Laying Bare the Device

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (96) ◽  
pp. 82-100
Author(s):  
Mitchell Gauvin
Keyword(s):  
Effective Means ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
Fox News ◽  
Harryette Mullen ◽  
Political Project ◽  
Poetic Practice ◽  
Bruce Andrews

What do experiential poet Bruce Andrews and former Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly have in common? On the surface, almost nothing—the former is a highly regarded, retired academic and the latter a disgraced TV host and conservative partisan. For a brief four minutes in 2006, however, the two met and discussed on national television the nature of politics and higher education, with predictable obtuseness on the part of O’Reilly. Nothing was concluded or conceded, and arguably nothing was learned. Yet both did portend a fundamental change to the operation of American political life. O’Reilly’s attempt was far more public (and destructive), but Andrews’s political project has remained confined to a small contingent of scholars. This article reexamines Andrews’s claim that the only effective means of political resistance can come from an experimental poetic practice that challenges the ideology of American individualism at the heart of contemporary sense making. The author argues that the limitations of this political project are instructive and relevant beyond the confines of a scholarly interest in poetry, which are revealed through readings of Harryette Mullen.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. DeJonge
Keyword(s):  
Political Life ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Clear Sense ◽  
Phases Of Development ◽  
Three Phases

The Introduction begins by noting the frequency and ease with which Bonhoeffer is mentioned in contemporary conversations about political resistance. Nonetheless, it would be difficult to derive from these appeals to Bonhoeffer any clear sense of the legacy of his political resistance. This raises the question: What did Bonhoeffer actually say about political resistance? Noting that Bonhoeffer spoke about political life primarily as a Christian pastor and Lutheran theologian, the Introduction sets forth the task of the book, which is a presentation of Bonhoeffer’s resistance thinking in the broader context of his theology. As summarized in the Introduction, this book presents Bonhoeffer’s resistance thinking chronologically according to three phases of development and systematically according to a sixfold typology of resistance.

From birth to agony: The political life of operation car wash (operação lava jato)

2021 ◽  
pp. e20210043
Author(s):  
Fernando Limongi
Keyword(s):  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Elected Officials ◽  
Critical View ◽  
Popular Support ◽  
Judicial Intervention ◽  
Car Wash ◽  
Political Project

This article reconstructs Operation Car Wash’s (Operação Lava Jato) political project. Three different moments of the operation are analysed: its conception, its encounter with political and administrative corruption, and its attempt to mobilize popular support to combat political and administrative corruption. The analysis characterizes the operation as a particular manifestation of judicial intervention in the system of representative politics, presenting a critical view of its effects on the balance of power between non-elected and elected officials.

The Reconstitution of Political Life: The Contemporary Relevance of Karl Mannheim's Political Project

Polity ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 623-647 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Kettler ◽  
Volker Meja
Keyword(s):  
Political Life ◽  
Political Project

Akan stool succession under colonial rule—continuity or change?

1975 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Henige
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Indirect Rule

This paper argues that interpretations which would view pre-colonial Akan political life as ‘normative’ and structured may be incorrect, at least in so far as stool succession is concerned. Contemporaneous evidence for this early period is at best sparse and at worst simply non-existent and seldom allows even tentative hypotheses. Rather, it is necessary to infer past practices from more recent data, whether this be observation of present behaviour or recent testimony about the past. In this case I have used the testimony presented at various stool and jurisdictional disputes during the colonial period for which records survive. These are generally, of course, ex parte statements and can be used only with caution. However, there is a surprising consensus throughout these records that both the principles and the patterns of stool succession and paramountcy in the pre-colonial period were variegated and even extemporaneous although, not surprisingly, there is much dispute about the reasons for this. On balance, this testimony suggests that a re-interpretation of early Akan political culture using a wider range of evidence is desirable.Although this implies that the impact of colonial ‘indirect’ rule was not as profound as has often been supposed, I have not discussed this problem directly except as it bears on the quality of the data. Nor have I attempted to analyse the day-to-day dynamics of political life, either for the earlier period (which would be impossible on the evidence) or for the colonial period (which would be irrelevant for comparison). Nevertheless, within the restricted compass of stool succession and paramountcy the argument here is that colonial rule involved little fundamental change from earlier practices. If anything, it probably served to delimit a greater range of previous options by seeking to codify them.

scholarly journals The Liberal and Labour Parties in North-East Politics 1900-14: The Struggle for Supremacy

1981 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. W. Purdue
Keyword(s):  
Labour Party ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
North East ◽  
Modern Britain ◽  
Consensus View

The related developments of the rise of the Labour Party and the decline of the Liberal Party have been subjected to considerable scrutiny by historians of modern Britain. Their work has, however, had the effect of stimulating new controversies rather than of establishing a consensus view as to the reasons for this fundamental change in British political life.

