Jacques Rancière’s Mallarmé: Deferring Equality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Boncardo
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Critical Tradition ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
The Aesthetic

This fifth chapter presents Jacques Rancière’s reading of Mallarmé through a critical exegesis of his 1996 book Mallarmé: The Politics of the Siren. By exploring Rancière’s studied opposition to the critical tradition that has framed Mallarmé as a hermetic recluse concerned exclusively with literature’s relation to itself, this chapter shows how Rancière presents Mallarmé as a thinker deeply engaged with the political crises of his times and committed to equality. The chapter explains how Rancière reformulates Mallarmé’s proposal for a poetic religion in terms of his famous account of the aesthetic regime of art, and closes with the argument that Rancière ultimately considers Mallarmé a conservative figure whose poetic utopia is infinitely deferred.

Dante Alighieri

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Bartoloni
Keyword(s):  
Dante Alighieri ◽  
The Political ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Artistic Process ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
The Aesthetic

The Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) is invoked several times in the work of Giorgio Agamben, often in passing to stress a point, as when discussing the political relevance of désoeuvrement (KG 246); to develop a thought, as in the articulation of the medieval idea of imagination as the medium between body and soul (S, especially 127–9); or to explain an idea, as in the case of the artistic process understood as the meeting of contradictory forces such as inspiration and critical control (FR, especially 48–50). So while Agamben does not engage with Dante systematically, he refers to him constantly, treating the Florentine poet as an auctoritas whose presence adds critical rigour and credibility. Identifying and relating the instances of these encounters is useful since they highlight central aspects of Agamben’s thought and its development over the years, from the first writings, such as Stanzas, to more recent texts, such as Il fuoco e il racconto and The Use of Bodies. The significance of Agamben’s reliance on Dante can be divided into two categories: the aesthetic and the political. The following discussion will address each of these categories separately, but will also emphasise the philosophical continuity that links the discussion of the aesthetic with that of the political. While in the first instance Dante is offered as an example of poetic innovation, especially in relation to the use of language and imagination, in the second he is invoked as a forerunner of new forms of life. Mediality and potentiality are the two pivots connecting the aesthetic and the political.

Reading Politics with Machiavelli

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald J. Schmidt, Jr
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Family Farm ◽  
Louis Althusser ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
White Nationalism ◽  
The Republic

Reading Politics with Machiavelli is an anachronistic reading of certain key concepts in Machiavelli’s The Prince and The Discourses (as well as some of his correspondence). In 1513, soon after the Medici returned to power in Florence, Machiavelli lost his position as First Secretary to the Republic, and he was exiled. On his family farm, he began a self-consciously anachronistic reading of great political figures of antiquity, and, in combination with his own experience as a diplomat, crafted a unique perspective on the political crises of his time. At our own moment of democratic crisis, as the democratic imagination, as well as democratic habits and institutions face multiple attacks from neoliberalism, white nationalism, and authoritarianism, I argue that a similar method, in which we read Machiavelli’s work as he read Livy’s and Plutarch’s, can help us see the contingency, and the increasingly forgotten radical potential, of our politics. Louis Althusser argued that Machiavelli functions for us as an uncanny authority, one whose apparent familiarity is dispelled as we examine his epistolary yet opaque account of history, politics, and authority. This makes his readings a potentially rich resource for a time of democratic crisis. With that challenge in mind, we will examine the problems of conspiracy, prophecy, torture, and exile and use a close reading of Machiavelli’s work to make out new perspectives on the politics of our time.

