scholarly journals Wog Zombie: The De- and Re-Humanisation of Migrants, from Mad Dogs to Cyborgs

1970 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikos Papastergiadis
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Complex Flows ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Media Reporting ◽  
The Public ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Sovereign Authority

This essay examines several contemporary articulations of the figure of the migrant, exploring both the stigmatic representations of this figure in the public imaginary, and migrants’ own personal self-identifications. I argue that as today’s increasingly complex flows of capital, people and information continue to erode both the sovereign authority of nation-states and the hitherto dominant codes of belonging, the figure of the migrant has undergone a series of reconfigurations. In its contemporary manifestations, the migrant figure has been imagined variously as a mechanical, animalistic, spectral, zombified, vampiric or cyborg entity. I contend that this series of images reveals a complex set of cultural anxieties around issues of belonging, cultural identity, citizenship and mobility. Drawing on theoretical constructs including Giorgio Agamben’s notion of the homo sacer along with representations of the figure of the migrant that have emerged recently within popular culture, literature, political discourse and media reporting, I aim to examine the forms of dehumanisation that are expressed in contemporary debate on migration.

Resur(e)recting a Spectacular Hero:Diriliş Ertuğrul, Necropolitics, and Popular Culture in Turkey

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josh Carney
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Historical Drama ◽  
The Public ◽  
Television Screen ◽  
Turkish Government ◽  
Media Texts ◽  
The Government

AbstractThe hugely popular proto-Ottoman television serialResurrection Ertuğrul(Diriliş Ertuğrul, 2014–) is the culmination of a series of attempts by Turkish government broadcaster TRT to produce a historical drama in line with the values of the governing AKP. Far from being confined to the television screen,Resurrectionis called upon by the government for multiple extra-textual engagements with the public. This essay traces some of the ways in which the serial has been used instrumentally by the AKP, blurring traditional distinctions between entertainment and official (state sanctioned) history, and intervening in political discourse. It first introduces the notion of prescriptive activation to describe the extra-textual use of media texts by those in power for political ends. Next, it examines the trappings of death that surround Resurrection, suggesting that the serial partakes in a representational necropolitics that fetishizes death for the nation. Finally, it explores the stakes of such representation, turning to a case in which text-inspired and literal necropolitics converge.

scholarly journals Romanian Bard: A Case Study of Shakespeare’s Adaptations in Contemporary Romania

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (-) ◽  
pp. 106-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Percec ◽  
Andreea Şerban
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Political Awareness ◽  
High Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
Musical Adaptations ◽  
Musical Genres

Abstract In Romania, Shakespeare played an important role in the construction of Romania’s cultural identity and in the reshaping of political awareness during the communist dictatorship. In recent years, the Bard’s work has been translated into a contemporary, accessible Romanian language, with theatrical or musical adaptations targeted at a public whose tastes are shaped by popular culture. The authors discuss, from this perspective, two recent adaptations: The Taming of the Shrew (2005), acclimatized to contemporary Romanian realities (names, locations and folk music), and Romeo and Juliet (2009) that relocates the tragedy in the musical genre. The choice of two musical genres popular with the most widely spread segments of the public - the conservative, but less educated middle-aged group of non-theatre-goers and the youth - indicates an attempt, still new for the Romanian cultural market, to accommodate Shakespeare to the interests of two different communities of consumers, so far absent from this country’s high culture circuit.

The elementary forms of digital culture. Knowledge, connections and sociality

2020 ◽  
pp. 316-328
Author(s):  
Vincenzo Susca
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
The Public ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Point Of Intersection ◽  
Dark Web

