‘It is this ignorance we have to fight’

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stamatina Katsiveli
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Gender Recognition ◽  
The Public ◽  
Transgender Identity ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Interactional Analysis ◽  
The Public Sphere

Growing legal LGBTQI+ representation in Greece is systematically targeted by Greek homophobic and transphobic nationalism, commonly articulated in public by (far) rightwing politicians and church representatives. The present article brings into attention a more subtle way in which discriminatory discourses make their way into the public sphere, disguised behind progressive narratives of inclusivity. I examine an interview with two transgender activists on the occasion of the gender recognition law passed in Greece in 2017. According to the journalist, the interview seeks ‘to fight ignorance’ and, by extension, transphobia. Drawing on conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis, I identify two discursive strategies through which the journalist disrupts his initial framing: (1) elaborated questions which invoke and assume gender normativity and (2) references to the overhearing audience, which assume (and reproduce) a generalised scepticism regarding transgender identity. This interview instantiates a new powerful genre of politics in disguise which deserves attention and requires nuanced interactional analysis in order to be traced and unpacked.

Multicultural differences in the public sphere

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 (1) ◽  
pp. 285-300
Author(s):  
Rudi Visker
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Academic Question ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Great Length ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Symbols ◽  
Private Realm ◽  
The Public Sphere

The present article plays off two conceptions of the public sphere against one another. The first one sees in it a sign of what is already present in the private sphere, whereas the second regards it as a symbol that has to inscribe its own symbolic force into the private realm. That this is by no means a mere academic question becomes obvious by way of several examples analyzed at great length: the institution of mourning and the discussion about the presence of religious symbols in the public sphere. An argument for considering the Muslim veil as a protection against the divine is put forward in an attempt to clarify the presuppositions of our current predisposal against it. Ultimately, pluralism should perhaps not just be taken to refer only to the presence of others outside of us who we are able to numerically count, but might be the more difficult plight of having to cope with an otherness within each of us. Should the latter be the case, then we are in need of a public sphere where we can leave behind and thus honor what is not only differentiating us from others but also from ourselves.

scholarly journals Działalność publiczna Tadeusza Staniewskiego w Swarzędzu do roku 1918

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 43-61
Author(s):  
Barbara Ksit
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Present Article ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
City Council ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Social Activist ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

mieście Swarzędz. Funkcję tę pełnił społecznie przez dziewięć miesięcy. Ponownie wybrany burmistrzem w 1929 r., pełnił tę funkcję do 1939 r. Dotychczasowe opracowania omawiają działalność Tadeusza Staniewskiego w Swarzędzu, począwszy od listopada 1918 r. Niniejszy artykuł ma być próbą poszerzenia wiadomości na jego temat we wcześniejszym okresie. Syn nauczyciela, ukończył Gimnazjum Fryderyka Wilhelma w Poznaniu. Na początku XX w. osiadł w Swarzędzu, gdzie zyskał uznanie jako kupiec i społecznik. W odniesieniu do lat 1900–1918, kiedy Tadeusz Staniewski stawiał pierwsze kroki w działalności publicznej, najlepszym źródłem jest prasa wielkopolska, zwłaszcza „Postęp” i „Orędownik” – czasopisma reprezentujące interesy drobnomieszczaństwa. Działalność Tadeusza Staniewskiego była omawiana na ich łamach szczególnie w kontekście dwóch wydarzeń istotnych dla Polaków w Swarzędzu – wyborów do Rady Miejskiej w 1909 r. i sprawy budowy Domu Katolickiego. Public activity of Tadeusz Staniewski in Swarzędz until the year 1918 In 1919, Tadeusz Staniewski was the first Pole to become mayor of Swarzędz, a town just outside of Poznań. He held this position for 9 months with no remuneration. He was re-elected in 1929 and remained the mayor of Swarzędz until 1939. Previous articles on the activity of Tadeusz Staniewski in Swarzędz discuss his life from November 1918. The present article aims at expanding this timespan and includes information about him in earlier periods. Son of a teacher, he graduated from Frederick William College in Poznań. In the early 20th century he settled down in Swarzędz, where he gained recognition as a tradesman and social activist. Regarding the years 1900–1918, when Tadeusz Staniewski entered the public sphere, the best sources are press articles published in Greater Poland journals, especially “Postęp” and “Orędownik” which represented the interests of the lower middle class. The activity of Tadeusz Staniewski was discussed there particularly with regard to two events of major importance for Poles in Swarzędz: the 1909 City Council elections and the construction of the Catholic House.

