scholarly journals Singapore: Technocracy and Transition

2021 ◽  
pp. 221-238
Author(s):  
Maartje De Visser ◽  
Paulin Straughan
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
Economic Disparity ◽  
Dual Strategy ◽  
The One

This chapter describes Singapore’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The government’s strategy revolved around the two poles of technocratic and expedient governance on the one hand and social solidarity, targeted at vulnerable or weaker segments of society, on the other. A crucial factor in implementing this dual strategy is Singapore’s smallness, in spatial and demographic terms, meaning that there are natural limits to emulation by others. At the same time, Singapore’s approach was not flawless. In particular, the wildfire-like spread of the virus in migrant workers’ dormitories emerged as an embarrassing blind spot. Other serious Covid-19-related challenges remain. The most significant of these are managing the narrative to preserve high levels of government trust and a further reckoning with the stark socio-economic disparity exacerbated by the crisis. The latter in particular may be a harbinger of wider socio-political change in Singapore which will continue to unfold long after the immediate health emergency has passed.

scholarly journals Mytens tvang

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Albinus
Keyword(s):  
Blind Spot ◽  
The Other ◽  
Instrumental Reason ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Negative Dialectics ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

The purpose of the article is to show how the negative dialectics of Adorno gets involved with a concept of myth that is questionable in several respects. First of all, Adorno tries to combine, but rather conflates, two understandings of myth. On the one hand, the concept of myth is defined as the ancient Greek mythos, in which the subject of man is projected on to nature; on the other hand, myth is defined as the backfire of enlightenment, in which self-reflection becomes the blind spot of instrumental reason. Along these lines of argument, Adorno’s interpretation of Homer, which, at any rate, is highly inspiring, attempts to demonstrate that Odysseus is already enlightened in that he keeps the myth at bay in order to gain his self. The point is, as a matter of dialectic necessity, that he just ends up in myth once again, albeit in the second sense, namely by being a victim of his own self-denial. A question that seems to remain unanswered, though, is how the two kinds of myth are related. Further, Adorno draws on a problematic distinction between myth and literature in order to claim that Homer separates himself from the realm of myth. By adopting Adorno’s own game of interpretation, however, it is possible to regard myth as such, including the Homeric one, as being contingently open-ended rather than just a matter of dialectic determination.

The politics of the unities: tragedy and the Risorgimento in Byron and Manzoni

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnold Anthony Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Political Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The One ◽  
Original Approach

This chapter takes an original approach to Byron’s much-discussed engagement with the early Risorgimento by focusing not on biographical aspects, but rather on formal issues. It centres on The Two Foscari in the context of the highly politicised contemporary Italian critical debates about the dramatic unities. In this fashion, it teases out the political implications of Byron’s adherence to the unities by comparing his play to Alessandro Manzoni’s Il conte di Carmagnola, which programmatically violates them. Focusing specifically on the playwrights’ representations of the fifteenth-century mercenary leader, Francesco Bussone da Carmagnola, the chapter explores these writers’ use or abuse of the unity of time, in particular. In doing so, it throws light on, and contrasts, Manzoni’s Risorgimento agenda on the one hand and Byron’s generally sceptical attitude about leadership and uncertainty about social and political change on the other.

scholarly journals “Liberation” as a political horizon amidst the coronavirus pandemic in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 314-317
Author(s):  
Nicholas Jon Crane ◽  
Zoe Pearson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Justice ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
Police Violence ◽  
The One ◽  
At Home

Participants in diverging US-based protest waves during the coronavirus pandemic are invoking “liberation” as a political horizon. Especially visible are superficially libertarian protests against government “stay-at-home” orders, on the one hand, and, on the other, racial and economic justice organizing around uneven exposure to the deadly effects of the pandemic. Beginning in May 2020, the latter articulation of liberation was amplified by widespread protest against racist police violence. The coronavirus pandemic is putting into sharp relief the contradictions of “liberation” promoted by individualists and underscoring the urgency of organizing for emancipatory social solidarity.

Notables, Bourgeoisie, Popular Classes, and Politics

1995 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-287
Author(s):  
Marco Meriggi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Small States ◽  
National Unification ◽  
Popular Classes ◽  
The One

In recent years Italian social historians have devoted increasing attention to the nature and morphology of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie. Traditional historiography viewed the bourgeoisie as key par excellence to the political change played out between 1859 and 1871. It was seen, on the one hand, as integral to the formation of a liberal political regime based on a limited suffrage, and, on the other, as critical to the outcome of the peninsula's national unification of a dozen small states, most of which were previously governed by absolutist regimes.

Port Harcourt: Ibo Politics in Microcosm

1969 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 469-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Wolpe
Keyword(s):  
Political Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Political Experience ◽  
Port Harcourt ◽  
Post War ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

To the political scientist concerned with the relationship between social and economic modernisation, on the one hand, and political change and integration, on the other, the Ibo experience has long held particular interest. In his pioneering study of Nigerian nationalism, James Coleman observed that Ibos had played a singular role in the post-war political era: ‘Ibos overwhelmingly predominated in both the leadership and the mass membership of the N.C.N.C., the Zikist Movement, and the National Church. Postwar radical and militant nationalism, which emphasized the national unity of Nigeria as a transcendent imperative, was largely, but not exclusively, an Ibo endeavor’1 But radical and militant pan-Nigerian nationalism was only one part of the Ibo political posture. No less noteworthy was the parallel development of a highly cohesive and organisationally sophisticated pan-Ibo movement, the very success of which ultimately undermined the pan- Nigerian aspirations of the Ibo-led N.C.N.C. and, subsequently, was one of several factors operating to impair the national legitimacy of an Ibo-led military régime. It is this paradoxical blending of ‘civic’ and ‘primordial’ sentiments which, perhaps, best defines the modern Ibo political experience2.

