Signifying the Signs - Simulating Cultural Political Subjectivity in Postmodernity

1990 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-357
Author(s):  
Pirkkohisa Ahponen
Keyword(s):  
Political Subjectivity

Sexual Politics and Surveillance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Runions
Keyword(s):  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
Reading Strategy ◽  
Political Subjectivity ◽  
Lgbt Rights ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Sense Of Security ◽  
Bodily Experiences

Psalm 139 has been used by pro-lifers and gay rights activists to argue for foetal rights and LGBT rights, respectively. The poet speaks of God’s surveillance from the womb, but why is God’s surveillance so valued by interpreters, rather than dreaded (as in the book of Job)? This essay explores why this Psalm is so politically potent, using a metonymic feminist reading strategy to interrogate the ways in which scripture is used to confer rights. Spinoza’s comment on Psalm 139 leads to a consideration of scripture in relation to bodies and affect. The Psalm’s surveillance produces bodily experiences of threat and bodily fragmentation, while also ameliorating that threat by providing a sense of security through time. The results are the positive emotions of allegiance to God and appreciation of surveillance. Identifying readers gain a feeling of agency, a model for rights-bearing political subjectivity as interior, fixed, and known by God.

scholarly journals "Communist" dispossession meets "reactionary" resistance

Focaal ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 2009 (54) ◽  
pp. 89-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Projit Bihari Mukharji
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
West Bengal ◽  
Present Situation ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Subjectivity ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Term Change ◽  
Communist Government ◽  
Set Up

The reflections in this article were instigated by the repeated and brutal clashes since 2007 between peasants and the state government’s militias—both official and unofficial—over the issue of industrialization. A communist government engaging peasants violently in order to acquire and transfer their lands to big business houses to set up capitalist enterprises seemed dramatically ironic. De- spite the presence of many immediate causes for the conflict, subtle long-term change to the nature of communist politics in the state was also responsible for the present situation. This article identifies two trends that, though significant, are by themselves not enough to explain what is happening in West Bengal today. First, the growth of a culture of governance where the Communist Party actively seeks to manage rather than politicize social conflicts; second, the recasting of radical political subjectivity as a matter of identity rather than an instigation for critical self-reflection and self-transformation.

scholarly journals School of Data and Shifting Forms of Political Subjectivity

2021 ◽  
pp. 45-67
Author(s):  
Valentin Dander ◽  
Felicitas Macgilchrist
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Document Analysis ◽  
Political Subjectivity ◽  
Skills Acquisition ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Educational Work ◽  
Data Literacy ◽  
Political Theories

AbstractDigital media are increasingly ‘data media’ and data media are involved in various forms of political activism. This chapter reconstructs political subjectivities around figurations of the ‘digital citizen’ within the field of (open) data activism. The authors draw on interviews, document analysis and concepts from modern and post-sovereign political theories of subjectivation to explore the transformative educational work of the Datenschule (School of Data) project, focusing on the intersection between open data and anti-discriminatory activism. The chapter suggests that although School of Data explicitly positions its work as supporting ‘skills’ acquisition (data literacy), indicating a modernist understanding of subjectivity, the project also generates an understanding of political subjectivation as a multiplicity of distributed transformative processes, entangling data literacy with power structures, data-related and organisational practices.

scholarly journals Political subjectivity in the youth of the city of El Alto

T inkazos ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (se) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiovanny E. Samanamud Ávila ◽  
Robert Finestone Berkson
Keyword(s):  
Political Subjectivity ◽  
El Alto ◽  
The City

The Politics of Boundaries: The Shifting Terrain of Belonging for Zimbabweans in a South African Border Zone

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blair Rutherford
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Farm Workers ◽  
Border Zone ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Subjectivity ◽  
Border Town ◽  
Commercial Farms

Abstract This paper examines Zimbabwean immigrants in northern South Africa and the ways through which they are able to claim, or not, some form of belonging. Drawing on the concept of “political subjectivity”, I trace the changes in the power relations shaping the forms of belonging operating on the commercial farms and the border town of Musina since 2000 and the concomitant shifts in some of the Zimbabweans’ tactics in these spaces. In particular, I look at the political subjectivities of “Zimbabwean farm workers” and “Zimbabwean woman asylum-seekers”. This analysis shows what particular imaginaries have become authoritative for differently situated Zimbabwean immigrants and denizens in this region, enabling particular claims for resources, accommodation, and belonging.

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