The political-performative power of language, appropriation, cultures of translation and travelling theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 83-101
Author(s):  
Ulrike E. Auga
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Power Of Language ◽  
Performative Power

Excerpts from Zamanın Kelimeleri: Yeni Türkiye’nin Siyasî Dili (Words of Our Times: The Political Language of New Turkey)

boundary 2 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-137
Author(s):  
Tanıl Bora
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Public Language ◽  
Justice And Development Party ◽  
Political Background ◽  
Power Of Language

These essays grapple with the widely “expended” words that characterize the era of the nationalist-conservative-populist Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP) in Turkey, which has been in power since 2002. Some of these words rest on a specified backdrop of nationalist and Islamist jargon. Others are words that have accrued meaning in tandem with the zeitgeist. Still others seem to have no particular political meaning, appearing rather “neutral,” though in fact they serve as reflections of a hegemonic zeitgeist. While the pointed political use of these words may be identified as “manipulative” and elicit reactions accordingly, the majority of the words are nonetheless perceived as entirely “neutral.” In any event, they are words that seize upon and configure public language, imposing a broad set of prejudices upon popular imaginaries. They function in society by reproducing the nationalist-conservative and authoritarianpopulist worldview as well as the ethos and pathos that sustain that worldview. Collectively, these essays clarify the historical and political background of the words at hand, examining their ideological function as well as their etymological and stylistic inspirations. By extension, these essays problematize these words, which, due to their standardizing effect, ensnare political communication and, moreover, powerfully corrode already weak sensitivities to the power of language.

scholarly journals The Role of Memory and Language in Transformation: Crucial Issues in American Indigenous Poetry

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bayu Kristianto
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Methodology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Political ◽  
Joy Harjo ◽  
The Face ◽  
Power Of Language ◽  
Indigenous Poetry

The integration of the personal and the political has been an engaging topic in analyses of literary texts by authors whose works are known for their political content and activism, as well as an emphasis on social justice. Literary audiences in the United States have been familiar with Joy Harjo and John Trudell, two well-known contemporary Indigenous poets, who have voiced out the concerns of Indigenous people in the face of colonization and injustice happening in their homeland. Within the fusion of the personal and the political, as well as the mythical, the idea of transformation is paramount for Indigenous authors since to move from the state of being colonized to one of being decolonized, transformation is undoubtedly crucial. This paper focuses on the role of memory and the power of language in the process of transformation in the three poems by Joy Harjo and John Trudell. The analysis uses a qualitative methodology in the form of a close reading of literary texts to uncover the interconnectedness of memory and language in transformation. I argue that Native poets experience personal transformation that is critically influenced by the role of ancestral memory and social and historical consciousness in the broader context of Indigenous people’s struggle and resistance, as well as the power of language to see reality differently and affect its change. The analysis is intended to show to what extent the concepts of memory and language are critical in the process of decolonization and the manners in which these texts can be empowering for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences in response to forms of injustice through the integration of the personal, the political, and the mythical.

scholarly journals Violence of war, ontopology, and the instrumental and performative constitution of the political community

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-82
Author(s):  
Klejda Mulaj
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Complete Understanding ◽  
Post War ◽  
Performative Power

AbstractThis article considers a neglected question in International Relations, namely how violence of war contributes to the constitution of the political community at the intersection between war and peace. It exposes limitations of means-ends, instrumental understanding of war violence due to the overlooking of violence’s performative attributes stemming from the centrality of bodily injuries in war. The instrumental violence on which the constitution of the political community is grounded finds expression in an order of representation that can be termed ontopology, and a pervasive – circular – relationship between ontopology and violence insofar as ontopology has inspired extreme forms of human behaviour and also been used to justify violence as a means to enact an ontopological goal. Yet, recognising the role of bodily injuries in the course of fighting allows for a more complete understanding of war. Crucially it enables an interpretation of the structure of war as a relation between war’s interior content – casualties in war – and the exterior, verbal issues standing outside it (pertaining to security, identity, sovereignty, authority, ideology), that lead to a surrogate contest of reimagining political community in the process of which performative power of violence contributes directly to the emerging post-war peace and laws that justify it.

