scholarly journals Tussen katedrale en kastele: Oor die teologies-politieke probleem

2009 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniël P. Goosen

Flanked by cathedrals and castles: Theology and its political problemThis article is a reflection on the theological-political problem (i.e. the question about the relationship between religion and politics) in modern society. It presupposes that this problem was created by modernism. Because modernism distinguished in a reductive fashion between religion and politics, modern society was left with the burning question of how to mediate between them. The first part of the article focuses on a critical appraisal of the modern distinction. In different sub-sections it is argued that the modern distinction led to a reduction in meaning of both the religious and the political. However, the modern distinction cannot be maintained. Contrary to the modern distinction it is argued that the political is always already infiltrated by the theological. Modernism cannot deliver on its promises. In the concluding section the argument is raised that the theological-political problem can be addressed if we as are willing to listen to the voice of tradition. According to tradition, desire (eros) reaches out from the lowest to the highest levels of reality. The relationship between the political and the theological is inscribed within the erotic curve of desire. While eros reaches out to and also finds fulfilment in active political participation, this does not represent the end of its journey. Eros even reaches further, to the transcendent realms of philosophical contemplation and theological wisdom. In the concluding sections it is argued that both the political and the religious can again be experienced as glorious phenomena due to their erotic mutuality. Their mutuality is not (pace modernism) an argument against their own integrity, but precisely an argument in favour thereof. Die moderne wêreld staan in spanning met alle stede uit die oudheid, met alles wat kultuur verteenwoordig, met alles wat tot ’n stad behoort.(Charles Péguy)

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-155
Author(s):  
Elva Orozco Mendoza ◽  

This article offers an interpretation of anti-feminicide maternal activism as political in northern Mexico by analyzing it alongside Hannah Arendt’s concepts of freedom, natality, and the child in The Human Condition. While feminist theorists often debate whether maternalism strengthens or undermines women’s political participation, the author offers an unconventional interpretation of Arendt’s categories to illustrate that the meaning and practice of maternalism radically changes through the public performance of motherhood. While Arendt does not seem the best candidate to navigate this debate, her concepts of freedom and the child provide a productive perspective to rethink the relationship between maternalism and citizenship. In making this claim, this article challenges feminist political theories that depict motherhood as the chief source of women’s subordination. In the case of northern Mexico, anti-feminicide maternal activism illustrates how the political is also a personal endeavor, thereby complementing the famous feminist motto.


Author(s):  
Tariq Modood

This chapter examines the political and cultural challenges posed by the growth of the non-white population in Europe. It reviews the chief current policy responses – assimilation, integration, and multiculturalism – in the context of claims by politicians in Germany, France, and the UK that ‘multiculturalism is dead’. The chapter distinguishes between two multicultural approaches: a valuing of diversity that accords full recognition to differences between cultural groups within a liberal democratic framework; and a multiculturalism that values cultural interaction and social mixing but withholds institutional recognition from groups, especially religious ones. The first approach may unintentionally strengthen barriers between groups and foster segregation, whilst the second may marginalise certain cultural orientations and communities. The chapter concludes by analysing the emerging ethnic fault lines across Europe and stresses the significance of a shift from colour to religion as the foundation of group identity, with major implications for the relationship between religion and politics.


Author(s):  
Carmen Bugan

There are two aspects of personal identity that often clash in the artistic process originating in oppression; they destabilize the voice of the ‘lyric I’. This chapter raises several questions about the relationship between personal biography and the construction of a lyric speaker, and explores the notion of a poetics that insists on healing the damage that politics does to the family; it discusses what happens when private and public identities become conflated because of politics, and how poetry ‘acts’ on the sense of family as a social microcosm where the conflict between the sense of the political self and the private self takes place.


On Universals ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 96-120
Author(s):  
Étienne Balibar

This chapter assesses the new “quarrel of universals” that now occupies philosophy and other overlapping disciplines. In this new quarrel, the question today is not only whether one is for or against the universal; the question is also how one defines the universal—a term whose surprising equivocity has become increasingly clear. Still more fundamentally, the question is how one should articulate the relationship between three related but heterogeneous terms whose widespread use has prompted conflicting claims: the universal, universality, and universalisms. The chapter begins by situating the question of the universal and its variations within the field that seems to constitute the strategic site of intersecting domains: philosophical anthropology, understood as the analysis of the historical differences of the human and of the problem that those differences pose to their bearers. It then outlines the difficulties which can be identified in every philosophical and political usage of the universal and its “doubles” according to three aporias. The first is the aporia of the multiplicity of the “world,” or of the universe as multiversum; the second is that of Allgemeinheit or All(en)gemeinheit, in other words, the irreducible gap between the universal and the common (or community); and, finally, that of co-citizenship, the form of belonging to a political unity to come, a unity whose law of belonging (membership) would be the heterogeneity within equality or the political participation of those foreign to the community.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayca Arkilic ◽  
Ayse Ezgi Gurcan

