The Necropolitics of Documents and the Slow Death of Prisoners in Turkey

2019 ◽  
pp. 97-117
Author(s):  
Başak Can
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Health Condition ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Penal Institutions ◽  
Multiple State ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere

The government used medico-legal documentation of prisoners’ health condition to solve the biopolitical crisis in penal institutions immediately after the end of death fast (2000-2007) and released hundreds of hunger strikers, who suffered from incurable conditions. That the state turned a political crisis into a medical one using the illness clause had unprecedented consequences for how claims are made in the political sphere. Human rights activists, Kurdish and leftist politicians are now using the plight of ill prisoners to make political arguments in the public sphere. The health conditions of political prisoners, specifically the use of the illness clause has thus emerged as one of the most contentious fields in the encounters between the state and its opponents. This chapter examines how temporality works as an instrument of necropolitics through the slow production and circulation of the medico-legal bureaucratic documents that are produced through encounters with multiple state officials. I argue, first, that medico-legal processes surrounding the detainees are mediated through the discretionary sovereign acts of multiple state officials, including but not limited to physicians, and second, that legal medicine as a technology of state violence is central to understanding the intertwined histories of sovereignty and biopolitics in Turkey.

The Contentious Public Sphere

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ya-Wen Lei
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
The State ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Critique ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
Uncertain Future ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Legal Subjects

Since the mid-2000s, public opinion and debate in China have become increasingly common and consequential, despite the ongoing censorship of speech and regulation of civil society. How did this happen? This book shows how the Chinese state drew on law, the media, and the Internet to further an authoritarian project of modernization, but in so doing, inadvertently created a nationwide public sphere in China—one the state must now endeavor to control. The book examines the influence this unruly sphere has had on Chinese politics and the ways that the state has responded. It shows that the development of the public sphere in China has provided an unprecedented forum for citizens to influence the public agenda, demand accountability from the government, and organize around the concepts of law and rights. It demonstrates how citizens came to understand themselves as legal subjects, how legal and media professionals began to collaborate in unexpected ways, and how existing conditions of political and economic fragmentation created unintended opportunities for political critique, particularly with the rise of the Internet. The emergence of this public sphere—and its uncertain future—is a pressing issue with important implications for the political prospects of the Chinese people. The book offers new possibilities for thinking about the transformation of state–society relations.

Performing Artivism: Feminists, Lawyers, and Online Legal Mobilization in China

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 678-705
Author(s):  
Di Wang ◽  
Sida Liu
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Mobilization ◽  
The Public ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
Performance Arts ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere

In authoritarian contexts where the state is the primary performer in the public sphere and legal mobilization is constrained and repressed, activists often seek to carve out a public space to confront the frontstage and backstage of the state’s performance in order to pursue collective action. Comparing the online legal mobilization of feminist and lawyer activists in China, this article investigates how performance arts are used by activists to challenge the authoritarian state in the age of social media. Performing “artivism” is to create conspicuous spectacles in the public eye for the purposes of exposing the state’s illegal or repressive backstage actions or promoting alternative values and norms different from the official ideology. By subversively disrupting the evidential boundaries set by the state, Chinese activists have been able to gain momentum and public support for their legal mobilization. However, it was precisely the success of their artivism that contributed to the government crackdowns on both feminists and lawyers in 2015.

scholarly journals Disobedience of Judges as a Problem of Legal Philosophy and Comparative Constitutionalism: A Polish Case

Res Publica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mateusz Pilich
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Difficult Problem ◽  
The State ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere

