An Unsettled Past as a Political Resource

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Svjetlana Nedimović
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Creative Process ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Vital Part ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Resource

This chapter examines recent debates about transitional justice and argues against attempts at ‘overcoming the past’ or ‘settling the past’. Drawing on Cornelius Castoriadis's theory of the social-historical, it shows that engaging with the past is an inescapable dimension of societal existence and its self-creative process. It contends that such past is not necessarily a burden but can become a political resource in the (re)construction of political community. The resourcefulness of the past, however, is contingent upon standing or permanent political institutions and normative frameworks. The unsettled past, the chapter suggests, becomes a valuable political resource only if it remains unsettled and, as such, a vital part and live matter of everyday political processes through the interconnected workings of collective political responsibility and political imagination.

scholarly journals The principle of exclusive citizenship and a foreigner's status

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-27
Author(s):  
Predrag Terzić
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Public Sphere

The process of creating a modern state and forming political institutions corresponds to the process of transforming the subjects of the past into a community constituted on the principle of citizenship. The citizen becomes the foundation of the political community and the subject, which in interaction with other citizens, forms the public sphere. However, this does not mean that all members of the community have the same rights and obligations contained in the status of a citizen. Excluding certain categories of residents from the principle of citizenship raises a number of issues that delegitimize the existing order by colliding with the ideas of justice, freedom and equality. The aim of this short research is to clarify the principle of citizenship, its main manifestations and excluded subjects, as well as the causes that are at the root of the concept of exclusive citizenship. A brief presentation of the idea of multiculturalism does not intend to fully analytically explain this concept, but only to present in outline one of the ways of overcoming the issue of exclusive citizenship. In order to determine the social significance of the topic, a part of the text is dedicated to the ideas that form the basis of an exclusive understanding of citizenship, the reasons for its application and the far-reaching consequences of social tensions and unrest, which cannot be ignored.

Sexual Ontology and Group Marriage

Philosophy ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 58 (224) ◽  
pp. 215-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen R. L. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Social Institutions ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Other ◽  
Unmarried Mother ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

Philosophers of earlier ages have usually spent time in considering thenature of marital, and in general familial, duty. Paley devotes an entire book to those ‘relative duties which result from the constitution of the sexes’,1 a book notable on the one hand for its humanity and on the other for Paley‘s strange refusal to acknowledge that the evils for which he condemns any breach of pure monogamy are in large part the result of the fact that such breaches are generally condemned. In a society where an unmarried mother is ruined no decent male should put a woman in such danger: but why precisely should social feeling be so severe? Marriage, the monogamist would say, must be defended at all costs, for it is a centrally important institution of our society. Political community was, in the past, understood as emerging from or imposed upon families, or similar associations. The struggle to establish the state was a struggle against families, clans and clubs; the state, once established, rested upon the social institutions to which it gave legal backing.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 146-152
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Collective Trauma ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Transformations ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Second World

The conclusion to the book makes the case that there is a connection between the political, social, and cultural transformations of the French Revolution and current debates on transitional justice and collective trauma. It is common to trace current discussions about coming to terms with the past to the Second World War and especially to the aftermath of the Holocaust. This chapter argues that there is a longer and deeper history at play here, one that goes back to the eighteenth century’s Age of Revolutions, to the radical rupture with the past that it postulated, and to the new visions of the social world that it engendered. In other words, the conclusion to the book sheds light on what is distinctly modern about the question of what to do with difficult pasts.

Seeing the light in Santa y Andrés: Metaphor, myth and historical ambivalence

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-408
Author(s):  
Ruth Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
The Social ◽  
Creative Resistance ◽  
Social Anxieties ◽  
Cuban History

Drawing on theories about bricolage as creative resistance, this article examines the sudden, unexplained appearance of the masked Abakuá íreme in the middle of Carlos Lechuga’s Santa y Andrés (2016), a film that otherwise focuses entirely on the repression of a gay writer in post-Mariel era Cuba. This disruption of the narrative is explored as a strategy that urges the viewer to consider cyclical processes by which displaced social anxieties are mapped onto different marginalized groups to form a shifting locus of backlash following moments of progressive social change in Cuban history. The article tracks the ways in which the film evokes Abakuá mythology to create historical parallels for the viewer to discover. Utilizing doubled characters and parallel journeys as its analogical grammar, tensions between the film’s archetypal figures signal larger conflicts around the policing of acceptable expressions of gender and sexuality, and the social and political processes by which particular expressions of masculinity that are perceived as ‘dangerous’ or threatening are regulated in Cuban society at different historical moments. Even though Santa y Andrés is set in 1983, the film’s contentious reception in 2016 makes it what I am calling a historically ambivalent film about repression both in the past and in the present.

Strangers and Members: Equality in an Immigration Setting

1994 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Galloway
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Refugee Camp ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Immigration Law ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Stranger ◽  
The Needy

Immigration Law has as its primary subject the stranger: the outsider who is under no obligation of allegiance to the state, who is not represented in its political processes, and whose needs and interests are, in most situations, accorded less concern than those of people who already participate in the social and political life of a community. The immigrant stranger may, of course, appear in a variety of guises. He may be a wealthy entrepreneur or investor who belongs to another political community but who chooses to emigrate to advance his own or his family’s well-being. Alternatively, the stranger may be a person who has experienced life solely within the confines of a community that is plagued by economic deprivation. Such a person may be crippled by physical and emotional need or cultural fragmentation. His search is for a new social environment in which, it is hoped, these constraints will not be present in such exaggerated or severe measure. Sometimes the needy stranger will be seeking an immediate escape from a political regime which offers her no protection or which aims at her very destruction, and sometimes she will be searching for deliverance from the incessant, limbo-like tedium or the multitude of unspeakable terrors to which one is exposed in a refugee camp. Whatever the guise in which he or she appears, the stranger is someone with whom the modern political state must come to terms. He or she cannot be ignored.

