scholarly journals The Twilight of the Public Intellectual: Germany

2004 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison M. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Social Issues ◽  
German Society ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Road ◽  
German States ◽  
Literary Intellectuals ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Post War ◽  
Ethical Stance

This essay focuses on the questions of whether German unification resulted in a wholesale retreat of intellectuals from politics and engagement with social issues, as the rhetoric of failure would indicate, or whether the key debates of the period can be read instead as a sign that Germany is on the road to becoming a more 'normal' European nation. Before returning to these issuesat the end of this paper I first provide a broad historical and theoretical context for my discussion of the role of the concerned intellectual in Germany, before offering an overview of the respective functions of literary intellectuals in both German states in the post-war period. I then address a series of key debates and discussions in 1989 and the early nineteen-nineties that were responsible for changing the forms of engagement in intellectual debates in post-unification German society. I argue that the 1990s and early years of the new millennium hastened the disappearance of the writer as a universal intellectual and focused attention on the writer as an individualist and a professional. Today's youngest generation of writer in Germany is a specialist intellectual who intervenes in political and social matters from time to time but who is not expected to take a moral-ethical stance on most issues of national and international concern. S/he is one who frequently writes about personal subjects, but may also occasionally, as witnessed after September 11, turn his or her pen to topics of global concern as in terrorism and Islam. More often than not, however, writers now leave the work of commenting on political affairs to writers of the older guard and to other 'senior' specialist intellectuals.

On the Road to a German “Postnationalism”? Athletic Competition between the Two German States in the Era of Konrad Adenauer

2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin H. Geyer
Keyword(s):  
Olympic Games ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Athletic Competition ◽  
The Road ◽  
National Symbols ◽  
German States ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Sports Organization ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Olympic Games

Sports have always been used to promote the nation state and the invention of national traditions with national symbols such as flags and national hymns playing an important role. This article looks at the peculiar situation of the post-war period when two Germanys established themselves also in the field of sports, yet cooperated in some athletic disciplines, and, most important of all, at the Olympic Games until 1968. This raised a great number of delicate political questions, particularly the politics of the nonrecognition of the GDR which strove hard to establish itself internationally by way of the international sports movement. Konrad Adenauer and the German Sports Organization clashed on this issue which brought to the fore the question of a German and an emerging West-German identity. In order to describe this negotiation of the nation state in the realm of sports, this article tries to make fruitful use of the term postnationalism in order to understand the ambiguities of identity of Germans towards their nation state. It also takes a brief look at the Olympic Games of 1972, which epitomizes more than anything else the peculiar postnationalism of the Federal Republic.

scholarly journals Politics, industry, and tourism: The conceptual construction of the blue highway

2020 ◽  
pp. 002252662097950
Author(s):  
Fredrik Bertilsson
Keyword(s):  
Road Network ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Atlantic Coast ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Road ◽  
Conceptual Construction ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Post War

This article contributes to the research on the expansion of the Swedish post-war road network by illuminating the role of tourism in addition to political and industrial agendas. Specifically, it examines the “conceptual construction” of the Blue Highway, which currently stretches from the Atlantic Coast of Norway, traverses through Sweden and Finland, and enters into Russia. The focus is on Swedish governmental reports and national press between the 1950s and the 1970s. The article identifies three overlapping meanings attached to the Blue Highway: a political agenda of improving the relationships between the Nordic countries, industrial interests, and tourism. Political ambitions of Nordic community building were clearly pronounced at the onset of the project. Industrial actors depended on the road for the building of power plants and dams. The road became gradually more connected with the view of tourism as the motor of regional development.

scholarly journals The Nomadic War Machine in Jack Kerouac’s Vanity of Duluoz and On the Road

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Social ◽  
War Machine ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Post War ◽  
Alter Ego ◽  
Duluoz Legend ◽  
Iconic Figure

This study inquiries into Jack Kerouac’s Vanity of Duluoz (1968) and On the Road (1957) from the perspective of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s nomadic war machine. It shifts from a rigorous scrutiny of Vanity of Duluoz for its general account of the Duluoz legend, Kerouac’s alter ego, to the study of On the Road for its more specific narrative of a certain period in Kerouac’s life. Being an iconic figure of rebellion and non-conformity in capitalist America during the postwar era, Kerouac’s literary works have a certain social and political magnitude that falls within the discourse of deconstructing orthodoxy and dogma. The study elucidates how Kerouac’s characters subvert the social norms and the state’s institutions in order to break free from pre-structured beliefs. The thesis of the article is to corroborate that such non-conformity and insubordination, exemplified in Kerouac’s autobiographical works, align with the nomadic characteristic of Deleuze and Guattari’s war machine. By extension, it aims at presenting Kerouac as the Deleuzeguattarian nomad who creates nomadic characters that deterritorialize post-war America from within.

