Going Creative: Becoming Free

1990 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 196-200
Author(s):  
Nigel Bakker
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Creative Activity ◽  
Real Possibility ◽  
The Real ◽  
Primary Schooling ◽  
Left Brain ◽  
The Status ◽  
Creative Becoming ◽  
Schooling System

Originally an address at a pre-primary conference, this paper examines the real possibility of creative activity in schools that are institutionalised and state-controlled. The dominance of left-brain activity, the bureaucratic pressure and the maintenance of the status quo argue against any full respect for creativity. The extent to which pre-primary schooling is part of such a schooling system is implicitly examined. As a useful alternative, Huston Smith's fourfold education scheme, subjective education, education for surprise, education for surrender and education for words, is presented as providing important contrasts to current education priorities.

Morality in aversion?: Meditations on slum tourism and the politics of sight

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-172
Author(s):  
Jacob Henry
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
The Real ◽  
Western Development ◽  
The Status ◽  
Slum Tourism

Abstract Despite fairly widespread popularity, slum tourism is enmeshed in moralizing debate. Supporters acknowledge that slum tourism may sometimes be problematic, but also may potentially be an important pedagogical experience which reveals the horrors of capitalism to westerners. Plus, supporters argue, there is no morality in aversion ‐ we should never turn away from slums and poverty. However, social theory on the politics of sight and opacity suggests that the promise of transparency ‐ showing the real poverty ‐ may lead to a violence of seeing and knowing rooted in western development epistemologies. I argue that morality can be found in aversion and turning away from slum tourism in many instances. I suggest that wealthy, western and usually white bodies of slum tourists represent the violence of the status quo which seeks to make legible a periphery and to partially re-integrate into capital those who have been expelled from it. This paper contributes to a growing literature which deploys social theory to understand and critique slum tourism and its relationship with capitalist society.

Hoping for a revolution Emperor Paul I, his heirs, and representation of power in I. Krylov's mock tragedy Podshchipa

2020 ◽  
pp. 196-211
Author(s):  
A. P. Kovalyova
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Real ◽  
Imperial Court ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Status ◽  
Political Pamphlets

The question of whether Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich was aware of or involved in the conspiracy against his father remains today as highly polemic as it was in the 19th c. The author claims that research into the reputational culture of the imperial court could change the status quo. The mock tragedy Podshchipa [or Trumf], penned by a young Ivan Krylov for the family of his benefactors, who had been banished from the capital by the Emperor, is a curious reflection on the real social capital of Paul I's heirs - Alexander and his spouse Elisabeth - and is devoted to the overthrow of the antihero Trumf, traditionally believed to represent Paul himself.A comparison between Krylov's characters and contemporary narratives like personal letters, diaries, and political pamphlets reveals an insider view of an impending political crisis, as witnessed by a Russian person in 1800.

The When of Sociopolitical Transformation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Leeb
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Real ◽  
Political Subject ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Moment

“The When of Sociopolitical Transformation: The Moment of the Limit” introduces the idea of the moment of the limit to engage with the first tension inherent in the idea of the political subject—the tension between the idea of a free and autonomous subject that is not impacted by power, and the idea of a subject as completely subjected to power. It acknowledges the ways in which subjects are subjected to power in capitalism, but avoids postulating the idea of a subjected subject through theorizing the moment of the limit, which it accomplishes through a reading of the real (Lacan) and the non-identical (Adorno). The moment of the limit is the moment when power fails to completely subject or subordinate individuals, and at this moment the political subject with the capacity to not only resist but to transform the status quo can emerge.

What Constitutes Readiness for Independence?

1932 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-122
Author(s):  
Walter H. Ritsher
Keyword(s):  
National Policy ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Local Autonomy ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
Complete Independence ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Final Settlement

In the past, the principal criterion of a capacity for independence seems to have been the ability to foment such forces of violence and potential insurrection as to make the cost of maintaining external political control greater than the controlling power could bear. The real question has been, not whether the subject people were able to stand alone, but whether the efforts necessary for keeping them in subjection conformed to national policy. While the maintenance of such control has invariably been justified by reference to “the white man's burden” and a “sacred trust of civilization,” the nature of this rationalization is sharply challenged by an examination of the actual instances when the time has been found ripe for a shifting of the “burden” to more willing shoulders. It has almost invariably followed upon outbreaks of such violent disorder, if not actual insurrection, as to make it inexpedient for the controlling power to attempt to maintain the status quo. If complete independence is not granted, some concessions of local autonomy and administrative reorganization placate the disaffected elements and postpone the evil day of final settlement.

The Trauma of Vulnerability: Human Rights and the Real

Somatechnics ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 298-314
Author(s):  
Debra Bergoffen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Cycle Of Violence ◽  
Human History ◽  
Bodily Integrity ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

The history of human rights is ambiguous and uncertain. Appeals to rights have been used to secure the privileges of the powerful and to legitimate the status quo. Appeals to rights have been used to expose the evils of cruelty and oppression. Given this muddied history we cannot assume that calls for human rights will operate in the name of justice. Cognizant of this history, I argue that human rights discourses can be a force for justice if: (1) we read human rights demands as an attempt to respond to the experience of the destabilizing, destructive and incomprehensible forces that Lacan calls the Real and that Adriana Cavero calls horrorism; and (2) if we use human rights discourses to respond to the trauma of encountering this horror by defining the human dignity and bodily integrity that human rights claims are intended to protect in terms of the dignity and integrity of the vulnerable body. I argue that if we persist in fleeing our vulnerability by using human rights discourse to insist on our autonomous sovereignty we will perpetuate the cycle of violence endemic to human history.

With radicals like these, who needs conservatives? Doom, gloom, and realism in political theory

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 264-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorna Finlayson
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Real World ◽  
Critical Distance ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Status

This paper attempts to get some critical distance on the increasingly fashionable issue of realism in political theory. Realism has an ambiguous status: it is sometimes presented as a radical challenge to the status quo; but it also often appears as a conservative force, aimed at clipping the wings of more ‘idealistic’ political theorists. I suggest that what we might call ‘actually existing realism’ is indeed a conservative presence in political philosophy, and that its ambiguous status plays a part in making it so. But I also argue that there is no necessary connection between realism and conservatism. This paper describes the three contingent and suspiciously quick steps which lead from an initial commitment to being attentive to the real world, via a particular kind of pessimism about political possibilities, to an unnecessarily conservative destination. In the process, I try to show how the ubiquitous trinity of realism, pessimism and conservatism might be pulled apart, thus removing the artificial tension between ‘being realistic’ and the demand for far-reaching social change.

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