Mapping Orientalist Discourses: Using Waltz with Bashir in the Classroom

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatriz Tomé-Alonso ◽  
Lucía Ferreiro Prado
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Artifacts ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
The World ◽  
Animated Film

Abstract While fiction and non-fiction productions can be used as tools to observe, describe, and analyze the “world-out-there,” within these events-issues centered approaches post-positivists posit films themselves as “cultural artifacts” to be analyzed. This paper proposes a critical analysis of Waltz with Bashir (2008) to be conducted with students in the classroom. This acclaimed animated film by Israeli writer and director Ari Folman depicting the 1982 Lebanon War is a non-obvious but germane example of Said's “Orientalism.” After explaining post-structuralism and post-orientalist stances on subjectivity, power relations, and the political consequences of the narratives we create, we analyze the film by applying an orientalist grid to Waltz with Bashir and raising qualitative questions to foster the student's criticality. We conclude by examining student's reactions to the film and their understanding of “Orientalism.”

scholarly journals Provençal Landscapes in Aldous Huxley’s Fiction and Non-Fiction

2019 ◽  
pp. 357-367
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Moroz
Keyword(s):  
Olive Tree ◽  
The Political ◽  
Aldous Huxley ◽  
Spatial Turn ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
The World ◽  
Analytical Tools

The paper focuses on the analysis of different ways in which Aldous Huxley chose to represent Provençal landscapes in his novels, such as Eyeless in Gaza or Time Must Have a Stop, as well as in his essays, such as “Music at Night” or “The Olive Tree”. The analytical tools which have been developed by scholars of the so called ‘spatial turn’ have been used (particularly the notion of ‘polysensory landscapes’), while Huxley’s representations of Provence are considered in the context of Aldous Huxley’s biography and the political situation in France in particular and in the world in general in the 1930s.

An Interview with Jean-Luc Nancy on Literature, Philosophy and the Present

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 355-366
Author(s):  
Artur R. Boelderl
Keyword(s):  
Easter Island ◽  
The Political ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
World Today ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The World ◽  
Before And After

‘We are before Dante’: In this interview, held via email in March 2020 amid the massive outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jean-Luc Nancy leads us on a brief but far-reaching foray through his thought. He succeeds in providing an overview of the subjects that he has raised since the beginning of his career as a philosopher, while maintaining a focus on their pertinence for what we are currently facing in the world today. He supplements his insight that ‘we are before Dante’ with the equally remarkable conclusion: ‘Desire is what is born par excellence’. In between these two propositions, and in between the lines and words documented here – touching upon topics as diverse as the moai statues of Easter Island, the music of Schumann, Wagner, and techno, as well as the writing of Artaud, Proust, and Verlaine – we find an exciting, up-to-date treatment of the question of how to ‘deal with the world intellectually’ (Musil) without, in doing so, participating in the modern claim to ‘master’ it. Instead, Nancy suggests, we ought to be attentive to what escapes us by its very principle, with philosophy, literature, and art serving as witnesses of what has always been absent from our mind, that is, the sensibility of meaning, in order to become aware that, since we are always already before and after birth, ‘we come from nowhere and everywhere’. This realization enables us to understand the political consequences that it has for our understanding of a world in metamorphosis, including for highly controversial issues such as colonialism, anti-Semitism, the far right, neo-liberalism, and other totalitarian forms that supposedly manifest a return of the myth, as well as its consequences for the insurmountability of Marx(ism).

scholarly journals “It’s a big world in here”: Contemporary Voyage Drama and the Politics of Mobility

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Wilkie
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Travel Narratives ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Solo Performance ◽  
The World ◽  
To Come ◽  
Restoration England ◽  
To Receive

AbstractIn Renaissance and Restoration England, many popular plays functioned as “voyage dramas,” offering opportunities for vicarious tourism to their audiences (McInnis 2012). The theatre became one site in which to receive and negotiate information about elsewhere, at a time before mass access to travel was available. The tagline of London’s Young Vic theatre – “It’s a big world in here” – suggests that something of this spirit survives in twenty-first-century performance. It is a sentiment that we find also in the festival director Mark Ball’s assertion that “theatre is my map of the world.” But the version of the world created here is necessarily skewed by a politics of mobility (Cresswell 2010): the uneven frictions, routes, speeds, levels of comfort, and power relations affecting how theatre-makers and productions move around the world. And contemporary audiences are themselves likely to come to the theatre with multiple and unequal experiences of travel. This article asks what function contemporary voyage dramas serve in a context of the widespread mobility of people, finance, goods and ideas, and what might be the political challenges of representing travel in the theatre. It investigates the claim to authenticity, the negotiation of privilege and remoteness, and the role of the performer as mediator in theatrical travel narratives. In particular, it focuses on Simon McBurney’s solo performance

Population, Resources, and Technology: Political Implications of the Environmental Crisis

1972 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nazli Choucri ◽  
James P. Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Precise Nature ◽  
Popu Lation ◽  
World Today ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The World ◽  
Exponential Rates

Virtually eveyone reconizes the existence on an environmental crisis in the world today, but may uncertianties remain concerning the precise nature of this cirsis and its domestic and interational implications. This much is clear: The world's popu;lation is continuing to grow at an alarming pace; finite resources are being utilized at exponential rates; and technological advances are contributing to negative ecological outcomes. These trends have been documented extensively. Their political significance, however, has received little attention if only because the visibility of the problem is such a recent phenomenon. This article is addressed to some of the political consequences and international implications of the environmental crisis.