Towards an Asian Multitextual Theology

Exchange ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-131
Author(s):  
Joas Adiprasetya
Keyword(s):  
Social Problems ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The One

Abstract The article criticizes some shortcomings of Asian contextual and liberation theologies that methodologically employ ‘hermeneutical circle’. The method focuses on experience as the starting point of doing theology. Despite its powerful insights that enable theologians to engage with concrete human and social problems, the method can easily preserve a theologian’s blind spot that hinders her/him from perspectives other than his or her own. I also criticize such an experience-based method as being too linear which can easily result in a methodological imperialism. In response to the weakness, I propose a multitextual theology, which on the one hand acknowledges the importance of perspectivism in any theology but also, on the other hand, celebrates theological freedom in viewing reality from ‘manywheres’. Since reality provides plurality of texts, a multitextual theology can begin simultaneously from any text, without being trapped into a procedural rigidity as clearly demonstrated in contextual and liberation theologies.

scholarly journals The Lexicon of Dafydd ap Gwilym's Poetry

2015 ◽  
pp. 53-68
Author(s):  
Dafydd Johnston ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Poetic Tradition ◽  
Welsh Language ◽  
The One ◽  
Core Vocabulary ◽  
New Compounds

Lexical eclecticism is a well-known characteristic of the fourteenth-century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym. This paper will offer a preliminary categorisation of the sources of his language, considering on the one hand what he inherited from the earlier poetic tradition and the various discourses of Middle Welsh prose (religious, legal, historiographical), and on the other hand innovations resulting from use of colloquial vocabulary and loanwords from French, English and Irish, as well as new compounds and abstract formations. An attempt will be made to assess the proportion of core vocabulary of the spoken language in his poetry, with due regard to the associated methodological issues. Some conclusions will be drawn about the kinds of evidence which the poetry can provide for the development of the Welsh language during a period of major socio-political change.

Against realism: Hegel and Adorno on philosophy’s critical role

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-202
Author(s):  
Bernardo Ferro
Keyword(s):  
Political Change ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
The Other ◽  
Main Task ◽  
Naive Realism ◽  
Naïve Realism ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

Key representatives of the dialectical tradition, Hegel and Adorno conceived philosophy as a critical tool, directed both at the naive realism of ordinary reason and the more sophisticated realism of modern scientific discourse. For the two authors, philosophy’s main task is to question received ideas and practices and to expose their underlying contradictions, thereby enabling meaningful forms of cultural and political change. But while for Hegel this procedure takes the form of a systematic enquiry, leading from a spurious to a true account of reality, Adorno rejects the idea that reason and reality can be reconciled. On the one hand, he praises Hegel for having developed a truly dialectical form of criticism, set into motion by the immanent unfolding of reality’s intrinsic contradictions. On the other hand, he views Hegel’s emphasis on systematic integration as a form of dogmatism, which must itself be criticized. Instead of a ‘positive’ or ‘closed’ dialectic, fuelled by the expectation of a final overarching synthesis, Adorno calls for a ‘negative’ or ‘open’ dialectic, radically averse to all forms of unification. In doing so, however, he is led to question the very limits of conceptual reason, leaving criticism vulnerable to new forms of attack.

Cinematography’s Blind Spots: Artistic Exploitations of the Film Frame

2021 ◽  
pp. 136-149
Author(s):  
Gabriele Jutz
Keyword(s):  
Motion Picture ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
The Other ◽  
French Film ◽  
Single Frame ◽  
Material State ◽  
Ideological Perspective ◽  
The One ◽  
Blind Spots ◽  
The Continuum

This chapter discusses filmic and photographic works that focus on isolated film frames, whether extracted from the continuum of a film strip, as in Slide Movie (Gebhard Sengmüller, 2007) and Und ich blieb stehen. (Thames, London) (Susanne Miggitsch, 2017), or captured photographically from a book or a viewing table, as in Motion Picture (La Sortie des Ouvriers de l’Usine Lumière à Lyon) (Peter Tscherkassky, 1984/2008) and Précis de decomposition (Éric Rondepierre, 1993–1999). Usually rendered invisible during projection, a single frame represents the ‘blind spot’ of cinematography. An explicitly ideological perspective was offered in 1971 by French film critic Sylvie Pierre Ulmann, who distinguished between the use of extracted frames (or ‘photograms’) and idealized still photographs produced on a film set. These ‘parasitic photographs’ no longer bear traces of the material state of a given film copy; they look flawless and perfectly meet ideological requirements of ‘legibility’ and ‘beauty’. The examples presented here bypass ideological claims, because, on the one hand, their dissected frames belong to the same order as the film they are taken from, and, on the other, they result in varying forms of ‘illegibility’.

A Puzzle of Sovereignity

1998 ◽  
pp. 159-164
Author(s):  
Steven Lee
Keyword(s):  
International Economic ◽  
Economic Integration ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The Other ◽  
Response Strategy ◽  
National Sovereignty ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The One

National sovereignty presents a puzzle. On the one hand, this notion continues to figure importantly in our descriptions of global political change. On the other hand, factors such as the accelerating pace of international economic integration seem to have made the notion anachronistic. This paper is an attempt to resolve this puzzle. Distinguishing between internal sovereignty or supremacy and external sovereignty or independence, I investigate whether some insights from the discussion of the former can be applied to our puzzle concerning the latter. One response to the objection that the notion of internal sovereignty is inapplicable because no group in society holds unlimited political power is to distinguish between different types of internal sovereignty, such as legal and electoral sovereignty. The resolution of the puzzle lies in applying this response strategy to the objection that the notion of external sovereignty is inapplicable because no state is completely independent.

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