scholarly journals Confronting the gated community: Towards a decolonial critique of violence beyond the paradigm of war

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Henrique Tavares Furtado
Keyword(s):  
Gated Community ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Service Staff ◽  
Colonial Violence ◽  
Critique Of Violence

Abstract This article investigates the works of Dussel, Maldonado-Torres, and Mbembe as representatives of a tendency in the field of decolonial thought to assume the templates of warfare and the camp as the archetypal registers of violence in the contemporary world. Identifying this focus as the remnant of a Eurocentric vocabulary (the paradigm of war), the article proposes a shift from the language of warfare predominant in the field to a language of welfare. The article turns to the gated community (GC), instead of the camp, and the imperatives of (re)creation, instead of the logics of elimination, as new templates with which to make sense of modern/colonial violence. Moving beyond militaristic imagery, the analysis shows a form of violence that emerges as a response to the endless search for a life of convenience inside the walls of the GC. To this end, the article advances the concept of the dialect of disarrangement, the enforced but uneasy encounter between two subjectivities that inhabit the GC: the patrons (the homeowners who consume the easy life) and servants (the racialised service staff). In the GC, violence emerges in attempts to respond to this (in)convenient encounter via misrepresentations of both patrons and servants as out of their place.

Design, power and colonisation: decolonial and anti-oppressive explorations on three approaches for Design for Sustainability

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas B. TORRETTA ◽  
Lizette REITSMA
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Design For Sustainability ◽  
The People ◽  
Reflexive Practice ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
Design Power ◽  
Relational Issue

Our contemporary world is organized in a modern/colonial structure. As people, professions and practices engage in cross-country Design for Sustainability (DfS), projects have the potential of sustaining or changing modern/colonial power structures. In such project relations, good intentions in working for sustainability do not directly result in liberation from modern/colonial power structures. In this paper we introduce three approaches in DfS that deal with power relations. Using a Freirean (1970) decolonial perspective, we analyse these approaches to see how they can inform DfS towards being decolonial and anti-oppressive. We conclude that steering DfS to become decolonial or colonizing is a relational issue based on the interplay between the designers’ position in the modern/colonial structure, the design approach chosen, the place and the people involved in DfS. Hence, a continuous critical reflexive practice is needed in order to prevent DfS from becoming yet another colonial tool.

R. K. Singh: The Poet Who Celebrates 'senses' to attain 'Nirvana'

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-154
Author(s):  
Ram Thakur
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Inside Out

This paper discusses a few of R.K.Singh’s characteristic poetic traits that make him stand apart from all his contemporary Indian poets writing in English. His poetry is an honest attempt to portray the contemporary world in its true hue and color; present an inside-out delineation of the modern man; and touch upon all the so-called ‘untouchable’ i.e., topics such as ‘Sex’, ‘Prostitution’, ‘Cultural Degradation’, ‘Stinking Politics’, ‘Religion’, etc. Reader finds Singh celebrating all his senses in his ‘unique’ attempt to attain the state of complete ‘Peace’ or ‘Calm’. His poetry serves as a medium for him to reach the state of ‘nirvana’. Reader finds Singh’s poetry as a prism that diffracts the worldly affairs into different spectrums, analyses each, and again sums it all into a single hue of liberation and peace with ‘detachment’ displaying the mark of a seasoned ‘yogi’. The paper aims to encourage other researchers and people in the academia to explore recent band of emerging Indian poets expressing themselves in English.

Bacurau as Science-Fiction Revenge Fantasy

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-86
Author(s):  
Jocimar Dias
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Colonial Violence

When Bacurau (dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, 2019) was released in Brazil, it was mainly received as a left-wing critique of the rise of the far right in the country’s political landscape. But some critics argued that the feature’s insistence on graphic violence was actually a celebration of barbarism, equating the oppressed villagers to their genocidal oppressors. This article refutes this view, borrowing from the analysis of science-fiction revenge fantasies and also following Foucault’s genealogical perspective. It argues that Bacurau actually reenacts Brazil’s foundational colonial violence through its complex temporality, in order to rediscover the forgotten past of real struggles that remain surreptitiously inserted in all levels of society, perhaps in the hope that new ways of resistance may flourish from its spectatorial experience.

