Theo-political Visions

Ecclesiology ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig A. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Nation State ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Strong Resemblance ◽  
Modern Nation State ◽  
Secular Politics

This article examines the work Giorgio Agamben and other contemporary philosophers who profane theological and messianic discourses in their post-secular and post-political projects. These theorists examine, among other things, monastic discipline and rules, the life and witness of St. Francis, and the messianic discourses of St. Paul for their material and political potential in developing a post-secular politics. Their work does not seek simply to invert the theological so as to secularize it, but rather to move beyond it. Accompanying this philosophical turn to a post-secular retrieval and reshaping of theological discourses is a search for a new kind of community beyond the politics of the modern nation-state, and in Agamben’s case, even beyond law itself. The communities these theorists imagine often bear a strong resemblance to the ecclesiastical structures and community they seek to replace.

The Riddle of the Sands

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Brayton
Keyword(s):  
Coastal Zone ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Intertidal Zone ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Aesthetic Appeal ◽  
Secret Service ◽  
German Coast ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Modern Nation State

The aesthetic appeal of coasts is due in part to the indeterminacy of the intertidal zone. The imagination finds room to play where land and sea meet. This chapter explores the coastal zone that lies at the heart of a novel considered by many to be the first modern spy thriller, Erskine Childers’s The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service. Childers develops the notion of coastal indeterminacy as a figure for the boundaries, ambitions, and limitations of the modern nation-state. The journey of Childers’s characters through a north Atlantic archipelago that extends from the German coast draws a line of association between Europe and Britain, whose form depends on coastlines, estuaries, and shallows. In following this course, Childers creates a narrative fiction that shifts between charts, borders, and languages.

Subversive Archaism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Herzfeld
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Equation Of State ◽  
Urban Slum ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Slum Dwellers ◽  
State Authority ◽  
Modern Nation State

In Subversive Archaism, Michael Herzfeld explores how individuals and communities living at the margins of the modern nation-state use nationalist discourses of tradition to challenge state authority under both democratic and authoritarian governments. Through close attention to the claims and experiences of mountain shepherds in Greece and urban slum dwellers in Thailand, Herzfeld shows how these subversive archaists draw on national histories and past polities to claim legitimacy for their defiance of bureaucratic authority. Although vilified by government authorities as remote, primitive, or dangerous—often as preemptive justification for violent repression—these groups are not revolutionaries and do not reject national identity, but they do question the equation of state and nation. Herzfeld explores the political strengths and vulnerabilities of their deployment of heritage and the weaknesses they expose in the bureaucratic and ethnonational state in an era of accelerated globalization.

The Modern Tradition

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Anne-Marie Curley
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Complementary Relationship ◽  
The Real ◽  
Pastoral Letter ◽  
Private Matter ◽  
Modern Nation State ◽  
The Ideal

Abbot Kōnyo’s pastoral letter of 1871 codifies an understanding of the Pure Land as a transcendent realm, attainable only after death, and of faith as a private matter of the heart. This understanding is valuable as a way of negotiating a place for Shinshū in the regime of the modern nation-state. Early Meiji thinkers like Shimaji Mokurai rely on this understanding of religion as internal in arguing for the separation of church and state. Shinshū reformer Kiyozawa Manshi pushes this focus on interiority to its limit, destabilizing the complementary relationship between the Buddhist law and the imperial law that his predecessors sought to secure. During the Taishō, Kiyozawa’s disciple Kaneko Daiei attempts to rearticulate the connection between the ideal Pure Land and the real world, while the Honganji-ha thinker Nonomura Naotarō argues that it is time for the Pure Land tradition to set aside the myth of the Western Paradise.

The New Knight: The French Far Right’s View of the Middle Ages

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-49
Author(s):  
Stéphane François
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Political Model ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Modern Nation State ◽  
The Middle Ages

The far right has always taken an interest in the Middle Ages. For the French revolutionary far right, which shares an ideological matrix influenced by Julius Evola, fascination with the Middle Ages revolves around the image of the Holy Germanic Roman Empire as a political model for Europe opposed to the modern nation-state. The romantic image of the medieval knight also offers a watered-down way to celebrate and legitimize violence without having to allude to a taboo National Socialism. This obsession with the Middle Ages contrasts with the reality that these revolutionary far-right movements were rather pro-Arab during the Cold War decades. This shift reveals the transformation of their thinking and the new dominance of the Identitarian notion of ethnic withdrawal, with the knight as the symbol of a pure racial warrior defending his society against Muslim invasion.