scholarly journals Truth Revelation Procedures as a Rights-based Alternative to the Politics of (Non-)Memory

2020 ◽  
pp. 51-66
Author(s):  
Emilia Kowalewska
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Research Problem ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Justice Theory ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Authoritative Knowledge ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Right

This article offers a socio-legal reflection on the relation between law, state obligation, and attempts to institutionalize collective memory. As the question of memory institutionalization becomes most pertinent in the context of regime change that imposes on an incumbent government certain expectations for addressing the past, the article considers this research problem from the perspective of transitional justice theory. The transitional justice paradigm allows for an interdisciplinary consideration of the topic. Special attention is paid to legal norms and mechanisms directed towards establishing authoritative knowledge about the past. The emerging principle of the right to truth is presented as an integrating and rights-based perspective from which to approach societal demands for acknowledging injustices of the past. Measured against the fundamental rights that lie at the heart of transitional justice theory, three types of truth revelation procedures are presented. The article shows that the relationship between law and memory – which is often reduced to one of political instrumentalization – should, in accordance with the values of a liberal democracy, be reframed from the perspective of individual and collective rights. The article seeks to contribute to the field of memory studies in the social sciences by exposing functions of legal norms and mechanisms that are often overlooked when discussed from the perspective of the politics of memory.

Brownson's Search for the Kingdom of God: The Social Thought of an American Radical

1954 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-36
Author(s):  
M. A. Fitzsimons
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The Past ◽  
Old Order ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church

In 1815 the rulers and political leaders of Europe—men who had known the terror of witnessing the violent destruction of their social and political institutions—finished their work at the Congress of Vienna, work designed to prevent the resurgence of revolutionary threats. State and Church—and on the continent this meant the Catholic Church—cooperated in this conservative and reactionary task. The task was doomed, for the vision of a free, equal and fraternal society throbbed with all the more compelling radiance in the world of privilege and inequality which the Congress of Vienna restored. Later industrial changes propelled the revolutionary tide, and waves of liberalism and socialism beat against the old order, menacing not only the governments of Europe but the Church. To those captivated by the vision of a better or perfect society on earth, conservative Catholic admiration for the past and reverence for the order and treasures of the present seemed peculiarly obscurantist, obstinate blindness to the cause of progress.

scholarly journals SOCIAL GROUNDS FOR POLITICAL CONFLICT

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 31-42
Author(s):  
L.I. Nikovskaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political System ◽  
Dynamic Balance ◽  
Basic Needs ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Private And Public

The article deals with the sociological aspects of the analysis of political conflict related to the socio-structural and subjective foundations of political processes and relations. It is shown that many problems and contradictions in the social sphere, such as social polarization, excessive inequality, poverty and violation of the principles of social justice, deprivation of basic needs and interests, unstable labor employment significantly determine the field of politics and are projected on the object and subject of political conflict, weighing down their course and positive outcomes. The insolubility of social problems and contradictions, their encapsulation cause either a decrease in the population's interest in politics, in the effectiveness of democratic institutions, con- tribute to the widening of the gap between "private" and "public", generate a sense of political alienation and powerlessness, or push to meet basic needs beyond the existing social norms and political institutions, to destructive forms of resolving political conflicts, which leads to a loss of control of society and social catastrophe. Sociological analysis of the subject cross-section of conflict interaction shows that a conflict based on group interests (in comparison with class and elitist) contributes more to maintaining a dynamic balance in society and realizing the positive potential of political conflict, since it is characterized by flexible intra-group connections and mobile inter-group barriers in the socio-political system. Class and elitist models of conflict tend more to vertical polarization of society, which strengthens the "discontinuous" lines of interaction between the "top" and "bottom", makes the dichotomy "rule-submission" rigid, and reduces the possibilities of dialogical plasticity and flexibility of the political system.

scholarly journals (Re)making the Social World: The Politics of Transitional Justice in Burundi

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Rubli
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Social World ◽  
Political Will ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Critical Literature

Focusing on political parties, this article highlights divergent conceptualizations of key elements of transitional justice that are part of the current contestation of the dealing-with-the-past process in Burundi. Speaking to the emerging critical literature on transitional justice, this article attempts to look beyond claims that there is a lack of political will to comply with a certain global transitional justice paradigm. In this article, transitional justice is conceived of as a political process of negotiated values and power relations that attempts to constitute the future based on lessons from the past. This paper argues that political parties in Burundi use transitional justice not only as a strategy to protect partisan interests or target political opponents, but also as an instrument to promote their political struggles in the course of moulding a new, post-conflict society and state.

scholarly journals Death on repeat

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-40
Author(s):  
Jason B. Scott
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Mechanical Reproduction ◽  
The Past ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
Violent Images

In the past decade, images of fatal police shootings shared on social media have inspired protests against militarised policing policies and re-defined the ways marginalised communities seek justice. This article theorises the repetition of violent images and discusses how social media has become an important tool for localising popular critiques of the law. I provide an ethnographic account of a police shooting in a Brazilian favela (shantytown). I am particularly interested in how residents of the favela interpret law and justice in relationship to contemporaneous movements such as Black Lives Matter. Reflecting Walter Benjamin’s concept of mechanical reproduction, this case study demonstrates an ‘aura’ that is shaped by the social and legal context in which a violent image is produced, consumed and aggregated. This case study suggests the possibility for research examining the ways inclusionary social media platforms are increasingly co-opted by oppressive political institutions.

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