John Lennon as Pop-Cultural and Political Icon

2021 ◽  
pp. 81-104
Author(s):  
Punch Shaw

No musician embodied the world-changing turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s more than John Lennon. His work as a composer with the Beatles and as a solo artist reinvented what a rock song could be. As a political and social activist, he was a tireless champion of truth, peace, and world harmony. For many of his fans, Lennon’s music and sociopolitical efforts were intertwined. They loved him for the timeless music he created with the Beatles and on his own. And many admired him still more for his efforts to effect social and political change. But his personal life, which included domestic abuse, heavy drug use, and some epically boorish behavior, did not always match his image rooted in peace and love. Has the growing knowledge of Lennon’s personal shortcomings damaged his relationship with his fans? Judging by the adulation he has received since his tragic death in 1980, apparently not.

Transfers ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charissa N. Terranova

This essay focuses on a body of photoconceptual works from the 1960s and 1970s in which the automobile functions as a prosthetic-like aperture through which to view the world in motion. I argue that the logic of the “automotive prosthetic“ in works by Paul McCarthy, Dennis Hopper, Ed Ruscha, Jeff Wall, John Baldessari, Richard Prince, Martha Rosler, Robert Smithson, Ed Kienholz, Julian Opie, and Cory Arcangel reveals a techno-genetic understanding of conceptual art, functioning in addition and alternatively to semiotics and various philosophies of language usually associated with conceptual art. These artworks show how the automobile, movement on roads and highways, and the automotive landscape of urban sprawl have transformed the human sensorium. I surmise that the car has become a prosthetic of the human body and is a technological force in the maieusis of the posthuman subject. I offer a reading of specific works of photoconceptual art based on experience, perception, and a posthumanist subjectivity in contrast to solely understanding them according to semiotics and linguistics.


2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben W. Dhooge

AbstractAnglo-American and Russian stylistics influenced each other substantially in the 1960s and 1970s. From the 1980s on, however, this fruitful mutual influence came to an end. The two schools started to grow apart, but despite that, they would develop almost parallel to each other, displaying many theoretical and methodological similarities. The present paper illustrates this by highlighting one such specificity – the idea of the possible reflection of one's conceptualization of the world in the use of literary language, and the possibility of reconstructing that conceptualization by means of a stylistic analysis (‘mind style’–‘kartina mira’). By comparing the Anglo-American and Russian theories on the topic, it is shown that the separately evolved conceptions are similar and even complement each other: the differences between them clarify and help solve possible theoretical and methodological gaps. Moreover, the juxtaposition of both conceptions allows us to perfect the notion of ‘mind style’ and its practical applications. A similar approach to other conceptions and tendencies in current seemingly mutually independent Anglo-American and Russian stylistics have the same potential, and may lead to a new convergence between the two schools.


Author(s):  
Mike Nellis

Since its operational beginnings in the United States in 1982—where its prototypes were first experimented with in the 1960s and 1970s—the electronic monitoring (EM) of offenders has spread to approximately 40 countries around the world, ostensibly—but not often effectively—to reduce the use of imprisonment by making bail, community supervision, and release from prison more controlling than they have hitherto been. No single authority monitors the development of EM around the world, and it is difficult to gain fully comprehensive accounts of what is happening outside the Western and Anglophone users of it. Some countries are secretive. Standpoints in writing on EM are varied and partisan. Although it still tends to be the pacesetter of technical innovation, the United States remains a relatively lower user of EM, in part because the exceptional punitiveness of its penal culture has inhibited its expansion, even when it has itself been developed in various punitive ways. Interprofessional and intergovernmental processes of “policy transfer” have contributed to EMs spreading around the world, but the commercial bodies that manufacture and market EM equipment have been of at least equal importance. In Europe, the Confederation of European Probation (CEP), a transnational probation advocacy organization, took an early interest in EM, and its regular conferences became a touchstone of international debate. As it developed globally, the United Nations reluctantly accepted that it may be of some value even in developing countries and set out standards for its use. Continuing innovations in EM technology will create new possibilities for offender supervision, both more and less punitive, but it is always culture, commerce, and politics in particular jurisdictions which shape the scale, pace, and form of its development.


