On the beginning of the world: dominance feminism, afropessimism and the meanings of gender

2021 ◽  
pp. 146470012110340
Author(s):  
Jennifer C. Nash
Keyword(s):  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Shared Experiences ◽  
Gender Binary ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Commitments

Dominance feminism and afropessimist theory, despite their critical appearances three decades apart, are undergirded by similar rhetorical strategies, political commitments and argumentative moves. This is the case even as afropessimism’s citational trajectory rarely invokes dominance feminism, and often positions itself as a critique of feminism’s imagined conception of gender as white, one that is thought to be most emphatically announced in the work of scholars like MacKinnon who invest in a gender binary, and in women’s oppressed location in this binary. In this article, I insist on reading dominance feminism and afropessimism together. In so doing, I aspire to challenge afropessimism’s prevailing conception of gender, revealing that while it is often critical of feminist conceptions of gender – particularly conceptualisations of gender that are thought to insist on the shared experiences and positions of women – it actually relies on similar argumentative moves, and even rhetorical seductions, as dominance feminism.

The Poetics of Friendship in Early Modern Spain

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Gilbert-Santamaria
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Spanish Literature ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Early Modern Spain ◽  
Shared Experiences ◽  
The World ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Alternative Modality ◽  
Sancho Panza

This book posits the Aristotelian-Ciceronian notion of perfect male friendship as an independent poetic force within the development of Spanish literature in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Through a re-examination of Spanish critic Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce’s notion of the “tale of two friends” tradition, the book shows how the poetics of friendship evolves in relation to other key concepts from the period—most notably exemplarity and imitatio—in a series of carefully selected examples from several important genres including the pastoral novel, the picaresque, and the Spanish comedia. Particular attention is given to the trajectory whereby the highly formalized narrativization of the traditional Aristotelian paradigm for friendship gives way to representations of personal intimacy grounded in a recognition of the idiosyncratic particularity of human experience in the world beyond the text. This alternative modality for representing friendship, which encompasses a variety of relationships beyond the Aristotelian paradigm—between women, erstwhile lovers, and pícaros, to take just three examples—reaches its fullest expression in the depiction of the evolving intimacy that grows up between the two unlikely companions, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, whose shared experiences provide the main focus for Cervantes’s most important work.

Slipping Away

Desertion ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Théodore McLauchlin
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
War Zone ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Commitments ◽  
Military Units

This chapter explains how armed groups in civil wars are able, or not, to prevent desertion as combatants often leave in some wars to go home, switch sides, or flee the war zone altogether. It analyses how some armed groups keep their soldiers fighting over long periods of time and explains why other groups fall apart from desertion and defection. It also explores the world of combatants in military units, with their comrades and commanders. The chapter discusses bonds of trust among combatants that keep them fighting, mistrust that pushes them to leave, and beliefs about political commitments and the motivation to fight. It clarifies how trust and mistrust depend on what soldiers perceive about others' motivations, both political and military.

From East Harlem to Cape Town: Tupac Shakur’s legacy as a globalised oppositional repertoire

Ethnography ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 146613812092337
Author(s):  
Dariusz Dziewanski
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Cultural Resource ◽  
East Harlem ◽  
Shared Experiences ◽  
Street Culture ◽  
Cultural Strategies ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

For marginalised people living in Cape Town, South Africa, rapper Tupac Shakur represents a globalised oppositional repertoire that people draw on for strength and esteem. The study focused on 22 purposefully sampled interviews from township communities throughout Cape Town, which were conducted within a broader multi-year research project that focused on street culture and gangs in the city. Perhaps the most obvious narrative emerging from the research was that of male gang members connecting to the defiant masculine aggression often projected through Tupac’s music. But research also found that gang girls can also draw on the oppositional power he embodies as a street soldier, leveraging it in order to push back against their physical and material insecurity through performances of street culture. There are also ways that Tupac, as the globalised ghetto prophet, serves as a cultural resource for those trying to resist the streets and participation in gangs. The continued resonance of his legacy and image among township residents in Cape Town hints at the links they find in common with disenfranchised groups in American ghettos, and the myriad of similarly segregated urban spaces around the world. Many such groups pursue common cultural strategies to counter their shared experiences with disenfranchisement and disempowerment.

The Consolation of Community: Innovation and Ideas of History in Ratpert's ‘Casus Sancti Galli’

2013 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
CHRISTINA PÖSSEL
Keyword(s):  
Human Agency ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Monastic History

This paper takes the case study of a well-known but also rather poorly-regarded text, Ratpert of St Gall's Casus Sancti Galli, to examine some of the methodological issues of modern historians reading medieval historians. It is argued that features of Ratpert of St Gall's monastic history which modern readers have found frustrating or even boring were actually the result of the author's specific rhetorical strategies and ideas of history. Ratpert developed an innovative way of writing the history of a Christian community in the mortal world. Unlike other monastic historians who were developing the genre at the time and who followed more hagiographical models, Ratpert chose to put the anonymous, timeless collective of the monks at the centre of his text. His idea of history suggests a lack of effective human agency in the world, in which ups and downs forever follow one another, and contrasts this with the eternity of God.

