ARTISTS AS AVATARS

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 237-252
Author(s):  
PETER CHAMETZKY
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Mental Distress ◽  
World War ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Artistic Vision ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Nazi Era

Are artists crazy? Are creators more likely to be mad, or madder, than the rest of us? Does mental distress deepen artistic vision? Correlate to genius? Is the drive to fashion a personal pictorial or plastic universe pathological? Bettina Gockel's hefty Tübingen Habilitationsschrift, “The Pathologizing of the Artist: Artist Legends in Modernity,” documents the significant amount of mental energy expended exploring these and related questions from the mid-nineteenth century into the 1920s. Matthew Biro's The Dada Cyborg argues that the Dadaists’ montages, assemblages, and raucous agitational activities in the public sphere of World War I-era Berlin indicate modernity's disruption of stable subject positions and suggest instead hybrid, “cyborgian” identities. These included challenges to normative notions of sanity, but also to those of gender, ethnicity, race, and national and political allegiance. James van Dyke's study of the Weimar- and Nazi-era career of painter Franz Radziwill, a World War I veteran and self-taught reactionary modernist realist, provides a detailed case study of an artist whom one might, in retrospect, suspect of a degree of grandiosity and careerism bordering on the pathological, but who was driven by a complex of motivations as political as they were personal.

A Countermovement on the Verge of Defeat

2020 ◽  
pp. 134-152
Author(s):  
Teri Finneman
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Social Movement Theory ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Movement Theory ◽  
Suffrage Movement ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter examines how the mainstream local and regional press covered the antisuffrage perspective in the critical year of 1917 as it became increasingly evident that the suffrage movement had momentum to secure a federal amendment. The goal here is to increase understanding of press portrayals of a countermovement and thus to add to literature on social movement theory. Its findings reveal that most coverage situated the suffrage debate in the context of World War I. Antisuffragists relied on negative discourse that criticized the patriotism of the suffragists and argued that women did not want the added burden of voting. In contrast, suffragists avoided emotional reactions and instead based their arguments on facts and on the benefits of women being in the public sphere. This study contributes to prior research on countermovements and the implications of taking a negative and narrow approach when attempting to undermine a social movement

The Suffering of the Perpetrators: The Ethics of Traumatic German Historicity in Karen Bass's Young Adult World War II Novels

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adult World ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.

The Invisible Other

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lara Vetter
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
The Other ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Existential Psychology ◽  
World War ◽  
Freudian Psychoanalysis ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Other Woman

Chapter 8 turns to the figure of the spy, a recurrent trope of her 1956 novel Magic Mirror and the accompanying memoir Compassionate Friendship. If the “other woman” is predicated on a position of alterity, the therapist-spy feigns an identification—and an empathetic connection—that does not in fact exist. At the level of the private sphere, H.D. uses espionage as a mode of critiquing Freudian psychoanalysis, offering in its stead the short-lived existential psychology, a movement which grew out of the trauma of World War II and emphasized an empathetic rather than transferential model of therapy. Shifting outward to the public sphere, her analysis of the figure of the spy becomes an examination of the politics of nationalism.

Locals

2017 ◽  
pp. 256-279
Author(s):  
Will Hanley
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
The Public ◽  
Government Employment ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Political Membership

The public sphere of the bourgeois effendiya, reflected in the sources that dominate the historiography Egypt before World War One, engaged only a narrow set of ideas about political membership. But police and legal records show that many residents of Egypt relied on a more generic and flexible label—“local”—which they refined in contradistinction to foreign nationalities. The term had a clear social meaning, particularly in imperial context, where it was a polite synonym of “native.” Localness began to gather a legal garb, particularly in the sphere of social rights such as education and government employment, until it began to resemble a nationality. This chapter argues that one key to explaining Egypt’s political quiescence between 1882 and 1919 is recognizing identity formation taking place under the banner of “local” status, rather than the more familiar category of Egyptian national citizen, which emerged only in the decades that followed.