scholarly journals The Rising Powers and Globalization: Structural Change to the Global System Between 1965 and 2005

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay Marie Jacobs ◽  
Ronan Van Rossem
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
The Political ◽  
Rising Powers ◽  
Vast Number ◽  
Global System ◽  
Global Power ◽  
The World ◽  
Military Networks ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Significant Attention

This article sets out to critically assess the increasingly prevalent claims of rapidly changing global power relations under influence of the ‘rising powers’ and ‘globalization’. Our main contention is that current analyses of countries’ degree of global power (especially for the BRICS) has been dominated by the control over resources approach that, though gauging power potential, insufficiently takes into account how this potential is converted into actual global might. By drawing on a unique and extensive dataset comprising of a wide array of political, economic and military networks for a vast number of countries between 1965 and 2005, we aim to 1) reassess alleged changes in the structure of the world-system since 1965 and 2) to analyze whether these changes can be attributed to ‘globalization’. Significant attention is paid to the trajectories of the BRICS and to the possibly divergent structural evolutions of the political and economic dimensions that constitute the system. Our results show that despite a certain degree of power convergence between countries at the sub-top of the system, overall, divergence continues to take place between the most and least powerful, and stratification is reproduced. Globalization is further shown to exacerbate this trend, though its effect differs on the political and economic dimensions of the system. Overall, though the traditional ‘core powers’ might have to share their power with newcomer China in the future, this hardly heralds a new age in which the global system of power relations are converging to the extent that stratification is being undermined.

Corruption and Transparency

2020 ◽  
pp. 630-647
Author(s):  
Manuel Villoria
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Epistemic Community ◽  
Open Government ◽  
The Political ◽  
Advocacy Coalition ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Know How ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Incremental Change

According to different surveys, corruption has become the second-most significant problem for Spaniards since the beginning of 2013. This article tries to demonstrate that corruption in present-day Spain is a consequence of institutional deficits that stem from the democratic transition. However, despite a certain path of dependence, the political consequences of the Great Recession economic crisis and the numerous scandals have fostered the emergence of a pro-integrity advocacy coalition. Using the know-how of the anti-corruption epistemic community, this coalition aims to modify social perception of the problem and introduce radical policy change. This chapter ends by offering a critical analysis of the incremental change in the anti-corruption policy made by the national government, particularly regarding transparency and open government outputs.

scholarly journals Memory’s Method

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-31
Author(s):  
Magdala Desgranges
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Edwidge Danticat ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Function ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
The World

Storytelling has the power to transform and transplant an audience into a higher form of consciousness, presenting nuanced views and correcting inaccurate portrayals of people, places, and phenomena the world over. Analyzing how memory is used in the works of Maryse Condé (Tales from the Heart) and Edwidge Danticat (Breath, Eyes, Memory), the intent of this paper is twofold: first, to articulate the role of temporality, transnationalism, and traces of collective memory in form and content of their works, and second, to highlight the political function embedded in both texts, writing beyond self and opening a parentheses to challenge “one-sided historicity.” I argue that a contextual and holistic understanding of what I call the three Ts (temporality, transnationalism, and traces of memory) as interconnected and not separate elements, are essential in the processes of Condé and Danticat, and the presence of Antillean identity they depict. As a result, an act of social justice is forged through literary critical analysis to represent and re-inscribe Caribbean cultural identity onto the global map.

scholarly journals Acknowledging Strength in Plurality: The World Social Forum 2016 Through the Prism of Assemblage Thinking

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-74
Author(s):  
Carminda Mac Lorin ◽  
Nikolas Schall
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
The Political ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
World Social Forum ◽  
Migration Policies ◽  
The World

In this article, we contribute to debates regarding the nature and role of the World Social Forum (WSF) in the post-2010 period by employing the prism of assemblage thinking. By using the WSF 2016 held in Montreal, Canada as a case study, we outline the political potential of the assemblage approach, which allows activists and researchers of social justice and contemporary contentious spaces to address some of the intrinsic paradoxes in such mobilizations. The observation of some paradigmatic moments from the WSF 2016 offers a glimpse into the heterogeneity that shapes it. We address elements as diverse as actors' intentionalities, migration policies, urban landscapes, power relations, contents, and absences, arguing that assemblage thinking opens up innovative possibilities for analyzing multidimensional phenomena such as the WSF.

scholarly journals COPERNICUS IN THE AMAZON: ONTOLOGICAL TURNINGS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF AMERINDIAN ETHNOLOGIES

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Els Lagrou
Keyword(s):  
Academic Success ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Anthropological Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Ontological Turn ◽  
Short Presentation

Abstract In this article I explore the ontological turn in anthropological theory through three interconnected approaches. First, I situate the academic success of Amerindian ontologies in the context of recent debates on the urgency of addressing the political consequences of the anthropocene. Secondly, I undertake an archaeology of the concept of perspectivism as a central stage of the ontological turn, showing how the sub-discipline of Amerindian ethnology has always had a vocation for Copernican turnings, from the time of Montaigne until today. In conclusion, I argue for a return to aesthetics and poetics as the quintessential domains for exploring how different ontologies can teach us to look at the world differently. To understand the multiple versions of Amerindian relational ontologies we have to be able to perceive the relational character of the aesthetics they reveal. The argument is sustained by a short presentation of Huni Kuin (Cashinahua) aesthetics as revealed in huni meka, ayahuasca song.

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