Misguided Ancients

2021 ◽  
pp. 79-94
Author(s):  
Kathleen Wellman

Although the ancient Greeks and Romans have long been appreciated as foundations for Western civilization, for these textbooks, the Greeks’ philosophy, gods, and immorality tar them as godless humanists. Nonetheless, the Greeks and the Romans allow these curricula to introduce several key social, political, and moral arguments. They assess whether ancient civilizations implemented the “family values” of the political right as it emerged in the 1970s. Thus the Greeks were commendable in excluding women from the public sphere and the Romans for their strong patriarchal families. But Rome fell when it failed to maintain family values. These textbooks disparage the Romans to downplay their influence on the American founding. Furthermore, the rise of Islam reveals the presence of Satan in the world. These curricula’s repudiation of the classical tradition reflects not only contemporary concerns of the religious right but also American anti-intellectualism.

Author(s):  
Dmitry Valuev ◽  

The article covers the issue of consistency of manifesto texts with a political system underpinned by publicness principles. The ever-increasing production of manifestos witnesses a crisis in the political system which necessitates the investigation of how such texts influence both their readers and public sphere as a whole. The public sphere concept by J. Habermas, perception of policies by J. Ranciere, and dialogue-based approaches of M. Buber and A. Pyatigorsky constitute the basis for analysing structural elements of a manifesto text, and highlighting their core traits shedding light on the relationship between a manifesto text and the public sphere. Through highlighting the three main elements of a manifesto text, i.e. ‘speaking I’, ‘Object’, and ‘Other’, and by clarifying the configuration of interrelations between the elements, the militant message of a manifesto is asserted as the opposite to the dialogue-based foundation of the public sphere. Such texts postulate the necessity both to eliminate the ‘Other’ and to immediately achieve a set objective by way of taking on an active participative position. The latter to be implemented via the ‘speaking I’ replication mechanism, which is expressed through a call for readers to take on the image of the person speaking through the manifesto. Thus, the manifesto becomes both a tool for getting rid of an existing system incapable of satisfying the needs of an actor, and a tool for leveling political space. Manifesto texts demonstrate the monological basis expressed in the postulation of the necessity for action to uncompromisingly transform the world.


Goods ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 7-13
Author(s):  
Emanuele Coccia ◽  
Marissa Gemma

This chapter offers philosophical reflections on the nature of commodities and their value in our civilization, focusing on the particular site where a commodity becomes recognizable as itself: the walls in our cities. It begins with a discussion of stones and the city as a “thing of stone”, arguing that stone inscriptions are the first tangible—and certainly the longest lasting—incarnation of what modern political philosophy has called the public sphere. It also asserts that the images, faces, and words that comprise this spatialized symbolic order express the city's collective ethos and goes on to explain how advertising enables us to encounter the commodity in the political space where the city has always articulated and portrayed its own ethos. The chapter concludes by suggesting that city walls imply a morality that in turn provides an important clue about the shape of the world we live in.


Author(s):  
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya

The archives are generally sites where historians conduct research into our past. Seldom are they objects of research. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya traces the path that led to the creation of a central archive in India, from the setting up of the Imperial Record Department, the precursor of the National Archives of India, and the Indian Historical Records Commission, to the framing of archival policies and the change in those policies over the years. In the last two decades of colonial rule in India, there were anticipations of freedom in many areas of the public sphere. These were felt in the domain of archiving as well, chiefly in the form of reversal of earlier policies. From this perspective, Bhattacharya explores the relation between knowledge and power and discusses how the World Wars and the decline of Britain, among other factors, effected a transition from a Eurocentric and disparaging approach to India towards a more liberal and less ethnocentric one.


2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-211
Author(s):  
Lee Michael-Berger

The story of The Cenci’s first production is intriguing, since the play, based on the true story of a sixteenth-century Roman family and revolving around the theme of parricide, was published in 1819 but was denied a licence for many years. The Shelley Society finally presented it in 1886, although it was vetoed by the Lord Chamberlain, and to avoid censorship it had to be proclaimed as a private event. This article examines the political and social context of the production, especially the reception of actress’s Alma Murray’s rendition of Beatrice, the parricide, thus probing the ways in which The Cenci question was reframed, and placed in the public sphere, despite censorship. The staging of the play became the site of a political debate and the performance – an act of defiance against institutionalised power, but also an act of defiance against the alleged tyranny of mass culture.


