scholarly journals De kracht van inertie : Een Sartreaans perspectief op verzet

2020 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-112
Author(s):  
Matthias Lievens

Abstract The force of inertia. A Sartrean perspective on resistanceAlthough Sartre’s philosophy of freedom is often considered as a philosophy of resistance, rooted in the experience of the Second World War, Sartre did not formulate a full-blown theory of resistance. However, his Critique of Dialectical Reason contains a wealth of material that allows a rethinking of the notion of resistance. In much of the literature, this notion is inflated so as to include action, opposition, struggle, exodus and a range of other phenomena. In order to acquire a sharper sense of the specific meaning of resistance, this paper argues, this notion has to be reconnected with its origins in mechanical physics. Sartre’s key concept of inertia provides a starting point for such a theoretical strategy. Although human beings are fundamentally free, they can live their relation to others and to themselves as if they were inert things. From a Sartrean perspective, resistance means making oneself inert in order to be able to persevere and to hold the line in the face of a threat. Resistance occurs at both sides of a struggle, and can take different, asymmetrical forms. The two fundamental modes of sociality Sartre distinguishes, namely the group and the series, offer different types of resistance to opponents.

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 895-900
Author(s):  
ELISABETH ALBANIS

A history of the Jews in the English-speaking world: Great Britain. By W. D. Rubinstein, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996. Pp. viii+539. ISBN 0-312-12542-9. £65.00.Pogroms: anti-Jewish violence in modern Russian history. Edited by John D. Klier and Shlomo Lambroza. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xx+393. ISBN 0-521-40532-7. £55.00.Western Jewry and the Zionist project, 1914–1933. By Michael Berkowitz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xvi+305. ISBN 0-521-47087-0. £35.00.Three books under review deal from different perspectives with the responses of Jews in Western and Eastern Europe to the increasing and more or less violent outbursts of anti-Semitism which they encountered in the years from 1880 to the Second World War. The first two titles consider how deep-rooted anti-Semitism was in Britain and Russia and in what sections of society it was most conspicuous, whereas the third asks how Western Jewry became motivated to support the Zionist project of settlement in Palestine; all three approach the question of how isolated or intergrated diaspora Jews were in their respective countries.


2012 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 17-32
Author(s):  
Mónika Szente-Varga

The first diplomatic and consular relations were established between Mexico and the Habsburg Empire in the 1800 s, motivated basically by commerdal reasons and dynastic interests. These got to an abrupt end with the execution of Emperor Maximilian in Querétaro in 1867, and diplomatic relations were resumed only decades later, in 1901, which is, in fact, our starting point. This essay examines the development of diplomatic relations between Mexico and Central-Eastern Europe from the beginning of the 20'' centuiy until nowadays. It is divided into chronological chapters, where we study bilateral relations in the coordinates of the following periods: beginning of the century, the period between the two world wars, the Second World War, Cold War and recent years. The investigation in based on documents of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico (SRE-AHD) and of the Hungarian National Archive (MOL).


Colossus ◽  
2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frode Weierud

This chapter describes the Siemens & Halske T52 cipher machines and explains how Bletchley Park broke them. (See photograph 51.) Many authors have confused the T52 with the Tunny machine, and have erroneously linked the T52 to Colossus. The German armed forces employed three different types of teleprinter cipher machines during the Second World War: the Lorenz SZ40/42a/42b (Tunny), the Siemens & Halske Schlüs-selfernschreibmaschine (SFM—Cipher Teleprinter Machine) T52, and the one-time-tape machine T43, also manufactured by Siemens. The Siemens T52 existed in four functionally distinct models: T52a/b, T52c, T52d, and T52e (there was also the T52ca, a modified version of the T52c). At Bletchley Park all T52 models went under the code name ‘Sturgeon’. The Siemens T43 was probably the unbreakable machine that BP called ‘Thrasher’. (This came into use relatively late in the war, and appears to have been used only on a few selected links.) In 1964 Erik Boheman, the Swedish Under-Secretary of State, first revealed that Sweden had broken the T52 during the Second World War. The Swedish successes against the T52 are the topic of Chapter 26. It was only in 1984 that the British officially acknowledged that Bletchley Park had also enjoyed some success against the T52. Not only did BP intercept traffic enciphered on the T52; it also broke all the different models that it discovered. It was clear from the beginning that the T52 was a very difficult machine to break. Probably it would have remained unbroken had it not been for German security blunders in using the machines. The blame should not be put entirely on the German teleprinter operators, however: the designers of the machines at Siemens, who failed to listen to the advice of the German cryptographic experts, were also responsible. The Siemens engineers seem to have focused more on the engineering problems than on the cryptographic security of the machine. The T52a/b and the original T52c were machines with quite limited security. The T52c is an extraordinary example of how not to go about designing a cryptographic machine. The wheel-combining logic, which was meant to strengthen the machine, had exactly the opposite effect—it eased the task of breaking the machine.


