SAILING TOGETHER: THE AGONISTIC CONSTRUCTION OF SISTERHOOD IN SOPHOCLES’ ANTIGONE

Ramus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 109-126
Author(s):  
Valentina Moro
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Conceptual Frameworks

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the meaning of kinship in Sophocles’ Theban plays has raised a great deal of interest in critical interpretations in the fields of philosophy, political theory, and psychoanalysis. From the 1970s onward, Antigone in particular has also become a staple of feminist theory, both as a philosophical and political gesture contra Hegel and Lacan, but also in connection with post-structuralism. Conversely, the topic of kinship in Athenian drama has attracted comparatively little attention from classical philologists. As a consequence, theorists have often been more inclined to discuss the theme with reference to modern conceptual frameworks, rather than to Sophocles’ language itself.

Decadence and Realism

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-582
Author(s):  
Matthew Potolsky
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Realist Novel ◽  
The Social ◽  
Realist Novels

This essay proposes a new understanding of the widely recognized disdain for realism and the realist novel among decadent writers, a disdain most critics have interpreted as a protomodernist celebration of artifice. Focusing on Oscar Wilde's dialogue “The Decay of Lying,” the essay argues instead that decadent antirealism is antimodern, embodying a repudiation of contemporary society. Decadent writers regard realism not as hidebound and traditional, as twentieth-century theorists would have it, but as terrifyingly modern. Wilde looks back to neoclassical theories of mimesis and classical Republican political theory to imagine a different, older world, one in which art improves upon brute reality and in which the artist stands apart from the social forces that realist novels make central to their literary universes.

scholarly journals POLITIK PEMUSNAHAN DAN PEMUSNAHAN POLITIK : Telaah Kritis Atas Konsep Hannah Arendt Tentang Totalitarisme

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
Mathias Daven
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Total Domination ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Totalitarian Regime

If we wish to understand a totalitarian system as a whole, we need first to understand the central role of the concentration camp as a laboratorium to experiment in total domination. Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism in the twentieth century shows how a totalitarian regime cannot survive without terror; and terror will not be effective without concentration camps. Experiments in concentration camps had as their purpose, apart from wiping out any freedom or spontaneity, the abolishing of space between human beings, abolishing space for politics. Thus, totalitarianism did not mirror only the politics of extinction, but also the extinction of politics. As a way forward, Arendt analyses political theory that forces the reader to understand power no longer under the rubric of domination or violence – although this avenue is open – but rather under the rubric of freedom. Arendt is convinced that the life of a destroyed nation can be restored by mutual forgiveness and mutual promises, two abilities rooted in action. Political action, as with other acts, is identical with the ability to commence something new. Keywords: Totalitarisme, antisemitisme, imperialisme, dominasi, teror, kebebasan, kedaulatan, kamp konsentrasi, politik, ideologi, tindakan

scholarly journals Moving out of the Attic: Susan Glaspell and the American She-Tragedy

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Zaid Ibrahim Ismael ◽  
Jinan Waheed Jassim
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Gender Issues ◽  
Vicious Circle ◽  
American Theater ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Susan Glaspell

Midwestern American dramatist Susan Glaspell (1876-1948) was one of the early voices in the American theater who explored gender issues and woman’s rights at the beginning of the twentieth century. She portrays women in distress, trying to find an outlet from the vicious circle of loneliness and abuse in which they live. Despite the fact that her characters resist oppression and degradation and try to defy the patriarchal authority that restrains them, they are often overwhelmed by this powerful male-dominated system. As a result, they grow defensive and resort to violence and murder in order to avenge themselves from the society that dehumanizes them. They ultimately fall prey to their tragic fate, not necessarily death, but psychological disintegration and incarceration. Glaspell’s tragic heroines are outsiders, living in a world that thwarts their dreams to have a free life beyond the prescribed roles and social demands of house management, domesticity, and social propriety. This study applies the feminist theory of Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, introduced in their seminal work The Madwoman in the Attic, to two of Glaspell’s major plays, namely Trifles and The Verge. It also aims at tracing the elements of the Restoration ‘she-tragedy’ in these plays to prove to what extent Glaspell is a master of this form of writing.

The Fix We Are In

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-87
Author(s):  
Richard Hudelson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Science Ethics ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
Grand Strategies

I have been thinking about the history and future of the labor movement for fifty years. As an academic in philosophy I have focused my research on the intersections of the global labor movement with philosophy of history, philosophy of science, ethics, economics, and political theory. ‘The Fix We Are In’ is a summary of my current thinking. At present the grand strategies for emancipation, ascendant in the mid-twentieth century, have faltered. Headless capitalism runs amuck. The conditions of the working class deteriorate. There is no vision of a better world—no clear pathway toward a better future. The ‘popular revolt’ bubbling up around the globe is a product of this moment. My paper concludes with a difficulty regarding my own favored way forward. Responses from readers would be welcome at: [email protected].