Abstract This article focuses on the relationship between Alevis and the Turkish and German states. It does so by examining the Turkish Alevi Opening (2009–2010) and the German Islam Conference (2006–present), two unprecedented official platforms aimed at improving Alevis’ political participation. The study asks why such state-sponsored initiatives came into existence in Turkey and Germany, and why the German Islam Conference has proven more successful from the perspective of Alevis. It argues that even though the diffusion of EU norms and pressure from transnational advocacy networks have increased awareness regarding the Alevi issue, domestic factors have been more salient in the emergence and outcome of these initiatives in both countries.


Author(s):  
Melissa R. Gotlieb ◽  
Chris Wells

Young citizens are increasingly seeking fulfillment in expressive modes of political participation, and scholars have begun to examine the implications of this trend for engagement in formal politics. While some argue that expressive practices are “crowding out” participation in more conventional civic activities, others more optimistically contend that they have expanded the political repertoires of young citizens, affording them with more opportunities to be engaged. The authors add clarity to this debate by specifying the conditions under which engagement in one particular form of expressive politics, political consumerism, is associated with conventional participation. An analysis of survey data shows that identification with other political consumers significantly enhances the relationship between political consumerism and traditional political engagement, particularly among younger generations of Americans. The authors argue that engaging in political consumerism alongside others provides an important opportunity for young citizens to develop the civic competencies necessary for engagement in the formal political sphere.


Author(s):  
Frank Weij ◽  
Pauwke Berkers

Various scholars have studied the relationship between music and politics. Most, however, focus on how governments and political parties on the one hand and movements and activists on the other use music for political outcomes and in doing so they often ignore the more latent forms of political participation music can lead to. This article, therefore, focuses on how people give meaning to political music in informal conversational settings by exploring the reception of Pussy Riot on YouTube. New media platforms like YouTube are ubiquitous in the West and as ‘third spaces’ they allow audiences to publicly reflect on everyday newsworthy events and activism. We combine the computerized methods of topic modelling and semantic network analysis to study both quantitatively and qualitatively how Pussy Riot’s punk protests afford political participation by (Western) YouTube users. Results show that the comments mostly address (1) the geopolitical boundaries of activism, (2) the legitimacy and commitment of the activists, (3) the political content of the protests and (4) the relationship between the protests and religion. For the YouTube users in our study, the political music of Pussy Riot thereby serves as a vehicle to discuss politics beyond the protests themselves.


Politics ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anja van Heelsum

In this article, the political participation of Turkish, Surinamese and Moroccan immigrants in four cities in the Netherlands is related to the civic community of these groups. The usefulness of Robert Putnam's civic community perspective is tested for the immigrant communities in Dutch cities in the Netherlands. The relationship between the networks in the migrant communities and political participation found in earlier research can partly explain the differences between the ethnic groups and between the cities, but some additional explanatory factors are suggested.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Rena Juliana ◽  
Reni Juliani ◽  
Nurkhalis Nurkhalis

Indonesia adheres to a democratic system of government. Each citizen, on the basis of the choice of ordinary people, chooses free political participation and then changes their direction as a sympathizer. Today, the excitement of political participation in Indonesian society to spread on Aceh has been somewhat hurt because some people have changed the political climate to be bad. This is reflected in the previous political participation side by side to deliver rhetoric to reap the voice of the people, but it has become a competition for each other. The purpose of this study is to find out what types of political participation occurred in constituents in Banda Aceh and West Aceh and who are the actors or groups that weaken or strengthen political participation in the constituents. The research method used is a qualitative approach with informants consisting of key informants, subject informants and non-subject informants. The results showed that the types of political participation in the constituents of Banda Aceh and West Aceh were very different and that sympathizers and political actors continued to strengthen and weaken the constituents. It is expected that this research will be a comparative study of the dynamics of policy in the Aceh region.


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