2019 ◽  
pp. 238-267
Author(s):  
Victor Fan

This book’s conclusion revisits what extraterritoriality means and the historical journey of different generations of filmmakers and spectators who tried to work through this problem by creating, theorising, defining, and defending Hong Kong cinema, television, and media. The end of the previous chapter suggests that humanism is perhaps the answer to our political impasse. However, the mode of humanism that was widely promulgated by politicians and artists during and immediately after the Second World War (1939–45) had already failed and it turned out to be the beginning of the problematics that have produced the precarious milieu in which we live. This conclusion therefore proposes that we revisit what it means by being human while living with other human beings, by not re-territorialising any place or anybody, but by giving extraterritoriality a presence, a body. It argues that in Hong Kong, Mainland filmmakers who were exiled from their homeland use their films to explore and negotiate the means by which one can reclaim humanity.


Author(s):  
Gaj Trifković

This chapter contains a few concluding remarks. This book is the first attempt at a comprehensive analysis of non-violent contacts between the Partisans and the German occupation authorities in Yugoslavia in the Second World War. Far from being the final word on the topic, it is a starting point for further research on various aspects of POW history. Frequent exchanges of able-bodied prisoners between the occupation forces and a resistance movement, partly through a cartel negotiated directly between their high commands, was a distinctive feature of the Second World War in Yugoslavia. It was probably the only place in war-torn Europe where representatives of two irreconcilable ideologies, Communism and Nazism, met regularly at the negotiating table. Both were primarily motivated by the desire to save their own men, but the talks did mitigate, however marginally, the horrors of the war.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-252
Author(s):  
Daan de Leeuw

Abstract During the Second World War over two hundred and fifty German doctors conducted medical experiments on human beings. Jurists and scholars have pondered ever since how doctors educated to heal could harm and even kill. Robert Jay Lifton has argued that psychological “doubling” could explain their crimes: their Faustian bargain with Nazism outweighed their Hippocratic Oath. Here the author argues, however, that Lifton’s theory does not apply to these Nazi doctors because there is no indication that they recognized ethical constraints against human experimentation. To explain how “healers became killers,” the author focuses on the broader historical aspects of their behavior.


2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 1425-1436
Author(s):  
Magda Polo Pujadas

The article focuses on the experimental music that emerged after the Second World War and in graphic musical notation. He has a special interest in the influence exercised by the reading of the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus in the musical work Treatise by Cornelius Cardew. The isomorphism between language and reality and the different types of propositions formulated by the first Wittgenstein represent a new conception of music in the composer.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 267-286
Author(s):  
Ermin Kuka ◽  
◽  
Hamza Memišević ◽  

