‘Blow Your Trumpets, Angels!’: Jeremy Goldstein and Truth to Power Café

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Jarrett
Keyword(s):  
Political Activism ◽  
Safe Space ◽  
The Political ◽  
Subjective Character ◽  
Call To Action ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
The Public ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Theatre Production ◽  
Public Nature

In the years since his death, some of the most important new areas of enquiry in Pinter studies have centred on the artistic works inspired by this major dramatist. One such endeavour is a new theatre production entitled Truth to Power Café. Truth to Power Café has been written and devised by the artist and producer Jeremy Goldstein. Goldstein’s work is a blend of poetry, performance and storytelling – an exploration of his own hidden history, and an articulation of his own ambivalent feelings. Even though Pinter contended that art and politics were irreconcilable, the argument of this paper is that Truth to Power Café represents an attempt by Goldstein to generate a synthesis between the artistic and the political: to reconcile the subjective character of art with the public nature of political activism; to mobilize the power of the theatre to enable the oppressed to break through the ritualistic ‘habits of lying’ that protect the powerful, and to discover a form of theatre where the audience can articulate themselves with ‘honesty’ and ‘precision’. Goldstein reconceptualizes the theatre as a ‘safe space’, where audience members can speak out against oppressive forces. Goldstein’s performance is a ‘call to action’. Each life testimony mediates between Goldstein’s lyrical psycho-biography, and the audience’s reception of his presentation, situating each regional performance of Truth to Power Café in its social, historical, and economic context. Goldstein achieves his objective by interweaving the personal, the private and the artistic with the public, the political and the historical.

The Public Nature of Critical Discourses on “Religion”

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-130
Author(s):  
Kenneth G. MacKendrick
Keyword(s):  
Review Essay ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Public Nature ◽  
Critical Discourses ◽  
Oxford University Press

Review Essay of William E. Arnal and Russell T. McCutcheon’sThe Sacred is the Profane: The Political Nature of ‘Religion’(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Sophie Richter-Devroe
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Entry Point ◽  
The Political ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
The Public ◽  
Oslo Accords ◽  
Aims And Scope ◽  
The Public Sphere

The introduction provides an analytical entry point to, and overview of, the different and evolving forms of Palestinian women’s political activism since the 1993 Oslo Accords. Outlining the book’s main aims and scope, it contextualizes Palestinian women’s political activism historically, by tracing major shifts in women’s peacebuilding, resistance, and everyday forms of politics, as well as conceptually, by framing the analysis within the scholarly literature on political activism, the public sphere, and the political more broadly.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroleen Marji Sayej
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Patterns Of Interaction

The introduction highlights the discourses of the senior Shiite clerics and how they oriented a state under reconstruction, especially during a period of brutal and sustained violence. Their importance lies in their ability to affect the state’s course of action and also offers a window into the political culture in which people operate. There is interpretive value in the ideas that flood the public sphere and are reproduced over and again, creating new patterns of interaction and new political symbols. The ayatollahs helped to set the parameters for debate—to frame it. The chapter highlights the importance of the ayatollahs within the Shiite hierarchical tradition, which made their political activism possible.

Political activism and ethnic revival of a cultural symbol

Ethnicities ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 489-511 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Sharaby
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Symbol ◽  
The Public Sphere

This article discusses the ethnic revival of the Mimouna holiday, a traditional holiday of immigrants from North Africa in Israel. Its revival was one of the main expressions for the ethnic revival of these immigrants after their immigration. The article analyzes the evolution of the Mimouna from an ‘unknown’ holiday celebrated by only a part of the immigrants from North Africa in a limited ritual system into a very prominent holiday among these immigrants, which was even awarded recognition and prominence in the ‘public sphere’. The article focuses on the political activism of party representatives and immigrants from North Africa as the major factor that set in motion the process of the introduction of the Mimouna holiday into the cultural mainstream in Israel.

Democrazy—Dem Go Craze, O: Monitoring the 1999 Nigerian Elections

1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-33
Author(s):  
Darren Kew
Keyword(s):  
Transition Program ◽  
The Political ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Soccer Match ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Military

In many respects, the least important part of the 1999 elections were the elections themselves. From the beginning of General Abdusalam Abubakar’s transition program in mid-1998, most Nigerians who were not part of the wealthy “political class” of elites—which is to say, most Nigerians— adopted their usual politically savvy perspective of siddon look (sit and look). They waited with cautious optimism to see what sort of new arrangement the military would allow the civilian politicians to struggle over, and what in turn the civilians would offer the public. No one had any illusions that anything but high-stakes bargaining within the military and the political class would determine the structures of power in the civilian government. Elections would influence this process to the extent that the crowd influences a soccer match.

