Afterword: The Robot Does (Not) Exist

2020 ◽  
pp. 265-269
Author(s):  
Eric B. White
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Us ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
Technological Sublime ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Cultural Dominance ◽  
Gilbert Simondon

The Afterword consolidates the book’s arguments about the spatial practices of the techno-bathetic avant-gardes, who harnessed the semantic power of technology to critique its broader cultural contexts. It extends Chapter 5’s discussion of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man by exploring how the unnamed protagonist critiqued the technicities by which white hegemonies sustained cultural dominance, while simultaneously introducing alternative approaches. As in other chapters, the Afterword locates the technological sublime at the root of this dominance; Ellison not only exposes the potent grip that its servile dialectics exert on Western imaginations, but also the bathetic contexts of their articulation in culture, which are often repressed. For Ellison, as for Gilbert Simondon, this occlusion is exemplified by the ‘robot’, a cultural creation that fuses technical discourses in engineering with industrial alienation and narratives of the technological sublime. By exposing the means by which techno-servility entered culture, and yoking it to racial difference, Ellison ‘plung[es] outside history’ to engender new modes of technological agency, in the US and beyond. The Afterword argues that Ellison’s diachronic strategies exemplify the task of techno-bathetic avant-gardes: to perform an intermediary critique of the technological sublime before introducing alternative, emancipatory narratives, which can gain traction in the public sphere.

scholarly journals Partisan electoral interventions by the great powers: Introducing the PEIG Dataset

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dov H. Levin
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Construction Process ◽  
Systematic Data ◽  
The Public ◽  
Peace Research ◽  
The Us ◽  
Election Results ◽  
The Public Sphere

Recent studies indicate that partisan electoral interventions, a situation where a foreign power tries to determine the election results in another country, can have significant effects on the election results in the targeted country as well as other important influences. Nevertheless, research on this topic has been hindered by a lack of systematic data of electoral interventions. In this article, I introduce the Partisan Electoral Intervention by the Great Powers dataset (PEIG), which provides data on all such interventions by the US and the USSR/Russia between 1946 and 2000. After describing the dataset construction process, I note some interesting patterns in the data, a few of which stand in contrast to claims made about electoral interventions in the public sphere and give an example of PEIG’s utility. I then describe some applications of PEIG for research on electoral interventions in particular and for peace research in general.

Women, Politics and the Public Sphere

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Radical Intellectual

This book is a socio-historical analysis of the relationship between women, politics and the public sphere. It looks at the legacy of eighteenth-century intellectual groupings which were dominated by women such as members of the ‘bluestocking circles’ and other more radical intellectual and philosophical thinkers such as Catherine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft. These individuals and groups which emerged in the eighteenth century established ‘intellectual spaces’ for the emergence of women public intellectuals in subsequent centuries. Women public intellectuals in the US examined in the book include Samantha Power, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Elizabeth Warren, Condoleezza Rice, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, and Sheryl Sandberg. The implications for the political representation of women in the West and globally is considered, highlighting how women public intellectuals now reflect much more social and cultural diversity. The book is about the fault-lines established in the eighteenth century for later developments in social and political discourse.

Religion and the Public Sphere

Sociology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Brennan ◽  
Diana Stypinska
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Public Sphere