From Hospitality to Hostility: Ibadan and Strangers, 1830–1904

1985 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toyin Falola
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Open Door ◽  
Equal Opportunities ◽  
Open Door Policy ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
City State ◽  
The City

The view that Ibadan society in the nineteenth century did not discriminate against strangers, irrespective of their origins in Yorubaland, is now firmly entrenched in the literature. To be sure, Ibadan, a new nineteenth-century Yoruba city-state, founded as a consequence of the political crises of the early decades of the century, did maintain an ‘open door’ policy to strangers, many of whom went there as adventurers, craftsmen and traders, hoping to acquire wealth and fame. This article, however, controverts the view that Ibadan society gave the strangers and the indigenes equal opportunities to wealth and power. It argues that all the key political offices went only to the Oyo-Ibadan group which dominated the city-state. Strangers were also not allowed to participate fully in the leading heights of the economy, with the result that most of the wealthy citizens were also of Oyo-Yoruba origin.In the 1890s discrimination against strangers was such that a number of moves were made to expel them. However, the British, who imposed colonial rule on Ibadan in 1893, were against the expulsion of strangers.

Post-Mass-Media and Participation

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Research Group ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
New Generation

Three decades after Félix Guattari introduced the concept of "post-mass-media" as a necessary condition of media participation, it is by no means self-evident that his reaction to events leading up to 1989 would still attract a new generation of scholars today. Yet, the concept continually reappears to address the role of technology in democratic participation and the relation between the aesthetic and the political. Originating in discussions of the DFG research group Media and Participation, this issu

scholarly journals Out of Bounds: Confronting War Crimes and the Breakdown of Justice with Contemporary Art

2021 ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Catherine Bernard
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
The Political ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
Administration Of Justice ◽  
Collective Remembering ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
Marc Quinn ◽  
The Aesthetic

Recent art has turned to judiciary and extra-judiciary practices, specifically in the context of international conflicts, in order to assert art’s political accountability and relevance to our capacity to historicise the present. The war in Iraq inspired works that directly address issues of representation and remediation, such as Marc Quinn’s Mirage (2008), in which the aesthetic experience opens onto an ambiguous experience of the breakdown of justice. Other works have chosen to turn carceral space itself into the site of a collective remembering that harnesses affect to a critical reflection on the administration of justice, on assent and dissent. This article will turn to key works by Marc Quinn and Trevor Paglen that confront extra-judiciary malpractices, but also to recent collective art projects involving an interdisciplinary take on the experience of imprisonment, such as Inside. Artists and Writers in Reading Prison (2016), in which artists of all backgrounds responded to Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis on the very premises of Wilde’s incarceration, as well as the work of 2019 Turner Prize co-recipient: Jordanian sound artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan whose recent works rely on testimonies from Syrian detainees and probe the political pragmatics of aural art. All these works have turned to the document—literary, visual, aural—to reflect on the process of experiential mediation. How does the experience of imprisonment, or extra-judiciary malpractices, come to the spectator? How are they read, heard, interpreted, remediated? The article ponders the remediation and displacement of aesthetic experience itself and the “response-ability”—following Donna Haraway’s coinage—of such a repoliticised embodied experience. It will assess the way by which such interdisciplinary works rethink the poetics of the documentary for an embodied intellection of justice—and injustice—in the present.

scholarly journals THE HOBBESIAN TURN

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (55-56) ◽  
pp. 23-40
Author(s):  
Joseph Margolis
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Creative Expression ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Western Politics

The “Hobbesian turn” is an invention out of whole cloth, a device by which to oppose the usually supposed autonomy of the aesthetic, the moral, the political, and the factual; to recover the collective holism of civilizational (or enlanguaged cultural) life; to feature the existential historicity of the human career, which is incompatible with any strict universalism and all the forms of transcendentalism; hence, also, to feature the adequacy of a contingent Lebensform in collecting the affinities of creative expression and agentive commitment within the terms of human solidarity; to abandon strict universality and necessary synthetic truths; and to favour the fluxive world of pragmatist construction rather than the indemonstrable fixities of rationalism and transcendentalism. The article proceeds largely by examining aspects of Picasso’s career and the history of Western politics spanning the sixteenth century to the present.

