‘Overflown bodies’ as critical-political transformations

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-481
Author(s):  
Begonya Enguix Grau
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Gender And Politics ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Gendered Bodies ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Complex Relationships

In order to explore the political and transformative potential of bodies in relation to gender and affects, I discuss how bodies, gender and politics are entangled through the figuration of ‘overflown bodies’. Departing from a material-discursive feminist conceptualisation of bodies, ‘overflown bodies’ are assemblages embedded in complex relationships of matter, discourse, emotions, affects, ideologies, protest, norms, values, relations, practices, expectations and other possibilities of (for) social and political action. Three ethnographic cases illustrate how ‘overflown bodies’ assemble matter and discourse, and how matter, bodies and gender matter. They are used to explore the political possibilities of gendered bodies and show how matter is entangled, embedded and assembled with our politics of being. The three cases interrogate the limits and boundaries of bodies and the modes and modalities of (political) agency. Finally, the article argues that it is through visibility and recognition that ‘overflown bodies’ become critically and creatively transforming, which can be useful for addressing issues related to exclusion, domination, political emancipation and social transformation.

scholarly journals (In)coherent subjects? The politics of conceptualising resistance in the UK asylum system

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110338
Author(s):  
Sarah M Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Subject Formation ◽  
Grounding Resistance ◽  
Migration Control ◽  
The Uk

Many accounts of resistance within systems of migration control pivot upon a coherent migrant subject, one that is imbued with political agency and posited as oppositional to particular forms of sovereign power. Drawing upon ethnographic research into the role of creativity within the UK asylum system, I argue that grounding resistance with a stable, coherent and agentic subject, aligns with oppositional narratives (of power vs resistance), and thereby risks negating the entangled politics of the (in)coherence of subject formation, and how this can contain the potential to disrupt, disturb or interrupt the practices and premise of the UK asylum system. I suggest that charity groups and subjects should not be written out of narratives of resistance apriori because they engage with ‘the state’: firstly, because to argue that there is a particular form that resistance should take is to place limits around what counts as the political; and secondly, because to ‘remain oppositional’ is at odds with an (in)coherent subject. I show how accounts which highlight a messy and ambiguous subjectivity, could be bought into understandings of resistance. This is important because as academics, we too participate in the delineation of the political and what counts as resistance. In predetermining what subjects, and forms of political action count as resistance we risk denying recognition to those within this system.

Cities of Refuge, Rebel Cities, and the City to Come

2019 ◽  
pp. 253-271
Author(s):  
Giovanna Borradori
Keyword(s):  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Shared Experience ◽  
The Core ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
Urban Contexts ◽  
To Come ◽  
The City

As the processes of globalization transform cities into nodes of accumulation of financial and symbolic capital, it is fair to assume that urban contexts have never been more vulnerable to the systemic imperatives of the market. It is thus surprising that cities continue to be the site where the deepest social and political transformations come to the surface. What, then, preserves the city as a space of dissent? The claim of this chapter is that a critical reflection on the political agency of Northern and Southern cities has to start from asking what it means today to occupy the pavement of their streets. The argument explored here is that, in this age of molecular neoliberal encroachment and restructuring, it is a certain experience of dispossession, rather than the quest for identification and recognition, that makes the city the core of a shared experience of refuge and resistance.

scholarly journals At komme til magten - magt, køn og kønnede aktører i det politiske felt

2006 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 23-43
Author(s):  
Lis Højgaard
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Gender And Politics ◽  
Political Field ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Female Politicians ◽  
Political Hierarchy ◽  
Gendered Patterns ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Political Praxis ◽  
Gender Specific

