scholarly journals Gendering Memory: Intersectional Aspects of the Polish Politics of Memory

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-118
Author(s):  
Inga B. Kuźma ◽  
Edyta Pietrzak

The article is devoted to the process of gendering memory as a counterpoint to the politicization of memory observed in the Polish context. The core problem of the paper is a description of a local case of this type of gender ‘memory practising’ in the area of the public urban sphere, specifically one created by the Łódź Women’s Heritage Trail Foundation (https://www.facebook.com/ŁódźkiSzlakKobiet) – a gender-profiled female grass-roots initiative that is concerned with the city’s past. The article consists of three main parts referring to, respectively, the functioning of memory in the urban public sphere as a form of dialogue (hemerneutic-interpretative anthropology with Jurgen Habermas’ and Seyla Benhabib’s theories is the theoretical foundation here), the process of gendering memory (appearing alongside the narrative phrase and feminist proposals for the interpretation of memory as a form of its pluralization), and the presentation of the activities within the Łódź Women’s HeritageTrail Foundation’s particular initiative – namely ‘Women Routes in Łódź’ – as a kind of case study for the city as a landscape of memory. The paper deals with the tension observed between the politics of memory and the political practice, and the alternative memories that arise from the idea of multiplicity and polyphony, including the voice of women. The authors raise the issue of the genderization of memory in the context of an inquiry into how the pluralism of collective memory and the diversification of the public sphere develops as a result of the discourses and operation of the alternative memory, including gender-focused memory.

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 822-835 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Possamai

‘Post-secularism’ is a term that has emerged in various disciplines, including sociology, to reflect religion’s move back into the public sphere and the need to take into account the voice of religious actors in any contemporary analysis of society. This article argues that post-secularism is, in fact, a specific type of secularism that deals with the neoliberal management of religion in the public sphere. To unpack this argument, the article will first explore what is meant by post-secularism, and then, via a case study of Shari’a in Australia, it will move to the theory of multiple modernities in order to underline the relativeness of such a term. It will then be proposed that what is meant by post-secularism is, in fact, a type of secularism (perhaps ‘late’ rather than ‘post’) in neoliberal societies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-149
Author(s):  
Jan Siegemund

AbstractLibel played an important and extraordinary role in early modern conflict culture. The article discusses their functions and the way they were assessed in court. The case study illustrates argumentative spaces and different levels of normative references in libel trials in 16th century electoral Saxony. In 1569, Andreas Langener – in consequence of a long stagnating private conflict – posted several libels against the nobleman Tham Pflugk in different public places in the city of Dresden. Consequently, he was arrested and charged with ‘libelling’. Depending on the reference to conflicting social and legal norms, he had therefore been either threatened with corporal punishment including his execution, or rewarded with laudations. In this case, the act of libelling could be seen as slander, but also as a service to the community, which Langener had informed about potentially harmful transgression of norms. While the common good was the highest maxim, different and sometimes conflicting legally protected interests had to be discussed. The situational decision depended on whether the articulated charges where true and relevant for the public, on the invective language, and especially on the quality and size of the public sphere reached by the libel.


Slavic Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 907-930
Author(s):  
Igor Fedyukin

This article uses the materials of the Drezdensha affair, a large-scale investigation of “indecency” in St. Petersburg in 1750, to explore unofficial sociability among the Imperial elite, and to map out the institutional, social, and economic dimensions of the post-Petrine “sexual underworld.” Sociability and, ultimately, the public sphere in eighteenth century Russia are usually associated with loftier practices, with joining the ranks of the reading public, reflecting on the public good, and generally, becoming more civil and polite. Yet, it is the privately-run, commercially-oriented, and sexually-charged “parties” at the focus of this article that arguably served as a “training ground” for developing the habits of sociability. The world of these “parties” provides a missing link between the debauchery and carousing of Peter I's era and the more polite formats of associational life in the late eighteenth century, as well as the historical context for reflections on morality, sexual licentiousness, foppery, and the excesses of “westernization.”


