Against Western Civilisation

This paper considers the effect of violence on the emotions of IS fighters and the resultant consequences of those emotions as a factor in their choice to use violence. By interrogating the human aspect of the fighters, I am focusing not on religion but on human agency as a factor in the violence. In this regard, this paper is about reorienting the question about the violence of IS not as “religious” violence but as a response to how these fighters perceive what is happening to them and their homeland. It is about politicising the political, about the violence of the state and its coalition of killing as opposed to a consistent effort to frame the violence into an explanation of “extremist religious ideology.” This shift in analysis is significant because of the increasing harm that is caused by the rise in Islamophobia where all Muslims are considered “radical” and are dehumanised. This is by no means a new project; rather it reflects the ongoing project of distortion of and animosity toward Islam, the suspension of ethics and the naturalisation of war. It is about an advocacy for war by hegemonic powers and (puppet regimes) states against racialised groups in the name of defending liberal values. Furthermore, the myth of religious violence has served to advance the goals of power which have been used in domestic and foreign policy to marginalise and dehumanise Muslims and to portray the violence of the secular state as a justified intervention in order to protect Western civilisation and the secular subject.

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Coronavirus, the great toilet paper panic and civilisation

Thesis Eleven ◽

10.1177/07255136211033167 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 072551362110331

Author(s):

Jon Stratton

Keyword(s):

General Population ◽

Federal Government ◽

Perceived Threat ◽

The Novel ◽

Social Breakdown ◽

Toilet Paper ◽

Western Civilisation ◽

Novel Coronavirus ◽

Key Aspects ◽

The Impact

Panic buying of toilet rolls in Australia began in early March 2020. This was related to the realisation that the novel coronavirus was spreading across the country. To the general population the impact of the virus was unknown. Gradually the federal government started closing the country’s borders. The panic buying of toilet rolls was not unique to Australia. It happened across all societies that used toilet paper rather than water to clean after defecation and urination. However, research suggests that the panic buying was most extreme in Australia. This article argues that the panic buying was closely linked to everyday notions of Western civilisation. Pedestal toilets and toilet paper are key aspects of civilisation and the fear of the loss of toilet paper is connected to anxiety about social breakdown, the loss of civilisation. This is the fear manifested in the perceived threat posed by the virus.

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The Theory of Translation

Philosophy ◽

10.1017/s0031819100061957 ◽

1962 ◽

Vol 37 (141) ◽

pp. 208-228 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

W. Haas

Keyword(s):

Western Civilisation

To translate is one thing; to say how we do it, is another. The practice is familiar enough, and there are familiar theories of it. But when we try to look more closely, theory tends to obscure rather than explain, and the familiar practice—an ancient practice, without which Western civilisation is unthinkable—appears to be just baffling, its very possibility a mystery.

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The official attitude of Basil of Caesarea as a Christian bishop towards Greek philosophy and science

Studies in Church History ◽

10.1017/s0424208400006586 ◽

1976 ◽

Vol 13 ◽

pp. 25-49 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Emmanuel Amand De Mendieta

Keyword(s):

Greek Philosophy ◽

Byzantine Church ◽

Western Civilisation

In this paper I wish to deal with a rather specialised topic. But this specialised topic may partly explain what was in fact the official attitude of the Byzantine Church, of its patriarchs, bishops and monks, over the centuries, towards Greek philosophy and science. May I suggest that Greek philosophy and science were, and still are indeed, one of the component factors and inspirations of our renaissance and post-renaissance western civilisation?In order to avoid misunderstanding, I must explain the title of this paper, so that the limitations or strict boundaries of this paper, and also its precise contents, its scope or design may be fully realised.

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Fiorenza mia…! Firenze e dintorni nella poesia portoghese d'oggi

10.36253/978-88-8453-329-6 ◽

2009 ◽

Keyword(s):

Italian Translation ◽

Locus Amoenus ◽

The Past ◽

Western Civilisation ◽

The City ◽

Hearts And Minds

In the Portuguese imagination Florence is justly considered the cradle of modern western civilisation. Seen and admired from the Renaissance on as the new Athens, for the Portuguese it has always represented not only a model of culture and civilisation to take as inspiration, but also and above all the locus amoenus of spiritual and intellectual harmony and balance, dreamed-of and unattainable, that floods and pervades the soul with a vague, nostalgic sentiment of admiration. Evidence of this, now as in the past, are the serried ranks of poets who for centuries have sung its praises and raised it to the rank of myth. This brief anthology proposes only a few of them, among the most renowned of recent generations. In a truly original way these poets have managed to convey to the hearts and minds of their compatriots their own stunned vision of the city, illustrating emotions that cannot fail to move even the Florentines and, in a broader sense, we Italians as a whole. Thus what is offered in these pages, in fine Italian translation, is this mesh of voices, an intimate and enthralling polyphony of city, poet and reader, unfurling in an evocative melody and proposing the legend of Florence in a new light – possibly more authentic and illuminating.

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A ‘horrid way of feeding’

Exchanges The Interdisciplinary Research Journal ◽

10.31273/eirj.v7i3.456 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 7 (3) ◽

pp. 65-89

Author(s):

Desmond Fraser Bellamy

Keyword(s):

Social Scientists ◽

Great Chain Of Being ◽

Western Civilisation ◽

Constant Improvement

Cannibalism both fascinates and repels. The concept of the cannibal has changed and evolved, from the semi- or in-human anthropophagi of Classical texts to the ‘savage’ cannibals of colonial times, whose alleged aberrations served as a justification for invasion, conversion and extermination, to the contemporary cannibal driven often by psychosexual drives. Cannibal texts typically present the act as pervasive, aggressive and repulsive. If these parameters are admitted, alleged cannibals immediately fall outside normative European humanist morality. This paper examines cannibalism as a major delineator of the civilised human. Cannibals offer social scientists a handy milestone to confirm the constant improvement and progress of humanity. The idea that colonised peoples were not savage, degenerate cannibals threatens the concept of the ‘Great Chain of Being’, which was assumed to show an inexorable progress from plants to animals to humans, and upward toward the divine, led by enlightened Western civilisation. But cannibal mythology, factual or imaginary, offers an opportunity to re-evaluate the assumptions of human supremacism and see ourselves as edible, natural beings.

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Western Civilisation and the Natives of South Africa

African Affairs ◽

10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a100802 ◽

1934 ◽

Vol XXXIII (CXXXIII) ◽

pp. 427-428

Author(s):

J. L.

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Western Civilisation

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War Work

Russomania ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198802129.003.0006 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 241-318

Author(s):

Rebecca Beasley

Keyword(s):

Russian Literature ◽

Katherine Mansfield ◽

British Government ◽

Ballets Russes ◽

The First World War ◽

Travel Writings ◽

John Middleton Murry ◽

Western Civilisation ◽

War Propaganda ◽

First World

Alliance with tsarist Russia during the First World War presented a propaganda challenge for the British government: many believed that to support Russia against Germany was to support a barbarous nation against its own subjects, and to risk tipping the balance of power in Europe away from democracy. Russian literature was strategically deployed by the War Propaganda Bureau as evidence of Russia’s civilization, and writers and critics were marshalled to overturn the anti-tsarist interpretations of Russian literature put in place by the Russian populists. Russian literature now appeared in a new guise, read not through realism but symbolism, a movement introduced to Britain through the performances of the Ballets Russes, the travel writings of Stephen Graham, and reappraisals of Dostoevsky’s writings. The chapter concludes by examining the fiction of D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, and John Middleton Murry, which resists wartime propaganda, and finds in Russian literature a critique of Western civilisation and its war.

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