various changes to first sentence of the manuscript show, Arnold initially called Bright ‘that famous orator’, before considering ‘tried and famous’ and then opting for ‘famous liberal’, giving a greater centrality to his party-political affiliation. In the final published version he calls him ‘that fine speaker and famous Liberal’.

f. (Chapter 1, p. 38) For the ongoing debates about Arnold’s legacy, see Raymond Williams, Culture and Society: 1780-1950 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1958); Edward W. Said, ‘Nationalism, Human Rights, and Interpretation’ Raritan, 12 (1993): 26-51; Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, ed. Samuel Lipman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); Stefan Collini, Matthew Arnold: A Critical Portrait (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Terry Eagleton, The Idea of Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000); Robert J. C. Young, The Idea of English Ethnicity (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008); Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Something Torn and New (New York: BasicCivitas, 2009); and Helen Small, The Value of the Humanities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

g. (Chapter 1, p. 44) The following image shows James Murray’s notes on the word ‘orange’ for the lecture series on ‘English Words’ he gave to undergraduates studying English at Oxford in 1911:

h. (Chapter 1, p. 49) To emphasize the fact that the English word ‘plunder’ is borrowed from German (plundern, literally ‘to rob a household of its furnishings’), the British Council film on the ‘History of the English Language’ (1943) included the following cartoon image. To see the film, click here.

i. (Chapter 2, p. 98) For an Excel spreadsheet detailing the contributors to T.S. Eliot’s Criterion, click here: Criterion contributors list. I am grateful to Charne Lavery for compiling this census.
j. (Chapter 3, p. 113) The following image shows the ‘Proclamation’ as it appeared in Eugene Jolas’s little magazine transition (16-17) in June 1929. For more details, click here and for an account of the genre of the manifesto, see Martin Puchner, Poetry of the Revolution (2005). The ‘Proclamation’, which Puchner does not discuss, both confirms and challenges some of his central claims. If it combines ‘performative intervention’ with ‘theatrical posing’ (5) on the part of an artistic collective – characteristic features of the genre – it does not succeed in turning the Wake into an instance of what Puchner calls ‘manifesto art’ – ‘an art forged in the image of the manifesto’ (6). As I argue in the book, the mismatch between Joyce’s project and Jolas’s is more telling than any real or imagined convergences, not only because it highlights the tensions between collective and individual endeavours within avant garde groups but because it exposes the gulf between the manifesto as a genre and individual acts of writing. Conspicuously Joyce is not among the signatories to the ‘Proclamation’.

k. (Prologue to Part 2, p. 156) Group of experts convened to advise on UNESCO’s Fundamental Education programme in 1947 under the general direction of Julian Huxley, H. E. Wilson, and Sir Alfred Zimmern. Zimmern, a fellow Oxford-trained Classicist, had worked closely with Gilbert Murray in the League of Nations. The details come from UNESCO, Fundamental Education: Common Ground for all Peoples (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 263-72. To watch footage of the conference for the establishment of UNESCO in London on 16 November 1945 at which the constitution was first read, click here.