Contemporary communicative platforms welcome and accelerate a socio-anthropological mutation in which public opinion (Habermas, 1995) based on rational individuals and alphabetic culture gives way to a public emotion whose emotion, empathy and sociality are the bases, where it is no longer the reason that directs the senses but the senses that begin to think. The public spheres that are elaborated in this way can only be disjunctive (Appadurai, 2001), since they are motivated by the desire to transgress the identity, political and social boundaries where they have been elevated and restricted. The more the daily life, in its local intension and its global extension, rests on itself and frees itself from projections or infatuations towards transcendent and distant orders, the more the modern territory is shaken by the forces that cross it and pierce it. non-stop. The widespread disobedience characterizing a significant part of the cultural events that take place in cyberspace - dark web, web porn, copyright infringement, trolls, even irreverent ... - reveals the anomic nature of the societal subjectivity that emerges from the point of intersection between technology and naked life. Behind each of these offenses is the affirmation of the obsolescence of the principles on which much of the modern nation-states and their rights have been based. Each situation in which a tribe, cloud, group or network blends in a state of ecstasy or communion around shared communications, symbols and imaginations, all that surrounds it, in material, social or ideological terms, fades away. in the air, being isolated by the power of a bubble that in itself generates culture, rooting, identification: transpolitic to inhabit

Public Service Motivation in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Mastracci
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Service Motivation ◽  
Public Servants ◽  
Buffy The Vampire Slayer ◽  
The Public ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Public Servant ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual

In this paper, the author examines public service as depicted in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS). First, she shows how slaying meets the economist’s definition of a public good, using the BtVS episode “Flooded” (6.04). Second, she discusses public service motivation (PSM) to determine whether or not Buffy, a public servant, operates from a public service ethic. Relying on established measures and evidence from shooting scripts and episode transcripts, the author concludes Buffy is a public servant motivated by a public service ethic. In this way, BtVS informs scholarship on public service by broadening the concept of PSM beyond the public sector; prompting one to wonder whether it is located in a sector, an occupation, or in the individual. These conclusions allow the author to situate Buffy alongside other idealized public servants in American popular culture.

Are They Ready for Their Close-Up? Civil Servants and Their Portrayal in Contemporary American Cinema

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle C. Pautz ◽  
Laura Roselle
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
Case Study Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Narrative Forms

Perceptions of government and civil servants are shaped by a variety of factors including popular culture. In the public administration literature the significant role that film and other narrative forms have on citizens’ perceptions is duly noted, and there is ample research on politicians and military heroes in film, but a focus on civil servants remains largely elusive. Among the sparse literature centered on civil servants are studies that employ a case study approach or focus on a few films. In contrast, our research employs a large sample of 150 films. These films comprise the top ten box-office grossing films from 1992 through 2006; therefore we examine the films most likely to have been seen by a majority of movie-watching Americans. More than 60 percent of the films in our sample portray government as bad, inefficient, and incompetent. However, the data on more than 300 civil servants yield intriguing findings. Surprising, in light of the negative depiction of government, is the positive depiction of individual civil servants. Half of civil servants were positively portrayed, and only 40 percent were negatively depicted. Americans may view government negatively, but they see in film positive depictions of how individual civil servants can and do make a positive difference.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassandra L. Yacovazzi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
The Public ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
The Common ◽  
Public Imagination ◽  
Maria Monk ◽  
People Today

Nuns in popular media today are a staple of kitsch culture, evident in the common appearance of bobble-head nuns, nun costumes, and nun caricatures on TV, movies, and the stage. Nun stereotypes include the sexy vixen, the naïve innocent, and the scary nun. These types were forged in nineteenth-century convent narratives. While people today may not recognize the name “Maria Monk,” her legacy lives on in the public imagination. There may be no demands to search convents, but nuns and monastic life are nevertheless generally not taken seriously. This epilogue traces opposition to nuns from the Civil War to the present, analyzing the various images of nuns in popular culture as they relate to the antebellum campaign against convents. It argues that the source of the misunderstanding about nuns is rooted in the inability to categorize these women either as traditional wives and mothers or as secular, career-driven singles.

scholarly journals Does the Law Determine What Heritage to Remember?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Sophie de Clippele
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Political Will ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Law ◽  
Ideological Manipulation

