How to Survive the End of the World

2021 ◽  
pp. 176-215
Author(s):  
Marilisa Jiménez García

This chapter contextualizes the contemporary era of youth literature and media in Puerto Rico and its diaspora, both those in the US and those returning to Puerto Rico. Looking at the 1980s into 2010s, this chapter analyzes the role of youth literature and culture in Puerto Rico’s contemporary struggles, including its economic crisis, public debt, the devastation of Hurricane Maria, and the political uprising which led to the resignation of former Governor Ricardo Rosello. Puerto Rican storytellers continue narrating Puerto Rico’s contemporary frontline struggles, from Broadway to comics to community-organized story times and children’s books.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gibran Cruz-Martinez

This essay aims to briefly collect the historical context of colonialism in Puerto Rico since the Spanish era but primarily focuses on revealing the reasons to consider Puerto Rico as a colony and non-self-governing territory of the US – rather than a neocolony of the US. Later, the article addresses the three non-colonial options recognized by the 1514 United Nations (UN) Resolution and the results of the five referendums on the political status of the Caribbean archipelago held over the last five decades. The essay concludes that Puerto Rico is undoubtedly a colony and asks for the United Nations and the sovereign countries of the world to denounce this illegal colonial relationship that subordinates residents of Puerto Rico to the will of the US Congress where they have no voting representatives.


Author(s):  
Marilisa Jiménez García ◽  
Sonia Nieto

Through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, American youth culture and literature grew up with Puerto Rico. The contemporary US tradition of youth literature and media, along with how young people, as authors, narrate their part in social struggle, is inseparable from Puerto Rican thought and writing. Youth literature, media, and youth-led movements have played a prominent role in portraying the political and cultural relationship between the US and Puerto Rico—from the US acquisition to Puerto Rican writer’s pleas for a place in US letters and culture. During the early colonial encounter, children’s books were among the first kinds of literature produced by US writers introducing the new colony, its people, and the US’s role as a twentieth-century colonial power to the American public. Subsequently, youth literature and media was an important tool of Puerto Rican cultural and educational elite institutions and Puerto Rican revolutionary thought for negotiating US assimilation and upholding a strong Latin American, Caribbean national stance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-315
Author(s):  
Simon(e) Van Saarloos

David Buckel set himself on fire to publicly stage the horrors of climate change, Delores “Lolita” Lebrón performed a sensational act in the US congress hall, hailing bullets while calling out: ¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre!When do we recognize violence as violence? When is the absence of a counter-attack a form of compliance? Do the desires of activists need an expression of violence to establish an ‘otherwise’ that’s carefully repressed? In “Blow your mind! Shards hailing, on superfluous violence to stop surviving” various instances of violence weave together, obscuring the difference between theatre, terrorism, assault and sensational act.The end of the world is a future for those who have been living like survivors. To explore the potential of violence as resistance, the author proposes to fight as an armless aimless army of vulnerables.‘Violence happens upon you. But that’s not really true for everyone. As a white cis-woman with passport privilege, I can say I’m interested in violence. Interested in, interested in. Violence doesn’t surround me. It may happen to me, but I would perceive it as an extraordinary event, a happening. I approach violence. I approach, I approach – there’s enough comfortable distance to repeat my sentence and imagine it echoing.’ 


2009 ◽  
pp. 26-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Glaziev

The article analyzes fundamental reasons for the world economic crisis in the light of global technological shifts. It proves that it is caused by the substitution of technological modes. It is shown that sharp increase and slump in stock indices and prices for energy resources are typical of the process of technological substitution which occurs regularly according to the rhythm of long-wave fluctuations of the world economic activity. The article rationalizes a package of anti-crisis measures aimed at stimulating the new technological mode. Its structure and role of the locomotive factor of the new long wave of economic growth are revealed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


