Introduction

Author(s):  
Lyndsey Stonebridge

This book is about how a generation of writers and intellectuals in the mid-twentieth century responded to the emergence of a new category of person in the world: the modern refugee whose history, as has recently become clear once more, is also the history of the changing meanings of political and national citizenship in the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The introduction offers a critical review of how literary and legal history eventually ended up telling the same story about exile and statelessness in the post-war period: the exile, usually European, emerges as an individual of conscience and agency, a victim of persecution who, nonetheless, is of his time; and the exile’s others, the refugees, sometimes but usually not European, caught in the dehumanizing movements of mass displacement and whose existence is recognized neither by the humanism of human rights nor by literary history.

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 464-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alon Harel

Reading Tushnet's careful analysis of the history of the American rights revolution filled me with envy. One of the great advantages of writing about law in the U.S. is the ability to experience and benefit from centuries of sustained legal evolution. The world of an Israeli law professor whose horizons barely reach the middle of the twentieth century is impoverished in comparison to the enriching experience of living in a mature and rich legal tradition such as that of the U.S.Living in a different legal tradition and being ignorant of legal history—a field which only began to develop in Israel in the late 1990s—it will be pretentious on my part to try and challenge Tushnet's findings or even to try and explore the similarities and differences with the rights revolution in the Israeli legal system. Instead, I wish to explore the relevance of Tushnet's findings to constitutional theory and argue that constitutional theorists have some important lessons to learn from Tushnet's careful historical observations.


2019 ◽  
pp. 170-182
Author(s):  
David Brydan

Integrating the history of Franco’s Spain into the history of twentieth-century internationalism sheds new light on both subjects. The importance of international cooperation, international organizations, and international networks for Francoist elites reflects the extent to which Spanish nationalism during the early Franco era was framed and shaped by the history of internationalism. And examining the perspective of experts from an authoritarian nationalist regime serves to broaden and deepen our understanding of the fascist, right-wing, and conservative ‘dark side’ of internationalism. The Epilogue explores how the international activities of Spanish social experts developed after 1959. A new generation increasingly accepted the immutability of the post-war international system, seeking to adapt Spain to the world rather than adapting the world to Spain. They were even more internationally active than the previous generation, but were no longer necessarily ‘Franco’s internationalists’.


1939 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-228
Author(s):  
Sigmund Neumann

Munich marks the end of an epoch, a “turning point in history,” as Arnold J. Toynbee recently states in a most suggestive article. In fact, these decisive events were foreshadowed long before September 1938, by actions almost necessarily leading the road to Munich. If one can speak of the end of a period, one might better say: Hitler's march into the Rhineland, March 7, 1936, was the real water-shed between two political continents. Indeed what had been said about the World War, that it merely precipitated a development of political and social forces which were moulding the twentieth century, could be repeated of this greatest diplomatic upset of our time too. It had its roots in the history of post-War Europe, and it may be that even the more we win distance from this “water-shed of Munich” the clearer it will become that the currents of history are running in the same old beds and in the same directions as before September, 1938.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-82
Author(s):  
B Muthu Kumar

Globally, there was a dramatic and disproportionate increase in caseloads in the second half of the twentieth century due to the expansion of human rights jurisprudence and legal awareness among citizens. This in turn, affected the quality of justice in the Apex Court of every country involved in the process of constitutional review. It was found that there cannot be any generalization in designing a Constitutional Court and it all depended on the constitutional and legal history of that particular nation. In many countries, the legislature and executive brought timely reforms to keep the Apex Court free from backlogs, but some countries, even today, are reeling under the pressure of unresolved cases. India is one among them and of late, the discussion about the National Court of Appeal (NCA) as a solution to this problem has gained momentum. This paper analyses the feasibility of establishing the NCA, along with measures that can be adopted by India, in tackling the mounting arrears of cases in Courts, following the American model of review such as U.S., Canada, Japan, and Brazil.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-517
Author(s):  
Ned Hercock

This essay examines the objects in George Oppen's Discrete Series (1934). It considers their primary property to be their hardness – many of them have distinctively uniform and impenetrable surfaces. This hardness and uniformity is contrasted with 19th century organicism (Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Ruskin). Taking my cue from Kirsten Blythe Painter I show how in their work with hard objects these poems participate within a wider cultural and philosophical turn towards hardness in the early twentieth century (Marcel Duchamp, Adolf Loos, Ludwig Wittgenstein and others). I describe the thinking these poems do with regard to industrialization and to human experience of a resolutely object world – I argue that the presentation of these objects bears witness to the production history of the type of objects which in this era are becoming preponderant in parts of the world. Finally, I suggest that the objects’ impenetrability offers a kind of anti-aesthetic relief: perception without conception. If ‘philosophy recognizes the Concept in everything’ it is still possible, these poems show, to experience resistance to this imperious process of conceptualization. Within thinking objects (poems) these are objects which do not think.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hou Yuxin