AbstractThe article takes up the difficult problem of the so-called disobedience of judges against the background of the experiences of the Polish departure from constitutional democracy in 2015–2020. The special role and responsibility of a judge in the state imposes restrictions on her freedom of opinion in the public sphere. Openly manifesting opposition to government policy, which in the case of an ordinary citizen is only the implementation of human rights and freedoms, may be described as controversial and contrary to applicable ethical regulations. The main thesis of this paper is the assertion that although judges who act as impartial arbitrators in disputes should generally refrain from ostentatiously opposing the actions of political authorities, they are not deprived of the possibility of protest. Also in the exercise of office, and not outside the sphere of their duties, judges should take into account overriding moral values that should be implemented by the legal order, and not the values or declarations guiding the government policies. The integrity of the judge, which prescribes restraint in statements and actions in the public sphere, as well as the care for the dignity of the office held, should not be confused with absolute subordination to the legislature or the executive, even if the judge is obliged to apply the law. The traditional attitude of the members of the judiciary, consisting in focusing only on the application of the law in individual cases and the lack of any political involvement, is being reviewed in the face of the spread of majoritarianism and the law abuse as normal techniques of exercising public authority. The disobedience of judges—although difficult to defend at first sight—may seem to be the only possible way to draw public attention to the corruption of the state system. The ‘disobediant’ judges can even be assigned the role of ‘whistleblowers’, which should help to ease their legal liability or their future rehabilitation.

scholarly journals The Public Sphere's Metamorphosis – The Triangular Relation Between the NGO, the State, and Globalization

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 124-128
Author(s):  
Azelarabe Bennani
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere

The issue we will discuss is related to the use of the Internet by the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to improve the social development in the African and international context. We will also discuss the philo-sophical background of the notion of ?public sphere‘ by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. Departing from the situation in Morocco, we observe that the lasting democratization process aims to improve the participation of the public sphere in the agency of social life. Taking for granted that society is not homo-geneous as expected, we observe that it is divided into the political establishment, including the state, par-liament, and the political institutions; in the social, religious and cultural institutions and the civil society. The state aims to enhance the participation of the other social spheres in the programme set by the government. The task is to engage the public sphere in the so called ?partnership‘ in the realization of its social pro-grammes.

‘Party in the street’: The partisan politics of space

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110338
Author(s):  
David Jenkins ◽  
Lipin Ram
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
State Power ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Public space is often understood as an important ‘node’ of the public sphere. Typically, theorists of public space argue that it is through the trust, civility and openness to others which citizens cultivate within a democracy’s public spaces, that they learn how to relate to one another as fellow members of a shared polity. However, such theorizing fails to articulate how these democratic comportments learned within public spaces relate to the public sphere’s purported role in holding state power to account. In this paper, we examine the ways in which what we call ‘partisan interventions’ into public space can correct for this gap. Using the example of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM), we argue that the ways in which CPIM partisans actively cultivate sites of historical regional importance – such as in the village of Kayyur – should be understood as an aspect of the party’s more general concern to present itself to citizens as an agent both capable and worthy of wielding state power. Drawing on histories of supreme partisan contribution and sacrifice, the party influences the ideational background – in competition with other parties – against which it stakes its claims to democratic legitimacy. In contrast to those theorizations of public space that celebrate its separateness from the institutions of formal democratic politics and the state more broadly, the CPIM’s partisan interventions demonstrate how parties’ locations at the intersections of the state and civil society can connect the public sphere to its task of holding state power to account, thereby bringing the explicitly political questions of democratic legitimacy into the everyday spaces of a political community.

Challenging representations of Muslims and cultural métissage in the ethnic comedies L’Italien (2010) and Mohamed Dubois (2013)

2021 ◽  
pp. 095715582110091
Author(s):  
Ramona Mielusel
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
The Public ◽  
French Culture ◽  
French People ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Legislative Measures

In this article, I am looking at two popular ‘ethnic’ comedies, L’Italien (2010) and Mohamed Dubois (2013), that promote dialogue and conviviality between Franco-Maghrebi and Franco-French people in France while questioning the societal feasibility of legislative measures of inclusiveness, visibility and equality of chances promoted by the government in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Considering some challenges in the representations, the comedies offer, at times, a social critique of certain stereotypical views on Islam and the destiny of Muslims on French soil, but they conclude in an optimistic tone supporting the idea that there is cultural métissage in France and that Muslims and Christians do mix in today’s diverse France. The popularity of these comedies attests to the fact that there is a need to bring up the issues of Islam in France and of the cohabitation between Muslims and Christian French citizens in the public sphere. I suggest however that while the Franco-Maghrebi’s ‘essentialist identity’ is challenged in the films, there are still neo-colonialist tensions in the artistic productions that entail ambivalence towards the Muslim characters. In a Franco-French dominated film-consuming culture, the Franco-Maghrebi characters are still subject to mimicry, which consistently maintains their subordinate position in the French culture.

