scholarly journals The violence of the event: ontology, ethics, and politics in Zizek

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 869-890
Author(s):  
Thiago Mota
Keyword(s):  
Political Consequences ◽  
Event Ontology ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Ethics And Politics

The article presents the guidelines of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s ontology, in order to understand his unique conception of violence, as well as the respective ethical and political consequences. For him, violence is not necessarily destructive, as there is a productive form of violence: transcendental violence, which involves both breaking the coordinates and building the conditions of possibility for the emergence of a new event. However, although he came to formulate, based on the examples of Socrates, Jesus and Gandhi, the idea of a violent pacifism, Zizek does not distinguish between antagonism and agonistic and, thus, loses sight of the strategic possibility of an agonistic pacifism.

The Politics of Repressed Guilt

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Leeb
Keyword(s):  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
Important Addition ◽  
Defensive Mechanisms ◽  
The Right

Through a critical appropriation of Hannah Arendt, and a more sympathetic engagement with Theodor W. Adorno and psychoanalysis, this book develops a new theoretical approach to understanding Austrians’ repression of their collaboration with National Socialist Germany. Drawing on original, extensive archival research, from court documents on Nazi perpetrators to public controversies on theater plays and museums, the book exposes the defensive mechanisms Austrians have used to repress individual and collective political guilt, which led to their failure to work through their past. It exposes the damaging psychological and political consequences such failure has had and continues to have for Austrian democracy today—such as the continuing electoral growth of the right-wing populist Freedom Party in Austria, which highlights the timeliness of the book. However, the theoretical concepts and practical suggestions the book introduces to counteract the repression of individual and collective political guilt are relevant beyond the Austrian context. It shows us that only when individuals and nations live up to guilt are they in a position to take responsibility for past crimes, show solidarity with the victims of crimes, and prevent the emergence of new crimes. Combining theoretical insights with historical analysis, The Politics of Repressed Guilt is an important addition to critical scholarship that explores the pathological implications of guilt repression for democratic political life.

Founding Gods, Inventing Nations

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
William F. McCants
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Cultural Orientation ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Islamic Culture ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Islamic Empire ◽  
First Time ◽  
Vast Range

From the dawn of writing in Sumer to the sunset of the Islamic empire, this book traces four thousand years of speculation on the origins of civilization. Investigating a vast range of primary sources, some of which are translated here for the first time, and focusing on the dynamic influence of the Greek, Roman, and Arab conquests of the Near East, the book looks at the ways the conquerors and those they conquered reshaped their myths of civilization's origins in response to the social and political consequences of empire. The Greek and Roman conquests brought with them a learned culture that competed with that of native elites. The conquering Arabs, in contrast, had no learned culture, which led to three hundred years of Muslim competition over the cultural orientation of Islam, a contest reflected in the culture myths of that time. What we know today as Islamic culture is the product of this contest, whose protagonists drew heavily on the lore of non-Arab and pagan antiquity. The book argues that authors in all three periods did not write about civilization's origins solely out of pure antiquarian interest—they also sought to address the social and political tensions of the day. The strategies they employed and the postcolonial dilemmas they confronted provide invaluable context for understanding how authors today use myth and history to locate themselves in the confusing aftermath of empire.

No One Can Serve Two Masters: A Contradictory Opinion in Case of Organizational Politics and Ethics

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Akanksha Dubey ◽  
Mrinalini Pandey
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Organizational Politics ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Shared Value ◽  
Value System ◽  
Ethics And Politics

Organizational politics is seen as a process through which one tries to fulfill their goals without considering the well- being of others. The ways adopted for fulfillment of goals might be sanctioned or unsanctioned (Mintzberg, 1985). Ethics works as a foundation for the Organisation as it provides employees with a shared value system around which the intra organizational and inter organisation communication takes place. The aim of this research paper is to find out whether politics and ethics survives subsist together in an organization or not. An empirical study has been conducted to attain our objective. The study was conducted in Academic organisations. The idea behind selecting Academic organisation is that these institutions are considered as idle organizations where one learns morals, values and discipline. The outcome of this study shows that ethics and politics can be present together in an organisation.

Dead Pledges

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annie McClanahan
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Credit Scoring ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Microeconomic Theory ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Irrational Behavior ◽  
Cultural Texts

Dead Pledges is a study of our contemporary culture of debt. Examining novels, poems, artworks, photographs, and films produced in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, this book aims to show how US cultural texts have grappled with the rise and fall of the financialized consumer credit economy. It argues that debt is such a ubiquitous yet elusive social form that we can most clearly understand it by looking at how our culture has sought to represent it. Whether popular entertainment or avant-garde art, post-crisis cultural texts allow us to map the landscape of contemporary debt: from foreclosure to credit scoring, student debt to securitized risk, microeconomic theory to anti-eviction activism. Across this range of sites, this book offers an account of the theoretical and political consequences of debt: how it affects our ideas of personhood and morality; how it deploys a language of irrational behavior and risky excess; how it transforms our relationship to property and possession. Bringing together economic history, debt theory, and cultural analysis, Dead Pledges demonstrates how our understanding of the economy can be illuminated by culture. What is at stake in our contemporary culture of debt is not just our measures of economic credibility but also the limits of our imaginative credulity; not just our account of economic character but also our literary characters; not just the money we see but also the way we see money; not just how we pay but also how we imagine getting payback.

Language Movement and Civil War in West Africa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ericka A. Albaugh
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Language Spread ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter examines how civil war can influence the spread of language. Specifically, it takes Sierra Leone as a case study to demonstrate how Krio grew from being primarily a language of urban areas in the 1960s to one spoken by most of the population in the 2000s. While some of this was due to “normal” factors such as population movement and growing urbanization, the civil war from 1991 to 2002 certainly catalyzed the process of language spread in the 1990s. Using census documents and surveys, the chapter tests the hypothesis at the national, regional, and individual levels. The spread of a language has political consequences, as it allows for citizen participation in the political process. It is an example of political scientists’ approach to uncovering the mechanisms for and evidence of language movement in Africa.

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