scholarly journals Close enough – obrazy porażki transformacji ustrojowej w Polsce lat dziewięćdziesiątych XX wieku na przykładzie "Psów" Władysława Pasikowskiego i "Szamanki" Andrzeja Żuławskiego [“Close Enough”: Images of the Failure of the 1990s’ Political Transformation in Poland as Exemplified by Władysław Pasikowski’s "Psy" [Pigs] and Andrzej Żuławski’s "Szamanka" [She-Shaman]]

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomasz Szczepanek
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
The West ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Transformation Period

“Close Enough”: Images of the Failure of the 1990s’ Political Transformation in Poland as Exemplified by Władysław Pasikowski’s Psy [Pigs] and Andrzej Żuławski’s Szamanka [She-Shaman]This article problematizes the Polish cinema of the 1990s by analyzing it in terms of the aesthetic of failure. Of crucial importance for that interpretation is the postcolonial perspective. Seen from this perspective, Poland of the political transformation period appears a land of unfulfilled dreams of being-like-the-West. One of the spheres where this is visible is the Polish cinematography of that time.Close enough – obrazy porażki transformacji ustrojowej w Polsce lat dziewięćdziesiątych XX wieku na przykładzie Psów Władysława Pasikowskiego i Szamanki Andrzeja ŻuławskiegoNiniejszy tekst problematyzuje kwestię polskiego kina lat dziewięćdziesiątych XX wieku w kategoriach estetyki porażki. Kluczowe znaczenie dla tego rozpoznania ma perspektywa postkolonialna, w której Polska czasów transformacji jawi się jako kraina niespełnionych marzeń o byciu-jak-Zachód, co widać m.in. w kinematografii tamtego okresu.

‘From the Congested Districts’

J. M. Synge ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 136-168
Author(s):  
Seán Hewitt
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Early Summer ◽  
Western World ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
The People ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Thought Patterns ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aran Islands

While travelling in the ‘Congested Districts’ of Mayo and Connemara with Jack Yeats in early summer 1905, on commission for The Manchester Guardian, Synge wrote a short vignette which he later added to the fourth part of his as-yet-unpublished prose narrative, The Aran Islands. The vignette in question takes the form of an inserted ‘set piece’ in which a crow is found trying to smash a golf ball. Here, the manuscript reveals the effects of the Guardian commission in confirming Synge’s oppositions to modernization in the west of Ireland and in prompting an increasing irony towards his earlier Romanticism. Taking this ‘set piece’ as its starting point, this chapter mobilizes Synge’s reading in socialism, and his correspondence and drafts for the Guardian commission, to demonstrate the writer’s socialist proclivities and to chart their nuances. Drawing on the earlier chapters of the book, this chapter shows that Synge’s socialism is rooted in nature and mystical experience, and in thought patterns borrowed from Spencerian evolutionism: he opposes modernization when it takes on a homogenizing form which he perceives as anti-nature. By showing that for Synge the aesthetic is politicized, and the political aestheticized, this chapter also registers a recalibrated Synge, evolving a more modernist response to his own notoriety. It concludes by positing the revision of his subsequent article, ‘The People of the Glens’, as a measure of an increasingly ironic sensibility, leading into the elaborate ironical, political structures of his final completed play, The Playboy of the Western World.

Palestinian Christians: Realities and Hopes

2000 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 373-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Sabella
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
National Authority ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
West Bank And Gaza ◽  
Palestinian Population ◽  
Israeli Occupation

As Palestinian society in the West Bank and Gaza has undergone political transformation from twenty-nine-year-long Israeli occupation to national authority rule, the fifty thousand Christians who make up two per cent of the total Palestinian population in these territories are also witness and party to this transformation. The Israeli-Palestinian accords which made possible this transformation came about, in part, because of the changes that have occurred in the attitudes of both Palestinians and Israelis since 1967 and 1948. But the present period is best characterized as one of transition. The peace process moves on slowly; the political system is in the creation stage; the economy and culture are evolving into new patterns; and society, as a consequence, is witnessing changes and developments in its structure and in its relationships. A transition period has its problems but also its challenges, promises, and hopes. The Palestinian Christians are not immune to the problems and yet they are hopeful, as are other Palestinians, that they will overcome the difficulties and problems. The distinction of religion for Palestinian Christians reflects itself in certain trends of thinking about and reacting to social, cultural, and political issues. A survey conducted in 1995 on a sample of all Palestinians, including a subsample of 340 Christians, shows that Palestinian Christians are in general agreement with other Palestinians on many of the issues of concern to all. Yet the responses given by the Christians point to a certain worldview: this is illustrated in the tables and comparisons presented here and which are all based on the results of the 1995 survey.

