scholarly journals Marta Górnicka’s «Grundgesetz»: The Chorus as Portrait and Proxy of Political Community

2021 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 123-143
Author(s):  
Louise Décaillet
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
German People

This text analyzes the function of the chorus in Marta Górnicka’s open-air production Grundgesetz (Berlin, 2018) in redefining the political community of “the German people.” While examining its relation to the audience, the author refers to examples of German mass spectacles from the Weimar Republic that invested choruses to both represent a political community in the making and to shape political subjects through collective action. Based on aesthetic and political concepts of representation, which intertwine in the performance, the author shows how the chorus of Grundgesetz both portrays and enacts “the German people” as a plurality of bodies and voices united by fundamental rights. Making it thus an available community to stand for, the performance questions the agency of the audience as a collective body capable of acting together in public space.

Continuity with Deficiencies: The New Basic Law of Hungary

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
András Jakab ◽  
Pál Sonnevend
Keyword(s):  
Constitutional Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Basic Law ◽  
The Government ◽  
Democratic Constitution ◽  
Legal Procedures

Hungarian constitutional law – New Basic Law – Continuity with the previous democratic Constitution – Vision of the political community embedded in the new Basic Law – The level of protection of fundamental rights – Continuity and lack of foreseeability in the organisation of the state – European legal procedures against or about Hungary – The life prospects of the new Basic Law – Danger of constitutional crisis whenever the government does not hold a constitution-amending majority

Is Impartiality Politics?

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Rosanvallon
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ways Of Thinking

This chapter examines conceptions of impartiality and looks at how impartiality itself is approached in a political context. In doing so the chapter asks if the shift from positive to negative generality reflects a decline in the democratic–republican ideal and a greater role for law. From here, the chapter turns to the idea of a democratic impartiality—an active impartiality whose intervention helps to build a political community. Impartiality has established itself in the political order as the vector of aspirations to construct a more deliberative and transparent public space. It is also a key to understanding new ways of thinking about the social.

Community

2019 ◽  
pp. 75-92
Author(s):  
Paul Spicker
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Communities Of Interest ◽  
Communities Of Place

A community is a based on networks; patterns of community include communities based on cultural identity, communities of interest and communities of place. Social policy has built on the idea of community to promote a model of solidarity where people can be integrated into the networks and included socially. The 'political community' becomes the focus both of collective action and of moral responsibility.

scholarly journals Jeremy Waldron and the Circumstances of Politics

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Alexander Latham-Gambi
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Civic Virtue ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
The Face

Abstract This article examines Jeremy Waldron's concept of the “circumstances of politics” (CoP), which he describes as the felt need for a common decision in the face of disagreement. Waldron uses the CoP to detach certain issues surrounding civic virtue and institutional design from questions about substantive principles such as justice and human rights. While emphasis is often placed on the fact of disagreement, I argue that the other aspect of the CoP, the need for collective action, is in fact the more fundamental. Waldron's arguments rely on an understanding that there is expressive value in citizens affirming commitment to the political community and on an awareness of how the nature of politics as public collective action is structured by the constitutional architecture. I argue that a lopsided focus on disagreement threatens to obscure the fact that the political sphere is itself a fragile achievement that is in need of continual support.

scholarly journals Constituent power beyond exceptionalism: Irregular migration, disobedience, and (re-)constitution

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Celikates
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Irregular Migration ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Institutional Structures

This article argues that, far from being a merely defensive act of individual protest, civil disobedience is a much more radical political practice. It is transformative in that it aims at the politicization of questions that are excluded from the political domain and at reconfiguring public space and existing institutions, often in comprehensive ways. Focusing on the reconstitution of the political community also allows us to reconceptualize constituent power. Rather than portraying it as a quasi-mythical force erupting only in extraordinary moments, constituent power can be conceptualized as a dynamic situated within established orders, transgressing their logic and reconfiguring them from within. Civil disobedience as a transformative and potentially comprehensive practice aimed at reconstituting the political order can then be seen as an internal driving force keeping this dialectic in play. A concrete example can be found in protests and border struggles by irregularized migrants. They show how unexpected forms of civil disobedience manage to politicize symbolic and institutional structures that are usually taken for granted or naturalized and thereby removed from politicization, such as borders and citizenship. In this way, they exemplify not only the defensive/reactive but also the constituent/transformative force of disobedience.