Name | Background | Nationality | Region |
Martinez BAEZ | Under Secretary, Health and Welfare Department, Mexico; Mexican Delegate to the World Health Organization, Mexican Delegate to UNESCO. | Mexico | S AMERICA |
Augustin Nieto CABALLERO | Colombian Ambassador to Chile; Director of Primary and Secondary Schools, Colombia; Rector, Universidad National, Colombia; Rector, Ginmasio Moderno, Bogota. | Columbia | S AMERICA |
A. TEIXEIRA | Professor of Education, Institute of Education, Bahia; Director, Department of Education, Federal District, Rio de Janeiro. Brazil; Professor of Education, University of the Federal District. | Brazil | S AMERICA |
Elena Cuellar TORRES. | Organizer and Administrator, Experimental Rural Education Mission, Agricultural Department, Mexico; General Supervisor of Rural Education, Ministry of Education, Mexico. | Mexico | S AMERICA |
H. B. ALLEN | Director of Education, Near East Foundation. | US | N AMERICA |
L. A. FREE | Director of Research and Planning. International Film Foundation, editor Public Opinion Quarterly, Princeton University. | US | N AMERICA |
E. GABRIEL | Head of the Supervision Section Rural Education Division Haiti; Head of the Section of Urban Primary Education and Teacher Training, Haiti. | Haiti | N AMERICA |
J. W. GUITON
|
Associate Professor, Bryn Mawr College, USA, Acting Head, Section of University Relations, Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, Paris. | US | N AMERICA |
Donn V. HART
|
Research Assistant for the Study of American Teaching Materials on the Soviet Union, American Council on Education. | US | N AMERICA |
Henry W. HOLMES
|
Professor of Education, Harvard University, editor of the report. | US | N AMERICA |
Thomas Jesse JONES | Educational Director, Phelps-Stokes Fund, U.S.A. | US | N AMERICA |
Isaac L. KANDEL | Professor of Education, International Institute, Teachers College, Columbia University. | US | N AMERICA |
L. KENWORTHY | Head of the Social Studies Department, Friends Central School, Overbrook, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. | US | N AMERICA |
Frank Charles LAUBACH | Maranaw Folk Schools, Lanao, Philippines; teacher and leader of literacy campaigns in India, Africa, Mexico, Central and South America, Philippines, etc.; Special Counsellor and Representative, Committee on World Literacy and Christian Literature. | US | N AMERICA |
H. Ormonde McCONNELL | Pastor, Methodist Church, Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Acting Chairman, Methodist Churches of Haiti; General Secretary, Haitian Government committee on Illiteracy. | Haiti | N AMERICA |
Margaret MEAD | Anthropologist, social scientist; Associate Curator of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History. | US | N AMERICA |
Albert CHARTON | Inspecteur Général de l’Instruction Publique, Ministère de la France d’Outre Mer, 1946. | France | EUROPE |
Bertie Harry EASTER | Director of Education, Acting Colonial Secretary, Grenada, Jamaica. | Jamaica | EUROPE |
W. C. FARR | British Ministry of Information, Films Division. | UK | EUROPE |
Hope HAY
|
Missionary, London Missionary Society; at present engaged in experiment in Mass Education for Northern Rhodesia Government. | UK | EUROPE |
Beatrice KING | Specialist on Soviet Education; Chair, Education Committee, Society for Cultural Relations between the Peoples of the British Commonwealth and the USSR; Assistant Editor Anglo-Soviet Journal. | UK | EUROPE |
H. LABOURET | Former Professor of Sudanese, National School of French Overseas Territories; National School of Oriental Languages, Institute of Anthropology. School of Political Sciences: former head of the International Institute of African Languages and Civilisations. | France | EUROPE |
R. S. LAMBERT | Supervisor of Educational Broadcasts, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; Editor, The Listener British Broadcasting Corporation. | UK | EUROPE |
J. A. LAUWERYS | Reader in Education, University of London. | UK | EUROPE |
C. K. OGDEN | Linguist; editor Psyche; inventor of Basic English; Director of Orthological Institute, London. | UK | EUROPE |
