Relations of difference: Power and inequality in intersectional and postcolonial feminist theories

2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (6) ◽  
pp. 846-866 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ina Kerner
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
The One ◽  
Gender Groups ◽  
Postcolonial Feminist

Feminist theory has addressed relations of difference, heterogeneity, and hierarchy within gender groups as well as the entanglement of various forms of differentiation, power, and inequality for a long time. This does not mean that there was unanimity with regard to the best way of doing this, though. Today, we can distinguish different approaches in this regard, and there is contestation about both the analytical and the political advantages and pitfalls of each of them. This article concentrates on two of these approaches: on the one hand on intersectional ones, which strongly focus on inequality; and on the other hand on postcolonial feminist theories, which put the emphasis on global power relations and interactions. The article discusses select positions of both intersectional and postcolonial feminist theories in conjunction, and argues why and how they should be conceptualized as complementary.

Measuring Feminist Attitudes

1998 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Shibley Hyde
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
The Other ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
Feminist Attitudes ◽  
The One ◽  
Experiences Of Women

Henley and colleagues' results, obtained in the process of developing a scale to measure the diversity of feminist attitudes, highlight a dilemma for feminist researchers in psychology. On the one hand, we advocate research based on feminist theory. On the other, we believe that research should begin with the lived experiences of women, from which theory should be generated, rather than forcing women's responses into a predetermined theoretical mold. Several aspects of Henley and colleagues' results contradict feminist theory. I argue that researchers should use empirical data to refine feminist theories.

scholarly journals The Double Entendre of Sex: Pornographies of Body and Society in Péter Esterházy’s Fiction

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 255-267
Author(s):  
Enikő Bollobás
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Rhetorical Criticism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Implied Author ◽  
Central European ◽  
Postmodern Fiction ◽  
Power Game ◽  
The One

Informed by feminist theory on the one hand and thematic and rhetorical criticism on the other, this article examines the components of discourse in two books by Péter Esterházy that share an emphatic attention to sexuality. The author interprets Esterházy’s discourse of sex as grounded in the figure of the double entendre, with a different function in each work. In Kis magyar pornográfia [‘A Little Hungarian Pornography’], vulgar corporeality and communist politics are shown as commensurate; both have a double meaning, with sex and politics referring both to themselves and to each other. In using one discourse as a cover for another, Esterházy continues the Central European Witz [‘joke’] tradition, giving a particular twist to it by making the transference of meaning two-directional, thereby assigning double meanings to sex and politics alike. In Egy nő [‘She Loves Me’], Esterházy attaches a double meaning to sex in a different manner; here sex is not a cover for something else but is shown to be reduced to itself, with a double meaning attached to its internal power relations. Sex is presented as a power game, in which man is repulsed by women yet is hopelessly attracted to them. Moreover, sex acts as the only tellable story taking the place of the untellable story of love. In this piece of postmodern fiction, the multiple perspectives bring about an interpretational uncertainty on the part of the reader as to whether sexist discourse is legitimized or subverted, and whether this legitimization and/or subversion is carried out by the narrator and/or by the implied author.

When Love and Violence Meet: Women's Agency and Transformative Politics in Rubaiyat Hossain's Meherjaan

Hypatia ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 760-777
Author(s):  
Elora Halim Chowdhury
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Feminist Art ◽  
Rape Survivors ◽  
Unresolved Question ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
Transformative Politics ◽  
Political Message ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

In official and unofficial histories, and in cultural memorializations of the 1971 war for Bangladeshi independence, the treatment of women's experiences—more specifically the unresolved question of acknowledgment of and accountability to birangonas, “war heroines” (or rape survivors)—has met with stunning silence or erasure, on the one hand, or with narratives of abject victimhood, on the other. By contrast, the film Meherjaan (2011) revolves around the stories of four women during and after the war, and most centrally the relationship between a Bengali woman and a Pakistani soldier. In this article, I investigate the anxieties underlying the responses to Meherjaan, particularly in association with themes of trauma—its absence or omnipresence—to nonnormative gender frames of national sexuality, and the notion of loving the Other. Drawing from feminist theories of vulnerability, ethics, and love, I want to explore these themes at two levels: the political message the film transmits, and its aesthetic choices and affects. Finally, I want to comment on the potential of this film, as feminist art, in furthering a dialogue around healing and ethical memorialization in relation to 1971 in Bangladesh.

scholarly journals The political theory of parties

Politik ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Wolkenstein
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theoretical Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Insufficient Attention ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The One

Political theory has for a long time paid scant attention to the topic of political parties and partisanship. In recent times, however, there has emerged a body of theoretical research that seeks to draw attention to the place of parties and partisanship in a well-functioning polity. This article offers an overview of this research, discussing approaches that focus on partisanship as an associative practice, on the one hand, and approaches that focus on the party as an institution, on the other. The article argues that, while the two approaches no doubt usefully complement each other, concentrating on partisanship at the expense of party risks paying insufficient attention to the institutional structures that ultimately connect partisans to the state and allow them to exercise power. This is problematic insofar as it is especially the party as institution whose virtues are currently called into question. Given this, the article proposes to shift the emphasis in theoretical research from partisanship-centred theories to party-centred theories.