Complexity, cultural pluralism and democracy: collective action in the public space

2000 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 507-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Melucci ◽  
Leonardo Avritzer
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
The Public ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right

This article is an attempt to show the political consequences of the forms of collective action introduced by social movements and their contribution to the formulation of a new conception of democratic practice. It is our contention that the current crisis faced by democracy is linked to the lack of a space capable of dealing with both social complexity and cultural pluralism. We argue that a public space for face-to-face interaction among citizens differentiated from the state allows us to consider this issue in a different light. Publicity allows the incorporation into democratic politics of demands for cultural integration by preserving a space for their direct presentation. Publicity also avoids a reductionist conception of political claims in which, in order for representation to take place, there is the need to reduce the plurality of the cultural demands through the aggregation of political majorities. In this article we show the tension between the public space and political representation, and argue that the definition of democracy in complex societies should include two further freedoms: the freedom not to belong as the right to withdraw from one's constituted identity in order to form a new one, and the freedom not to be represented. Such acts, which are non-aggregative par excellence, cannot be managed by the system of representation, but only through mechanisms of public presentation and acknowledgement of difference. In our view the tension between the political and the public should become part of the definition of democracy.

Arte ConTexto

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-52
Author(s):  
Antonio Bellisario ◽  
Leslie Prock
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Pictorial Representation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Socialist Government ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Military

The article examines Chilean muralism, looking at its role in articulating political struggles in urban public space through a visual political culture perspective that emphasizes its sociological and ideological context. The analysis characterizes the main themes and functions of left-wing brigade muralism and outlines four subpolitical phases: (i) Chilean mural painting’s beginnings in 1940–1950, especially following the influence of Mexican muralism, (ii) the development of brigade muralism for political persuasion under the context of revolutionary sociopolitical upheaval during the 1960s and in the socialist government of Allende from 1970 to 1973, (iii) the characteristics of muralism during the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1980s as a form of popular protest, and (iv) muralism to express broader social discontent during the return to democracy in the 1990s. How did the progressive popular culture movement represent, through murals, the political hopes during Allende’s government and then the political violence suffered under the military dictatorship? Several online repositories of photographs of left-wing brigade murals provide data for the analysis, which suggests that brigade muralism used murals mostly for political expression and for popular education. Visual art’s inherent political dimension is enmeshed in a field of power constituted by hegemony and confrontation. The muralist brigades executed murals to express their political views and offer them to all spectators because the street wall was within everyone's reach. These murals also suggested ideas that went beyond pictorial representation; thus, muralism was a process of education that invited the audience to decipher its polysemic elements.

NCOBPS Fifty Years

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-135
Author(s):  
William J. Daniels
Keyword(s):  
Predominantly White ◽  
Black Student ◽  
Personal Narrative ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Protest ◽  
Predominantly White Institution ◽  
Significant Events ◽  
White Institution ◽  
The 1960S

This personal narrative recounts the experiences of an NCOBPS founder, who discusses significant events in his life from student to faculty that motivated his professional journey, including his participation in the founding of NCOBPS. It reflects on what it meant to be a black student, and later, a black faculty member teaching at a predominantly white institution in the political science discipline in the 1960s. It also provides a glimpse into how the freedom movements shaped his fight for fundamental rights as a citizen. Finally, it gives credence to the importance of independent black organizations as agents for political protest and vehicles for economic and social justice.

Religion and the Construction of a Christian Roman Polity

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-113
Author(s):  
Francesco Rotiroti
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Theories Of Religion ◽  
Ancient Christianity

This article seeks to define a theoretical framework for the study of the relation between religion and the political community in the Roman world and to analyze a particular case in point. The first part reviews two prominent theories of religion developed in the last fifty years through the combined efforts of anthropologists and classicists, arguing for their complementary contribution to the understanding of religion's political dimension. It also provides an overview of the approaches of recent scholarship to the relation between religion and the Roman polity, contextualizing the efforts of this article toward a theoretical reframing of the political and institutional elements of ancient Christianity. The second part focuses on the religious legislation of the Theodosian Code, with particular emphasis on the laws against the heretics and their performance in the construction of the political community. With their characteristic language of exclusion, these laws signal the persisting overlap between the borders of the political community and the borders of religion, in a manner that one would expect from pre-Christian civic religions. Nevertheless, the political essence of religion did also adapt to the ecumenical dimension of the empire. Indeed, the religious norms of the Code appear to structure a community whose borders tend to be identical to the borders of the whole inhabited world, within which there is no longer room for alternative affiliations; the only possible identity outside this community is that of the insane, not belonging to any political entity and thus unable to possess any right.

Occupy Movement, Religion and Social Formations

2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-24
Author(s):  
Matt Sheedy
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
Political Opportunity Structures

The Occupy movement was an unprecedented social formation that spread to approximate 82 countries around the globe in the fall of 2011 via social media through the use of myths, symbols and rituals that were performed in public space and quickly drew widespread mainstream attention. In this paper I argue that the movement offers a unique instance of how discourse functions in the construction of society and I show how the shared discourses of Occupy were taken-up and shaped in relation to the political opportunity structures and interests of those involved based on my own fieldwork at Occupy Winnipeg. I also argue that the Occupy movement provides an example of how we might substantively attempt to classify “religion” by looking at how it embodied certain metaphysical claims while contrasting it with the beliefs and practices of more conventionally defined “religious” communities.

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