Men Without Names

2021 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-183
Author(s):  
Debjani Sarkar ◽  
Nirban Manna

Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) in India was realized along the lines of Maoist ideology through the Naxalite insurgency in the 1960s. Novelists have attempted to grasp the mood of this decade of liberation through fiction. This article attempts to study two novels which document the formative years of the Naxalite movement in West Bengal. Translated works from Bengali, Mahasweta Devi’s Mother of 1084 (1974) and Bani Basu’s The Enemy Within (1991) foreground the necropolitical policies of the demonic state in eliminating these Naxal names. State and non-state actors obliterate the question of the Naxal’s identity (enmeshed with his mind and body), making it the focal point of the analysis. Drawing abundantly on concepts of homo sacer, necropolitics, McCarthyism, and democide, the analysis demonstrates that the protagonists are typical of what modern biopolitical states do to non-conformist subjects by creating death worlds. This article is an attempt at understanding the nuances of a sociopolitical movement through literature as social responsibility.

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (01) ◽  
pp. 102-129
Author(s):  
ALBERTO MARTÍN ÁLVAREZ ◽  
EUDALD CORTINA ORERO

AbstractUsing interviews with former militants and previously unpublished documents, this article traces the genesis and internal dynamics of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People's Revolutionary Army, ERP) in El Salvador during the early years of its existence (1970–6). This period was marked by the inability of the ERP to maintain internal coherence or any consensus on revolutionary strategy, which led to a series of splits and internal fights over control of the organisation. The evidence marshalled in this case study sheds new light on the origins of the armed Salvadorean Left and thus contributes to a wider understanding of the processes of formation and internal dynamics of armed left-wing groups that emerged from the 1960s onwards in Latin America.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-52
Author(s):  
Antonio Bellisario ◽  
Leslie Prock

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.


Author(s):  
Andy Sumner

This chapter reviews currents in theory with a focus on modernization and neoclassical statements of comparative advantage on the one hand, and structuralism, dependency, and other theories of underdevelopment on the other. The latter theories of underdevelopment hit their zenith in the policies of the import-substitution industrialization of the 1960s and 1970s. They were largely dismissed in the 1980s as the limits of import-substitution industrialization became apparent and as East Asia industrialized, undermining any argument that structural transformation was problematic in the periphery. This chapter theorizes that neither orthodox nor heterodox theories of structural transformation adequately explain the development of late developers because of the heterogeneity of contemporary capitalism. That said, heterodox theories, which coalesce around the nature of incorporation of developing countries into the global economy, do retain conceptual usefulness in their focal point, ‘developmentalism’, by which we mean the deliberate attempts at national development led by the state.


2012 ◽  
Vol 53 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 187-198
Author(s):  
Virág Büky

In her book about Bartók’s American years Agatha Fasset recalls the composer attesting to his second wife Ditta Pásztory that her piano playing “comes to the nearest of all” to his own style admonishing her “to preserve this style, keep it alive, keep it going.” Pásztory’s discography (containing recordings from the 1960s) testifies that she took Bartók’s assignment seriously. The first part of this paper gives a short description of Pásztory’s formative years as a pianist and her long apprenticeship under Bartók’s guidance. The second part, analysing a few of her recordings will attempt to find out how she succeeded in preserving Bartók’s manner of performance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-79
Author(s):  
Russell White

The photography of the Argentinian photographer Francisco ‘Tito’ Caula tracked some of the key social and physical changes that Caracas underwent during the middle decades of the twentieth century. This period saw the country transition from dictatorship to democracy. Caula’s advertising photographs together with his images of spectacular spaces and buildings such as the Sabana Grande and the Centro Simón Bolívar presented Caracas as a mecca of mid-century ‘petro-modernity’ (LeMenager 2014). In contrast to late nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century modernity, which was predominantly European in influence, Caraqueño modernity at mid-century was more cosmopolitan, taking particular inspiration from the United States. Caula’s photographs speak to the process of Americanization, defined as the adoption of North American cultural products, urban forms and patterns of living that Venezuela underwent during the years Caula spent in the country. Venezuela witnessed an economic boom in the 1960s and 70s, which was fuelled by the US acquisition of Venezuelan oil. In Venezuela, the boom facilitated the growth of a consumer society as well as the development of such quintessentially North American urban forms as freeways, shopping malls, drive-in movie theatres, suburbs and skyscrapers. It was also accompanied by the adoption of violent security tactics by the state’s security apparatus and the political marginalization of the radical left. Given that Caula held left-wing views, it is perhaps surprising that his photographs (at least those that have been published) do not explore the tensions at the heart of the Pacto de Punto Fijo, instituted to ensure that the transition from dictatorship to democracy would hold following elections in 1958. The celebration of North American influence within Caula’s photographs puts them in dialogue with critical perspectives that have seen US cultural influence rather more negatively. Moreover, their celebration of prosperity and their presentation of Caracas as an exciting city means that, for some, they have taken on a nostalgic hue.


The International Biological Programme served as a focal point for studies on biological nitrogen fixation during the 1960s. The introduction of the acetylene reduction technique for measuring nitrogenase activity in the field led to estimates becoming available of the contribution of lichens, blue-green algae, nodulated non-legumes and bacterial-grass associations, as well as of legumes. Other studies carried out on the physiology and biochemistry of the process led to the eventual purification and characterization of the nitrogenase enzyme. These studies, collectively, provided the springboard for current work, so essential in view of the present energy crisis, on how to increase the use and efficiency of nitrogen-fixing plants, on the metabolic regulation of the nitrogenase enzyme and on the genetics of the nitrogen-fixing process, both in higher plants and in free-living micro-organisms.


Author(s):  
Udi Greenberg

This chapter considers the new vision of democracy ushered in by the generation of the 1960s. Unlike the architects of the postwar order, left-wing students challenged, rather than celebrated, the legitimacy of elected institutions and party politics. Parliaments were merely stages for oligarchies, tools for self-perpetuating elites. In both West Germany and the United States, students claimed that state institutions inevitably reinforced rigid hierarchies and oppressive norms. A “true” democracy could not be built by state agencies. Rather, it would emerge from “autonomy,” from small organizations, student movements, NGOs, and, later, human rights organizations. When the frustration and anger of this new generation exploded in protest in the late 1960s, German émigrés were among its main targets. Student journals and pamphlets frequently attacked and ridiculed the leading thinkers of the older generation. Such criticism was especially ferocious in West Germany, where returning émigrés came to represent Cold War ties with an amoral and depraved United States.


This chapter considers the ways in which selected perspectives from the new public diplomacy, as well as established forms of diplomatic study of both state and non-state actors, can illuminate and enhance an understanding of the history and growth of the governing body of world football and the "continental" confederations recognized by FIFA. In turn, it reflect on the ways in which a rigorous study of sporting institutions such as FIFA can contribute to an understanding of the crossover between sport development, sport governance and related forms of diplomacy. A new analysis of the cultural and political dynamics of the developments of FIFA’s regional bodues warrants a forensic approach to the analysis of the historical phases of the confederations emergence. The chapter therefore considers the cases of the formative years of CONCACAF and OCEANIA, small players initially in global football politics but by 2016 providing 52 full members of FIFA, almost a quarter of the powerbrokers making up the 209 members of its Congress. In conclusion, the generally unacknowledged contribution of sport governing bodies to forms of diplomatic practice and relations is reconsidered, in the comparative light of other studies within the book, and the detailed consideration in this chapter of the selected phase of FIFA and confederation development.


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