An Anthropological Approach to the Islamic Turn in Indonesia's Regional Politics

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Millie
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Regional Politics ◽  
West Java ◽  
Long Time ◽  
National Life ◽  
Public Ethics ◽  
Anthropological Approach ◽  
The One ◽  
Embodied Practice

AbstractExisting analyses of the Islamic turn in regional Islamic politics in Indonesia have overlooked the possibility that these politics – often critiqued for their negative implications for minorities and vulnerable segments – are to some extent reflections of indigenous cultural dispositions. Drawing on the author's long-time ethnographic work in West Java, as well as recent anthropological theorising about public ethics in Islamic societies, the article identifies a significant correlation between, on the one hand, the practical forms and legislative outputs of the regional Islamic turn, and on the other, a characteristic notion of public decorum that is asserted in routines of embodied Islamic observance. The article notes that this extension of an embodied, practice-based public ethics into the political regimes of national life has created conflict with the disembodied civic order established in Indonesia's constitution and state ideology.

Ethics of Care: Readings and Perspecives

Diogenes ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatyana Batuleva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Ethics Of Care ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Main Emphasis ◽  
Holistic Concept ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
Relational Ethic ◽  
The One ◽  
Political Weapon

The article examines the main emphasis in the evolution of the concept of care. It, on the one hand, builds a different ethics (C. Gilligan) and, on the other, is an attempt to justify a new political philosophy (J. Tronto) and new forms of solidarity arising from the understanding of vulnerability as universally shared situation. Particular attention has been paid to the French ethical voices – Sandra Logier and Patricia Paperman, who contribute to the enrichment of care readings: it is a leading relational ethic and political weapon that valorizes all that remains beyond the reach of ethics of justice. Possible political projections range it between the reduction of the feminist charge of the concept in case of over-reduction in favor of a particular political context (J.-M. Chahsiche) and the promising future of this “holistic” concept, bearing resources to enrich the political (S. Logier). Further arguments in favor of ethics of care have been sought in Hunyadi’s theory of the role of context as a combination of factuality and counter-factuality, and the opportunity for ethics of care to formulate its own normativity (St. Collins). The ethics of care is a contribution to feminist theories of difference and an example of a moderate deconstructionist approach: it practically realizes the calls of the deconstruction to “retain aporia” (Fr. Laruelle), but without reaching its possible extremes.

scholarly journals UKRAINIAN BORDER: CURRENT STATE AND PROBLEMS

2019 ◽  
pp. 24-28
Author(s):  
Denis Eckert
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
The State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Current State ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The One

This article analyses Ukraine’s current borders, de jure and de facto, from a geopolitical point of view. Significant changes in the border regime occurred after the political events of 2014. The emergence of de facto borders after the annexation of Crimea and the hostilities in eastern Ukraine raises the question not only of the direction of the Ukrainian state’s foreign policy but also has fundamental consequences for domestic policy. The presence of international organisations monitoring parts of the state border shows that Ukraine is involved in the process of combating illegal immigration and smuggling, on the one hand, and that it has not solved all its state-building problems, on the other. The delimitation of state borders (demarcation) with the other former Soviet republics has taken a long time for land borders and has not been completed for maritime borders. Today’s Ukraine, in the context of European integration, opens its borders to the West and minimizes its contacts with the East. The sharp deterioration in relations with Russia following the annexation of Crimea, Russia’s support for separatist entities in eastern Ukraine has led to the abandonment of cross-border cooperation between border regions, including for mechanisms as effective as Euroregions. The need to amend current Ukrainian legislation, to take into account the political and legal status of de facto borders is an important point at the moment. To achieve this objective, it is necessary not only to draw on the experience of the functioning of the State border with Moldova in its section not controlled by the Moldovan government but also to develop new approaches to facilitate the lives of displaced persons, legalize their legal status and facilitate the crossing of the line of demarcation.

Getting Over Athens

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Wiater
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Model ◽  
Dionysius Of Halicarnassus ◽  
The One

This chapter examines the ambivalent image of Classical Athens in Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ Roman Antiquities. This image reflects a deep-seated ambiguity of Dionysius’ Classicist ideology: on the one hand, there is no question for Dionysius that Athenocentric Hellenicity failed, and that the Roman empire has superseded Athens’ role once and for all as the political and cultural centre of the oikoumene. On the other, Dionysius accepted Rome’s supremacy as legitimate partly because he believed (and wanted his readers to believe) her to be the legitimate heir of Classical Athens and Classical Athenian civic ideology. As a result, Dionysius develops a new model of Hellenicity for Roman Greeks loyal to the new political and cultural centre of Rome. This new model of Greek identity incorporates and builds on Classical Athenian ideals, institutions, and culture, but also supersedes them.

‘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.

Studying Political Leadership: The Case of François Mitterrand

1994 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 453-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Cole
Keyword(s):  
General Framework ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Environmental Constraints ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The One

The study of political leadership, in France and elsewhere, must be appreciated in terms of the interaction between leadership resources (personal and positional) on the one hand, and environmental constraints and opportunities on the other. This article proposes a general framework for appraising comparative liberal democratic political leaderships. It illustrates the possibilities of the framework by evaluating the political leadership of the French President François Mitterrand.

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