Failing the Masses in Syria

Women Rising ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 135-142
Author(s):  
Asaad Alsaleh
Keyword(s):  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Political Control ◽  
The Political ◽  
Women's Liberation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Democratic Reform ◽  
Women’S Liberation ◽  
Syrian Revolution ◽  
The Masses

In this chapter, Asaad Alsaleh discusses the problematic and double-sided role of the public intellectual Buthaina Shabaan in the Syrian revolution. Shabaan was a writer, professor, and advocate of the Syrian regime who spurred the populace to embrace the possibility of democratic reform. However, this feminist intellectual accepted—even embraced—the political control employed by the Assad authoritarian one-party regime, which used her as a representative of its supposed progressive and women’s liberation agendas.

The Liberation of Islamic Letters

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Anne McLarney
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Broad Spectrum ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Women's Liberation ◽  
Islamic Ethics ◽  
Women’S Liberation ◽  
Political Activist ◽  
Intellectual Elites

This chapter focuses on Bint al-Shatiʾ, whose writings crystallize some of the most salient themes of the modern Islamic public sphere and illustrate the power of adab in formulating modern Islamic ethics and politics. A public intellectual, political activist, chaired professor, journalist, and adēba (woman of letters), Bint al-Shatiʾ synthesized discursive trends for a broad spectrum of readers that included both intellectual elites and popular audiences. Her Omdurman lectures reinterpreted the concept of “women's liberation” for an Islamic politics, nearly seventy years after Qasim Amin first ventured his interpretation of “women's liberation” in Islam in 1899. Like Amin, she has unmitigated faith in the power of education and knowledge—scientific, Islamic, and literary—to elevate the political community from its political chains. But she also surpasses Amin in imagining the force of women's literary voices in transforming the umma, just as she surpassed him in literary accomplishment, stature, and recognition.

Ambiguities and Clichés in the Debate about Public Intellectuals

2007 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara A. Misztal
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
New Left ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper's purpose is to exam Turner's (2006a) thesis that Britain neither produced its own public intellectuals nor a distinctive sociology. It aims to outline difficulties with the logic of Turner's argument rather than to discuss any particular public intellectual in Britain. The paper argues that Turner's claim about the comparative insignificance of public intellectuals in Britain reinforces the myth of British exceptionalism and overlooks the significance of the contribution to the public sphere by intellectuals from other disciplines than sociology. It discusses Turner's assumption that intellectual innovation requires massive disruptive and violent change and suggests that such an assertion is not necessarily supported by studies of the conditions of the production of knowledge. Finally, the paper argues that Turner's anguish at the absence of public intellectuals among sociologists in Britain is symptomatic of New Left thinking that models the idea of the intellectual on Gramsci. In conclusion, the paper asserts that Turner's idea of the intellectual fails to note the tension at the heart of the role of public intellectual–the tension between specialist and non-specialist functions.

scholarly journals Fatma Aliye Hanım: Gender Debates in Turkey

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 693-716
Author(s):  
Zeynep Direk
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Impact ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Republic Of Turkey ◽  
Late Ottoman

Abstract This essay explores the late nineteenth and early twentieth Century gender debates in the late Ottoman Empire, and the early Republic of Turkey with a focus on Fatma Aliye’s presence in the public space, as the first Ottoman woman philosopher, novelist, and public intellectual. I choose to concentrate on her because of the important stakes of the gender debates of that period, and the ways in which they are echoed in the present can be effectively discussed by reflecting on the ways in which Fatma Aliye is read, presented, and received. In the first part of this paper, I talk about Fatma Aliye’s life and experience of her gender as a woman, and point to her key interests as a writer and philosopher. In the second part, I situate her in the political history of feminism during the Rearrangement Period (Tanzimat), the Second Constitutional Era (II. Meşrutiyet), and the institution of the modern Republic of Turkey. Lastly, in the third part, I discuss the diverse ways in which she is interpreted in contemporary Turkey. I explore the political impact of the reception of Fatma Aliye as an intellectual figure on the current gender debates in Turkey.

scholarly journals FOOTBALL, BRAZIL AND THE ROLE OF THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (esp) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Grant Jarvie
Keyword(s):  
Public Intellectual ◽  
The Public

