ELECTRA LOST IN TRANSIT

Ramus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 11-24
Author(s):  
Demetra Kasimis
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
Familial Disorder ◽  
Poor Farmer ◽  
House Of Atreus ◽  
In Transit

Like all the tragedies about the House of Atreus, Euripides’ Electra dramatizes the political stakes of familial disorder. In the background lies the legendary story of Agamemnon who sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia and, after returning from Troy, was killed by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Electra takes place sometime after that murder and political usurpation, with the couple scrambling to secure their rule against the potential threat of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra's children. When the play opens, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus have already exiled Orestes from Argos and relocated Electra to its border where she lives in a forced countryside marriage to a poor farmer. Over the course of the play, the siblings reunite and plot the murders of their mother and her new husband. By its end, Orestes and Electra are prepared to say goodbye to each other for good and, under the stain of matricide, to embark on their respective forms of movement, wandering for him and a new marriage for her.

scholarly journals ‘Cheap Merchandise’: Atrocity and Undocumented Migrants in Transit in Mexico’s War on Drugs

2020 ◽  
pp. 089692052096181
Author(s):  
Javier Trevino-Rangel
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Central America ◽  
Immigration Policy ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
Security Policies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Undocumented Migration ◽  
The Subject ◽  
In Transit

Undocumented migrants in transit in Mexico are victims of atrocity. The subject has been largely ignored by scholars, however, until recently when a number of migration experts became interested in the matter. Most observers argue that abuses suffered by migrants are the consequence of the ‘securitization’ of Mexican immigration policy. For them, Mexican authorities perceive migrants from Central America as a threat to national security and have hardened laws and migratory practices as a result, but there is insufficient evidence to support these claims. This article looks at the political economy of undocumented migration in transit in Mexico and the violence associated with it. It investigates the abuses suffered by migrants not as the result of supposed security policies but rather as the consequence of the interplay between local and global economies that generate profits from undocumented migration. The article explores the role played by state officials, cartels and ordinary Mexicans in the migration industry.

Walking the Migrant Trail: Community Resistance to a Weaponized Desert

2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 192-200
Author(s):  
Abby C. Wheatley
Keyword(s):  
State Policies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Border Enforcement ◽  
Community Resistance ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Border Policy ◽  
Political Intervention ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
In Transit

Since 1994, migrant fatalities on the Arizona Sonora Border have grown significantly as a result of prevention through deterrence policies ostensibly intended to prevent unauthorized migration by making it dangerous and even deadly to migrate. Building on a growing body of scholarship documenting migrant vulnerability, this article examines the political dimensions and possibilities of the Migrant Trail, a seventy-five-mile collective walk from Sásabe, Sonora, to Tucson, Arizona, that seeks to witness and protest the deadly conditions created by border policy. Drawing on intimate ethnography, I conceptualize the Migrant Trail as a space of encuentro (encounter) and by extension, a pedagogical space, that reveals the deadly consequences of United States border enforcement and the ways in which contemporary policies weaponize the desert to control migration. Initially organized in 2004, the annual walk is an autonomous political intervention that moves beyond mainstream liberal institutions and electoral politics to provoke a series of critical realizations and insights and a new way of doing politics. Through this embodied experience, walkers become frontline observers and political actors. By publicly remembering those who have died crossing, they aim to interrupt state policies that actively disappear people in transit by disappearing their stories with them.

Orthodox Dissidence as De-Atomization: Father Dmitrii Dudko and His Battle with Razobshchennost’

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-114
Author(s):  
Nicholas Ganson
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Opposition ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
Soviet State ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Political Implications

On June 20, 1980, after more than five months of imprisonment, grueling interrogation, and emotional anguish, Fr. Dmitrii Dudko appeared on Soviet television and disavowed his earlier “anti-Soviet” statements. Dudko’s televised repudiation of his activities appeared to put the last nail in the coffin of an Orthodox dissident movement, which had shown promise as a political opposition to the Soviet state. Based on the case of Fr. Dmitrii, this article advances the idea that the characterization of the movement in political terms misrepresents the motives of its participants. Far from dismissing the political implications of the churchmen’s actions, the article, building on Fr. Dmitrii’s expressed struggle with razobshchennost’ (social atomization or isolation), explains his “dissidence” on its own terms, while considering its consequences and potential threat to the Soviet state. Seeking to grasp some of the nuance of the Orthodox dissident movement in the Soviet Union, this article employs the paradigm of atomization, de-atomization, and re-atomization to connect the religiously motivated activities of Fr. Dmitrii Dudko with the political implications of his actions for the Soviet state.

scholarly journals What is Left of Migrants’ Spaces?

