scholarly journals Danska ríkisráðið og íslensk stjórnmál 1874–1915

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-68
Author(s):  
Birgir Hermannsson

The main purpose of this article is to trace the debate in Iceland about the inclusion of the minister of Iceland in the Danish state council from 1874 to 1915. This debate concerned the interpretation of the Danish Positional Law and whether the Danish Constitution was in some regards also enforceable in Iceland. The state council was included in the Icelandic constitution in 1903 and proposed changes hotly debated until 1915. To understand this debate the political discourse on the state council is analyzed and its role in the wider struggle for independence. The Icelandic opposition to the state council was based on the definition of specific Icelandic issues apart from Danish ones in the Positional law and the proposition that the state council was a Danish institution defined by the Danish constitution. It was therefore against Icelandic self-rule to discuss and decide on specific Icelandic issues in a Danish institution. During the independence struggle Icelanders had to decide whether the state council clause was a matter of principle and should therefore stand in the way of agreement with Denmark or whether a more pragmatic view should be taken. The disagreement was therefore not only between Iceland and Denmark but also a source of conflict and disagreement within Iceland.

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-45
Author(s):  
Akihiko Shimizu

This essay explores the discourse of law that constitutes the controversial apprehension of Cicero's issuing of the ultimate decree of the Senate (senatus consultum ultimum) in Catiline. The play juxtaposes the struggle of Cicero, whose moral character and legitimacy are at stake in regards to the extra-legal uses of espionage, with the supposedly mischievous Catilinarians who appear to observe legal procedures more carefully throughout their plot. To mitigate this ambivalence, the play defends Cicero's actions by depicting the way in which Cicero establishes the rhetoric of public counsel to convince the citizens of his legitimacy in his unprecedented dealing with Catiline. To understand the contemporaneousness of Catiline, I will explore the way the play integrates the early modern discourses of counsel and the legal maxim of ‘better to suffer an inconvenience than mischief,’ suggesting Jonson's subtle sensibility towards King James's legal reformation which aimed to establish and deploy monarchical authority in the state of emergency (such as the Gunpowder Plot of 1605). The play's climactic trial scene highlights the display of the collected evidence, such as hand-written letters and the testimonies obtained through Cicero's spies, the Allbroges, as proof of Catiline's mischievous character. I argue that the tactical negotiating skills of the virtuous and vicious characters rely heavily on the effective use of rhetoric exemplified by both the political discourse of classical Rome and the legal discourse of Tudor and Jacobean England.


Author(s):  
Peter D. McDonald

The section introduces Part II, which spans the period 1946 to 2014, by tracing the history of the debates about culture within UNESCO from 1947 to 2009. It considers the central part print literacy played in the early decades, and the gradual emergence of what came to be called ‘intangible heritage’; the political divisions of the Cold War that had a bearing not just on questions of the state and its role as a guardian of culture but on the idea of cultural expression as a commodity; the slow shift away from an exclusively intellectualist definition of culture to a more broadly anthropological one; and the realpolitik surrounding the debates about cultural diversity since the 1990s. The section concludes by showing how at the turn of the new millennium UNESCO caught up with the radical ways in which Tagore and Joyce thought about linguistic and cultural diversity.


1916 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold J. Laski

“Of political principles,” says a distinguished authority, “whether they be those of order or of freedom, we must seek in religious and quasi-theological writings for the highest and most notable expressions.” No one, in truth, will deny the accuracy of this claim for those ages before the Reformation transferred the centre of political authority from church to state. What is too rarely realised is the modernism of those writings in all save form. Just as the medieval state had to fight hard for relief from ecclesiastical trammels, so does its modern exclusiveness throw the burden of a kindred struggle upon its erstwhile rival. The church, intelligibly enough, is compelled to seek the protection of its liberties lest it become no more than the religious department of an otherwise secular society. The main problem, in fact, for the political theorist is still that which lies at the root of medieval conflict. What is the definition of sovereignty? Shall the nature and personality of those groups of which the state is so formidably one be regarded as in its gift to define? Can the state tolerate alongside itself churches which avow themselves societates perfectae, claiming exemption from its jurisdiction even when, as often enough, they traverse the field over which it ploughs? Is the state but one of many, or are those many but parts of itself, the one?