The Modern Foundations of Brazilian Cinema

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Maite Conde
Keyword(s):  
Nation State ◽  
Early Cinema ◽  
Brazilian Cinema ◽  
Political Project ◽  
Modern Nation State ◽  
Alternative Modernity

The introductory chapter outlines a theory of early cinema in Brazil and its relationship to the country’s invention of modernity. Theories and examinations of early film’s relationship to modernity have by and large focused on the medium’s links to changes and transformations wrought by the advent of industrialization. Noting that such transformations were not present in Brazil, the introduction outlines how early film in Brazil—that is, its arrival and dissemination—were linked instead to a political project impelled by the first Republican regime, one that sought to transform the country into modern nation-state of order and progress. The chapter maps ways in which this imbrication between film and this project laid the foundations for the birth Brazilian cinema and modernity in Brazil. In doing so, it provides an alternative modernity of early cinema.

Field Theory and Global Transformations in the Long Twentieth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 81-98
Author(s):  
Julian Go
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Turning Points ◽  
Global Dynamics ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Conceptual Apparatus ◽  
International Issues ◽  
Post War ◽  
Modern Nation State

This chapter explores how the Bourdieusian field theory can be deployed to make sense of global dynamics. It mentions international relations (IR) scholars that have enlisted Bourdieu in their analyses, applied his work to international issues, and taken certain concepts, such as habitus and practice, from his larger theoretical conceptual apparatus. It also focuses on three transformative processes or macro-historical turning points: the expansion of colonial empires during the phase of 'high imperialism', the two world wars, and the post-war end of formal colonial empires that heralded the rise to dominance of the modern nation state. The chapter maps the points of differentiation between field theory approaches and other approaches. It recognizes other key elements of Bourdieusian field theory, such as fields that consist of objective relations between actors and the subjective and cultural forms of those relations.

Living beyond Our Psychological Means

2020 ◽  
pp. 43-51
Author(s):  
Yael Tamir
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Need To Belong ◽  
Clear Definition ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Cultural Community ◽  
The World ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Modern Nation State

This chapter examines the bottom-up justification for the formation of the modern nation-state. It suggests that borderless states are dystopian, noting that in order to be democratic and promote justice, states must depend on a clear definition of territory and membership. The chapter elaborates how the borders and demarcation helped individuals define their identity, providing them with interpretive tools to decipher reality and make sense of their daily actions. It then explains the term human, human features, and identity. The chapter also explicates the need to belong to a cultural community, a nation, or any other particular group. It argues that it is an epistemological need for systems of interpretation that will allow us to understand the world and choose a way of life as well as a creative need for means of interpretation, exchange, and expression. Ultimately, the chapter assesses the negative effect of divided communities on human behavior.

Athens and Sparta of the New World

2020 ◽  
pp. 79-116
Author(s):  
Dan-el Padilla Peralta
Keyword(s):  
Dominican Republic ◽  
New World ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
First Century ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Santo Domingo ◽  
Classical Greece ◽  
Classical Reception ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Modern Nation State

This chapter reconstructs the reception and appropriation of ancient Greece and Rome in the Dominican Republic, tracing the long arc of classical reception from the foundation of the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo to the politics of the twenty-first-century nation-state. Two interlocking appropriations of classical Greece are documented and scrutinized: the glorification of colonial Santo Domingo by postcolonial Dominican elites as the “Athens of the New World,” and the celebration of the modern nation-state as the “Sparta of the New World” during the dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo (1930–61). Both modes of scripting hispanophone Hispaniola as classically Greek turn out upon closer examination to derive their impetus from a racialized—and racist—cultural and nationalistic program whose imprint on Dominican debates about statehood and race remains visible to this day.

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