Contending with Women and War

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (03) ◽  
pp. 586-595
Author(s):  
Christine Sylvester
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
Public Address ◽  
Women And Gender ◽  
The Road ◽  
Women And War ◽  
Academic Fields ◽  
On The Road ◽  
And Gender

The late Jean Bethke Elshtain was a difficult feminist, a public intellectual and scholar who drew on feminist thinking but interpreted or applied it so idiosyncratically that many feminists disavowed her. Elshtain's early works encapsulated the best hopes of 1980s' feminists to bring women and gender to the fore across many academic fields. She was influential in political theory, religious studies, and feminist analysis, and she was one of the leading lights of feminist international relations (IR) well into the 1990s. Yet she was moving in other directions and would let it be known that she disapproved of gay marriage and endorsed George W. Bush's war in Iraq as just. These positions were anathema to most western feminists, and Jean Bethke Elshtain slid down the feminist reputational ladder from pinnacle to the point where she was almostpersona non grata, deemed an imperialist traitor to feminist causes. She did not draw back or go quiet under attack: to the last public address she gave shortly before her death, Elshtain was on the road defending her controversial political viewpoints openly and forcefully. Let it not be said that the difficult feminist is shy.

scholarly journals Literary Serial Killer Fiction: The Evolution of a Genre

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Grant Cook
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Serial Killer ◽  
Contemporary American Literature ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
The Road ◽  
Literature And Society ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Post War ◽  
Ontological Sense ◽  
The Impact

<p>This study examines the dynamics of post-war American serial killer fiction as it relates to social and literary contexts. In the context of history and development, this study considers the impact and origins of particular works and how they have influenced the stylistic and thematic evolution of a particular subgenre I have called literary serial killer fiction. Emphasis is placed on select narratives that directly (or indirectly) transform, challenge and critique the genre conventions in which they are written. Of interest is the evolution of general serial killer fiction as a postmodern phenomenon, in terms of its popularity with the reading public, and in line with the growth of media interest in representations of serial killers. I draw on literary theory (in particular, ‘new historicism’) to demonstrate that the appeal and tropes of serial killer fiction reflect socio-political interests indicative of the era from where they were produced, and to show how the subgenre of literary serial killer fiction can be categorized using its own particular set of defining features.  I examine these aspects in detail in relation to the following selection of fictional serial-killer narratives: Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me, James Ellroy’s Killer on the Road, and Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. For brevity’s sake, I have selected American narrative works that employ first-person narration and are transgressive in the way they focus on characters who defy convention and push boundaries, as do the narratives within larger genre traditions and protocols. In my view, these works are the purest examples of literary serial killer fiction in that they are characteristically unlike other examples that can easily be categorised under other literary genres.  The appeal and popularity of the genre, alongside the functional aspects of the trope, leads me to conclude that it is an ideal form to interact with popular cultural narratives, while also allowing subversive interplay between both real and fictional concerns. The appeal of the genre to those authors who usually write outside of it, particularly in regard to its transgressive and allegorical qualities, is also of particular interest to this study. Because of the hybrid nature of the genre and the ease with which the central trope of the fictional serial killer transcends genres, the resulting possibilities provide a transgressive outlet for authors who wish to test boundaries, in both a literary and an ontological sense, in regard to the commentary serial killer fiction allows on the state of contemporary American literature and society.</p>

Sustainable Information Society

2011 ◽  
pp. 622-630
Author(s):  
Ralf Isenmann
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Information Society ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
German Society ◽  
Development Goal ◽  
The Road ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Normative Issues ◽  
The One

As a development goal, a sustainable information society is emerging at present, with the aims of sustainability and an information society as its converging elements. This article introduces the conceptual elements of sustainability and the information society, while bringing to the surface underlying normative issues. Further, a series of opportunities is presented on how to develop towards such a promising approach. Finally, examples of using information and communication technologies (ICTs) from the ‘Memorandum Sustainable Information Society’ are discussed. That publication was recently released by a working group of the German Society for Informatics. The memorandum provides a valuable source of the role modern ICT is playing on the road to a forward-looking society which is based on increasing use of ICT on the one hand, while at the same time it meets the fundamental sustainability criteria of human, social, and ecological comparability on the other hand.

3. Industry

2017 ◽  
pp. 28-49
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Trade Liberalization ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Road ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
World Cinema ◽  
Technological Base ◽  
Studio System ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Do So ◽  
Hollywood Studio System

The cinema is an industry, but it did not become an industry overnight, nor did it do so as an automatic consequence of its technological base. What set cinema on the road to becoming an industry in the early years were the needs of commerce, as the new medium spread rapidly across the globe. ‘Industry’ describes the development of the Hollywood studio system and how that practice was imitated in Europe and Asia. It goes on to outline how the structure of world cinema changed through trade liberalization and mass migration. Despite numerous changes, the world’s film industries continue to follow the template set down nearly a century ago, in the 1920s.

scholarly journals Československo 1945–1948: Případ hybridního režimu?