scholarly journals Contested Numbers: Census Controversies and the Press in 1960s Nigeria

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Gerardo Serra ◽  
Morten Jerven
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
The State ◽  
Population Census ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Press ◽  
Distribution Of Resources ◽  
The Public Sphere

Abstract This article reconstructs the controversies following the release of the figures from Nigeria's 1963 population census. As the basis for the allocation of seats in the federal parliament and for the distribution of resources, the census is a valuable entry point into postcolonial Nigeria's political culture. After presenting an overview of how the Africanist literature has conceptualized the politics of population counting, the article analyses the role of the press in constructing the meaning and implications of the 1963 count. In contrast with the literature's emphasis on identification, categorization, and enumeration, our focus is on how the census results informed a broader range of visual and textual narratives. It is argued that analysing the multiple ways in which demographic sources shape debates about trust, identity, and the state in the public sphere results in a richer understanding of the politics of counting people and narrows the gap between demographic and cultural history.

scholarly journals AUTORITA’ AND AUTOREVOLEZZA: EXPLAINING CONTESTATIONS BETWEEN POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS LEADERS IN THE AGE OF THE NEW MEDIA

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-38
Author(s):  
Walter C. Ihejirika
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Connection ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Material Wealth ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

In many African countries, since the nineties, there is a subtle contest going on between religious and political leaders. At the heart of this contest is what Rosalind Hackett described as the redefinition of the categories of power and status, which cease to be primarily tied to material wealth or political connection, but rather to spiritual authority and revelation. This is a struggle for the hegemonic control of the society in the Gramscian sense of the term. While political leaders may use the coercive arms of the state – military might as well as their control of the financial resources of the state to impose their authority, religious leaders on the other hand assume the posture of moral icons, personalities endowed with superior knowledge based on divine revelation. As these contestations are played out in the public sphere, the way the leaders are able to portray themselves to their public will determine their followership. This explains the importance of mediation in the process of politico-religious contestations. In the eyes of the public, political leaders have the physical or raw power - the Italian concept of autorita; while the religious leaders have the moral power - autorevolezza. This paper uses these concepts as metaphors to present a general explanation of how the contestation between religious and political leaders plays out in the public sphere of the new media

In and out of Othello

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Poonam Trivedi
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
The State ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Politics Of Identity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Indian Adaptation

Othello has been the play that seems to speak to current issues of racism and sexism for the last couple of decades. Recent Indian productions have stretched its relevancies further, particularly addressing the politics of identity, of individual and state, of belonging and othering. The 2014 award-winning Assamiya film Othello (We Too Have Our Othellos) appropriates and radicalizes the main concerns of the play to embody and critique the movements for self-determination that continue to rage in the state. The article examines this unusual Indian adaptation of Shakespeare that locates the play directly within the public sphere of the politics of the state through its singular focus on Othello as an ‘outsider’ figure paralleled by other such figures of contemporary Assamese society. It will contextualize the discussion of this film, its production and positioning within the film industry of Assam and attempt to define the nature of its adaptation. It will also glance at its similarities with the earlier film In Othello (2003), which too connected Shakespeare and Assam to illustrate the volatile configurations of the outsider/insider status in contemporary India.

(Un)Liberated and Contested Narratives

2019 ◽  
pp. 334-347
Author(s):  
Bongani C Ndhlovu
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
South African ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Many ◽  
Contested Narratives

This chapter analyses the influence of the state in shaping museum narratives, especially in a liberated society such as South Africa. It argues that while the notion of social cohesion and nation building is an ideal that many South African museums should strive for, the technocratisation of museum processes has to a degree led to a disregard of the public sphere as a space of open engagement. Secondly, the chapter also looks at the net-effect of museums professionals and boards in the development of their narrative. It argues that due to the nature of their expertise and interests, and the focus on their areas of specialisation, museums may hardly claim to be representative of the many voices they ought to represent. As such, the chapter explores contestations in museum spaces. It partly does so by exploring the notion “free-spokenness” and its limits in museum spaces. To amplify its argument, the chapter uses some exhibitions that generated critical engagements from Iziko Museums of South Africa.

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