scholarly journals Beginners On Stage: Arendt, Natality and the Appearance of Children in Contemporary Performance

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
ADELE SENIOR
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Beginning ◽  
Theatre Company ◽  
Political Intervention ◽  
Contemporary Performance ◽  
Political Dimensions

This paper examines the complex questions that arise around the appearance of children in contemporary performance. Drawing on performances by Nottingham-based theatre company Zoo Indigo and by Tim Etchells and the Flemish theatre company Victoria, I consider the extent to which Hannah Arendt's theorization of natality as ‘the new beginning inherent in birth’ that gives rise to the political potential to ‘begin something anew’ can help us to understand the ethico-political dimensions of children's appearance as natal, biological and relational beings in contemporary performance. In particular, I draw on feminist interpretations of Arendt's work to articulate the significance of the embodied aspects and ethical quality of children's relation to adult spectators and performers. I argue that these performances prompt a rethinking of the child's potential to generate political intervention, which moves beyond Arendt's gendered account of political agency in a public sphere from which children are excluded.

scholarly journals Look at me, I’m on TV: the political dimensions of reality television participation

2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372110369
Author(s):  
Bethany Klein ◽  
Stephen Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Reality Television ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Representation ◽  
Political Dimensions

It has been over 20 years since the reality television genre attracted the attention of fans, critics and scholars. Reality programmes produced high viewing figures, suggesting a strong appetite for the form; critics dismissed the programmes as mindless and the participants as desperate for fame; and scholars assessed the formats, audiences and meanings of reality television, offering a complex, if rarely celebratory, account. While some commentators and scholars made connections between vote-based formats and electoral systems, or between opportunities afforded audiences for the deliberation of social issues and the idealized public sphere, the civic dimension of participation itself has not been explored. In this article, we take a closer look at reality television participants, drawing on press interviews and coverage in order to highlight how participants enact representative performances that might supplement more formal modes of democratic representation.

Representation, Bicameralism, Political Equality, and Sortition: Reconstituting the Second Chamber as a Randomly Selected Assembly

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arash Abizadeh
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The Many ◽  
Treat All ◽  
Legislative Review ◽  
Political Turn

The two traditional justifications for bicameralism are that a second legislative chamber serves a legislative-review function (enhancing the quality of legislation) and a balancing function (checking concentrated power and protecting minorities). I furnish here a third justification for bicameralism, with one elected chamber and the second selected by lot, as an institutional compromise between contradictory imperatives facing representative democracy: elections are a mechanism of people’s political agency and of accountability, but run counter to political equality and impartiality, and are insufficient for satisfactory responsiveness; sortition is a mechanism for equality and impartiality, and of enhancing responsiveness, but not of people’s political agency or of holding representatives accountable. Whereas the two traditional justifications initially grew out of anti-egalitarian premises (about the need for elite wisdom and to protect the elite few against the many), the justification advanced here is grounded in egalitarian premises about the need to protect state institutions from capture by the powerful few and to treat all subjects as political equals. Reflecting the “political” turn in political theory, I embed this general argument within the institutional context of Canadian parliamentary federalism, arguing that Canada’s Senate ought to be reconstituted as a randomly selected citizen assembly.

Lottocratic Institutions from a Participatory Perspective

2019 ◽  
pp. 138-160
Author(s):  
Cristina Lafont
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Democratic Control ◽  
Political Deliberation ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
High Road ◽  
Political Decisions

This chapter explores how we might institutionalize deliberative minipublics in order to serve genuinely democratic goals. In contrast to empowered uses of minipublics that would bypass the citizenry’s political deliberation, citizens could use minipublics for contestatory, vigilant, and anticipatory purposes. These uses of minipublics would improve the quality of deliberation in the public sphere and would also force the political system to take the high road of properly involving the citizenry in the political process. The chapter illustrates these potential forms of “deliberative activism” with the help of examples of actual deliberative polls that James Fishkin has conducted over several decades. This analysis shows how deliberative minipublics can help improve the democratic quality of political deliberation in the public sphere while strengthening citizens’ democratic control over political decisions.