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-128
Author(s):  
Elliott Karstadt

Many scholars argue that Hobbes’s political ideas do not significantly develop between The Elements of Law (1640) and Leviathan (1651). This article seeks to challenge that assumption by studying the way in which Hobbes’s deployment of the vocabulary of ‘interest’ develops over the course of the 1640s. The article begins by showing that the vocabulary is newly important in Leviathan, before attempting a ‘Hobbesian definition’ of what is meant by the term. We end by looking at the impact that the vocabulary has on two key areas of Hobbes’s philosophy: his theory of counsel and his arguments in favour of monarchy as the best form of government. In both areas, Hobbes’s conception of ‘interests’ is shown to be of crucial importance in lending a new understanding of the political issue under consideration.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 104
Author(s):  
Eliana Alemán ◽  
José Pérez-Agote

This work aims to show that the sacrificial status of the victims of acts of terrorism, such as the 2004 Madrid train bombings (“11-M”) and ETA (Basque Homeland and Liberty) attacks in Spain, is determined by how it is interpreted by the communities affected and the manner in which it is ritually elaborated a posteriori by society and institutionalised by the state. We also explore the way in which the sacralisation of the victim is used in socially and politically divided societies to establish the limits of the pure and the impure in defining the “Us”, which is a subject of dispute. To demonstrate this, we first describe two traumatic events of particular social and political significance (the case of Miguel Ángel Blanco and the 2004 Madrid train bombings). Secondly, we analyse different manifestations of the institutional discourse regarding victims in Spain, examining their representation in legislation, in public demonstrations by associations of victims of terrorism and in commemorative “performances” staged in Spain. We conclude that in societies such as Spain’s, where there exists a polarisation of the definition of the “Us”, the success of cultural and institutional performances oriented towards reparation of the terrorist trauma is precarious. Consequently, the validity of the post-sacrificial narrative centring on the sacred value of human life is ephemeral and thus fails to displace sacrificial narratives in which particularist definitions of the sacred Us predominate.


2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-180
Author(s):  
Roslina Abdul Latif ◽  
◽  
Sojoud Elgarrai ◽  

The following study of selected works of art by Zulkiflee Anwar Haque or better known as Zunar, a Malaysian political cartoonist from his book ‘Twit Twit Cincin’. This study is guided by the visual rhetoric theory that has three areas of study - nature, function and evaluation. The study looks at selected cartoons that addressed political figures, politics and social issues. The research looked at the way the caricatures portrayed Malaysian politicians, his perspectives on the political and social issues and how these issues were addressed. The researcher also looked at metaphors used by the cartoonist to communicate his ideas to the audiences. The study found that Zunar’s portrait of Malaysian politicians is not always positive. He is critical but not in an inflammatory way. The metaphors found in Zunar’s work are found to be common themes and simple to understand. They are also very well-known, visually appealing and a tool to tie his messages together and to get his ideas across. Zunar has managed to resist the oppression of the state through his cartoons while looking at institutional reform, puts forth an alternative articulation of history and nation that juxtapose the current government. Keywords: Zunar, political cartoonist, political and social issues, Twit Twit Cincin, metaphors.