Este ensaio trata de questões relacionadas a questionamentos sobre o papel do intelectual público e da universidade como recursos para tratar de questões públicas e assumir ativamente o engajamento público como parte do contrato universitário. O ensaio trabalha com os protestos sociais e políticos que antecederam à Copa do Mundo da FIFA, em 2014, no Brasil, como base para pesquisar duas interrogações: Para que servem as universidades? Que oportunidades são proporcionadas pelo esporte para se atuar como intelectual público e ser recurso de esperança no mundo de hoje? Este pequeno estudo sobre o futebol, o Brasil e o papel do intelectual se baseia em fontes primárias e secundárias. O artigo conclui com a recomendação de que as pessoas que trabalham no esporte e por meio dele na universidade têm um meio ideal para trabalhar com o público sobre as questões que são importantes para o público, e devem usar integralmente essa oportunidade.

Rethinking Kant as a public intellectual

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-108
Author(s):  
Sofie Møller
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Political ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past

In Kant’s Politics in Context, Reidar Maliks offers a compelling account of Kant’s political philosophy as part of a public debate on rights, citizenship, and revolution in the wake of the French Revolution. Maliks argues that Kant’s political thought was developed as a moderate middle ground between radical and conservative political interpretations of his moral philosophy. The book’s central thesis is that the key to understanding Kant’s legal and political thought lies in the public debate among Kant’s followers and that in this debate we find the political challenges which Kant’s political philosophy is designed to solve. Kant’s Politics in Context raises crucial questions about how to understand political thinkers of the past and is proof that our understanding of the past will remain fragmented if we limit our studies to the great men of the established canon.

Reading inquiry through the prism of unemployement

2020 ◽  
pp. 201-216
Author(s):  
Guillaume Heuguet
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Doctoral Students ◽  
Science Inquiry ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

This exploratory text starts from a doctoral-unemployed experience and was triggered by the discussions within a collective of doctoral students on this particularly ambiguous status since it is situated between student, unemployed, worker, self-entrepreneur, citizen-subject of social rights or user-commuter in offices and forms. These discussions motivated the reading and commentary of a heterogeneous set of texts on unemployment, precariousness and the functioning of the institutions of the social state. This article thus focuses on the relationship between knowledge and unemployment, as embodied in the public space, in the relationship with Pôle Emploi, and in the academic literature. It articulates a threefold problematic : what is known and said publicly about unemployment? What can we learn from the very experience of the relationship with an institution like Pôle Emploi? How can these observations contribute to an understanding of social science inquiry and the political role of knowledge fromm precariousness?

“The Factory Of The Revolution”

Women Rising ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 354-362
Author(s):  
Layla Saleh
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Political ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Second Year ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
Syrian Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Giving a personal voice to the role of women in the Syrian revolution, Layla Saleh places the account of one Syrian woman, Um Ibrahim, exiled in the second year of the uprising, in the larger context of women’s participation in the revolutionary popular mobilization, after the Assad regime’s “women’s rights” proved unsatisfactory and insufficient. The narrative culminates in Um Ibrahim’s own participation in the protests in Damascus before the full-fledged war took hold. Um Ibrahim recounts how women took on a central role in the Syrian revolution, hiding protesters, cooking, delivering food and weapons, and serving in the political and armed opposition. However, they have been victimized by the war, their activist role has been diminished, and their security and physical well-being have become precarious as the country is bloodily entrenched in civil and proxy warfare.

Libraries and the Preservation of Public Intellectual Space and Heritage

2020 ◽  
pp. 218-230
Author(s):  
Anil Kumar Nauriya
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Public Library ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Intellectual Heritage ◽  
Epistemic Justice ◽  
Primary Means

There is one aspect of Libraries that needs particularly to be highlighted, namely the role of the public library as a par excellence site that upholds the public intellectual space when contrasted to the more restricted academic space. It is a primary means by which public intellectuals and, through them, civil society, may hold even academia to account when the latter becomes confined by dead habits or restricted by institutional, bureaucratic, elitist or other, structures. It needs to be emphasized that academia and scholarship are not necessarily congruent. The interplay between academia and scholarship is crucial and that is made possible by the public library. Open libraries, especially public libraries, are at least as vital as the academia. The importance of a library or a museum is not necessarily related to its location or its size. “Preservation” and “intellectual heritage” need to be decolonized in order to realize epistemic justice.

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