scholarly journals The non-aligned humanism of Rudolf Bruci: The composer and the society of self-management socialism

Muzikologija ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 83-97
Author(s):  
Nemanja Sovtic
Keyword(s):  
Morphological Characteristics ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Self Management ◽  
The Political ◽  
Daily Newspaper ◽  
The West ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Novi Sad ◽  
Intersubjective Field

In 1979 the oratorio We Are All a Single Party was performed, composed by the Yugoslav composer Rudolf Bruci, who in an interview for the Novi Sad daily newspaper Dnevnik explained his driving motives in the following way: ?I wanted to preserve the spirit of our revolutionary songs and to speak in a modern, familiar way, understandable to everyone, about the decades in which our revolution was born and grew; about the legendary activities of pre-war communists, the difficult days of the War of National Liberation, the liberation and reconstruction of the country, about Tito and his invaluable contribution to the development of our selfmanagement socialism and non-aligned humanism? (Dnevnik, 10 April, 1979). In this article I argue that the syntagm ?non-aligned humanism? is suitable for identifying the connection between the aesthetic and the political in Rudolf Bruci?s creative output, observed as a consistent author?s opus. At the core of this thesis lies the assumption that non-alignment in regard to the West or East was a major political and aesthetic orientation of Yugoslav self-management socialism. The intersubjective field of this self-management socialist pluralism produced creative entities - composers such as Bruci - whose works were created under the principles of direct political engagement and modernist aestheticism as different manifestations of the same ideology. Within the specific rationality of non-aligned humanism, the concrete poetic-morphological characteristics of Bruci?s compositions become coherent subjective (Bruci?s personal) and objective (social) achievements.

Dante Alighieri

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Bartoloni
Keyword(s):  
Dante Alighieri ◽  
The Political ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Artistic Process ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
The Aesthetic

The Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) is invoked several times in the work of Giorgio Agamben, often in passing to stress a point, as when discussing the political relevance of désoeuvrement (KG 246); to develop a thought, as in the articulation of the medieval idea of imagination as the medium between body and soul (S, especially 127–9); or to explain an idea, as in the case of the artistic process understood as the meeting of contradictory forces such as inspiration and critical control (FR, especially 48–50). So while Agamben does not engage with Dante systematically, he refers to him constantly, treating the Florentine poet as an auctoritas whose presence adds critical rigour and credibility. Identifying and relating the instances of these encounters is useful since they highlight central aspects of Agamben’s thought and its development over the years, from the first writings, such as Stanzas, to more recent texts, such as Il fuoco e il racconto and The Use of Bodies. The significance of Agamben’s reliance on Dante can be divided into two categories: the aesthetic and the political. The following discussion will address each of these categories separately, but will also emphasise the philosophical continuity that links the discussion of the aesthetic with that of the political. While in the first instance Dante is offered as an example of poetic innovation, especially in relation to the use of language and imagination, in the second he is invoked as a forerunner of new forms of life. Mediality and potentiality are the two pivots connecting the aesthetic and the political.

Charlemagne’s Health in ‘Old Age’: Did It Affect Carolingian Military Strategy?