Obtaining Power – power, gender and gendered actors in the political arena The gendering of politics in Denmark is no longer manifested in large differences in representation in important political positions or in unambiguous gender specific ways of doing politics or of climbing the political hierarchy. A discourse analysis of interviews with top male and female politicians shows that gender and political are woven together in multifarious ways, while revealing gendered patterns in discursive practices. There are no sharp differences in male and female politicians’ discourses on doing politics, on obtaining top positions in the political hierarchy or on gender and politics. Gendered patterns appear in the way male and female politicians combine discourses on how to get power and in their discourses on the meaning of gender in politics. The interviews revealed three discourses on how to get power: the fight, the party community and the personal stake. These represent distinct ways of characterizing the processes involved in becoming politically powerful. The interviews also revealed two main discourses on the meaning of gender: gender as an explicitly important dimension of political praxis, and gender as unimportant in relation to political praxis. The gendered agents combine these discourses in different ways, which opens different spaces of action and nego-tiation as well as different possibilities for positioning in the political field, possibilities that are reflected by a meta-discourse expressing processes of inclusion and exclusion in the field of politics.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 144-168
Author(s):  
Jun Liu
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Mobile Communication ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Mobile Technologies ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Contention ◽  
People’S Perception ◽  
Shed Light

This chapter summarizes the implication of the embedding of mobile communication into politics in contemporary China. The political relevance of mobile technologies relies not just on their capacity for providing affordable communication to human agency and generating new mediated visibility, but the relevance of these devices also relies on their capacity to carve out new opportunities for political action, to accumulate social resources as mobilizing structures against authoritarianism, and to shape people’s perception of their (potential) political agency or political subjectivity. Whereas mobile communication technologies entail new affordances to the Chinese people who are engaging in politics, the conclusion further broadens the scope of investigation to cases of political contention beyond China in order to illustrate how and to what extent the communication-centered framework may shed light on the case beyond China to more precisely pin down the influence of ICTs on contentious collective action.

scholarly journals Regrounding Critical Theory: Lenin on Imperialism, Nationalism, and Strategy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Pahnke
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Political Right

Abstract We live at a time of heightened nationalism on the political right and left, from the mobilization of anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States and Europe, to promoting Palestinian liberation. This article, focusing on Lenin's work concerning imperialism, shows the importance, yet shortcomings of foregrounding the nation in calling for social transformation. The piece reads Lenin's contributions on imperialism, highlighting his understanding of strategy and the dual nature of nationalism, in light of debates within Critical Theory more generally. As I argue, Lenin offers insights for Critical Theorists, particularly on the place of nationalism within transformative political projects, as well as on the dynamics of capitalist accumulation and territorial acquisition. Lenin's work on imperialism draws our attention to the idea that only by mobilizing beyond the state/society binary—which many Critical Theorists and activists reify, sometimes unintentionally—can we explore the nature of emancipatory political action.

scholarly journals Trans* Politics: Current Challenges and Contestations Regarding Bodies, Recognition, and Trans* Organising

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-230
Author(s):  
Mieke Verloo ◽  
Anna Van der Vleuten
Keyword(s):  
Thematic Issue ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Gender And Politics ◽  
Transgender People ◽  
International Courts ◽  
Institutional Power ◽  
Gender Binary ◽  
Gendered Bodies ◽  
And Gender

This thematic issue analyses trans* politics, and the problems and policies articulated by societal, political and legal actors in national and international contexts in Europe and Latin America. Trans* issues are at the heart of politics concerning sex and gender, because the sex binary ordering is producing the categories, identities, and related social relationships around which gender inequalities are constructed. Scholarship on trans* politics promises to bring more fundamental knowledge about how the gender binary organisation of our societies is (dis)functional, and is therefore relevant and beneficial for all gender and politics scholarship. Contestations around trans* issues continue developing, between state and non-state actors, transgender people and medical professionals, and also among and between social movements. This thematic issue is our contribution to dimensions of trans* politics that revolve around the issue of sexed and gendered bodies (the making and unmaking of “deviant” bodies, non-binary language about bodies, and voice given in bodily re/assignments), the limits of recognition (undermining of trans* agency, persistent binary thinking, and disconnect with material dimensions of gender justice), and the potential of trans* movements (processes and practices through which political claims are generated in the movement, a more forward looking and pro-active perspective on the possibility of alliances between the feminist and the trans* projects, and between the trans* project and the disability project, and alliances of movement actors with institutional power holders such as international courts).

China's New Voices: Popular Music, Ethnicity, Gender, and Politics, 1978–1997. By Nimrod Baranovitch. [Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2003. xiv+332 pp. £16.95; $24.95. ISBN 0-520-23450-2.]