Relationship between state and religion: Egypt after the revolution†

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 404-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tarek El-Beshry
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Muslim Brotherhood ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Structure And Dynamics ◽  
Political Project ◽  
Cultural Forces ◽  
The Muslim Brotherhood

According to Tariq Al-Bishri, it is not true that it is the Islamic current that controls the state in Egypt as a political project is in the process of crystallizing. His main proposal is for the three forces dominating the structure and dynamics of political life in Egypt – namely the army and judiciary, the Muslim Brotherhood, and liberals – to collaborate and avoid posing religion and the state as two opposing entities. Having to deal with the Shari'a as the source or reference for legislation need not be a polarizing issue as religion is being dealt with as ‘the dominant culture’; moreover, much work has already been done along this line throughout the 20th century. Al-Bishri argues that democracy within a society becomes vacuous if it is detached from solving its socio-economic challenges. To this end he prioritizes four main issues: (1) freeing the Egyptian national will from American and Israeli pressures; (2) reforming and rebuilding government administrative bureaucracy; (3) organizing civil society; and (4) drafting a constitution. Al-Bishri considers that ‘after Islamists assume power in Egypt’ it is imperative for the existing political and cultural forces in Egypt to cooperate as none of them has enough power to negate the others or lead on his own.

Western Cold War Broadcasting

1999 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 168-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Critchlow
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Effective Means ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
The Political ◽  
Radio Stations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Information Monopoly ◽  
Radio Programs

In the 1940s and 1950s, Western governments turned to radio as the most effective means of countering the Soviet information monopoly. U.S. and West European radio stations attempted to provide listeners with the kind of programs they might expect from their own radio stations if the latter were free of censorship. For most of these listeners in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the broadcasts were their only contact with the outside world. The importance of the foreign radio programs was confirmed not only by audience estimates, but also by the considerable efforts the Communist regimes made to jam the transmissions. Given the importance of foreign broadcasting for the political life of the Soviet bloc, it is remarkable that these broadcasts have received scant scholarly attention in the Western countries that sponsored them. The three books reviewed here help to fill that gap.

Political Science and the Crisis of Authoritarianism

1990 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucian W. Pye
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
World Culture ◽  
Free Part ◽  
Political Cultures ◽  
The World

Political science is a discipline in constant danger of fragmentation because of the centrifugal pulls of our subfields and the contradictions in our scientific and humanistic traditions. We are, however, periodically brought together by the need to respond to major developments that are reshaping the political universe. We are today confronted with a unifying challenge in the crisis of authoritarianism that is undermining the legitimacy of all types of authoritarian systems throughout the world, including the Marxist-Leninist regimes. The crisis will not necessarily produce democracies, but rather a variety of part-free, part-authoritarian systems which do not conform to our classical typologies. Although the crisis of authoritarianism stems from profound social, economic, and cultural trends, the outcome in each case will be decided by political responses. Political science, therefore, has the responsibility to lead intellectually other social sciences in analyzing the fundamental change in political life that involves the clash between individual political cultures and the world culture of modernization.

Bonhoeffer on Resistance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. DeJonge
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Phases Of Development ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
Historical Accounts

A recent flurry of references to Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the context of political resistance shows that the story of his struggle against the Third Reich continues to animate imaginations across a broad political spectrum. Curious readers have long had access to a variety of Bonhoeffer biographies, all of which devote space to his resistance. And there are more specialized historical treatments that place his story in the context of the broader resistance to the Nazis. Beyond these biographical and historical accounts, however, there has been no comprehensive and accessible account of Bonhoeffer’s resistance thinking. He was, after all, not only a resister but a theologian in resistance, trained by vocation to reflect on and write about what the message of the Bible and the tradition of Christian theology might have to say about political life. In this book, internationally recognized Bonhoeffer scholar Michael DeJonge provides an account of Bonhoeffer’s resistance thinking as a whole, situated in the context of his thinking about political life in general and ultimately in the context of his theology. He presents Bonhoeffer’s resistance thinking chronologically according to three phases of development and systematically according to a sixfold typology of resistance. Overall, what emerges is Bonhoeffer’s surprisingly systematic, differentiated, and well-developed vision of political resistance anchored by his vision of the word of God entrusted to the church.

Capitalism and Christianity, American Style, by William E. Connolly

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 300-301
Author(s):  
Lisa Wedeen
Keyword(s):  
Political Life ◽  
Evangelical Christianity ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Fox News ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Elective Affinity ◽  
American Capitalism ◽  
American Style ◽  
Second Coming

In this passionate, insightful book, William E. Connolly tracks the work of the “evangelical-capitalist resonance machine,” both source and exemplification of a destructive ethos characteristic of contemporary American political life. Born out of the elective affinity between a segment of evangelical Christianity, based on vengeful visions of the Second Coming, and the “cowboy sector of American capitalism,” defined by its “exclusionary drives and claims to special entitlement” (p. 7), this evangelical-capitalist ethos works to shore up and deepen existing inequalities. Through church sermons and Fox News Reports, in practices of consumption and investment, the evangelical-capitalist resonance machine reverberates, working to stymie political debate and deflect political responsibility for the problems this same destructive ethos creates.

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