2019 ◽  
pp. 512-519
Author(s):  
Teymur Dzhalilov ◽  
Nikita Pivovarov

The published document is a part of the working record of The Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee on May 5, 1969. The employees of The Common Department of the CPSU Central Committee started writing such working records from the end of 1965. In contrast to the protocols, the working notes include speeches of the secretaries of the Central Committee, that allow to deeper analyze the reactions of the top party leadership, to understand their position regarding the political agenda. The peculiarity of the published document is that the Secretariat of the Central Committee did not deal with the most important foreign policy issues. It was the responsibility of the Politburo. However, it was at a meeting of the Secretariat of the Central Committee when Brezhnev raised the question of inviting G. Husák to Moscow. The latter replaced A. Dubček as the first Secretary of the Communist party of Czechoslovakia in April 1969. As follows from the document, Leonid Brezhnev tried to solve this issue at a meeting of the Politburo, but failed. However, even at the Secretariat of the Central Committee the Leonid Brezhnev’s initiative at the invitation of G. Husák was not supported. The published document reveals to us not only new facets in the mechanisms of decision-making in the CPSU Central Committee, the role of the Secretary General in this process, but also reflects the acute discussions within the Soviet government about the future of the world socialist systems.


2021 ◽  
pp. 095394682110313
Author(s):  
Nancy J. Duff

This article argues that an apocalyptic interpretation of divine revelation provides the theological foundation for discerning the appropriate space for human life to thrive. This apocalyptic theological ethic is contrasted with that of end-time Christians who have supported Donald Trump as God’s chosen one and who joined the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. It contrasts five features of apocalyptic thinking for both groups: (1) expectation of the end of the world, (2) ethics, (3) Christ, nation, and the first commandment (4) Christians and Jews, and (5) the cross. While the article seeks to give a fair description of the beliefs of end-time Christians, it argues that their beliefs have taken a heretical and dangerous turn.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172110026
Author(s):  
Kurt Weyland

Responding to Rueda’s questions, this essay explains the political-strategic approach (PSA) to populism and highlights its analytical strengths, which have become even more important with the emergence of populist governments across the world. PSA identifies populism’s core by emphasizing the central role of personalistic leaders who tend to operate in opportunistic ways, rather than consistently pursuing programmatic or ideological orientations. PSA is especially useful nowadays, when scholars’ most urgent task is to elucidate the political strategies of populist chief executives and their problematic repercussions, especially populism’s threat to democracy.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hou Yuxin

Abstract The Wukan Incident attracted extensive attention both in China and around the world, and has been interpreted from many different perspectives. In both the media and academia, the focus has very much been on the temporal level of the Incident. The political and legal dimensions, as well as the implications of the Incident in terms of human rights have all been pored over. However, what all of these discussions have overlooked is the role played by religious force during the Incident. The village of Wukan has a history of over four hundred years, and is deeply influenced by the religious beliefs of its people. Within both the system of religious beliefs and in everyday life in the village, the divine immortal Zhenxiu Xianweng and the religious rite of casting shengbei have a powerful influence. In times of peace, Xianweng and casting shengbei work to bestow good fortune, wealth and longevity on both the village itself, and the individuals who live there. During the Wukan Incident, they had a harmonizing influence, and helped to unify and protect the people. Looking at the specific roles played by religion throughout the Wukan Incident will not only enable us to develop a more meaningful understanding of the cultural nature and the complexity of the Incident itself, it will also enrich our understanding, on a divine level, of innovations in social management.


2021 ◽  

Historians of political thought and international lawyers have both expanded their interest in the formation of the present global order. History, Politics, Law is the first express encounter between the two disciplines, juxtaposing their perspectives on questions of method and substance. The essays throw light on their approaches to the role of politics and the political in the history of the world beyond the single polity. They discuss the contrast between practice and theory as well as the role of conceptual and contextual analyses in both fields. Specific themes raised for both disciplines include statehood, empires and the role of international institutions, as well as the roles of economics, innovation and gender. The result is a vibrant cross-section of contrasts and parallels between the methods and practices of the two disciplines, demonstrating the many ways in which both can learn from each other.


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