Enacting Political Friendship in Gezi

In the Street ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 151-188
Author(s):  
Çiğdem Çidam
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
Democratic Action ◽  
May 68 ◽  
The Moment

This chapter deploys the alternative conceptual lens developed in the book, according to which democratic action is a theatrical experience created and sustained through the intermediating practices of political friendship, to analyze the Gezi protests of 2013. What emerges from this analysis is a richer account of events that moves beyond the limiting frameworks of success/failure and spontaneity/organization by bringing to light both the on-the-ground practices of political actors and the messiness and impurity of democratic politics even in the moment of its staging. Focusing on such intermediating practices as deliberation, judging, negotiation, artistic production, common use, and the organization of the mundane aspects of everyday life, the chapter demonstrates that those who took part in Gezi borrowed from past struggles, including May ’68, re-activated political habits, and, acting in unexpected ways, created new, if imperfect and fragile, forms of commonality among diverse figures, showing that another way of doing things is possible.

Jacques Rancière

In the Street ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 121-150
Author(s):  
Çiğdem Çidam
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Theory Of Education ◽  
Democratic Action ◽  
Action Taking ◽  
As If

This chapter demonstrates that Rancière’s journey to democratic theory started in the aftermath of May 1968 with his efforts to overcome the problematic transformation of political theory into “a theory of education.” For Rancière, unpredictability is integral to democratic politics. Thus, in an anti-Rousseauian move, he emphasizes the theatrical aspect of democratic action: taking on a role other than who they are, acting as if they are a part in a given social order in which they have no part, political actors stage their equality, disrupting the existing distribution of the sensible. Rancière’s focus on the moments of disruption, however, opens him to the charge of reducing democratic politics to immediate acts of negation. Insofar as he erases the role of intermediating practices in the stagings of equality, Rancière imposes on his accounts a kind of purity that his own work, with its emphasis on broken, polemical voices, cautions against.

Democratic Action, Spontaneity, and the Intermediating Practices of Political Friendship

In the Street ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 7-38
Author(s):  
Çiğdem Çidam
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
Democratic Action ◽  
Spontaneous Action

This chapter accomplishes two goals. First, it critically engages with the contemporary debates on the last decade’s democratic uprisings to demonstrate the ongoing influence of Rousseau’s emphasis on immediacy in democratic theory. By casting organization as that which precedes politics and moments of spontaneous action as sudden explosions, contemporary accounts reduce spontaneity to immediacy. Thus, they both erase on-the-ground practices of the political actors, and, taking an antidemocratic Rousseauian turn, construe the transience and unpredictability of democratic events as problems to be resolved under the guidance of the theorist. Second, the chapter appropriates Aristotle’s notion of political friendship, laying the groundwork for the conception of democratic action developed in the book, and arguing that democratic events are created in and through “intermediating practices,” including deliberation, judging, negotiation, artistic production, and common use. Through intermediating practices, people establish relations with strangers, constitute a common amid disagreements, and stage their equality as political friends.

Prologue

In the Street ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Çiğdem Çidam
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Interpretive Analysis ◽  
Democratic Action ◽  
May 68

Through an interpretive analysis of the surprising refiguration of the iconic May ’68 poster “Beauty is in the Street” in Istanbul during the Gezi Protests of 2013, the Prologue sets the stage for the book by making three closely related points. First, it draws attention to the emancipatory potential of such refigurations of past struggles in the present and highlights the importance of keeping a record of democratic events. Second, it establishes the centrality of 1968 in democratic theory by demonstrating how Negri, Habermas, and Rancière formulated their own unique conceptualizations of democratic action in response to the questions that first emerged in the aftermath of the experience of 1968 and continue to shape current debates. Third, it argues that to rescue contemporary democratic events from their ongoing trivialization, it is necessary to develop an alternative conceptual lens that reveals what other accounts erase, namely the on-the-ground efforts of political actors.

scholarly journals Ethnic Cleavages: The Descendant and Clan Sentiment on Local Executive Election in North Tapanuli, North Sumatera Province

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erond Litno Damanik
Keyword(s):  
Local Politics ◽  
Political Anthropology ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Democratic Decentralization ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Social Units ◽  
The Impact