scholarly journals Creating Romanestan: A Place to be a Gypsy in Post-Nazi Europe

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Sierra
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Racial Exclusion ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
Second World ◽  
Performative Power

This article examines the political formula of Romanestan as conceived by Ionel Rotaru (1918–1982), a Romanian refugee in France after the Second World War. Romanestan is the most visible aspect of an ambitious plan demanding rights for those labelled Gypsies throughout the world. This study is of interest because it sheds new light on the problems of social and political readjustment after the Second World War from the standpoint of racial exclusion. Rotaru’s project was both the response to longstanding historical racist aggression and also a crucial turning point in the formation of Romani ethnic identity. What makes its study interesting is that the formula of the Romanestan wove the right to exist of those regarded as Gypsies into a creative transnational political project. Based on classified documents, this article highlights the political nature of processes of ethnicization and assesses the performative power of symbols.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Athena Athanasiou
Keyword(s):  
National Language ◽  
The Political ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Critical Methodology ◽  
Performative Power

This introductory chapter pursues the main question of the book: How might we capture the performative power implicit in processes of turning the impossibility of mourning into an incalculable political potentiality that deconstitutes its interpellating terms and contests state-nationalist authoritarianism? It outlines the challenge that the critical methodology of a feminist political movement in post-Yugoslavia presents for the available theoretical and political vocabularies of agonism. Through an anthropological account of the urban feminist and antinationalist movement Women in Black of Belgrade (Žene u Crnom), the Introduction addresses the ways these activists, by engaging in practices of undoing grief as feminine and national language, open onto spaces for challenging conventional divisions between the affective and the political, between the political and the performative, as well as between body and language.

The Social Origins and Provenance of the English Bishops during the Reign of Edward II

1959 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 51-79
Author(s):  
K. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Early Career ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Edward Ii ◽  
The Social ◽  
Complete Study ◽  
History Of

During the last twenty or twenty-five years medieval historians have been much interested in the composition of the English episcopate. A number of studies of it have been published on periods ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A further paper might well seem superfluous. My reason for offering one is that most previous writers have concentrated on analysing the professional circles from which the bishops were drawn, and suggesting the influences which their early careers as royal clerks, university masters and students, secular or regular clergy, may have had on their later work as bishops. They have shown comparatively little interest in their social background and provenance, except for those bishops who belonged to magnate families. Some years ago, when working on the political activities of Edward II's bishops, it seemed to me that social origins, family connexions and provenance might in a number of cases have had at least as much influence on a bishop's attitude to politics as his early career. I there fore collected information about the origins and provenance of these bishops. I now think that a rather more careful and complete study of this subject might throw further light not only on the political history of the reign, but on other problems connected with the character and work of the English episcopate. There is a general impression that in England in the later middle ages the bishops' ties with their dioceses were becoming less close, and that they were normally spending less time in diocesan work than their predecessors in the thirteenth century.

Democrazy—Dem Go Craze, O: Monitoring the 1999 Nigerian Elections

1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-33
Author(s):  
Darren Kew
Keyword(s):  
Transition Program ◽  
The Political ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Soccer Match ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Military

In many respects, the least important part of the 1999 elections were the elections themselves. From the beginning of General Abdusalam Abubakar’s transition program in mid-1998, most Nigerians who were not part of the wealthy “political class” of elites—which is to say, most Nigerians— adopted their usual politically savvy perspective of siddon look (sit and look). They waited with cautious optimism to see what sort of new arrangement the military would allow the civilian politicians to struggle over, and what in turn the civilians would offer the public. No one had any illusions that anything but high-stakes bargaining within the military and the political class would determine the structures of power in the civilian government. Elections would influence this process to the extent that the crowd influences a soccer match.

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