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (2–3) ◽  
pp. 188-213
Author(s):  
Jaroslav Bílek ◽  
Ľubomír Lupták
Keyword(s):  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Hybrid Regimes ◽  
The Road ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Post War ◽  
Transitional Phase

This article presents an interpretative case study utilizing the concept of hybrid regimes as presented by Leah Gilbert and Payam Mohseni to analyse the political regime of Czechoslovakia between the years 1945–1948. Our aim is to demonstrate that rather than a mere transitional phase on the road from democracy to authoritarianism or an episode of final tremors of the pre-war (democratic) regime, the 1945–1945 regime represents a full-fledged hybrid, rooted in the specific conditions of the post-war period. One of the major problems in contemporary discussions about hybrid regimes is the blurred and somewhat unstable boundary between democratic and authoritarian regimes, especially when viewed only as a function of the electoral processes and mechanics. Gilbert and Mohseni’s classification of hybrid regimes attempts to overcome this problem by including two additional analytic dimensions, allowing to point at the dynamic development of the political regime in post-war Czechoslovakia and its rather lively movement on the scale between authoritarianism and democracy.

From a National System Locally Administered to a National System Nationally Administered: The New Leviathan in Education and Training in England

2001 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 457-476 ◽  
Author(s):  
PATRICK AINLEY
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Education And Training ◽  
National System ◽  
The Road ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Education Act ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Post War ◽  
And Training

This article's starting point is Glennerster et al.'s 1991 question in JSP, 20: 3 whether ‘the decisive break’ they then saw in British social policy represented ‘A New Enlightenment or a New Leviathan’. Evidence is produced from the policy arena of education and training (i.e., learning) to argue that the Learning and Skills Act due for implementation from 1 April 2001 represents an example of the latter rather than the former. The Act is a further step on the road from what was traditionally ‘a national system of education locally administered’ to a national system nationally administered. This is clearly seen when the post-war system of education and training established by the 1944 Education Act is contrasted with the new system of contracting out provision through agencies. In presenting this contrast the article is an exercise in ‘Learning Policy’, described as ‘a new area of social policy … [which] indicates the concerted approach that many governments in developed countries now take to integrate the reproduction of knowledge at all levels in the education institutions under their control with skill formation in training in and out of employment’ (Ainley, 1999, p. 9).

scholarly journals Literary Serial Killer Fiction: The Evolution of a Genre

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Grant Cook
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Serial Killer ◽  
Contemporary American Literature ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
The Road ◽  
Literature And Society ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Post War ◽  
Ontological Sense ◽  
The Impact

<p>This study examines the dynamics of post-war American serial killer fiction as it relates to social and literary contexts. In the context of history and development, this study considers the impact and origins of particular works and how they have influenced the stylistic and thematic evolution of a particular subgenre I have called literary serial killer fiction. Emphasis is placed on select narratives that directly (or indirectly) transform, challenge and critique the genre conventions in which they are written. Of interest is the evolution of general serial killer fiction as a postmodern phenomenon, in terms of its popularity with the reading public, and in line with the growth of media interest in representations of serial killers. I draw on literary theory (in particular, ‘new historicism’) to demonstrate that the appeal and tropes of serial killer fiction reflect socio-political interests indicative of the era from where they were produced, and to show how the subgenre of literary serial killer fiction can be categorized using its own particular set of defining features.  I examine these aspects in detail in relation to the following selection of fictional serial-killer narratives: Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me, James Ellroy’s Killer on the Road, and Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. For brevity’s sake, I have selected American narrative works that employ first-person narration and are transgressive in the way they focus on characters who defy convention and push boundaries, as do the narratives within larger genre traditions and protocols. In my view, these works are the purest examples of literary serial killer fiction in that they are characteristically unlike other examples that can easily be categorised under other literary genres.  The appeal and popularity of the genre, alongside the functional aspects of the trope, leads me to conclude that it is an ideal form to interact with popular cultural narratives, while also allowing subversive interplay between both real and fictional concerns. The appeal of the genre to those authors who usually write outside of it, particularly in regard to its transgressive and allegorical qualities, is also of particular interest to this study. Because of the hybrid nature of the genre and the ease with which the central trope of the fictional serial killer transcends genres, the resulting possibilities provide a transgressive outlet for authors who wish to test boundaries, in both a literary and an ontological sense, in regard to the commentary serial killer fiction allows on the state of contemporary American literature and society.</p>

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