Author(s):  
Līga Romāne-Kalniņa ◽  

Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric as the art of observing the available means of persuasion is one of the most widely used quotations not only in linguistics but also in social, political, and communication sciences. Aristotle, apart from defining the elements of rhetoric (logos, ethos and pathos), has proposed three types of rhetoric that refer either to the present situation (ceremonial), the past (judicial), or the future (political). The current president of Latvia and his language use is one of the most widely discussed topics across the media and academia due to the register, style, and content of his speeches. Moreover, the president of Latvia has a direct impact on how the state is perceived nationally and internationally; thus, it is significant to investigate the linguistic profile of the linguistic expression of the ideas communicated by the president to the wider public. The current study analyses 160 speeches given by president Egils Levits on nationally significant occasions as well as internationally with the aim to investigate whether the speeches of the president of Latvia correspond to the ceremonial, political or judicial rhetoric because the president represents both legal and political discourse as the former judge of the European Court of Human Rights and the former minister of Justice, and as the head of the Republic of Latvia represents the state nationally and abroad. The study is grounded in the theories on rhetoric and Critical Discourse Analysis applied to political discourse and presidential language and discussed by scholars such as Aristotle (1959), Van Dijk (2006), Chilton and Schäffner (2002), O’Keeffe (2006), Van Dijk (2008), David (2014), Wilson (2015) and Wodak and Mayer (2016). The results of the current study reveal that the speeches are a clear representation of a combination of legal, political, and ceremonial rhetoric and cross various semantic fields that are marked by the use of field terminology in combination with topos of definition and name interpretation to explain the terms directly in the speeches. The speeches by Levits are furthermore marked by relatively frequent use of loanwords, neologisms, obsolete words, and compounds that is one of the main characteristics of the linguistic profile of his speeches. Additional characteristic features are the use of parallel sentence constructions, inverted word orders, rhetorical questions, and pronominal referencing to attract the listener's attention and emphasize the thematic areas of the speeches. Nevertheless, it has been concluded that such linguistic techniques as metaphors, metonymies, synecdoche, or hyperbole are used comparatively less frequently, thus making the speeches appear more formal and less emotional from the linguistic point of view.


Author(s):  
Jaime Rodríguez Matos

This chapter examines the role of Christianity in the work of José Lezama Lima as it relates to his engagement with Revolutionary politics. The chapter shows the multiple temporalities that the State wields, and contrasts this thinking on temporality with the Christian apocalyptic vision held by Lezama. The chapter is concerned with highlighting the manner in which Lezama unworks Christianity from within. Yet its aim is not to prove yet again that there is a Christian matrix at the heart of modern revolutionary politics. Rather, it shows the way in which the mixed temporalities of the Revolution, already a deconstruction of the idea of the One, still poses a challenge for contemporary radical thought: how to think through the idea that political change is possible precisely because no politics is absolutely grounded. That Lezama illuminates the difficult question of the lack of political foundations from within the Christian matrix indicates that the problem at hand cannot be reduced to an ever more elusive and radical purge of the theological from the political.


Author(s):  
Simon J. G. Burton

Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex remains a source of perennial fascination for historians of political thought. Written in 1644 in the heat of the Civil Wars it constitutes an intellectual and theological justification of the entire Covenanting movement and a landmark in the development of Protestant political theory. Rutherford’s argument in the Lex Rex was deeply indebted to scholastic and Conciliarist sources, and this chapter examines the way he deployed these, especially the political philosophy of John Mair and Jacques Almain, in order to construct a covenantal model of kingship undergirded by an interwoven framework of individual and communal rights. In doing so it shows the ongoing influence of the Conciliarist tradition on Scottish political discourse and also highlights unexpected connections between Rutherford’s Covenanting and his Augustinian and Scotistic theology of grace and freedom.


City, State ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 17-50
Author(s):  
Ran Hirschl

This chapter examines four introductory dimensions of the political and constitutional discourse around cities. The first is the tremendous interest in cities throughout much of the human sciences as contrasted with the silence of public law in general, and of comparative constitutional law in particular. Next, the chapter takes a look at the dominant statist stance embedded in constitutional law, in particular as it addresses sovereignty and spatial governance of the polity. A brief account of what national constitutions actually say about cities, and more significantly what they do not is then given. Finally, the chapter turns to the tendency in political discourse on collective identity to understand the “local” almost exclusively at the national or regional levels, rather than distinguishing urban interests from those of the state. Taken together, the four angles of city constitutional (non)status examined here highlight the bewildering silence of contemporary constitutional discourse with respect to cities and urbanization, as well as the strong statist outlook embedded in national constitutional orders, effectively rendering the metropolis a constitutionally non-tenable entity.


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