Confucianism as a World Religion

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Sun
Keyword(s):  
Vital Signs ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
World Religion ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
Thoughtful Reflection

Is Confucianism a religion? If so, why do most Chinese think it isn't? This book traces the birth and growth of the idea of Confucianism as a world religion. The book begins at Oxford, in the late nineteenth century, when Friedrich Max Müller and James Legge classified Confucianism as a world religion in the new discourse of “world religions” and the emerging discipline of comparative religion. The book shows how that decisive moment continues to influence the understanding of Confucianism in the contemporary world, not only in the West but also in China, where the politics of Confucianism has become important to the present regime in a time of transition. Contested histories of Confucianism are vital signs of social and political change. The book also examines the revival of Confucianism in contemporary China and the social significance of the ritual practice of Confucian temples. While the Chinese government turns to Confucianism to justify its political agenda, Confucian activists have started a movement to turn Confucianism into a religion. Confucianism as a world religion might have begun as a scholarly construction, but are we witnessing its transformation into a social and political reality? With historical analysis, extensive research, and thoughtful reflection, this book will engage all those interested in religion and global politics at the beginning of the Chinese century.

The Political Machine

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam T. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Mortuary Ritual ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Organized Violence ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
Political Machine ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
The Bronze Age

This book investigates the essential role that material culture plays in the practices and maintenance of political sovereignty. Through an archaeological exploration of the Bronze Age Caucasus, the book demonstrates that beyond assemblies of people, polities are just as importantly assemblages of things—from ballots and bullets to crowns, regalia, and licenses. The book looks at the ways that these assemblages help to forge cohesive publics, separate sovereigns from a wider social mass, and formalize governance—and it considers how these developments continue to shape politics today. The book shows that the formation of polities is as much about the process of manufacturing assemblages as it is about disciplining subjects, and that these material objects or “machines” sustain communities, orders, and institutions. The sensibilities, senses, and sentiments connecting people to things enabled political authority during the Bronze Age and fortifies political power even in the contemporary world. The book provides a detailed account of the transformation of communities in the Caucasus, from small-scale early Bronze Age villages committed to egalitarianism, to Late Bronze Age polities predicated on radical inequality, organized violence, and a centralized apparatus of rule. From Bronze Age traditions of mortuary ritual and divination to current controversies over flag pins and Predator drones, this book sheds new light on how material goods authorize and defend political order.

Future Education within Disruptive Technologies Developments

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-293
Author(s):  
Codrin-Leonard Herţanu
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Disruptive Technologies ◽  
Educational Domain ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
How People Learn ◽  
Future Education ◽  
Present World ◽  
Technology Domain

AbstractOur contemporary world is on the verge of crucial changes of an unparalleled pace. The ‘technological changeover’ is the new paradigm caused by the unprecedented evolution of the disruptive technologies. The present world has the tendency to evolve at least exponential, therefore future educational environment is fairly different than its present layout. An entire array of nowadays studies widely recognizes that the progress of the disruptive technologies will pose a meaningful impact over the educational system evolution. Among the most spectacular technologies with disruptive features we should encounter Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain Technology, Cloud Computing, and the like. In an era of technological disruption the education is seen as the new currency. With the help of Artificial Intelligence, for instance, the education system could track how people learn from kindergarten to retirement. Besides, the technology domain will move the centre of gravity from the institutional area to that of the education’s beneficiaries, as we might expect that they will recruit and employ the needed teacher staff, not the institutions. Moreover, the education’s recipients will be the main creators of tomorrow’s professions and within their community the overarching events will happen and the main decisions will be taken in the educational domain.

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