Risk, Desire and Adaptation: The Paradox of Queer Solidarity and the Political Possibility of Death Under Neoliberalism and Homonationalism

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Natalie Kouri-Towe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sexual Rights ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Strategy I

In 2015, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid Toronto (QuAIA Toronto) announced that it was retiring. This article examines the challenges of queer solidarity through a reflection on the dynamics between desire, attachment and adaptation in political activism. Tracing the origins and sites of contestation over QuAIA Toronto's participation in the Toronto Pride parade, I ask: what does it mean for a group to fashion its own end? Throughout, I interrogate how gestures of solidarity risk reinforcing the very systems that activists desire to resist. I begin by situating contemporary queer activism in the ideological and temporal frameworks of neoliberalism and homonationalism. Next, I turn to the attempts to ban QuAIA Toronto and the term ‘Israeli apartheid’ from the Pride parade to examine the relationship between nationalism and sexual citizenship. Lastly, I examine how the terms of sexual rights discourse require visible sexual subjects to make individual rights claims, and weighing this risk against political strategy, I highlight how queer solidarities are caught in a paradox symptomatic of our times: neoliberalism has commodified human rights discourses and instrumentalised sexualities to serve the interests of hegemonic power and obfuscate state violence. Thinking through the strategies that worked and failed in QuAIA Toronto's seven years of organising, I frame the paper though a proposal to consider political death as a productive possibility for social movement survival in the 21stcentury.

Facing the Challenge of Democracy

2011 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Democratic Representation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Party Polarization

Citizens are political simpletons—that is only a modest exaggeration of a common characterization of voters. Certainly, there is no shortage of evidence of citizens' limited political knowledge, even about matters of the highest importance, along with inconsistencies in their thinking, some glaring by any standard. But this picture of citizens all too often approaches caricature. This book brings together leading political scientists who offer new insights into the political thinking of the public, the causes of party polarization, the motivations for political participation, and the paradoxical relationship between turnout and democratic representation. These studies propel a foundational argument about democracy. Voters can only do as well as the alternatives on offer. These alternatives are constrained by third players, in particular activists, interest groups, and financial contributors. The result: voters often appear to be shortsighted, extreme, and inconsistent because the alternatives they must choose between are shortsighted, extreme, and inconsistent.

Our universities away from partisan Altsarat

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
أ.د.عبد الجبار احمد عبد الله
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Moral Duty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Office ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The Public ◽  
The University

In order to codify the political and partisan activity in Iraq, after a difficult labor, the Political Parties Law No. (36) for the year 2015 started and this is positive because it is not normal for the political parties and forces in Iraq to continue without a legal framework. Article (24) / paragraph (5) of the law requires that the party and its members commit themselves to the following: (To preserve the neutrality of the public office and public institutions and not to exploit it for the gains of a party or political organization). This is considered because it is illegal to exploit State institutions for partisan purposes . It is a moral duty before the politician not to exploit the political parties or some of its members or those who try to speak on their behalf directly or indirectly to achieve partisan gains. Or personality against other personalities and parties at the expense of the university entity.

التأثيرات السياسية في استدامة الدين العام في موازنة العراق 2019

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (66) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
م.م أحمد حامد جمعة ◽  
◽  
د. كمال فيلد البصري
Keyword(s):  
Public Debt ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
The Political ◽  
Financial Policy ◽  
Public Expenditures ◽  
Public Budget ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Benefit ◽  
Political Impact

This study clarifies the analysis of the reality of the financial policy in the budget of Iraq 2019, and that analysis is evaluated by tracking the elements of the public budget from public expenditures and public revenues, and the study focuses on the size of the political impact on the path of public spending, as well as the analysis of public spending and revenues in various sectors and sections of the public budget. This study also shows the size of the risks resulting from the continuation of the financial deficit, as well as the risks of public debt according to the indicators of its sustainability analysis within the financial and economic indicators that express the risks of public debt. The study emphasized that public spending is still based on the political decision and does not achieve the principles and objectives of the economic budget that achieve the public benefit. The necessity requires efficient spending and fair distribution in order to avoid future public debt risks and their impact on future generations

Sentientist Democracy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair Cochrane
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public

Chapter 3 asks what kinds of institutions are needed to protect the worth and rights of sentient creatures. The chapter’s ultimate claim is that they are best protected by democratic institutions: that is, institutions which are participative, deliberative, and representative, and underpinned by a set of entrenched rights. Crucially, the chapter further argues that those institutions should be comprised of dedicated animal representatives. The job of those representatives should be to act as trustees of the interests of ‘animal members’ of the political community. In other words, their job should be to translate the interests of animals with whom we share a ‘community of fate’ into their deliberations with other representatives over what is in the public good.

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