War as an Alternative Reality

God at War ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 25-43
Author(s):  
Mark Juergensmeyer
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Reinhold Niebuhr ◽  
Ordinary Life ◽  
Separatist Movement

Chapter 2 explores the possibility that the idea of war is an imagined alternative reality. First, a former militant in the Sikh separatist movement explains how the idea of warfare permeated the worldview of the youth in the Punjabi village where he was raised. Second, concepts of war from the political scientist Kenneth Waltz and the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr are presented, as well as the insights of the eighteenth-century German soldier Carl von Clausewitz, who theorized that all war stems from the notion of absolute war, the all-or-nothing conception of reality in which there are only winners and losers. This worldview can be exhilarating since it offers the possibility of destroying forever the enemies—the sources of discord—that confound ordinary life. Hence enemies have to be invented, if they didn’t exist before, for the idea of war to be imaginable.

A General Theory of Party, Opposition and Government, 1688–1832

1980 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. D. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
General Theory ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

England has not known a simple two-party system, oraparty system of any sort. The lineage of English parties is fragmented and discontinuous. Most of the apparent continuities, like the myth of a long-standing two-party system, have been invented in retrospect by politicians and publicists seeking the justification of a pedigree. Party itself has not been a constant phenomenon, which could be defined by the political scientist and then searched for by the historian. The English experience, rather, is of a succession of discontinuous two-, three-, even four-party systems whose components both develop and relate to each other through changing conventions. Often the fiction of the ‘two-party system’ has disguised the reality of three or more parties; parties which, themselves, can be the vehicles for a wide range of issues. It is a commonplace, which was evident to Hume and Bolingbroke, that whigs and tories exchanged many of their policy commitments in the early eighteenth century; but the same suggestion has been made of the Conservative and Labour parties today. The content of a party's programme has always been almost infinitely flexible;exceptin respect of the questions raised by a small number of threats, challenges or problems. The existence and endurance of party systems has usually articulated the ideological polarity which such challenges induce.

The representation of post-conflict gender violence in Iraqi Kurdish novelistic discourse in Bahdinan

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-57
Author(s):  
Lolav M. Hassan Alhamid
Keyword(s):  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Gender Violence ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Kurdish Women ◽  
Gendered Aggression ◽  
Struggle For Recognition