Lifting the “Claud-Lorraine Tint” over the Republic

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Pace Vetter
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Comprehensive System ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
Early American ◽  
The Republic

Frances Wright makes several major contributions to political theory. She served as an essential transitional figure from republicanism to early American socialism. Wright outlined a comprehensive system of reform based on an epistemological method of inquiry. Although Alexis de Tocqueville is credited with anticipating aspects of what would become critical race theory, her devastating critique of slavery in America precedes his by several years and includes elements of critical race theory as well. Unlike Tocqueville, Wright also applies those principles to the plight of American women, which prefigures aspects of critical feminist theory. Wright presents an early version of intersectionality by portraying the oppression of women, the enslavement of African Americans, and the injustice of economic inequality as intertwined through institutionalized corruption.

Two regimes of the symbolic: radical democracy between Romanticism and structuralism

2019 ◽  
pp. 77-88
Author(s):  
Warren Breckman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Radical Democracy ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
German Romanticism ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Ernesto Laclau ◽  
Constructed Dialogue ◽  
History Of

The ‘symbolic’ has found its way into the heart of contemporary radical democratic theory. When one encounters this term in major theorists such as Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek, our first impulse is to trace its genealogy to the offspring of the linguistic turn, structuralism and poststructuralism. This paper seeks to expose the deeper history of the symbolic in the legacy of Romanticism. It argues that crucial to the concept of the symbolic is a polyvalence that was first theorized in German Romanticism. The linguistic turn that so marked the twentieth century tended to suppress this polyvalence, but it has returned as a crucial dimension of contemporary radical political theory and practice. At stake is more than a recovery of historical depth. Through a constructed dialogue between Romanticism and the thought of both Žižek and Laclau, the paper seeks to provide a sharper appreciation of the resources of the concept of the symbolic.

Jane Addams as Feminist Heroine: Democracy and Contentious Politics

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (03) ◽  
pp. 554-561
Author(s):  
Nancy J. Hirschmann
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Graduate School ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Jane Addams ◽  
Hard Time ◽  
Political Analysis

I have long been a puzzled admirer of Jean Elshtain's work, going back to graduate school whenPublic Man, Private Woman(Elshtain 1981) first came out, and I read it for a class in feminist theory taught by Nancy Hartsock. I remember another student, a Marxist, wrinkling her nose and saying about the author, “she's really pretty conservative, don't you think?” I had a hard time understanding this question. As a newcomer to feminism in the early 1980s, I perhaps naively thought that anyone who recognized that gender was an important category for political analysis, that it was a realm of inequality, and that canonical political theory actually had a lot to say about it despite the fact that most of our professors always blithely ignored it, was, by definition, pretty radical.

James Scott, Seeing Like a State

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loren King
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
The State ◽  
Coercive Power ◽  
Critical Importance ◽  
Rational Planning ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World

States see the world in a particular way, simplifying their domains to better rule them. By the early twentieth century, these ordering imperatives coincided with progressive ideals grounded in hopes that scientific and technological progress could shape the world for good. That conceit—that we should use the formidable power of the state to forge grand rational schemes for human improvement—blinded planners to the critical importance of local, cumulative, practical knowledge. This is Scott’s core thesis in Seeing Like a State, which he supports with a rich (if selective) body of evidence. If we defend Scott’s book as political theory, then we might worry that he has simply rediscovered skeptical themes (specifically, worries about coercive power and rational planning) long-evident in counter-enlightenment, anarchist, libertarian, and postcolonial thought. These worries, while reasonable, should not obscure the great value of Scott’s book as grounded political theory: there are lessons here, both methodological and substantive, for political theory.

Representation

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Disch
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Cultural Representation ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Historical Representation ◽  
The Relationship

The concept of representation may be second only to gender in its centrality to mid-twentieth-century feminist theory and practice. This chapter provides an overview of feminist explorations of the relationship between political representation and aesthetic/semiotic/cultural representation. It analyzes three approaches, comparing feminist discussions of “Vamps” (cultural representation), with “Visibility” (historical representation) and “Voice” (political representation) to emphasize the interdisciplinarity of feminist explorations of representation. Running through all three sections are concerns about the interplay between how representations picture women and who speaks for them, and how acts of representation work to constitute that for which they purport merely to stand.

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