The foundation of this study is political anthropology to see the phenomenon of ethnicity in local politics in the era of democratic decentralization. The study focused on ethnic cleavages in the form of strengthening social units that appear through descendant and clan sentiments at the moment of the Pemilukada (Local Executive Election). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand the phenomenon of ethnic cleavages which highlights descendant and clan sentiments in four districts in north of Tapanuli in the Pemilukada. Local politics at the time of democratic decentralization was not only used to expand the four cultural areas, namely Silindung, Humbang, Toba and Samosir, but also strengthen descent and clan sentiments in the Pemilukada. Although, the population in these four regions is a Toba ethnic group, its members destabilize and negate each other. This phenomenon originated from the domination of Silindung from the colonial era to the Reformation. Through Pemilukada, the descent and clan sentiments are used to blockade other candidates as well as mobilize selecting candidates from similar groups and clans. The promise of Pemilukada is channeled through a monopoly to fill government positions from one lineage group and clan. The approach of this problem is used Dunning and Harrison's theory about Cross-Cutting Cleavages and Ethnic Voting. The data collection was carried out through in-depth interviews with subjects, namely descendants and clans in four districts in north of Tapanuli. The results of the study show that: (i) ethnic cleavages occur because of the utilization and mobilization of social units namely descent and clan groups in the moment of Pemilukada, (ii) the strengthening of descent and clan group sentiments in Pemilukada is the impact of competition and contestation which are packaged as political capital for gained power, and (ii) political actors redefined ethnicity as 'Orang Toba' to smaller identities namely descendants and clans in each cultural region. The Toba ethnic groups are more loyal to their descendants and clan identities than their identities as 'Orang Toba'. Although the political analysis of the flow was considered less relevant as a result of the strengthening of the issue of interest in the Pemilukada, but the strengthening of division in ethnicity became a strong indication of ethnic cleavages and the game of primordialism during the Pemilukada.

The emergence of the idea of ‘the welfare state’ in British political discourse

2021 ◽  
pp. 095269512110344
Author(s):  
David Garland
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Core ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Subsequent Integration ◽  
The Welfare State

This article traces the emergence of the term welfare state in British political discourse and describes competing efforts to define its meaning. It presents a genealogy of the concept's emergence and its subsequent integration into various political scripts, tracing the struggles that sought to name, define, and narrate what welfare state would be taken to mean. It shows that the concept emerged only after the core programmes to which it referred had already been enacted into law and that the referents and meaning of the concept were never generally agreed upon – not even at the moment of its formation in the late 1940s. During the 1950s, the welfare state concept was being framed in three distinct senses: (a) the welfare state as a set of social security programmes; (b) the welfare state as a socio-economic system; and (c) the welfare state as a new kind of state. Each of these usages was deployed by opposing political actors – though with different scope, meaning, value, and implication. The article argues that the welfare state concept did not operate as a representation reflecting a separate, already-constituted reality. Rather, the use of the concept in the political and economic arguments of the period – and in later disputes about the nature of the Labour government's post-war achievements – was always thoroughly rhetorical and constitutive, its users aiming to shape the transformations and outcomes that they claimed merely to describe.

Between Ethics and Aesthetics – Reception of Genetic Information and Narrative Experience

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 144-144
Author(s):  
Raphaël Pfeiffer ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Genetic Information ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Suicide Attempts ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Ethical Reasoning ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Negative Feelings

"In a clinical context, the communication of genetic information is an event that can give rise to unexpected situations for health professionals. Several empirical studies have shown that, despite being presented with “good” presymptomatic test results, some patients develop negative feelings, depression, which can in extreme cases lead to suicide attempts. Here, genetic information takes full meaning when considered in a personal narrative. In this presentation, we would like to look at the specificities of this narrative experience in the light of works on the aesthetics of everyday life, with a particular focus on the works of John Dewey. For Dewey, the aesthetic experience is possible in all aspects of people’s daily lives, including clinical experience. In this case, “aesthetics” appears in the sensitive character of an experience rather than in a specific type of object. Through the examination of this thought, we will ask to what extent we can speak of an aesthetic experience when thinking of the communication of genetic information, and how this consideration can help ethical reasoning. We will begin by examining how the moment of the communication of genetic information to patients by the clinician can constitute a process of defamiliarization of everyday life. This will lead us to look at patients’ accounts of genetic information reception and to analyse how these appear to be more than mere testimonies about the experience of pathologies, but a means by which the patient is confronted with difficult experiences in order to reformulate them. "

Unspeakable Events

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Gikandi
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Standing ◽  
Aesthetic Object ◽  
William Beckford ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Moment

This chapter presents two instances of how slave money shaped the moment of taste in both pragmatic and conceptual terms. It provides a substantive exploration of the cultural traffic between Britain and its colonial outposts in order to show how the experience of slavery was turned into an aesthetic object that was woven into the fabric of everyday life. It then seeks to connect slave money and the power and prestige of art by focusing on the aesthetic lives of William Beckford and Christopher Codrington, famous heirs to slave fortunes, who sought to remake their social standing through the patronage of art and the mastery of taste.

