scholarly journals Reading Black Bloc Aesthetically

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-62
Author(s):  
Claryn Spies
Keyword(s):  
Direct Action ◽  
Transformative Experience ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Jacques Rancière ◽  
Aesthetic Practice ◽  
Mail Address ◽  
Property Destruction ◽  
E Mail

While black bloc has been persistently misunderstood and maligned by the mainstream media and leftist intellectuals alike, rereading this tactic as an aesthetic practice opens new and more interesting methods of appraisal. This paper considers three ways of reading black bloc: first, how participation in a black bloc can be an ontologically transformative experience for its participants; second, how property destruction associated with black blocs can have transformative effects on its spectators; and third, how black bloc is particularly well-suited to what Jacques Rancière calls the redistribution of the sensible. These accounts provide alternative lenses through which black bloc can be brought into focus, and suggest that the bloc’s lack of concrete demands or fixed membership, its fleeting temporality, and its refusal to either identify itself with a particular party or class, or to engage with “politics as usual”—the very things that frustrate its critics—can be read as its greatest strengths. In entertaining a multiplicity of ways of seeing black blocs, we may loosen ourselves from the prevailing criticisms that eschew nontraditional forms of demonstrations, and shift the horizon of what we find to be politically possible. [Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: [email protected] Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2021 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.] KEYWORDS: Aesthetics, Direct Action, Anonymity, Subjectivity, Jacques Rancière.

scholarly journals What Divides?

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 85
Author(s):  
Shannon Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Community Organisation ◽  
Jacques Rancière

The academic–activist divide does not merely consist of a division between those working within the academy to transform society and those pursuing the same ends through direct action, community organisation, or other forms of political organisation. Rather, at base the academic-activist divide is constituted by ideas around who can think and speak, what counts as thought and speech, and through the assumption that there are supposedly ‘legitimate’ spaces from which thought and speech issue. Thinking through and beyond the academic–activist divide requires questioning the relation between thought and action and challenging their containment within a social order. In what follows, I seek to move beyond the academic-activist divide by drawing on the work of Karl Marx and Jacques Rancière. Far from an inward exercise in political or social theory, the arguments made here have immediate consequences for questions of political organisation in the present moment.  

scholarly journals Riotous Epistemology: Open Referentiality and Reconfigured Temporalities in AK Thompson’s Black Bloc, White Riot

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-84
Author(s):  
Robert Carley
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Antonio Gramsci ◽  
Radical Theory ◽  
Social Struggle ◽  
Mail Address ◽  
E Mail

This paper suggests that AK Thompson’s text be viewed through the twin lenses of what I describe as “open referentiality” and “reconfigured temporalities” in order to broadly understand the pedagogical and epistemological contributions of his work. I argue that Thompson’s work, at the pedagogical level, provides several reference points through which readers are invited to consider how theories, concepts, and the traditions that they are embedded in can be reinterpreted in the context of contemporary forms of social struggle, protest, demonstrations, and direct action. I connect the pedagogical aspects of Thompson’s work to their epistemological underpinnings arguing that Thompson’s work produces a phenomenology of thought and action that, taken in consort with his pedagogical invitation to reconsider aspects of radical and critical traditions, provides a riot in the epistemological frameworks that settle or partition (radical and critical) traditions of thought. I explore this idea by discussing how Black Bloc White Riot provided a means for me to rethink the contributions of Antonio Gramsci to contemporary social movement studies. [Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: [email protected] Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2021 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.] KEYWORDS: AK Thompson, Black Bloc White Riot, Critical Theory, Radical Theory, Direct Action, Antonio Gramsci.

Freiheit, Gleichheit, Sinnlichkeit–Jacques Rancière, Hegel und die holländische Malerei

2010 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leander Scholz
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Traditional Concept ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Jacques Rancière ◽  
Political Intervention ◽  
The French Revolution