A Whole Sense of Self, a Whole Sense of the World

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia B. Dillard
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Praxis ◽  
Political Commitments ◽  
Multicultural Research

The paper focuses on defining and consciously re-membering spirituality as fundamental to the practice and praxis of multicultural research and teaching. In what I describe as the blessings of spirituality, I examine the ways that examining spirituality in international/global contexts can help us to theorize “in the flesh” (Hurtado, 2003), engaging research that seeks to address social justice in its practice and outcomes. Thus, the blessings of spirituality are also the basis for political commitments to informed moral action and principled political praxis in our lives and work as researcher-teachers.

scholarly journals Going against the grain in literary studies: an analysis of boosters, hedges and other rhetorical strategies in The Pilgrimage of Dorothy Richardson by Joanne Winning

2009 ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
María Francisca Llantada Díaz
Keyword(s):  
Literary Studies ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Dorothy Richardson ◽  
The World ◽  
Scholarly Identity

In The Pilgrimage of Dorothy Richardson (2000), Joanne Winning negotiates her claim to credibility in the world of Richardson’s studies when introducing a theory that goes against the grain. The study of boosters, hedges and other rhetorical strategies in its introduction and afterword will be of key importance to show how Winning conciliates her self-assurance about her proposal with her deference to other researchers. Researchers are able to convince their colleagues if they have full command of rhetorical strategies to present their findings in an acceptable way. Thus, this article will analyse how boosters, hedges and the coexistence of self-mention with impersonalization strategies help Winning create an adequate scholarly identity for herself that guarantees her inclusion in the literary critical scene.

Why Amendment Rules?

2019 ◽  
pp. 39-60
Author(s):  
Richard Albert
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
The United States ◽  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Basic Law ◽  
The World ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Political Commitments

Virtually all constitutions codify amendment rules. But why? What are the uses and purposes of constitutional amendment rules? Amendment rules of course create a legal process for reformers to alter the constitution. But amendment rules serve important purposes even if the constitution is never amended at all because they have essential uses beyond the obvious one of textual alteration. Amendment rules have three categories of uses: formal, functional, and symbolic. Their formal uses include repairing imperfections, distinguishing constitutional from ordinary law, entrenching rules against easy repeal or revision, and establishing a predictable procedure for constitutional change. Their functional uses include checking the court, promoting democracy, heightening public awareness, pacifying change, and managing difference. Symbolically, amendment rules can be used to express constitutional values. This chapter explains all of these many uses of amendment rules and illustrates each of them with examples drawn from constitutions around the world. This chapter also interrogates the symbolic uses of amendment rules: How can we know whether the values expressed in constitutional amendment rules reflect authentic political commitments? This chapter explains with reference to the German Basic Law that it is possible to evaluate the authenticity of the values in amendment rules by investigating the design of amendment rules and their subsequent interpretation. This chapter considers constitutions from Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Central African Republic, Chad, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Germany, Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Saint Lucia, South Africa, Spain, the Russian Federation, the Soviet Union, Ukraine, the United States, and Yugoslavia.

The Earth as a Gift-Giving Ancestor

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anatoli Ignatov
Keyword(s):  
Ecological Footprint ◽  
Dynamic Processes ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Natural Processes ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Shared Experiences ◽  
Open Universe ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
Ecological Relations

This article puts into conversation Friedrich Nietzsche’s perspectivism and a particular expression of “African animism,” drawn from my ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana. Nietzsche’s perspectivism extends interpretation beyond the human species into natural processes. Like perspectivism, African animism troubles the binaries—body/soul, nature/culture—that permeate anthropocentric thinking. Human-nonhuman relations are refigured as socio-ecological relations: the earth may be regarded as life-generating ancestors; baobab trees may approach humans as kin. These two images of the world intersect, but they do not mesh together. Nietzsche adopts perspectivism as active intersections between dynamic processes, within an open universe that has not been predesigned for humans. Animism tends toward a world of personalized relationships that would reach harmony if we would only lighten our ecological footprint. I draw upon such resonances to advance a new ethic of experiential environmentalism that treats ecological threats as lived risks and shared experiences with a lively and communicating “environment.”

Salzburg Declaration on the Conservation and Preservation of Cultural Heritage

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 609-611
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Shared Experiences ◽  
The World

On the occasion of the Salzburg Global Seminar session on Connecting to the World's Collections: Making the Case for the Conservation and Preservation of our Cultural Heritage, 60 cultural heritage leaders from the preservation sector representing 30-two nations around the world shared experiences to address the sustainability of cultural heritage.

scholarly journals Learning to live with doubt: Kierkegaard, Freire, and critical pedagogy

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 834-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Paulo Freire ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
The World ◽  
Pedagogical Theory ◽  
Political Commitments ◽  
Ethical Significance

What role does doubt play in education? This article addresses this question, initially via an examination of Søren Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments. Kierkegaard, through his pseudonym Johannes Climacus, draws attention to the potentially debilitating and destructive effects of doubt on both teachers and learners. The work of Paulo Freire is helpful in responding to the problems posed by Kierkegaard’s account. It is argued that in Freire’s pedagogical theory and practice, doubt has both epistemological and ethical significance. It is linked with other key Freirean virtues such as humility and openness, and it forms part of the process of learning how to question. It is also related, through the Freirean idea of being ‘less certain of one’s certainties’, to the ethical priorities we determine, the political commitments we have, and the actions we take as we negotiate our way in the world.

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