front cover of In Praise of Ambiguity
In Praise of Ambiguity
Erasmus, Huizinga and the Seriousness of Play
Willem Otterspeer
Leiden University Press, 2018

In Praise of Ambiguity presents a discourse about the seriousness of play. Erasmus and Huizinga are its main subjects, their books In Praise of Folly (1511) and Homo Ludens (1938) its main texts. Though published more than four hundred years apart, Otterspeer treats those books as contemporaries and asks what they still have to say to us. The main theme of both books is the contrast between two attitudes of life: the conviction that each subject has two or more sides as opposed to the certainty that there is always only one side to the subject. It is relativism versus essentialism, play versus seriousness.

In these times of populism and fundamentalism, the relationship between play and seriousness is more significant than ever. Erasmus and Huizinga conceive a compromise as brilliant as it is paradoxical: turn seriousness into play, play into seriousness. Their solution is the life blood of literature. Literature is always paradoxical, always "true" and "not true' at the same time, both reality and fiction. Ambiguity is its home territory. Literature is the best answer to the purity and peremptoriness of prophets.

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front cover of Inescapable Entrapments?
Inescapable Entrapments?
The Civil-Military Decision Paths to Uruzgan and Helmand
Mirjam Grandia Mantas
Leiden University Press, 2021
New insights into how contemporary civilian and military leaders make decisions.
 
Inescapable Entrapments? reevaluates the role of the military in foreign policy by comparing the decision-making processes behind British and Dutch military action in Afghanistan. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews, this study finds that neither the military nor the government influenced the other to act; rather, the decision to deploy troops to Afghanistan emerged organically from a series of prior transnational commitments.
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front cover of The Invasion of the Dutch East Indies
The Invasion of the Dutch East Indies
Edited and Translated by Willem Remmelink
Leiden University Press, 2015
Between 1966 and 1980, the War History Office of the National Defense College of Japan published a 102-volume military history of Imperial Japan’s involvement in the Pacific War. This book, the first full and unabridged translation of a volume from the series, describes in great detail the operation to capture the Dutch East Indies, which at the time was the largest transoceanic landing operation ever attempted.
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front cover of The Invasion of the South
The Invasion of the South
Army Air Force Operations, and the Invasion of Northern and Central Sumatra
Edited and Translated by Willem Remmelink
Leiden University Press, 2021
A comprehensive study of Japanese army air force operations in Indonesia during World War II.
 
This translation of a volume of the Senshi Sosho, the National Defense College of Japan’s unparalleled 1966–80 war history series, The Invasion of the South describes Japanese army air force operations against the Dutch East Indies during World War II. This essential resource provides the most comprehensive treatment of Japanese activity in the Indonesian archipelago, one of the largest transoceanic operations in history.
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front cover of Irreverent Persia
Irreverent Persia
Invective, Satirical and Burlesque Poetry from the Origins to the Timurid Period (10th to 15th Century)
Edited by Riccardo Zipoli
Leiden University Press, 2015
Poetry that uses satire, invective, and burlesque to criticize social, political, and cultural life has been a vital part of Persian literature for centuries. This anthology brings together some of the most impressive, important, and, crucially, irreverent poetry from major and minor poets from the earliest days of Persian poetry through the death of Jami in 1492, the moment when the classical era of Persian poetry ended.
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front cover of Ishikawa Sanshir.’s Geographical Imagination
Ishikawa Sanshir.’s Geographical Imagination
Transnational Anarchism and the Reconfiguration of Everyday Life in Early Twentieth-Century Japan
Nadine Willems
Leiden University Press, 2020
Antiestablishment ideas in contemporary Japan are tied closely to its recent history of capitalist development and industrialization. Activist Ishikawa Sanshiro exemplifies this idea, by merging European and Japanese thought throughout the early twentieth century. Ishikawa Sanshiro’s Geographical Imagination investigates the emergence of a strand of nonviolent anarchism and uses it to reassess the role of geographic thought in modern Japan as both a tool for political dissent and a basis for dialogue between radical thinkers and activists from the East and West. By tracing Ishikawa’s travels, intellectual interests, and real-life encounters, Nadine Willems identifies a transnational “geographical imagination” that valued ethics of cooperation in the social sphere and explored the interactions between man and nature. Additionally, this work explores anarchist activism and the role played by the practices of everyday life as a powerful force of sociopolitical change.
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front cover of Islam, Humanity and the Indonesian Identity
Islam, Humanity and the Indonesian Identity
Reflections on History
Ahmad Syafii Maarif
Leiden University Press, 2018
Islam exists in global history with its richly variegated cultural and social realities. When these specific cultural contexts are marginalized, Islam is reduced to an ahistorical religion without the ability to contribute to humanity. This limited understanding of Islam has been a contributing factor in many of the violent conflicts in the present day. Reflecting on Islam in Indonesia, the world’s third largest democracy, supporting the largest Muslim population, Ahmad Syafii Maarif argues for an understanding that is both faithful to Islam’s essential teachings and open to constantly changing social and cultural contexts. Building on this, he then addresses critical contemporary issues such as democracy, human rights, religious freedom, the status of women, and the future of Islam. Syafii Maarif’s insights offer inspiration to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
 
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front cover of Islam, Politics and Change
Islam, Politics and Change
The Indonesian Experience after the Fall of Suharto
Edited by Kees van Dijk and Nico J. G. Kaptein
Leiden University Press, 2015
The decades-long rule of President Suharto in Indonesia was ended by violent protests throughout the country in the spring of 1998. Following Suharto’s resignation, Indonesia successfully made the transition from an authoritarian state to a democracy, and this book explores the effects of that transformation on Islamic political organizations in Indonesia, which, for the first time in forty years, were legally allowed to campaign and promote their agenda. The contributors to this book consider the effects of these changes on the influence of orthodoxy and radicalism in Indonesian life and politics, the status of women, and the fate of religious minorities.
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