Der Aufsatz geht der These nach, daß die Fundierung der politischen Theorie in einer ästhetischen Theorie bei Jacques Rancière eine Aktualisierung der Losung der Brüderlichkeit aus der Französischen Revolution darstellt. Diese Aktualisierung der Brüderlichkeit als »ästhetische Gemeinschaft« erlaubt es Rancière, an den Klassenbegriff von Marx anzuschließen, ohne die damit verbundene Gemeinschaftserfahrung begrifflich bestimmen und damit an positive Merkmale binden zu müssen. Weil Rancière seine Demokratietheorie vor allem als eine Interventionstheorie angelegt hat, soll die »ästhetische Gemeinschaft« im Unterschied zum Klassenbegriff es ermöglichen, eine prinzipiell unabgeschlossene Reihe von politischen Subjektivierungsprozessen zu denken. Um diese These zu schärfen, wird Rancières Demokratietheorie mit der von Jacques Derrida verglichen, der auf ganz ähnliche Weise das Demokratische der Demokratie in einem Streit gegeben sieht, der jenseits von demokratischen Spielregeln stattfindet, die Losung der Brüderlichkeit jedoch für überaus problematisch hält.<br><br>This article argues that the foundation of political theory in aesthetics by Jacques Rancière can be seen as an actualization of the slogan of fraternalism during the French Revolution. This actualization of fraternalism as »aesthetic community« gives Rancière the possibility to operate with the Marxian concept of classes without positively defining the experience of community. Because Rancière understands democracy as the chance for political intervention, the concept of an »aesthetic community« (as opposed to the traditional concept of classes) allows him to posit an endless process of political subjectification. To sharpen this argument, the article compares Rancière’s understanding of democracy to Jacques Derrida’s, who also focuses on a democratic struggle beyond democratic rules, but is very skeptical about the slogan of fraternalism.

Effects and utility of an online forward triage tool during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: patient perspectives (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Michel
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Health System ◽  
Information Source ◽  
Patient Perspectives ◽  
User Friendliness ◽  
Fear And Anxiety ◽  
Mail Address ◽  
Second Wave ◽  
E Mail

BACKGROUND Background: Online forward triage tools (OFTT) or symptom checkers are being widely used during this COVID-19 pandemic. The effects and utility of such tools however, have not been widely assessed. OBJECTIVE Objective: To assess the effects (quantitatively) and the utility (qualitatively) of a COVID-19 OFTT in a pandemic context, exploring patient perspectives as well as eliciting recommendations for tool improvement. METHODS Methods: We employed a mixed-method sequential explanatory study design. Quantitative data of all users of the OFTT between March 2nd, 2020 and May 12th, 2020 were collected. A follow-up survey of people who consented to participation was conducted. Secondly, qualitative data was collected through key informant interviews (n=19) to explain the quantitative findings, as well as explore tool utility, user experience and elicit recommendations. RESULTS Results: An estimate of the effects, (quantitatively) and the utility (qualitatively) of a COVID-19 OFTT in a pandemic context, and recommendations for tool improvement. In the study period, 6,272 users consulted our OFTT; 560 participants consented to a follow-up survey and provided a valid e-mail address. 176 (31.4%) participants returned a complete follow-up questionnaire. 85.2% followed the recommendations given. 41.5% reported that their fear was allayed after using tool and 41.1% would have contacted the GP or visited a hospital had the tool not existed. Qualitatively, seven overarching themes emerged namely i) accessibility of tool, ii) user-friendliness of tool, iii) utility of tool as an information source, iv) utility of tool in allaying fear and anxiety, v) utility of tool in decision making (test or not to test), vi) utility of tool in reducing the potential for onward transmissions (preventing cross infection) and vii) utility of tool in reducing health system burden. CONCLUSIONS Conclusion: Our findings demonstrated that a COVID-19 OFTT does not only reduce the health system burden, but can also serve as an information source, reduce anxiety and fear, reduce cross infections and facilitate decision making (to test or not to test). Further studies are needed to assess the transferability of these COVID-19 OFTT findings to other contexts as the second wave sweeps across Europe.

scholarly journals 1932: entre a imagem e a virtualidade

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (24) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Chirsty Beatriz Najarro Guzmán
Keyword(s):  
El Salvador ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Jacques Rancière

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1984-784X.2015v15n24p23Entre a realidade e sua representação imagética, intervém a subjetividade de quem capta essa realidade, cujas condições intelectuais, sociais e culturais se articulam para a configuração analógica e dessemelhante do rosto imagético, conforme as considerações de Jacques Rancière sobre a natureza das imagens. Nesse sentido, não só se contesta a existência de um discurso único sobre um evento histórico, mas também a univocidade de tal evento. Levando isso em consideração, o documentário 1932: cicatriz en la memoria (2005), dirigido por Carlos Hernríquez Consalvi, para o Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen (MUPI) de El Salvador, apresenta uma narrativa que compreende o levante popular e etnocídio cultural de 1932, como a semente do Partido Comunista (PC) salvadorenho, ao mesmo tempo em que na entrelinha se tece uma contra-narrativa, cuja linha de pensamento vai no sentido contrário, colocando o indígena como protagonista, contestando o discurso oficial sobre os eventos.

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