Excluded Generations in Non-Inclusive Nations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Fargues
Keyword(s):  
Arab Countries ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Full Membership ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
High Prevalence ◽  
Family Building ◽  
Arab Societies

This chapter offers an interpretation of the political link in Arab societies through the lens of demography. The first section shows how young generations today do not resemble those of earlier times. Rising education has raised expectations, and the reduction of fertility and postponement of family building have provided young adults with unprecedented individual freedom of movement. If expectations are not met by opportunities and young people have a feeling of exclusion, freedom of movement becomes a driver of emigration and rebellion. The second part focuses on specific patterns of reproduction among Arab populations and the obstacles they put to building inclusive nations. On one side, the uniquely high prevalence of kinship endogamy means that marriage does not help unrelated population groups to integrate so that blood bonds remain stronger than national bonds. On the other side, while the circulation of people is the most significant form of exchange between Arab countries, nationality laws based on exclusive jus sanguinis do not provide newcomers with pathways to full membership; and therefore, non-citizens have emerged as a category in Arab countries. Excluded generations in non-inclusive nations set the stage for prolonged political crises.

Migration and Refuge

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Patrick Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ecological Change ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Haitian Literature ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Natural Catastrophes ◽  
The World ◽  
Over Time

This book argues that contemporary Haitian literature historicizes the political and environmental problems brought to the surface by the 2010 earthquake by building on texts of earlier generations, notably at the end of the Duvalier era and its aftermath. Haitian writers have made profound contributions to debates about the converging paths of political crises and natural catastrophes, yet their writings on the legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and neoliberalism are often neglected in heated debates about environmental futures. The earthquake only exacerbated this contradiction. Despite the fact that Haitian authors have long treated the connections between political violence, social and economic precariousness, and ecological degradation, in media coverage around the world, the earthquake would have suddenly exposed scandalous conditions on the ground in Haiti. Informed by Haitian studies and models of postcolonial ecocriticism, the book conceives of literature as an “eco-archive,” or a body of texts that depicts ecological change over time and its impact on social and environmental justice. Focusing equally on established and less well-known authors, this study contends that the eco-archive challenges future-oriented, universalizing narratives of the Anthropocene and the global refugee crisis with portrayals of different forms and paths of migration and refuge within Haiti and around the Americas.

In the Kingdom of Whomever: Baldwin’s Method

Empty Houses ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Kurnick
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Political Costs ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Generic Difference

James Baldwin is not only one of the more notable Anglophone twentieth-century novelists to attempt continually and with minimal success to enter the theater. He is also one of the major inheritors of the aesthetic and political problematic we have repeatedly encountered in the course of this book. Baldwin is perhaps the most important twentieth-century novelist to seriously explore what it means to make interiority the bearer of collective desire. This chapter argues that the novel of interiority reaches an impasse and a breakthrough in the work of Baldwin precisely when the contradictions inherent in the attempt to think collective problems through sexual interiority becomes unavoidably insistent—and does so through Baldwin's negotiation with the generic difference of the theater. His career makes clear that if the novel relentlessly personalizes collective issues, its theatrical preoccupation constitutes a record of the political costs of that reduction, one that demands to be read at the level of form.

Epilogue

2020 ◽  
pp. 226-230
Author(s):  
Cailah Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Islamic Art ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Complex Objects ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Visual Properties ◽  
Artistic Communities

THIS BOOK HAS uncovered the aesthetic variety and documentary richness of the Islamic arts of the book of the late medieval Lands of Rūm and produced new ways of understanding this material in its proper cultural and intellectual contexts. It has done so by considering the manuscripts as ‘whole’, complex objects. This approach has entailed looking closely at the codicological and visual properties of the manuscripts themselves, reading their inscriptions and analysing this material within a framework that accounts for patronage beyond dynastic confines – a facet that is sometimes overlooked in the wider scholarly field of Islamic art history. The manuscripts discussed here show that some of Rūm’s cities (particularly Konya) were home to dynamic artistic communities that consisted of local and émigré craftsmen, including converts to Islam and, possibly, Christians. This material also reveals that patrons were often drawn from the political classes, but were, generally speaking, otherwise not well-known from historical sources. In some cases, patrons’ affiliations and intellectual interests challenge simplistic or unambiguous conceptions of the ‘frontier’ and the role of ‘Turkishness’ in late medieval Rūm....

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