Author(s):  
Yuliya Kuzovenkova ◽  

The last two decades have been a time of serious transformation of youth subcultures. Researchers speak about the formation of the postmodernism paradigm of subculture and the virtualisation of sociocultural phenomena. The subcultural subject and the power that formed it continue to exist in the new realities, but are undergoing a transformation. Changes having occured to the public sphere were especially significant for a subcultural entity since it is the public sphere where a subcultural entity can present itself to authorities, thereby maintaining its social subsistence. Our research was aimed at studying how the transformation of the public sphere has affected the entity’s subculture. For the study, the authors employed the method of a qualitative half-structurated interview and draw on the disciplinary authority concept suggested by M. Foucault. The analysis was based on materials of interviewing some representatives of the graffiti subculture in the city of Samara (twenty-two people) from 2016 to 2018. The author has established that the subcultural subject is processual and dependent on the practices in use; a change in practices leads to a change in the subject. Changes of practices in the graffiti subculture were a result of the virtualisation of culture. The author has identified the changes that have taken place in the subcultural subject under the influence of the transformation of the public sphere (the ‘short time’ of instantaneous fame prevails over the ‘long time’ of the symbolic capital of the nickname, new space-time coordinates within which the entity exists, the ‘digital body’ of the subcultural entity becomes ever more informative rather than that which was created via sketches placed in urban space). Unlike the public sphere, the private sphere under the influence of a subculture ideology remains unchanged.


Author(s):  
Rachel Baarda ◽  
Rocci Luppicini

Ethical challenges that technology poses to the different spheres of society are a core focus within the field of technoethics. Over the last few years, scholars have begun to explore the ethical implications of new digital technologies and social media, particularly in the realms of society and politics. A qualitative case study was conducted on Barack Obama's campaign social networking site, my.barackobama.com, in order to investigate the ways in which the website uses or misuses digital technology to create a healthy participatory democracy. For an analysis of ethical and non-ethical ways to promote participatory democracy online, the study included theoretical perspectives such as the role of the public sphere in a participatory democracy and the effects of political marketing on the public sphere. The case study included a content analysis of the website and interviews with members of groups on the site. The study's results are explored in this chapter.


Author(s):  
Judith Bessant

This chapter presents a case study of Facu Diaz, a Spanish satirist whose on-line ridicule of the Spanish government created a political furor that brought him before the courts. The chapter engages the problem of the criminalization of political dissent by liberal states in the digital age. The case highlights how digital media is now being used to create content for satire, as well as to replicate and infiltrate more traditional political and media forums, changing many traditional forms of political practice. The case [points to some of the central problems inherent in liberalism which may give reason to curb the enthusiasm of those who think that new digital media creates fresh opportunities for augmenting the ‘public sphere'. It is argued that liberalism as a political theory and ethos, tends to be blind to non-traditional political expressions like satire and other artistic work. In addition, the expansion of security laws in many countries suggests, liberalism's ostensible commitment to freedom needs to be reframed by recalling its historical preoccupation with security.


Author(s):  
Stephen Lovell

This chapter tells the story of public speaking in Russia from the imposition of greater restrictions on the public sphere in 1867 through to the eve of Alexander II’s assassination in 1881. It shows that in this period the focus of the Russian public switched from the zemstvo to the courtroom, where a number of high-profile trials took place (and were reported, sometimes in stenographic detail, in the press). The chapter examines the careers and profiles of some of Russia’s leading courtroom orators. It also explores the activities of the Russian socialists (populists), in particular the ‘Going to the People’ movement of 1873–4 and later propaganda efforts in the city and the courtroom. It ends by considering the intensification of public discourse at the end of the 1870s: the Russo-Turkish War saw a surge of patriotic mobilization, but at the same time the populist adoption of terrorism seized public attention.


2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-81
Author(s):  
Oriol Poveda

Through a case study of the Facebook page of a Jewish Orthodox environmental project based in Germany, this paper explores the ways in which religion and modernity might be made compatible and what role digital media plays in such interaction. On the basis of the empirical material gathered for this paper, the author presents a typology of religious-environmental processes of hybridization. The analysis draws from the concepts of multiple modernities, public religions and religious branding in order to discuss whether the combination of religion and modernity is enabled or compromised by the collapsing of boundaries between the public sphere and the marketplace in late modern societies. The findings suggest that Facebook and its affordances make possible the particular intersections of religion and environmentalism, of public sphere and marketplace, that are characteristic of the case under study.


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