Henning RAVNHOLT | Head of Education Department, Danish Cooperative Wholesale Society; Lecturer. Borup Folk high School, Copenhagen. | Denmark | EUROPE |
Margaret READ | Anthropologist; Reader in Education, University of London. | UK | EUROPE |
I.A. RICHARDS | University Professor, Harvard University; Director, Harvard Commission on English Language Studies. | UK | EUROPE |
R. W. VAN DIFFELEN | Sub-Director of Education and Public Worship, Netherlands Indies; Ministry of Overseas Territories, Plein, The Hague, Holland. | Holland | EUROPE |
Frank Harvey VIVIAN | Exchange teacher, Training College for Teachers, Bonn University, Germany; Assistant Master, Wellington College, England and Clifton College, England; Education Officer, R.A.F., P.O.W. Camps, Germany. | UK | EUROPE |
Margaret WRONG | Secretary, International Committee on Christian Literature for Africa ; Editor, Books for Africa. | UK | EUROPE |
Yuan Ren CHAO | Research Fellow and Chief of Section of Linguistics, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica; on leave for research and instruction at University of Hawaii, Yale University, Harvard University. | China | ASIA |
Ranjit Mohan CHETSINGH | Editor, Indian Journal of Adult Education; Honorary General Secretary, Indian Adult Education Association ; Head, Quaker Centre, Delhi; Lecturer in Sociology and Economics, Delhi College of Nursing | India | ASIA |
B. C. GUHA | Chief Technical Adviser, Food Department, Government of India; Professor of Applied Chemistry, Calcutta University. | India | ASIA |
Francis. L. K. HSU | Professor of Social Anthropology, National Yunnan University, Kunming, China; Lecturer on Anthropology, Columbia University, N.Y. | China | ASIA |
Yu-shou KUO | Chair; Member of the Council of the Szechwan Provincial Government; Commissioner of Education, Province of Szechwan; Professor, National Szechwan University and West China Union University, Adviser to the Chinese Delegation to the United Nations. | China | ASIA |
Cheng-su WANG | Professor of Education, National Chekiang University, China. | China | ASIA |
Chu-pei YETI | Director of Metallurgical Research, Laboratory of the National Resources Commission, U.S.A.; Member Chinese Technical Missions to U.S.A. and Great Britain. | China | ASIA |
Mohamed Bey AWAD | Head, Department of Geography, Fnad I University, Egypt; Chief Publicity Censor, Egypt; Adviser to the Egyptian Delegation to the San Francisco Conference. | Egypt | ARAB STATES |
Hassan Ahmed SALMAN | Director of Rural Education; Ministry of Education, Baghdad, Iraq. | Iraq | ARAB STATES |
Mekki ABBAS | Adult Education Officer, Bakht er Ruda, Sudan Government. | Sudan | AFRICA |
A. G. DICKSON | Education Officer, East Africa. | East Africa | AFRICA |
V. L. GRIFFITHS | Principal, Bakht er Ruda, Sudan. | Sudan | AFRICA |
Ellen HELLMAN
|
Executive Committee, South African Institute of Race Relations and South African Jewish Board of Deputies; Chair, Johannesburg Joint Council of Europeans and Africans. | South Africa | AFRICA |
J.D. JONES | Lecturer on Race Relations, University of Witwatersrand ; Secretary, Witwatersrand Council of Education; Member of Advisory Council of Labour; President of Sections E and P. South African Association for the Advancement of Science; Founder and Director, South African Institute of Race Relations. | South Africa | AFRICA |
Ismail KABBANI | Institute of Education. Cairo, Egypt; Technical Adviser to the Egyptian Ministry of Education. | Egypt | AFRICA |
Quintin WHYTE | Assistant Director, South African Institute of Race Relations; Assistant Secretary, Witwatersrand. | South Africa | AFRICA |
l. (Prologue to Part 2, p. 160) Group of experts UNESCO convened in 1967 to advise on cultural policy and development. The details come from Mauricio Bustamante, ‘L’UNESCO et la culture: construction d’une catégorie d’intervention internationale, du “dévelopment culturel” à la “diversité culturelle”’, Doctoral thesis (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 2014), 80-81. I am grateful to Bustamante for allowing me to reproduce them here in a translated and revised form.