2004 ◽  
Vol 178 ◽  
pp. 518-519
Author(s):  
Rachel Harris
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Gender And Politics ◽  
Popular Music Studies ◽  
The World ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Ethnicity And Gender

An enjoyable overview of the world of pop, rock and politics in Beijing, accessible for students of Chinese culture and popular music studies. This is an area that has been exceptionally well covered in the literature, and Baranovitch's claim to originality lies mainly in his focus on ethnicity and gender. The overview of the development of pop from 1978–97 does a useful job of drawing together the various strands, though most of this is very familiar from the writings of Geremie Barmé, Andrew Jones et al. We begin with the introduction of Gangtai (Hong Kong and Taiwan pop) to the mainland, led by Deng Lijun whose ‘coquettish nasal slides,’ Baranovitch rightly suggests, were more truly subversive in China in 1978 than any of the subsequent rock and punk styles. Baranovitch chronicles the rise of the xibeifeng, the Shaanbei folk-infused rock style, linking it into the xungun roots movement and Tiananmen. An interesting section on qiuge or ‘prison songs,’ popular in 1988, explores somewhat less well-known territory. We follow the rise of the commercial, the karaoke craze and Mao fever, and the co-option of at least some of the rebellious rockers by the state. Baranovitch enthusiastically reveals the significance of music in the political arena, and its ability to prefigure, even shape the political.

Political Action, Context and Conjuncture

1998 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-84
Author(s):  
Alan Shandro
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Political ◽  
Strategic Action ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Action Context ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Social Democratic Parties ◽  
Radical Transformation

AbstractConcerned to remedy the ‘state of severe disarray’ that immobilises the left in advanced capitalist countries, Howard Chodos and Colin Hay set out to inquire into ‘the organisational conditions that are necessary to the radical transformation of capitalism'. This disarray is expressed in the drift of social-democratic parties in the wake of the neoliberal mainstream, the inability of a fragmented and disappearing radical Left to orient either itself or spontaneous resistance to the global neoliberal agenda, and the failure of the ‘new’ social movements as a vehicle of ‘broader social transformation'. Against this background of fragmentation, dispersal and division, the authors spell out their central contention: the idea that ‘there is a distinctively creative component to politics', as the claim that organisation in general and the political party in particular provide the necessary context for the actualisation of ‘belief-dependent emergent capacities'. Fulfilling a ‘multi-dimensional mediating function', the party provides ‘an indispensable context in which we can define who we are and what we stand for', a locus for the definition of commonalities, and hence it constitutes a basis for strategic action.

Challenges of the parliamentary system in Iraq after 2003

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (10) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Emad Wakaa Ajil
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
The Political ◽  
Parliamentary System ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
The Us ◽  
Long Time

Iraq is one of the most Arab countries where the system of government has undergone major political transformations and violent events since the emergence of the modern Iraqi state in 1921 and up to the present. It began with the monarchy and the transformation of the regime into the republican system in 1958. In the republican system, Continued until 2003, and after the US occupation of Iraq in 2003, the regime changed from presidential to parliamentary system, and the parliamentary experience is a modern experience for Iraq, as he lived for a long time without parliamentary experience, what existed before 2003, can not be a parliamentary experience , The experience righteousness The study of the parliamentary system in particular and the political process in general has not been easy, because it is a complex and complex process that concerns the political system and its internal and external environment, both of which are influential in the political system and thus on the political process as a whole, After the US occupation of Iraq, the United States intervened to establish a permanent constitution for the country. Despite all the circumstances accompanying the drafting of the constitution, it is the first constitution to be drafted by an elected Constituent Assembly. The Iraqi Constitution adopted the parliamentary system of government and approved the principle of flexible separation of powers in order to achieve cooperation and balance between the authorities.

Between the Social and the Political

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-98
Author(s):  
Pia Rowe ◽  
David Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Political ◽  
Conventional Theory ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
The Social ◽  
Action Language

While Wood and Flinders’ work to broaden the scope of what counts as “politics” in political science is a needed adjustment to conventional theory, it skirts an important relationship between society, the protopolitical sphere, and arena politics. We contend, in particular, that the language of everyday people articulates tensions in society, that such tensions are particularly observable online, and that this language can constitute the beginning of political action. Language can be protopolitical and should, therefore, be included in the authors’ revised theory of what counts as political participation.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document