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.

scholarly journals Re-theorizing civil society in China: Agency and the discursive politics of civil society engagement

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marielle Stigum Gleiss ◽  
Elin Sæther ◽  
Kathinka Fürst
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Discursive Politics ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Chinese Civil Society

Scholarship on Chinese civil society has produced rich empirical studies, but there have been few attempts to theorize the empirical knowledge acquired. Moreover, the question of how to conceptualize the political agency of civil society in a non-democratic context has received limited systematic attention. In this conceptual article, we draw on a discursive approach to politics to analyse the political agency of Chinese civil society. Our analysis is based on synthesizing insights gained through three separate research projects. We propose a conceptual framework which focuses on how civil society actors position themselves within a structured political space, how they represent social groups and issues through advocacy, how they care for these groups, and how they engage in processes of identity formation. Taken together, these four modalities constitute a framework for analysing the different political dimensions of civil society agency.

The Wooster Group’s To You, The Birdie!

2019 ◽  
pp. 143-176
Author(s):  
Emma Cole
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Wooster Group ◽  
Theatre Company ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Canonical Texts

New York-based theatre company The Wooster Group have a long history of using canonical texts as springboards for devised productions. Their 2002 To You, The Birdie! ostensibly used Racine’s neoclassical Phèdre as a source text; however, the artists also engaged with Euripides’ Hippolytus and included numerous elements from the Greek tragedy and its reception history in their production. Chapter 4 analyses To You, The Birdie! and reveals that within its highly ambiguous, disorienting performance aesthetic lay a complex engagement with the political. It argues that the production was infused with explicit political dimensions surrounding the company’s identity, the form of the production, and the socio-political context in which it was first read, alongside implicit political elements relating to the play’s exploration of gender, class, and its emphasis on the incomplete nature of the classics. Through comparative reference to Sarah Kane’s Phaedra’s Love, the chapter demonstrates how different reinventions of the same myth can substantiate alternate national traditions and, through their similarities and differences, shed further light on the role of tragedy in the modern world.

scholarly journals The Origin of the Work of Art

MANUSYA ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-62
Author(s):  
Freeland Charles
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Death Of God ◽  
New Beginning ◽  
Static Object ◽  
European Experience ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Concept Of Truth ◽  
Definition Of

The following was presented at the Fourth Collegium in the Humanities held at Thammasat University on January 4 and 5, 2001. The paper is intended as an introduction to Heidegger’s important essay, "The Origin of the Work of Art". In the course of the paper, I discuss the following themes:Heidegger’s questioning of the concept of truth in terms of Aletheia, the self disclosing and concealing of Being, as the setting for a radical revaluation of techne, (the Greek word for art, as a practical, productive knowledge (Wissen)), in which techne will now be conceived as not only a way of kno wing that stands alongside theoria, but even more, as a decisive site for the disclosure of Being. The actuality of art, its "thingly" character, will not be seen as a static object, therefore, but as energeia, activity or "being-at-work". Techne will be thought as event, an event of Being, the site for the happening of Truth (Aletheia) This culminates in Heidegger’s delimitation, or definition, of art as the site or place (topos, Orter; in the German word Heidegger uses) of truth’s setting-itself-to- work. This is art’s "activity", its "actuality". Finally, the significance of this is.in the way it opens a new questioning of the European experience of nihilism as the "death of God", or withdrawal of gods, and the related triumph of knowledge in the form of scientific technicity, the calculative thinking of a techne that demands, challenges, provokes, and sets up Being as an object and conceives of earth , for example, as a "natural resource" to be exploited. The work of art, as the techne in which "truth (Aletheia) sets itself to work", what Heidegger might call "great art", is then to be seen as a possible way of overcoming (Verwindung) of nihilism and of questioning the essence of technology and calculative thinking. Through a questioning of the origin of the work of art, philosophical thinking will go beyond a mere "aesthetics" toward the more fundamental questioning of the "end of metaphysics". Through a return to an archaic Greek world opened in and by the temple, and through a thinking of all that is still yet to be thought, or that is still held in reserve in that experience, Heidegger seeks the possibility of a new beginning for the European, especially the Germanic, historical destiny. No doubt the revaluation of techne, not only in terms of the work of art, but in terms of the political and the founding of a nation and the opening of the destiny of a people, which is Heidegger’s way of thinking the actuality of the work of techne, are all crucial and deeply related themes. But, due to limitations of time and space in this paper, both the links of thi s with Heidegger’s meditations on the poetry of Holderlin, and the political dimensions of this work and Heidegger’s relation to National socialism during the 1930s, are not considered.