Name | Background | Nationality | Region |
Raymond RAVAR | Senior Director of National Institute of Performing Arts and Technology (INSAS), Brussels. | Belgium | WEST EUROPE |
Charles C. MARK | Director, States and Community Operations, National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities, Washington D.C. | US | N AMERICA |
Roger STEVENS | Executive Office of the President, Washington D.C. | US | N AMERICA |
Pierre BOURDIEU | Director of Studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, in charge of cultural sociology, Paris. | France | WEST EUROPE |
Joffre DUMAZEDIER | Research Fellow at the National Council for Scientific Research, Paris. | France | WEST EUROPE |
Pierre MOINOT | Novelist and Director General of Arts and Letters at the State Ministry for Cultural Affairs, Paris. | France | WEST EUROPE |
Ivan BOLDIZSAR | Writer, Budapest. | Hungary | EAST EUROPE |
Enrico PAULUCCI | Painter, and President of the Italian Committee of the International Association of Art, Turin. | Italy | WEST EUROPE |
Antoine BATTAINI | Head of Cultural Affairs at the State Department of the Principality of Monaco. | Monaco | WEST EUROPE |
Arthur CROVETTO | Minister Plenipotentiary, President of Monaco’s National Commission for UNESCO. | Monaco | WEST EUROPE |
Stefan ZOLKIEWSKI | Professor in the Social Sciences Section of the Polish Academy of Sciences. | Poland | EAST EUROPE |
Nigel ABERCROMBIE | Secretary-General, Arts Council of Great Britain. | UK | WEST EUROPE |
Carl-Johan KLEBERG | Administrator at the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs, Stockholm. | Sweden | WEST EUROPE |
Mulk Raj ANAND | Writer and President, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi. | India | ASIA |
Yoichi MAEDA | Professor of French Literature at the University of Tokyo, President of the Cultural Affairs Committee of the Japanese National Commission for UNESCO. | Japan | ASIA |
Yacine KATEB | Playwright, Algiers. | Algeria | ARAB STATES |
Abdel Moneim EL SALAI | Under Secretary of State for Antiquities, Ministry of Culture, Cairo. | Egypt | ARAB STATES |
Rafik SAID | Director of Cultural Activities in Tunisia. | Tunisia | ARAB STATES |
Carlos CHAGAS | Ambassador, Permanent Delegate of Brazil to UNESCO. | Brazil | S AMERICA |
Roberto MATTA | Painter | Chile | S AMERICA |
Alejo CARPENTIER | Writer and Cultural Counsellor at the Cuban Embassy in Paris. | Cuba | S AMERICA |
Albert HOBA | Cultural Affairs Officer in the Ministry of National Education. | Senegal | AFRICA |
Ousmane SEMBENE | Film Director and writer, Dakar. | Senegal | AFRICA |
Sam Joseph NTIRO | Commissioner for Culture, Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development. | Tanzania | AFRICA |
m. (Prologue to Part 2, p. 163) UNESCO’s ‘MacBride Commission‘, 1980: Bustamante (2014), 238.
Name | Role | Nationality | Region |
Seán MAC BRIDE | Jurist and diplomat (Commission President) | Ireland | WEST EUROPE |
Élie ABEL | Journalist and dean of the School of Journalism at Columbia University | US | N AMERICA |
Marshall McLuhan [replaced by Betty ZIMMERMAN] | Sociologist specialising in communication | Canada | N AMERICA |
Hubert BEUVE-MÉRY | Lawyer and journalist | France | WEST EUROPE |
Johannes Pieter PRONK | Economist and poltician | Holland | WEST EUROPE |
Léonid Mitrofanovich ZAMIATINE [replaced by Sergei LOSEV] | Journalist and diplomat | USSR | EAST EUROPE |
Bogdan OSOLNIK | Journalist and politician (member of the National Assembly) | Yugoslavia | EAST EUROPE |
Elebe Ma EKONZO | Journalist, diplomat and politician | Zaïre | AFRICA |
Fred Isaac Akporuaro OMU | Academic and politician (former Head of Dept. of Mass Communications) | Nigeria | AFRICA |
Mochtar LUBIS | Economist, journalist and novelist | Indonesia | ASIA |
Boobli George VERGHESE | Economist and journalist | India | ASIA |
Michio NAGAI | Sociologist, journalist, politician (former Minister of Education) | Japan | ASIA |
Mustapha MASMOUDI | Economist, politician and diplomat (Secretary of State for Information) | Tunisia | ARAB STATES |
Gamal EL-OTEIFI | Journalist, lawyer, politician (former Information Minister and Vice-chair of Parliament) | Egypt | ARAB STATES |
Gabriel GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ | Journalist and writer | Colombia | S AMERICA |
Juan SOMAVIA | Lawyer, diplomat and scholar. Executive Director ILET | Chile | S AMERICA |
n. (Prologue to Part 2, p. 167) UNESCO’s ‘De Cuellar Commission’, 1996: Bustamante (2014), 295-97.