This article explores the processes of finding a voice, learning to speak, and breaking silence around gender violence for a Kurdish woman endeavouring to resist oppression and destroy forced negative images and identities. It examines the ways in which she struggles to break imposed silences through resisting gender discrimination and telling stories of violence and exploitation, as represented in the Kurdish novelistic discourse in Bahdinan. Studying Sabri Silevani’s Mariama: Kiçe-Jinek ji Zemanek Di (Mariama: A Woman from Another Time, 2007), the article examines the various forms and layers of violence imposed on Kurdish women by the tribal and patriarchal norms and the social and political structures within the post-conflict Kurdish society in Iraqi Kurdistan. The three-fold typological model of violence developed by the political scientist Johan Galtung is adopted in the article to explore the ways in which the personal characteristics of individuals and the political, economic, and cultural structures of society are viewed as factors affecting the generation of gendered aggression. Most importantly, for the purpose of this article, is the significant utilisation of the association of Galtung’s typology with feminist studies of violence in the exploration of Kurdish women’s attempt to resist marginalisation and their struggle for recognition. Moreover, Rita Felski’s description and study of modern writing by women as a medium through which female political identities and collective consciousness are constructed and represented are adopted to discuss the structural and thematic properties of the text.ABSTRACT IN KURMANJITemsîla şideta cinsî ya piştî şerî di gotara edebî ya kurdên Iraqê de li herêma BehdînanEv meqale berê xwe dide merheleyên peydakirina dengî, fêrbûna axiftinê û daşikandina bêdengiya li dor şideta cinsî li cem jineke kurd a hewl dide li hember zextan ber xwe bide û wêne û huwiyetên menfî yên dasepandî ji nav bibe. Meqale lê hûr dibe ka çawa jin têdikoşe ku bi rêya berxwedana li hember cudakariya cinsî û bi gotina hikayêtên şidet û bikaranînê, wek ku di gotara romana kurdî ya li Behdînan tê temsîlkirin, bêdengiyên dasepandî bişikîne. Ev meqale li ser romana Sebrî Silêvanî ya bi navê Meryema: Kiçe Jinek Ji Zemanek Dî (2007) hûr dibe û dikeve dû destnîşankirina wan awa û tebeqeyên cihêreng ên şideta li ser jina kurd yên bi destê dab û nerîtên eşîrî û babsalarî û herwiha bi destê dezgehên civakî û siyasî yên di nav civaka kurd a li Kurdistana Iraqê ya piştî şerî têne dasepandin. Di meqelayê de modêla tîpolojîk û sê-tebeqeyî ya şidetê, ku Johan Galtungê zanyarê siyasetê dahînaye, hatiye bikaranîn ji bo veçirandina awayên ku taybetiyên şexsî yên ferdan û binyadên civakê yên siyasî, aborî û çandî wek fakterên kartêker ên peydabûna êrîşkariya cinsî têne dîtin. Ji bo armancên vê gotarê, ev tîpolojiya Galtung ligel xebatên fêmînîst ên li ser şidetê têne bikaranîn da ku hewla jinên kurd a berxwedana li hember perawêzxistinê û venasînê berçavtir bibe. Herwiha, pênase û lêkolîna Rita Felski ya li ser nivîsînên hevçerx ên jinan wek amrazek ji bo avakirin û temsîlkirina huwiyetên siyasî û şiûra cemawerî hatine bikaranîn ji bo vedîtina xasyetên metnê yên binyadî û têmayî.ABSTRACT IN SORANIWênekirdinî tundûtîjîy cenderî le gutarî novêlîstîkî kurdîy 'Êraq le BadînanEm meqaleye degerrêt be dway ew prosaney dozînewey deng, fêrbûnî peyivîn û şkandinî ew bêdengîye ke ballî be ser tundûtîjî cenderî da kêşawe, le xebatî ew jine kurde da ke deyewêt rûberrûwî stemkarî bibêtewe û wêne û şunase nerênîye be zor dasepênrawekan têk bişkênêt. Ew rêgayane be taqî dekatewe ke ew jine le xebatî da be kariyan dehênêt bo şkandinî bêdengiye be zor beserî da sepêndrawe le rêgay rûberrûbûnewey ciyakarî cenderî û gêrranewey dastangelî tundûtîjî û pawankirdin, herweku le gutarî novêlîstîkî da be kar hênrawin le nawçey Badînan. Le rêgay xwêndinewey "Meryeme Kiçejinek Ji Zemanek Dî" nûsraw le layen Sebrî Slêvanîyewe, em meqaleye ew şêwaz û rehendaney tundûtîjî be taqî dekatewe ke le rêga bawe hozgerayî û bawsalarîyekan û bunyade siyasiyekanî komellgay kurdî dway şerr le Kurdistanî 'Êraq da xirawnete ser jinanî kurdewe. Lem meqaleye da modêlî sê çînî taypolojîy tundûtîjî bekarhênrawe ke le layen zanay siyasî Johan Galtungewe dirust kirawe, be mebestî dozînewey ew rêgayaney ke pêyan karakterîstîke kesiyekanî takekan û bunyade siyasî û abûrî kelepurîyekanî komellga weku fakterî karîger nîşan drawin be ser qehrî cenderîyewe. Giringtirîn layenî mebestî em meqaleye nîşandanî ew sudbexşîye giringeye ke peywendîdarkrdinî taypolojî Galtung legell lêkollînewey fêmînîstî le gerran da be dway hewllî jinanî kurd bo rûberrûbenewe le hember perawêzxistin û xebatyan bo ewey ke danyan pêda binirêt. Herweha wesf û lêkollînewey Rîta Felski le nusînî hawçerxî jinan weku geyenerêk ke le rêgayiyewe şunasgelî siyasî û agayîy giştîy mê bunyad denirêt û nîşan dedirêt, be mebestî giftûgokirdin le ser layene bunyadî û tewerîyekanî deq, be kar hênrawe.

The Use and Misuse of Religious Language: Zionism and the Palestinians

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wetherell
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Figurative Language ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Title Deed ◽  
History Of ◽  
Land Question

Every discipline which deals with the land question in Canaan-Palestine-Israel is afflicted by the problem of specialisation. The political scientist and historian usually discuss the issue of land in Israel purely in terms of interethnic and international relations, biblical scholars concentrate on the historical and archaeological question with virtually no reference to ethics, and scholars of human rights usually evade the question of God. What follows is an attempt, through theology and political history, to understand the history of the Israel-Palestine land question in a way which respects the complexity of the question. From a scrutiny of the language used in the Bible to the development of political Zionism from the late 19th century it is possible to see the way in which a secular movement mobilised the figurative language of religion into a literal ‘title deed’ to the land of Palestine signed by God.

The Gallic Singularity and the Royal Mistress

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-66
Author(s):  
Christine Adams
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Marie Antoinette ◽  
Louis Xvi ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Political Realm

The relationship of the French king and royal mistress, complementary but unequal, embodied the Gallic singularity; the royal mistress exercised a civilizing manner and the soft power of women on the king’s behalf. However, both her contemporaries and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians were uncomfortable with the mistress’s political power. Furthermore, paradoxical attitudes about French womanhood have led to analyses of her role that are often contradictory. Royal mistresses have simultaneously been celebrated for their civilizing effect in the realm of culture, chided for their frivolous expenditures on clothing and jewelry, and excoriated for their dangerous meddling in politics. Their increasing visibility in the political realm by the eighteenth century led many to blame Louis XV’s mistresses—along with Queen Marie-Antoinette, who exercised a similar influence over her husband, Louis XVI—for the degradation and eventual fall of the monarchy. This article reexamines the historiography of the royal mistress.