AbstractCultural heritage can offer tangible and intangible traces of the past. A past that shapes cultural identity, but also a past from which one sometimes wishes to detach oneself and which nevertheless needs to be remembered, even commemorated. These themes of memory, history and oblivion are examined by the philosopher Paul Ricoeur in his work La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli (2000). Inspired by these ideas, this paper analyses how they are closely linked to cultural heritage. Heritage serves as a support for memory, even if it can be mishandled, which in turn can affect heritage policies. Memory and heritage can be abused as a result of wounds from the past or for reasons of ideological manipulation or because of a political will to force people to remember. Furthermore, heritage, as a vehicule of memory, contributes to historical knowledge, but can remain marked by a certain form of subjectivism during the heritage and conservation operation, for which heritage professionals (representatives of the public authority or other experts) are responsible. Yet, the responsibility for conserving cultural heritage also implies the need to avoid any loss of heritage, and to fight against oblivion. Nonetheless, this struggle cannot become totalitarian, nor can it deprive the community of a sometimes salutary oblivion to its own identity construction. These theoretical and philosophical concepts shall be examined in the light of legal discourse, and in particular in Belgian legislation regarding cultural heritage. It is clear that the shift from monument to heritage broadens the legal scope and consequently raises the question of who gets to decide what is considered heritage according to the law, and whether there is something such as a collective human right to cultural heritage. Nonetheless, this broadening of the legislation extends the State intervention into cultural heritage, which in turn entails certain risks, as will be analysed with Belgium’s colonial heritage.

Nothing in Popular Culture Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gad Saad
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Case Analysis ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Cultural Form ◽  
The Public ◽  
Psychology Today ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Song Lyrics

An evolutionary lens can inform the study of cultural forms in a myriad of ways. These can be construed as adaptations, as exaptations (evolutionary byproducts), as gene–culture interactions, as memes, or as fossils of the human mind. Products of popular culture (e.g., song lyrics, movie themes, romance novels) are to evolutionary cultural theorists what fossils and skeletal remains represent to paleontologists. Although human minds do not fossilize or skeletonize (the cranium does), the cultural products created by human minds do. By identifying universally recurring themes for a given cultural form (song lyrics and collective wisdoms in the current article), spanning a wide range of cultures and time periods, one is able to test key tenets of evolutionary psychology. In addition to using evolutionary psychology to understand the contents of popular culture, the discipline can itself be studied as a contributor to popular culture. Beginning with the sociobiology debates in the 1970s, evolutionary informed analyses of human behavior have engendered great fascination and animus among the public at large. Following a brief summary of studies that have explored the diffusion of the evolutionary behavioral sciences within specific communities (e.g., the British media), I offer a case analysis of the penetration of evolutionary psychology within the blogosphere, specifically the blog community hosted by Psychology Today.

A Republic of distrust, fear and division. Rethinking contemporary Polish Experience

2021 ◽  
pp. 312-324
Author(s):  
Ryszard Piotrowski
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
European Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
European Institutions ◽  
Polish Experience ◽  
Constitutional Identity ◽  
Ways Of Life

The system of governance in contemporary Poland is founded mainly on a negative narrative of distrust. That narrative brought to power the country’s present scaremongering rulers. They continue feeding the public with frightening stories of an influx of refugees, threats of war and terrorist attacks, evils of globalisation and a loss of cultural identity to foreign ways of life. A balance between distrust of rulers and trust in them is part of democracy’s constitutional identity. Those currently in power sow distrust in liberal democracy and its values – they violate the constitution, stir up distrust of elites, and make attempts at bringing the judiciary to heelwhile staging judges bashing propaganda campaigns. Distrust of European law and European institutions is part and parcel of this process. The negative narrative weakens and threatens to disenfranchise civil society, blurring the line between law and lawlessness. It also weakens those in power.

scholarly journals The Ancient Walls of Damascus and the Siege of Mouaddamiyya: A Historical and Spatial Analysis of Bounded Place and Cultural Identity

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nour Halabi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Spatial Organization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Public Response ◽  
The Public ◽  
Syrian Crisis ◽  
Political Turmoil ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Vast Area

Throughout the Syrian crisis, the presence of material and symbolic boundaries to culture became a particularly salient element of the continuously unfolding political turmoil. As one terrorist group, Daesh, or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, seeks to unite the vast area of the Middle East under the political, religious, and cultural administration of a “Greater State of Syria,” or “al-Sham,” this article revisits the historical spatial organization of Damascus and the construction of city boundaries and walls as factors that contributed to the cultivation of spatially grounded cleavages within Syrian and Damascene identity. In the latter section of this article, I reflect on the impact of these cleavages on the Syrian crisis by focusing on the public response to the siege of the Mouaddamiyya neighborhood.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document