Name | Role | Nationality | Region |
Javier PÉREZ DE CUELLAR | Jurist and diplomat (Ex-Secretary General of the UN) | Peru | S AMERICA |
Lourdes ARIZPE | Anthropologist (Director of the Institute of Anthropological Research of the National University of Mexico) | Mexico | S AMERICA |
Celso FURTADO | Economist (former Planning Minister and former Minister of Culture, Honorary Professor of Development Economics at the University of Paris-Sorbonne) | Brazil | S AMERICA |
Ole-Henrik MAGGA | Linguist (expert Sami culture, University of Oslo) | Norway | EUROPE |
Nikita MIKHALKOV | Filmmaker (Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival 1991 Oscar for best foreign film in 1995) | Russia | EUROPE |
Kurt FURGLER | Lawyer and economist (Vice-President of the Club of Rome) | Switzerland | EUROPE |
Niki GOULANDRIS | Public Administrator (ecologist, former Secretary of State for Social Services, Honorary Vice-President of the Radio and Television) | Greece | EUROPE |
Keith GRIFFIN | Economist (Professor at the University of California, Riverside, Chairman of the Board of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development) | US | EUROPE |
Mahbub UL HAQ | Economist, politician and banker, especially known for creating the Human Development Index (HDI) in 1990. | Pakistan | ASIA |
Chie NAKANE | Social Anthropologist and orientalist (Honorary Professor of Tokyo, President of the Japanese National Commission for UNESCO) | Japan | ASIA |
Angeline KAMBA | Civil servant (Director of the National Archives) | Zimbabwe | AFRICA |
Yoro K. FALL | Historian (Professor and Head of Department of History at Shikh Anta Diop University, Dakar) | Senegal | AFRICA |
Leila TAKLA | Lawyer (Member of Councils for Culture and Universities, former President of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Egyptian Parliament) | Egypt | ARAB STATES |
Honorary members of the ‘De Cuellar Commission’:
Name | Role | Nationality | Region |
El Hassan BIN TALAL | Prince of Jordan, very committed to the causes of peace and development. | Jordan | ARAB STATES |
Aung San SUU KYI | Politician (Nobel Peace Prize, 1991) | Myanmar | ASIA |
Derek WALCOTT | Writer (Nobel Prize for Literature, 1992) | Saint Lucia | S AMERICA |
Claude LÉVI-STRAUSS | Anthropologist (Professor at the Collège de France, member of the French Academy) | France | EUROPE |
Ilya PRIGOGINE | Writer, physicist and chemist (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1977) | Belgium | EUROPE |
Élie WIESEL | Writer (Nobel Peace Prize, 1986) | US | EUROPE |
o. (Prologue to Part 2, p. 168) UNESCO’s advisory committee on cultural diversity in the lead up to the Declaration (2001): Bustamante (2014), 331-332.