Searching for Political Parties in the Past

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piero Ignazi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Common

Chapter 1 introduces the long and difficult process of the theoretical legitimation of the political party as such. The analysis of the meaning and acceptance of ‘parties’ as tools of expressing contrasting visions moves forward from ancient Greece and Rome where (democratic) politics had first become a matter of speculation and practice, and ends up with the first cautious acceptance of parties by eighteenth-century British thinkers. The chapter explores how parties or factions have been constantly considered tools of division of the ‘common wealth’ and the ‘good society’. The holist and monist vision of a harmonious and compounded society, stigmatized parties and factions as an ultimate danger for the political community. Only when a new way of thinking, that is liberalism, emerged, was room for the acceptance of parties set.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John West
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Literary History ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Third ◽  
Religious Differences

Literary history often positions Dryden as the precursor to the great Tory satirists of the eighteenth century, like Pope and Swift. Yet a surprising number of Whig writers expressed deep admiration for Dryden, despite their political and religious differences. They were particularly drawn to the enthusiastic dimensions of his writing. After a short reading of Dryden’s poem to his younger Whig contemporary William Congreve, this concluding chapter presents three case studies of Whig writers who used Dryden to develop their own ideas of enthusiastic literature. These three writers are Elizabeth Singer Rowe, John Dennis, and the Third Earl of Shaftesbury. These case studies are used to critique the political polarizations of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literary history and to stress instead how literary friendship crossed political allegiances, and how writers of differing ideological positions competed to control mutually appealing ideas and vocabularies.

The Making of British Bourgeois Tragedy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Eric Hernandez
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Common People ◽  
Ordinary Life ◽  
Emotional Processes ◽  
Critical Account ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Cultural Conversation

This book assembles a body of print and performance concerned with the misfortunes of the middling sort, arguing that these works negotiated tragedy’s vexed relationship to ordinary life. This “bourgeois and domestic tragedy” imagined a particularly modern sort of affliction, an “ordinary suffering” divested of the sorts of meanings, rhetorics, and affective resonances once deployed to understand it. Whereas neoclassical aesthetics aligned tragedy with the heroic and the admirable, bourgeois tragedy treated the pain of common people with dignity and seriousness, meditating upon a suffering that was homely, familiar, realistic, and entangled in the nascent values of capitalism, yet no less haunted by God. Hence, where many have seen aesthetic stagnation, misfiring emotion, and the absence of an idealized tragicness in the genre, this book tracks instead a sustained engagement in the emotional processes and representational techniques through which the middle rank feels its way into modernity. Describing this shift as an episode in the histories of both tragedy and emotion, it revises the standard critical account of eighteenth-century tragedy and reads the genre’s emergence in the period as a vigorous cultural conversation over whose life—and whose way of life—is grievable, as well as how that mourning might be performed.

The Wasteland of William Blake

1947 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-204
Author(s):  
Frank O'Malley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
William Blake ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Mind ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future

The question is: how can you put a prophet in his place when, by the very character of prophecy, he is eternally slipping out of place? William Blake was not an eighteenth century or nineteenth century mind or a typically modern mind at all. What I mean to say, right at the start, is that, although well aware of his time and of time altogether, he was not in tune with the main tendencies of his or our own time. Indeed time was a barrier he was forever crashing against. Blake's talent raved through the world into the fastnesses of die past and dramatically confronted the abysses of the future. His age did not confine him. As a poet he does not seem finally to have had real spiritual or artistic rinship with any of the rationalist or romantic writers of England. As a thinker he came to despise the inadequacy of the limited revolutionary effort of the political rebels of the Romantic Revolution. Blake's name is not to be seen mounted first with that of Paine or Godwin, of Rousseau or Voltaire, of Wordsworth or Shelley or Byron or Keats. With these he has, ultimately, little or nothing in common. At any rate, his voice and mood and impact are thoroughly different from the more publicly successful voices of the period of his life, older and younger generations alike.

The British General Election of 1970 - Impressions of an Academic Candidate

1971 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-57
Author(s):  
William Wallace
Keyword(s):  
General Election ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
Levels Of Reality ◽  
Political Scene ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Political Battle

THE STUDENT OF POLITICS AND THE PRACTITIONER OF POLITICS approach the same problem from different ends. The student is concerned with searching for the underlying realities which can explain the surface shifts of political ephemera; or perhaps with disentangling the different levels of reality which he discerns from his dispassionate observation of the political scene. The practitioner is concerned above all with the intricacies of day-to-day politics. He is interested in long-term patterns of political behaviour only insofar as they affect his political chances, or insofar as foreknowledge will enable him to change and shape the developing pattern. At the opposite ends of this division of interest in the phenomena of politics one may imagine, as ideal types, the ‘pure’ political scientist, the neutral observer of the political battle whose attitude to the contestants and their fluctuating fortunes is one of scholarly detachment, and the dedicated politician, glorying in the clash and chaos of the battlefield, with little more than contempt for those who stand aside and watch. For those who stand towards either end of this division, there are now two separate worlds of politics.

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