Gender Mainstreaming in Development

2021 ◽  
pp. 870-886
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Kurebwa
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Gender Mainstreaming ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Life Situation ◽  
Gender Perspective ◽  
Specific Policy ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Policies And Practices

Gender mainstreaming means the consistent use of a gender perspective at all stages of the development and implementation of policies, plans, programmes, and projects. Mainstreaming gender differs from previous efforts to integrate women's concerns into government activities in that, rather than ‘adding on' a women's component to existing policies, plans, programmes, and projects, a gender perspective informs these at all stages and in every aspect of the decision-making process. Gender mainstreaming starts by analyzing the everyday life situation of women and men. It makes their differing needs and problems visible and examines what this means for specific policy areas. In this way, it ensures policies and practices are not based on incorrect assumptions and stereotypes. It recognizes that gender is one of the most fundamental organizing features in society and affects our lives from the moment we are born.

Communicating Terror: Mediatization and Ritualization

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-162
Author(s):  
Xi Cui ◽  
Eric Rothenbuhler
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Internal Logic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Flows ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Fear And Anxiety ◽  
Terrorist Acts

In this essay, we explicate the internal logic of contemporary terrorist acts and our society’s responses, to denaturalize the label and meanings we give to “terrorism.” We argue that contemporary terrorism communicates intimidation, fear, and anxiety through the ritualization and mediatization of terrorist attacks. Mediatization refers to the strategic coercion of imperative media coverage of the attacks, and ritualization refers to the focus on sacred life structures in both terrorist attacks and remedial responses. In combining ritualization and mediatization, terrorism aims to introduce maximal chaos through unexpected disruption of the sacred and taken-for-granted in everyday life in the community of the attack and wherever media coverage can reach. The fear and anxiety induced by disrupted life rhythms, including normal media flows, and the compelling footage of the disruption lead to ritualized reactions which both restore and transform the social order beyond the moment of the attack.

Détournement as a Qualitative Method

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Trier
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Public Pedagogy ◽  
Situationist International ◽  
Arts Based Research ◽  
Society Of The Spectacle ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Critical Media ◽  
May 68 ◽  
Revolutionary Situation

The term détournement is most associated with a European, mainly Paris-based avant-garde group called the Situationist International (SI), which was founded in 1957, went through three distinct phases, played a key role in the May ’68 massive general strike in France, and eventually dissolved in 1972. Guy Debord was the SI’s singular leader and its most important theorist. Debord’s 1967 book The Society of the Spectacle is the best-known work produced by an SI member. In it, Debord develops his theorization of what he called the Spectacle, which is capitalism in its economic, political, social, and cultural totality. Debord argued that culture—especially visual and popular culture—played a central role in transforming citizens into consumers and passive spectators in all spheres of their lives. In societies saturated by seductive visual representations and permeated by an endless staging of spectacles, all that matters to those in power is that people consume commodities and become politically malleable and stupefied. The Spectacle works to transform everyday life into a continuous experience of alienation, passivity, mindless consumption, and political non-intervention. An apt cinematic reference for the Spectacle is the film The Matrix. Debord’s theory seems to preclude any possibilities for challenging or contesting the Spectacle, but Debord also theorized that such possibilities (situations) could be created in everyday life, and détournement was the critical anti-art that Debord and his friends practiced for the purpose of critiquing and challenging the alienating, pacifying, spectator-inducing, socially controlling forces of the Spectacle. For Debord, détournement was by definition an anti-spectacular action and creation that sought to subvert the debilitating effects of the Spectacle’s life-draining power. During the SI’s first phase (1957–1962), members of the SI created many détournements that contested the dominance of what they believed was a crucially important sphere within the Spectacle—that of the Art World. The SI’s détournements took many forms, including films, comics, paintings, graffiti, novels, and public interventions and scandals. Eventually, during its second phase (1962–1968), the SI called for a détournement of the streets and of everyday life through strikes and protests. Of their role in the events of May’68, the SI wrote that it brought fuel to the fire. During those events, ten million people walked off the job, engaged in wildcat strikes, and brought the country—and the Spectacle—to a standstill. For Debord and the SI, May ’68 was the ultimate construction of a revolutionary situation in which détournement contributed to the radical transformation of everyday life, if only for a brief time. So détournement is an important practice in the service of combatting the Spectacle and dismantling capitalism. In terms of qualitative research, détournement has a set of resemblances to several qualitative methods and perspectives, including the aesthetic and arts-based research approaches of bricolage, collage, critical media literacy, and public pedagogy, to name a few.

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