Name | Background | Nationality | Region |
Serge KANCEL | Public Administrator, Project Manager at the General Inspectorate of the Administration of Cultural affairs. Inspectorate Department of Culture and Communication | France | EUROPE |
Dan HAULICA | Literary critic, Ambassador, Permanent Delegate of Romania to UNESCO | Romania | EUROPE |
José PÉREZ LÁZARO | Deputy Director General for International Cultural Cooperation (Secretary of State for Culture) | Spain | EUROPE |
Tamara POURTROVA | Deputy Director of the State Russian House of Folk Arts | Russia | EUROPE |
Boleslaw SULIK | Film director, journalist, and former President of the Polish National Council for Radio and Television (TVP SA) | Poland | EUROPE |
Vassilis VASSILIKOS | Writer, Ambassador, Permanent Delegate of Greece to UNESCO | Greece | EUROPE |
Masanori AOYAGI | Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Tokyo, Member of the Japanese National Commission for UNESCO | Japan | ASIA |
Hossein AZIMI | Economist, Department of Centre for Advanced Economic Studies, Islamic Azad University, Iran | Iran | ASIA |
Rosario G. MANALO | Career diplomat (political scientist), Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines in charge of International Economic Relations (1997-2001), Permanent Representative of the Philippines to UNESCO (1990-1994) | Philippines | ASIA |
Khélifa CHATER | Public Administrator, Director General of the National Library of Tunis | Tunisia | ARAB STATES |
Sami KHACHABA | Editor, and head of cultural reporting at Al-Ahram daily | Egypt | ARAB STATES |
Aïd AL DAHYAT | University Professor, President of the University Mutah | Jordan | ARAB STATES |
Luís António COVANE | Politician, Minister of Culture | Mozambique | AFRICA |
John P.O. IGUE | Minister of Industry and Small and Medium Enterprises and Professor of Geography | Benin | AFRICA |
Daniel NDAGALE | Politician, Commissioner for Culture at the Ministry of Education and Culture | Tanzania | AFRICA |
Miguel LEÓN-PORTILLA | Anthropologist and diplomat, former Permanent Delegate of Mexico to UNESCO | Mexico | S AMERICA |
Luis Guillermo LUMBRERAS SALCEDO | Director of the Indian Institute of Archaeological Studies of Lima and Professor of the National University of San Marcos | Peru | S AMERICA |
Antonio RUDDER | Culture and Commerce Committee | Barbados | S AMERICA |
p. (Prologue to Part 2, p. 170) UNESCO’s advisory committee on cultural diversity in the lead up to the Convention (2005): Bustamante (2014), 368.
Name | Background | Nationality | Region |
Ivan BERNIER | Professor of International Law | Canada | N AMERICA |
Tyler COWEN | Professor of Cultural Economics | US | N AMERICA |
Mihaly FICSOR | Professor of International Law | Hungary | EUROPE |
Jean MUSITELLI | French diplomat, former state councilor and member of the Board of the Institute of International and Strategic Relations | France | EUROPE |
Alexandre SADOVNIKOV | Professor of International Law | Russia | EUROPE |
Sabine VON SCHORLEMER | Professor of International Law | Germany | EUROPE |
Toshiyuki KONO | Professor of International Law | Japan | ASIA |
Bhikhu PAREKH | Professor of Political Science | India | ASIA |
David THROSBY | Professor of Cultural Economics | Australia | ASIA |
Georges ABI-SAAB | Professor of International Law | Egypt | ARAB STATES |
Amin MAALOUF | Writer | Lebanon | ARAB STATES |
q. (Chapter 4, p. 174) Front cover and editorial for Es’kia Mphahele’s The Voice of Africa, II.8 (December 1950). (Source: The South African National Library).
r. (Chapter 5, p. 192) Afrikaans student marginalia from the 1972 school edition of F. A. Venter‘s Swart Pelgrim (1958). The notes say: ‘I like this book a lot. It shows me how the Bantu live and how much they love their families. And how they want to be like whites.’
s. (Chapter 7, p. 229) The front matter and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s editorial ‘statement’ from damn you 6 (1968), p. 1. For a PDF of all six issues of damn you, click here: damn you 1-6. The magazine is part of the collection of Mehrotra’s papers held at The Rare and Manuscript Collections Carl A. Kroch Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA. YouTube interview: Mehrotra discusses the fate of Indian languages with Souradeep Roy (August 2018); YouTube interview: Mehrotra discusses Kabir with Souradeep Roy (September 2018).