Slavic Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 907-930
Author(s):  
Igor Fedyukin

This article uses the materials of the Drezdensha affair, a large-scale investigation of “indecency” in St. Petersburg in 1750, to explore unofficial sociability among the Imperial elite, and to map out the institutional, social, and economic dimensions of the post-Petrine “sexual underworld.” Sociability and, ultimately, the public sphere in eighteenth century Russia are usually associated with loftier practices, with joining the ranks of the reading public, reflecting on the public good, and generally, becoming more civil and polite. Yet, it is the privately-run, commercially-oriented, and sexually-charged “parties” at the focus of this article that arguably served as a “training ground” for developing the habits of sociability. The world of these “parties” provides a missing link between the debauchery and carousing of Peter I's era and the more polite formats of associational life in the late eighteenth century, as well as the historical context for reflections on morality, sexual licentiousness, foppery, and the excesses of “westernization.”


2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Beyeler ◽  
Hanspeter Kriesi

This article explores the impact of protests against economic globalization in the public sphere. The focus is on two periodical events targeted by transnational protests: the ministerial conferences of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the annual meetings of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Based on a selection of seven quality newspapers published in different parts of the world, we trace media attention, support of the activists, as well as the broader public debate on economic globalization. We find that starting with Seattle, protest events received extensive media coverage. Media support of the street activists, especially in the case of the anti-WEF protests, is however rather low. Nevertheless, despite the low levels of support that street protesters received, many of their issues obtain wide public support.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 383-390
Author(s):  
Elizabeth M. Morgan

The broad goal of researchers of emerging adulthood can be construed as wanting to advance the understanding of development in emerging adulthood with the outcome of bettering the lives of emerging adults throughout the world. However, the information we amass during the research process is rarely extracted into the public sphere to influence policy or practice. My goal in this article is to revitalize motivations to conduct research that matters and provide an overview of practices that enhance the societal relevance and translational nature of our research via public engagement. First, I will discuss what public engagement by researchers is and why it matters. Second, I will identify barriers to engaging in public engagement. Third, I will review practices that can move us toward greater public engagement as researchers of emerging adulthood. Overall, though it presents many challenges, public engagement is critical for using our research to invoke social change.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-127
Author(s):  
Luke Matthews

Heiner Goebbels’s works are examples of “postdramatic” theatre works that engage with the political by seeking to challenge socially ingrained habits of perception rather than by presenting traditional, literary-based theatre of political didacticism or agitation. Goebbels claims to work toward a “non-hierarchical” theatre in the contexts of his arrangement of the various theatrical elements, in fostering collaborative working processes between the artists involved, and in the creation of audience-artist relationships. In offering a reading of Goebbels’s “no-man show” Stifters Dinge, this paper seeks to situate Goebbels’s practice within a theoretical tradition that also encompasses Hannah Arendt’s deployment of the theatre as a metaphor for the public sphere. Within this analysis, I suggest, theatre can be seen to offer the possibility of a participatory democracy through its attention to disappearance and absence.


Author(s):  
Luís Guilherme Nascimento de Araujo ◽  
Claudio Everaldo Dos Santos ◽  
Elizabeth Fontoura Dorneles ◽  
Ionathan Junges ◽  
Nariel Diotto ◽  
...  

The political and economic crises faced today, evidenced by the manifestos of political parties and the texts published in social networks and in the press, point to Brazilian society the possibility of different directions, including that of an autocratic regime, with the return of the military to the public sphere. This article discusses the movements of acceptance and resistance to the military regime that was implemented in Brazil with the coup of 1964. It is observed that the military uprising received at that time the support of a large part of the Brazilian population, which sought ways to maintain its socioeconomic status to the detriment of a majority that perceived itself vulnerable in view of the forms of maintenance and expansion of power used by the regime. In this context, Tropicalism emerges as an example of a contesting movement. This text approaches the song "Culture and civilization" by Gilberto Gil, performed by Gal Costa, relating the ideas present in this composition with the understandings of politics and culture, in a multidisciplinary proposal, seeking to understand the resistance and counter-resistance movements that emerged in Brazil at the time.


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