The Changing Patterns of North Korea’s International Film Co-Productions Since the 1980s: A Global Value Chain Approach

2020 ◽  
pp. 83-108
Author(s):  
Moon Hwy-Chang ◽  
Wenyang Yin
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
International Standards ◽  
The Political ◽  
Global Value Chain ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
Film Productions

Although North Korea is one of the most closed countries in the world, it has long been pursuing international cooperation with other countries in order to upgrade the quality of its film industry to international standards. Preceding studies on this topic have mainly focused on the political influences behind filmmaking in general and very few studies have exclusively dealt with North Korea’s international co-productions. In this respect, in order to develop a comprehensive understanding of the internalization strategy of North Korea’s film productions, this paper uses the global value chain as a framework for analysis. This approach helps understand the internationalization pattern of each value chain activity of film co-productions in terms of the film location and the methods for collaborating with foreign partners. By dividing the evolution of North Korea’s international co-productions into three periods since the 1980s, this paper finds that although North Korea has shown mixed results with different aspects of the film value chain, it has generally improved its internationalization over the three periods. This paper further provides strategic directions for North Korea by learning some of the successful Chinese experiences in the film sector regarding collaboration with foreign partners—to foster a win-win situation for all involved parties.

Persons Together

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan L. Mittleman
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Market Relations ◽  
The Image Of God

This chapter moves into the political and economic aspects of human nature. Given scarcity and interdependence, what sense has Judaism made of the material well-being necessary for human flourishing? What are Jewish attitudes toward prosperity, market relations, labor, and leisure? What has Judaism had to say about the political dimensions of human nature? If all humans are made in the image of God, what does that original equality imply for political order, authority, and justice? In what kinds of systems can human beings best flourish? It argues that Jewish tradition shows that we act in conformity with our nature when we elevate, improve, and sanctify it. As co-creators of the world with God, we are not just the sport of our biochemistry. We are persons who can select and choose among the traits that comprise our very own natures, cultivating some and weeding out others.

ROUPAS COMO CORPOS: O AGENCIAMENTO POLÍTICO DO VESTUÁRIO POR CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI / Clothes as bodies: the political agency of clothing by Christian Boltanski

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (39) ◽  
pp. 55-65
Author(s):  
Angélica Adverse
Keyword(s):  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Regimes ◽  
Historical Document ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
Political Experience

O artigo aborda o agenciamento das roupas no trabalho do artista Christian Boltanski. Partindo da dimensão do poder dos corpos têxteis, analisaremos como as roupas investem-se das palavras emudecidas dos corpos ausentes, constituindo-se como alegoria do testemunho e do documento histórico. A ideia central é pensar como as roupas explicitam a aniquilação humana provocada pelos regimes políticos totalitários. Analisaremos como as instalações Prendre la Parole (2005) e Personnes(2010) desvelam a presença-ausência da vida-morte na experiência política do discurso têxtil.  Palavras-chave: Roupas; Corpos; Agenciamento; Política; Memória.AbstractThe article addresses the agency of clothes in the work of the artist Christian Boltanski. Starting from the dimension of the power of the textile bodies, we will analyze how the clothes invest themselves with the muted words of the absent bodies, constituting themselves as an allegory of the testimony and of the historical document. The central idea is to think about how clothes make explicit human annihilation brought about by totalitarian political regimes. We will analyze how the installations Prendre la Parole (2005) and Personnes (2010) reveal the presence-absence of life-death in the political experience of textile discourse.Keywords: Clothes; Bodies; Agency; Politics; Memory. 

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