Author(s):  
Laurence R. Jurdem

The strain of Black Nationalism that existed within the United Nations also worried conservatives as they monitored the evolution of events in Southern Africa. In their intense desire to rid the world of communism, other issues, such as race, were either marginalized or ignored. The chapter analyzes the three publications’ view of race as it relates to the issue of Rhodesia during the height of the Cold War. In ignoring the suppression of an entire race of people, Human Events and National Review contrasted what they perceived to be a stable, anticommunist, biracial society with the militarism and lawlessness that they argued defined the 1960s and 1970s. While the two conservative publications viewed Rhodesia as a model of biracial success, Commentary focused on the Carter administration’s dismissive attitude about the dangers of Soviet encroachment within the African hemisphere. The Right argued that the Carter White House, in its refusal to endorse Rhodesia’s 1979 parliamentary elections due to a lack of representation of militant nationalist groups, and its belief in the policy of détente, continued to send a message of American weakness and indifference to totalitarianism around the world.


1986 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. James

SummaryIn all European countries for which data exist, there was a maternal-age-specific decline in dizygotic twinning rates during the 1960s. For most of these countries, this decline continued through the 1970s, but in a few it apparently ceased. The causes of the declines and of their abatement are unknown. However, there were declines in sperm quality during the 1960s and 1970s in some parts of the world, including parts of Europe, and it is speculated here that this decline in sperm quality may be related to the decline in dizygotic twinning.


Babel ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-60
Author(s):  
Hamed Ghessimi

Abstract The activist aspect of translation that has illocutionary and perlocutionary dimensions is a sort of speech act that rouses, inspires, bears witness, mobilizes and incites to rebellion, actually participating in social movement and political change. In this way, translators are the producers of new knowledge signifying the assertion of power by choosing deliberately to subvert the traditional allegiance of translation and also interjecting their own world view and politics into their work, and these translators undertake the work they do because they believe the texts they produce will benefit humanity or impact positively upon the receptor culture in ways that are broadly ideological. This paper investigates the issue of an Islamic Marxist translators’ agency applying Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological concepts (habitus, field, capital) in the socio-political context of Iran in the 1960s and 1970s. This study surveys how based on his habitus Ali Shariati, an Islamic Marxist translator and thinker, translated some texts to transfer new knowledge to society as cultural capital which intensified the initiation and facilitation of social reform and political change in Iran in the 1970s. The paper peruses some texts translated by Ali Shariati to show that he wielded his own politics in translation to illuminate Iranians’ thought against the imperial regime to stimulate them to subvert the Pahlavi dynasty.


1987 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 508-535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Oldenburg

Corruption—like the weather—is a phenomenon people in the third world talk about a great deal, and, it would seem, do little about. Scholars of political change in the third world share this interest, but—although they are usually not expected to deal with corruption itself —they should move beyond the recounting of vivid anecdotes to a more systematic analysis of the problem. Steps in this direction were made in the 1960s and 1970s, but surprisingly little more work has been done since.


Numen ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 60 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 230-250
Author(s):  
Abdulkader Tayob

Abstract Ismāʿīl Rājī al Fārūqī (1921–1986) played a considerable role in the academic study of Islam as it was developing in North America in the 1960s and 1970s. This paper is a critical examination of how he employed the categories of religion and religious studies in his scholarly, dialogical, and Islamist work. The paper follows his ideas of religious traditions, their truth claims, and ethical engagement in the world. For Al Fārūqī, these constituted the main foundations of all religions, and provided a distinctive approach to the study of religions. Al Fārūqī was critical of the then prevailing approaches, asserting that they were either too subjective or too reductionist. He offered an approach to the study of religions based on a Kantian approach to values. Al Fārūqī’s method and theory, however, could not escape the bias and prejudice that he tried to avoid. Following his arguments, I show that his reflections on religion and its systematic study in academia charted an approach to religions, but also provided a language for a particular Islamic theology that delegitimized other approaches, particularly experiential ones, in modern Islam.


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