t. (Chapter 7, p. 241) The front and back covers of Arun Kolatkar’s Jejuri (1976) in its original Clearing House edition designed by Kolatkar himself. The ‘religious’ front cover depicts Khandoba, the Hindu god celebrated in the pilgrimage town of Jejuri in the western state of Maharashtra; while the ‘secular’ back cover is based on ‘the setting sun’, the final poem in the sequence called ‘The Railway Station’, which describes the sun touching ‘the horizon/at a point where the rails/like the parallels of a prophecy/appear to meet.’ Clearing House was a Bombay-based writers’ publishing collective. Image reproduced by permission of Adil Jussawalla. For a further account of Kolatkar and his context, see Anjali Nerlekar, Bombay Modern: Arun Kolatkar and Bilingual Literary Culture (Northwestern University Press, 2016); and Laetitia Zecchini, Arun Kolatkar and Literary Modernism in India (Bloomsbury, 2014).
u. (Chapter 8, p. 244) Marginal notes on p. 101 of Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1988) faxed by the Islamic Foundation based in Leicester in the UK to Muslim organisations around the world, now among the archives of the apartheid censors in South Africa: see file P88/10/144, Directorate of Publications, Western Cape Provincial Archives and Records, Cape Town, South Africa. To see a PDF of all the marginal notes on the fax, which is dated 21 October 1988, click here: Verses marginalia. For more on the ‘Rushdie Affair’, see The Literature Police (Oxford, 2009), especially the Postscript, and Anshuman A. Mondal, Islam and Controversy (Palgrave, 2014), especially Chapter 4.
v. (Chapter 8, p. 256) The following image shows the charcoal self-portrait entitled ‘Ulysses’ (1988) by the Indian Expressionist painter F. N. Souza that provided part of the inspiration for Amit Chaudhuri’s Odysseus Abroad (2014). For Chaudhuri’s reflections on this, and on the process of writing, see ‘The Moment of Writing‘, the Paris Review, 10 May 2018; and for more on Souza and his generation, see Ratik Asokan, ‘The Modern Art of Independent India‘, NYRDaily, January 2019. To hear Chaudhuri reflect on the phrase ‘my people’ and the question of categories in ways relevant to the discussion in this chapter, click here.

w. (Chapter 8, p. 260) A classically-trained Indian singer, Chaudhuri has a parallel career as a musician in which he has developed other ways of hovering between cultures without firmly settling down one way or the other, or seeking to achieve some kind of fusion. In the piece that follows, which is entitled ‘The Layla riff to Todi’, he moves musically between Eric Clapton’s ‘Layla‘ and the classical raga Todi, keeping both in play without according either a prior or normative status, much as he keeps the legacies of Tagore and Joyce alive in Odysseus Abroad while nonetheless producing a work entirely his own. The track comes from Chaudhuri’s first album This is not fusion (2010).
x. (Postscript, p. 265) The following images relate to Xu Bing’s 天书/ Tiānshū or Book from the Sky (1988). The first shows the complete installation with Buddhist sutras or scrolls hanging from the ceiling, over a hundred traditional paper-bound and thread-stitched books, neatly set out across the gallery floor, and modern poster-style newspapers covering the walls. The second contains examples of the pseudo-characters used throughout, and the third shows the woodblocks on which they were originally carved. For a guide to Xu Bing’s oeuvre, click here.



y. (Postscript, p. 267) To see images of Xu Bing’s Monkeys Grasp for the Moon (2001/8) installations, click here. For The Living Word (2001/2), click here.
z. (Postscript, p. 268) The following images show various aspects of Xu Bing’s Book from the Ground (2007-) in its book version from the cover to the initial inside pages. For more on the project and to buy the book, click here.