Religion in the public sphere (hereafter RPS) refers to the intermingling of religion with issues of politics, governance, the state, and institutions of civil society. That it is a topic of interest to academics across the humanities and social sciences is itself a reflection of the gradual separation—over many centuries—of religion from public affairs in modern, largely secular, societies of the West. The readmission of religion to the public sphere raises several key issues, not least around secularization (and the extent to which religion has been disassociated from public life and policymaking), but also about the resurgence of religious conservatism as an attempt to close the gap opened up in modernity between religion and politics. The renewal of interest in religion as a social, cultural, and political force—a feature of what some are now calling the “post-secular”—has proved especially contentious in diverse, multifaith liberal democracies, where attempts to divorce religion from public life can be seen to undermine the inclusion of religious minorities and the expression of religious identities. Academic interest in the intersection between religion and public life has been concentrated largely among sociologists (of religion) and political scientists. The revival of religion in the public sphere confounds a widely held assumption among modern social and political theorists; namely, that religion would wither as a feature of public life as societies underwent a process of modernization—and where religion continued to exist at all, it would be confined to the private, domestic sphere and that of individual belief. Particular interest has been generated by controversies that expose the vexed nature of attempts to limit or bar the admission of religion in public life; such as the 1962 ruling by the US Supreme Court removing prayer from public schools (in the spirit of the First Amendment of the US Constitution), or, more recently, the banning of religious headscarves (and other “ostentatious” symbols of religion) from public schools in 2004 by the French authorities (in the spirit of secularism—or laïcité) enshrined in Article 1 of the French Constitution). Attempts to undo the “wall of separation” between religion and state first envisioned by Thomas Jefferson can be seen in attempts by American religious conservatives to overturn “progressive” legislation on abortion, gay rights, and same-sex marriage. Recent opposition in the United Kingdom by Muslim conservatives to LGBT education in public schools illustrates the sensitivities and tensions surrounding expressions of RPS in contemporary Western societies.

scholarly journals Student science publishing: an exploratory study of undergraduate science research journals and popular science magazines in the US and Europe

2008 ◽  
Vol 07 (03) ◽  
pp. A03 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mico Tatalovic
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Popular Science ◽  
Science Students ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Undergraduate Science

Science magazines have an important role in disseminating scientific knowledge into the public sphere and in discussing the broader scope affected by scientific research such as technology, ethics and politics. Student-run science magazines afford opportunities for future scientists, communicators, politicians and others to practice communicating science. The ability to translate ‘scientese’ into a jargon-free discussion is rarely easy: it requires practice, and student magazines may provide good practice ground for undergraduate and graduate science students wishing to improve their communication skills.

Neutrality narratives, gender, and fear of cuckoldry in public administration

Organization ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 135050842110153
Author(s):  
Sharon Mastracci ◽  
Arthur J Sementelli
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Democratic Accountability ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Roots ◽  
The Public Sphere

Administration draws its legitimacy from neutrality in cultural contexts where power relations are shaped by gendered norms. Neutrality bestows legitimacy where power is vested in the male generative force and is heritable. In the public sphere, neutrality renders administration nonthreatening to politicians and justifies administrators’ use of discretion despite their lack of democratic accountability and oversight. We examine historical and cultural roots of administrative neutrality as embodied by the physiologically transformed man and the resulting genderedness of public administration. We highlight two examples of power and sexuality in anime and different implications of neutered maleness. We also discuss enforced administrative neutrality in practice—the Hatch Act in the United States—which prevents administrators from engaging in political activity, rendering them “political eunuchs.”

Accountability and Responsibility in the Public Sphere

2014 ◽  
pp. 237-243
Author(s):  
Alexandros Passiatas
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Vice President ◽  
The United States ◽  
Complex Mechanism ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Us ◽  
Illegal Acts ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Initial Research

The impeachment process, which is constitutionally based, provides a legislative mechanism for investigating possible illegal acts from the President, the Vice President, and other civil officers of the United States. The impeachment process needs the intervention of the House of the Representatives and the Senate. The House has the responsibility to make the initial research and to determine the possibility of an official's impeachment. If the House decides that this is appropriate, the members of the House vote for the article or the articles of impeachment that explain the specific reasons upon which the impeachment is based. Then these facts and these reasons are presented to the Senate, which has the power to try all the impeachments. It is clear that the impeachment procedure is a very complex mechanism, and the US constitution gives only a skeletal guidance as to the nature of the proceedings letting the House and the Senate fill this void through their rules, procedures, and precedents. Impeachment is explored in this chapter.

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.

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