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martina Tazzioli
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Border Enforcement ◽  
To Come ◽  
In Transit ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Enforcement Policies ◽  
Forced Eviction

This article deals with the political legacy of migrants’ spaces across Europe that are the outcome of border enforcement policies but that are also shaped by migrants’ struggles and movements. It interrogates what is left, after their vanishing forced eviction, at the level of spatial-political traces, as well as in the collective memory of the citizens of those places. The main argument of the piece is that in order to come to grips with these spaces beyond their ephemeral dimension, we need to consider the temporality of migrant struggles and of solidarity practices – between migrants and citizens. The article focuses, first, on the French-Italian Alpine border, and analyses how the sedimented memory of the struggles in that valley has been reactivated in the present to support the migrants in transit. Then, the article moves on by developing the notion of transversal alliances through an insight into the Gilets Noirs movement in France, a collective of undocumented migrants which mobilised towards getting to permit to stay and accommodation, while at the same time framing their struggle as a broader battle against precarity and exploitation. The piece concludes suggesting that by bringing in the genealogy of struggles and solidarity practices, migrants’ spaces appear as part of a precarious mobile common in the making.

scholarly journals The changing rationale of science communication: a challenge to scientific autonomy

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (03) ◽  
pp. C04 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Marcinkowski ◽  
Matthias Kohring
Keyword(s):  
Science Communication ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Strategic Communication ◽  
The Political ◽  
Academic Institutions ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
Dominant Form ◽  
Public Science ◽  
Scientific Autonomy ◽  
Communication Goals

We argue that the institutionalized push communication of academic institutions has become the dominant form of public science communication and has tended to force other forms and functions of science communication into the background. Given the new schemes of public funding, public communication of science now primarily serves the purpose of enabling academic institutions to promote themselves in a competition that has been forced upon them by the political domain. What academics working under these conditions say about themselves and their work (and what they do not) will depend crucially on the strategic communication goals and concepts of the organizations to which they belong. We surmise that the inherent logic of this form of science communication represents a potential threat to the autonomy of scientific research.

scholarly journals Angola's geopolitical dilemma

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (22) ◽  
pp. 177-202
Author(s):  
Eli alves Penha
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Political System ◽  
South Atlantic ◽  
The Political ◽  
The South ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Geographical Position ◽  
The Stability

Angola is one of the most dynamic countries in Africa, with a wealth of natural resources. However, its geographical position has entailed security problems. On the continental side, conflicts represent a potential threat for the stability of the political system. On the maritime side, technological and military difficulties make the country vulnerable to piracy and advances of major powers. The text examines how Angola has been facing this dilemma, considering its locationbetween the African heartland and the South Atlantic.

scholarly journals Populism as an Essentially Contested Concept or: On the Dangers of Centrism

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Marius Hansteen
Keyword(s):  
Social Conflict ◽  
Symbolic Representation ◽  
Mirror Image ◽  
Radical Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
The People ◽  
Essentially Contested Concept

The term «populism» is most often used polemically, and notably as a pejorative term, denoting an actual or potential threat to democracy. If, however, all problems and challenges to democracy are projected into an image of the populist danger, we encounter nothing but «centrism» as a mirror-image of «populism». Theories of «radical democracy» propose a more analytical concept of «populism», denoting the political dynamics of social conflict, i.e. how popular frustrations, claims and demands are articulated. In this perspective, political «agonism» is vital to democracy. My own take on these questions: «Democracy» is an essentially contested concept, but if we a central feature is that the «people» («demos») is the basis for the legitimacy of its institutions and policies, we must recognize that conflicts over the symbolic representation of «the people» are fundamental. To dismiss the problem is as dangerous as to claim that it is solved.

scholarly journals Permanently in Transit. Middle Eastern Migrants and Refugees in Serbia

Südosteuropa ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-109
Author(s):  
Armina Galijaš
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Refugee Children ◽  
The Political ◽  
Migrant Population ◽  
Institutional Response ◽  
Final Destination ◽  
In Transit ◽  
State Schools

Abstract Serbia has never been the chosen final destination for refugees from Iraq, Syria, and other beleaguered countries like Afghanistan who have embarked on the so-called Balkan route since 2015. But following the closure of this route in March 2016, between 3,500 and 4,500 migrants have found themselves living in Serbia. This article analyses the composition and changing size of the migrant population, looking at the legal status of individuals and migratory paths taken. It moves on to examine reactions to the migrants from the state authorities and the Serbian public, together with the institutional response manifested in legal measures and infrastructural facilities, and the political contexts in which decisions about these were taken. Specific attention is given to the situation of refugee children who attend state schools in Serbia. The analysis reveals a pragmatic and quite flexible administrative response to the refugees’ situation. However, the remarkable level of tolerance is largely related to awareness that the great majority of those stranded in Serbia are doing everything in their power to continue their journey into central and northern Europe—that is to leave Serbia.

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