Abstract The Wukan Incident attracted extensive attention both in China and around the world, and has been interpreted from many different perspectives. In both the media and academia, the focus has very much been on the temporal level of the Incident. The political and legal dimensions, as well as the implications of the Incident in terms of human rights have all been pored over. However, what all of these discussions have overlooked is the role played by religious force during the Incident. The village of Wukan has a history of over four hundred years, and is deeply influenced by the religious beliefs of its people. Within both the system of religious beliefs and in everyday life in the village, the divine immortal Zhenxiu Xianweng and the religious rite of casting shengbei have a powerful influence. In times of peace, Xianweng and casting shengbei work to bestow good fortune, wealth and longevity on both the village itself, and the individuals who live there. During the Wukan Incident, they had a harmonizing influence, and helped to unify and protect the people. Looking at the specific roles played by religion throughout the Wukan Incident will not only enable us to develop a more meaningful understanding of the cultural nature and the complexity of the Incident itself, it will also enrich our understanding, on a divine level, of innovations in social management.


Philosophy ◽  
1937 ◽  
Vol 12 (48) ◽  
pp. 424-431
Author(s):  
Alfred E. Garvie

Inhis greatest work (The Republic) the greatest thinker of his era, if not of all time, Plato, writing in one of the greatest, if not even the greatest epoch in the intellectual, artistic, and literary history of mankind, held up a mirror not only to his own age but to every age, not least our own, in the glowing radiance of his unsurpassed genius. This essay is an attempt to look on the world around us with his searchlight. Addressing on this subject a select company of educated and intelligent men and women, I discovered that several of them had attempted but had failed to read throughThe Republic. They could not see the wood for the trees, lost their way, and gave up the guest.


2021 ◽  

The fourth volume of The Cambridge History of America and the World examines the heights of American global power in the mid-twentieth century and how challenges from at home and abroad altered the United States and its role in the world. The second half of the twentieth century marked the pinnacle of American global power in economic, political, and cultural terms, but even as it reached such heights, the United States quickly faced new challenges to its power, originating both domestically and internationally. Highlighting cutting-edge ideas from scholars from all over the world, this volume anatomizes American power as well as the counters and alternatives to 'the American empire.' Topics include US economic and military power, American culture overseas, human rights and humanitarianism, third-world internationalism, immigration, communications technology, and the Anthropocene.


2021 ◽  

This volume examines Arnold Gehlen’s theory of the state from his philosophy of the state in the 1920s via his political and cultural anthropology to his impressive critique of the post-war welfare state. The systematic analyses the book contains by leading scholars in the social sciences and the humanities examine the interplay between the theory and history of the state with reference to the broader context of the history of ideas. Students and researchers as well as other readers interested in this subject will find this book offers an informative overview of how one of the most wide-ranging and profound thinkers of the twentieth century understands the state. With contributions by Oliver Agard, Heike Delitz, Joachim Fischer, Andreas Höntsch, Tim Huyeng, Rastko Jovanov, Frank Kannetzky, Christine Magerski, Zeljko Radinkovic, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg and Christian Steuerwald.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 323-334
Author(s):  
Inga V. Zheltikova

The concept of O. Spengler suggests that the history of any culture goes through certain stages of development, the last of which is civilization. During this period creative activity in culture is replaced by mechanical imitation and lost connection with the culture formed by the «pra-phenomenon». The author correlates Spengler’s postulates with the processes of actual social reality and comes to the conclusion that contemporary Russia is going through the stage of civilization. The article raises the question of how the future is seen in this situation. The author uses the term “image of the future”, introduced by F. Polak to understand the disinterest of modern post-war Europe in its future. Thus, the lack of interest in the future can be recognized as another characteristic of the state of civilization. The existence in contemporary Russia of distinct images of the future is an open question. Using the methods of content analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that in Russian contemporary society there exists a retrospective image of the future, focused on conservative values, hierarchy of society and its closed nature to the world. Thus, it is concluded that it is wrong to talk about complete absence of images of the future in contemporary Russia. But the nature and content of these images demonstrate the low level of interest in the future, which also indicates the transition of Russian culture to civilization.


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