Main goal of Serbian ideology, policy, practice, starting from the late XVIII until the beginning of XIX century is creation of a clean, pure and ethnic Serbian country so called Great Serbia. In such country idealists also included the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Meanwhile that is achievable only by committing heinous crimes including the Bosnian Genocide. Because of the Visegrads Geostrategic position the city is crucial for Serbian plans, aggressors and criminals tried by any means to form ethnically clean territory, not choosing the means or tools in the attempt of achieving that goal. Highest point of those crimes happened during the second world war 1941-1945, also in the time of aggression on Republic Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992-1995. Numerous mass and individual killings, extermination, enslavement, deportations and / or forcible transfer of the Bosniak population, imprisonment and other forms of deprivation of liberty committed in violation of basic rules of international law constitute a long and sad list of criminal and genocidal acts committed against Bosniaks in the Drina Valley, and in the name of the so-called project Great Serbia. In this cycle and history of chetnik misery and inhumanity, the culmination of human malice, evil blood and moral dishonor was against the Bosniaks of Eastern Bosnia. Thanks to the hard work of the community and people of the country this evil plan and evil intentions of Serbs ideologists did not come through. Yet they do not give up, furthermore they use new means and methods. In that contest targeting wider area of Visegrad, as a starting point for commencing Great Serbian goals and ideas. That gave birth to the idea that Visegrad is continuously in focus to the leaders and actors of the ideology of Great Serbia, therefore creation of ethnically clean Serbian areas. All this, for a consequence, had a permanent acts of numerous crimes against humanity and international human rights among Bosnians in wider area of Visegrad, from the period of World war 2 and in the time of aggression on Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this area number of heinous crimes were committed. One of the consequences of the horrific crimes committed against Bosniaks is a radical change in the ethnic structure of the population in the Visegrad area during the 1992-1995 aggression. In relation to the 1991 Census, when there were 13,471 Bosniaks, according to the 2013 census, 1,043 Bosniaks have registered residence in Visegrad. Still, the area wasn’t ethnically cleansed as in accordance to Serbian ideologists, so this shameful project that’s grounded on crime, continued by new means and methods. Analysis confirmed key marks of aggressive attempts of ideology and policy in creating ethnic clean Serbian territory within area of Visegrad. Research is focused and timely determined on three periods: First during the Second world war 1941-1945, Second, Aggression on Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, third period after signing of Dayton’s 1995. still this day. For the purpose of proving the general hypothesis of the research, the methods of analysis and synthesis, the hypothetical-deductive method and the comparative method will be used, and for the purposes of obtaining data, the method of analysis (content) of documents and the case study method. Serbian ideologist still tries to remove all Bosnians from the wider area of Visegrad and by doing so make that town the starting point for the next phases of ethical cleansing of non-Serbian population from walleyes of Drina Conclusion would be under any price secure at first economic conditions for survival of Bosnians on those areas, take a set of measures on economically strengthening Gorazde, as a center of gathering non-Serb population in the walleye of Drina.


Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 128
Author(s):  
Anders E. Johansson

This article tries to be funny in a very serious way, following Virginia Woolf’s call in Three Guineas that, in the face of man-made disasters, we may have to make fools of ourselves in relation to common sense. Apocalypses, such as the Anthropocene, climate change, and mass extinction require—like the Second World War that Woolf refused to simplify—a tentative search for knowledge, not controlling and predictable methods in the search for a solution. The article is based on how Jacques Derrida’s discussion with Immanuel Kant regarding how truth should sound before the apocalypse over the years has increasingly come to describe contemporary doxa, within which there is only room for mystagogues, who inaugurate followers in the “real truth” behind “fake news”, or scientisticists, who believe that facts and truth are the same thing. When Derrida shows how these two positions depend on each other, sharing the modern belief that knowledge is associated with development, boundaries and control, he also shows how this narrows knowledge down to the predictable, and, thus, makes it complicit with the mistaken efforts of control responsible for today’s challenges. Against this background, the article analyzes works by the artist, Eva Löfdahl, and links them with questions concerning connections between truth, knowledge, art, and science.


Author(s):  
Jim Tomlinson

The volume provides a distinctive new account of British economic life since the Second World War, focusing upon the ways in which successive governments, in seeking to manage the economy, have sought simultaneously to ‘manage the people’: to try and manage popular understanding of economic issues. In doing so, governments have sought not only to shape expectations for electoral purposes but to construct broader narratives about how ‘the economy’ should be understood. The starting point is to ask what goals have been focused upon; how these have been constructed to appeal to the population; and how far the population has accepted these narratives. In its first part, the volume analyses the development of the major narratives from the 1940s onwards. This part covers the notion of ‘austerity’ and its particular meaning in the 1940s; the rise of a narrative of ‘economic decline’ from the late 1950s, and the subsequent attempts to ‘modernize’ the economy; the attempts to ‘roll back the state’ from the 1970s; the impact of ideas of ‘globalization’ in the 1980s and 1990s; and, finally, the way the crisis of 2008/9 onwards was constructed as a problem of ‘debts and deficits’. The second part of the volume then focuses in on four key issues in attempts to ‘manage the people’: productivity, the balance of payments, inflation, and unemployment. It shows how in each case governments have sought to get the populace to understand these issues in a particular light, and have shaped strategies to that end.


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