scholarly journals “No More Apologies”: Violence as a Trigger for Public Controversy over Islam in the Digital Public Sphere

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-152
Author(s):  
Johanna Sumiala ◽  
Anu A. Harju
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Media Ethnography ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Terrorist Violence

This article investigates how violence associated with religion, here namely Islam, functions as a trigger for public controversy in the Turku stabbings that took place in Finland in 2017. We begin by outlining the Lyotard-Habermas debate on controversy and compound this with current research on the digital public sphere. We combine cartography of controversy with digital media ethnography as methods of collecting data and discourse analysis for analysing the material. We investigate how the controversy triggered by violence is constructed around Islam in the public sphere of Twitter. We identify three discursive strategies connecting violence and Islam in the debates around the Turku stabbings: scapegoating, essentialisation, and racialisation. These respectively illustrate debates regarding blame for terrorism, the nature of Islam, and racialisation of terrorist violence and the Muslim Other. To conclude, we reflect on the ways in which the digital public sphere impacts Habermasian consensus- and Lyotardian dissensus-oriented argumentation.

Gendered Narratives of Mobility

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 323-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Grossman-Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Ethnographic Case Study ◽  
The Public ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Nepali Women ◽  
Present Case Study ◽  
Conflicting Messages

In the last 30 years women have been making significant inroads into Nepal's public sphere, troubling long-held normative assumptions about women's place in modern Nepal. In this article I examine the discursive strategies that working-class Nepali women employ to justify and legitimate their presence in Nepal's urban public spaces and simultaneously claim an identity as a modern Nepali woman. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of one group of publicly visible women, female trekking guides, I provide a close analysis of how spatial language is leveraged by both state actors and informants to articulate multiple, sometimes conflicting, messages about Nepali women's “place” in contemporary society. In particular, I focus on the use of spatial metaphors, showing how informants use terms such as inside, outside, forward, and backward to locate themselves within narratives of modernity, development, and national progress. I conclude by showing that unlike women in other examples from the global South, who have framed their emergent presence in the public sphere as an extension of a traditionally feminine and domestic role, informants in the present case study appropriate a masculine language of overt publicness and mobility to justify their visibility. In so doing, informants author themselves as agents of modernity rather than objects of the state's development efforts.

Empire and Eugenics

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-454
Author(s):  
Ezra Horbury ◽  
Christine “Xine” Yao
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Gender Recognition ◽  
The Public ◽  
Radical Feminist ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Trans Studies ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Uk

Abstract This essay offers an overview of trans studies in the United Kingdom in the current climate of transphobia in both academia and the public sphere. This report outlines how trans-exclusionary radical feminist scholars have co-opted the language of victimization and academic freedom following proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act in 2018. The production of ignorance about trans issues and trans studies is a deliberate project abetted by the UK media even on the left. In response, the authors organized an interdisciplinary trans symposium to affirm trans lives and trans studies for students, scholars, and the wider community. The authors reflect on the successes and failures of the event in light of their institution's past as the origin of eugenics founded by Frances Galton and the broader scope of the legacies of the British empire.

The Suffering of the Perpetrators: The Ethics of Traumatic German Historicity in Karen Bass's Young Adult World War II Novels

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adult World ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.

Habermas, Cultural Hegemony, and the Educational Public Sphere

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Arabic Speaking

This study explores Habermas’s work in terms of the relevance of his theory of the public sphere to the politics and poetics of the Arab oral tradition and its pedagogical practices. In what ways and forms does Arab heritage inform a public sphere of resistance or dissent? How does Habermas’s notion of the public space help or hinder a better understanding of the Arab oral tradition within the sociopolitical and educational landscape of the Arabic-speaking world? This study also explores the pedagogical implications of teaching Arab orality within the context of the public sphere as a contested site that informs a mode of resistance against social inequality and sociopolitical exclusions.

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