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-53
Author(s):  
Bernard S. Bachrach
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
The Political ◽  
Military Strategy ◽  
The West ◽  
Long Time

During the first thirty-three years of his reign as king of the Franks, i.e., prior to his coronation as emperor on Christmas day 800, Charlemagne, scholars generally agree, pursued a successful long-term offensive and expansionist strategy. This strategy was aimed at conquering large swaths of erstwhile imperial territory in the west and bringing under Carolingian rule a wide variety of peoples, who either themselves or their regional predecessors previously had not been subject to Frankish regnum.1 For a very long time, scholars took the position that Charlemagne continued to pursue this expansionist strategy throughout the imperial years, i.e., from his coronation on Christmas Day 800 until his final illness in later January 814. For example, Louis Halphen observed: “comme empereur, Charles poursuit, sans plus, l’oeuvre entamée avant l’an 800.”2 F. L. Ganshof, who also wrote several studies treating Charlemagne’s army, was in lock step with Halphen and observed: “As emperor, Charlemagne pursued the political and military course he had been following before 25 December 800.”3

‘There shall be no musical servitude’: Towards a Multitudinous Shostakovich in the West

2020 ◽  
Vol 145 (2) ◽  
pp. 495-505
Author(s):  
EIRINI DIAMANTOULI
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

Ideologically motivated attempts to elucidate Shostakovich’s political views and to determine whether and how they may be coded into his compositions have come to characterize the Western reception of the composer’s works since his death in 1975. Fuelled by the political oppositions of the cold war, Shostakovich’s posthumous reputation in the West has been largely shaped by two conflicting perspectives. These have positioned him on the one hand as a secret dissident, bent and broken under the unbearable strain of totalitarianism, made heroic through his veiled musical resistance to Communism; and on the other hand as a composer compromised by his capitulation to the regime – represented in an anachronistic musical style. Both perspectives surrender Shostakovich and his music to a crude oversimplification driven by vested political interests. Western listeners thus conditioned are primed to hear either the coded dissidence of a tragic victim of Communist brutality or the sinister submission of a ‘loyal son of the Communist Party’.1 For those prepared to accept Shostakovich as a ‘tragic victim’, the publication of his purported memoirs in 1979, ‘as related to and edited by’ the author Solomon Volkov, presents a tantalizing conclusion: bitterly yet discreetly scornful of the Stalinist regime, Shostakovich was indeed a secret dissident and this dissidence was made tangible in his music.

scholarly journals Authoritarian resilience through top-down transformation: making sense of Myanmar's incomplete transition

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Ruzza ◽  
Giuseppe Gabusi ◽  
Davide Pellegrino
Keyword(s):  
Political Reform ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Ongoing Process ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Divide And Rule ◽  
Events Data

AbstractStarting from the imperfect nature of Myanmar's democracy, this paper aims to answer two questions. First, can Myanmar's transition be defined as a case of democratization, or is it, rather, a case of authoritarian resilience? To state this differently: is the progress enjoyed by Myanmar's polity the outcome of an ongoing process that is supposed to lead to a fully fledged democracy, or, rather, an attempt to enshrine elements of authoritarian governance under a democratic guise? Second, if the balance leans towards the latter instead of the former, how did authoritarian resilience work in Myanmar? The transition is analysed from a long-term perspective, moving from the 1988 pro-democracy uprising up to the most recent events. Data were collected from available published sources and from three fieldworks conducted by the authors in Myanmar. The paper concludes that Myanmar's transition is better understood as a case of authoritarian resilience than as democratization and highlights three core traits of Myanmar's authoritarian resilience: first, the very top-down nature of the political transformation; second, the incumbents’ ability to set the pace of political reform through the use of repression and political engineering; and third, the divide-and-rule strategy used as a means to keep contestations separated and local.

The Place of Interests in Hobbes’s Civil Science

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-128
Author(s):  
Elliott Karstadt
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Civil Science ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

Many scholars argue that Hobbes’s political ideas do not significantly develop between The Elements of Law (1640) and Leviathan (1651). This article seeks to challenge that assumption by studying the way in which Hobbes’s deployment of the vocabulary of ‘interest’ develops over the course of the 1640s. The article begins by showing that the vocabulary is newly important in Leviathan, before attempting a ‘Hobbesian definition’ of what is meant by the term. We end by looking at the impact that the vocabulary has on two key areas of Hobbes’s philosophy: his theory of counsel and his arguments in favour of monarchy as the best form of government. In both areas, Hobbes’s conception of ‘interests’ is shown to be of crucial importance in lending a new understanding of the political issue under consideration.

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