Shaping Digital Democracy in the United States

2014 ◽  
pp. 213-231
Author(s):  
Rachel Baarda ◽  
Rocci Luppicini
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Networking Site ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
The Public Sphere

Ethical challenges that technology poses to the different spheres of society are a core focus within the field of technoethics. Over the last few years, scholars have begun to explore the ethical implications of new digital technologies and social media, particularly in the realms of society and politics. A qualitative case study was conducted on Barack Obama's campaign social networking site, my.barackobama.com, in order to investigate the ways in which the website uses or misuses digital technology to create a healthy participatory democracy. For an analysis of ethical and non-ethical ways to promote participatory democracy online, the study included theoretical perspectives such as the role of the public sphere in a participatory democracy and the effects of political marketing on the public sphere. The case study included a content analysis of the website and interviews with members of groups on the site. The study's results are explored in this chapter.

Digital Humour, Gag Laws, and the Liberal Security State

2017 ◽  
pp. 204-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Bessant
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Political Dissent ◽  
The Public ◽  
On Line ◽  
Artistic Work ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter presents a case study of Facu Diaz, a Spanish satirist whose on-line ridicule of the Spanish government created a political furor that brought him before the courts. The chapter engages the problem of the criminalization of political dissent by liberal states in the digital age. The case highlights how digital media is now being used to create content for satire, as well as to replicate and infiltrate more traditional political and media forums, changing many traditional forms of political practice. The case [points to some of the central problems inherent in liberalism which may give reason to curb the enthusiasm of those who think that new digital media creates fresh opportunities for augmenting the ‘public sphere'. It is argued that liberalism as a political theory and ethos, tends to be blind to non-traditional political expressions like satire and other artistic work. In addition, the expansion of security laws in many countries suggests, liberalism's ostensible commitment to freedom needs to be reframed by recalling its historical preoccupation with security.

Greening Religion in Facebook: Can Digital Media Bridge the Gap Between Religion and Modernity?

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-81
Author(s):  
Oriol Poveda
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
The Public ◽  
Multiple Modernities ◽  
Environmental Processes ◽  
Religion And Modernity ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
Empirical Material

Through a case study of the Facebook page of a Jewish Orthodox environmental project based in Germany, this paper explores the ways in which religion and modernity might be made compatible and what role digital media plays in such interaction. On the basis of the empirical material gathered for this paper, the author presents a typology of religious-environmental processes of hybridization. The analysis draws from the concepts of multiple modernities, public religions and religious branding in order to discuss whether the combination of religion and modernity is enabled or compromised by the collapsing of boundaries between the public sphere and the marketplace in late modern societies. The findings suggest that Facebook and its affordances make possible the particular intersections of religion and environmentalism, of public sphere and marketplace, that are characteristic of the case under study.

Defining and Defending Valid Citizenship During War: Jewish Immigrant Businesses in World War I Britain

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
STEPHANIE SEKETA
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Business Networks ◽  
Hostile Environment ◽  
World War ◽  
Business Decisions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Behavior ◽  
Political Associations ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Corporate Actions

Beginning in the 1870s and 1880s, many British companies relied on transnational business networks and global associations. However, the tensions produced by World War I created an environment in which consumers, journalists, and politicians actively promoted economic protectionism and consumer nationalism through various Buy British movements. Entrepreneurs under scrutiny took a variety of approaches to manage this hostile environment and avoid the financial, political, and cultural ramifications of suddenly having their and their family members’ valid citizenship questioned and outright attacked in the public sphere. During the war, neutral, passive, or absent patriotism drew suspicion. Any suspicions about loyalty could spark an avalanche of attacks, with each one being exponentially more difficult to defend as fear built in people’s minds. Citizenship was more than a legal matter; it was a layered set of dynamic activities and enterprises in which corporate actions became tied to expression of loyalty. People were judged by their cultural behavior, political associations, legal citizenship, and business decisions. I argue that some firms reacted by defining themselves, their products, and their services as “British,” erasing their “foreignness” as a defense against attacks on their citizenship and loyalty.

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