“A Matrix of Intellectual and Historical Experiences”

Symposium ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Philippe Deranty ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Post War ◽  
Political Apathy

This article seeks to re-evaluate the importance of the political in the thinking of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The article first shows that Sartre’s description of Merleau-Ponty’s intellectual trajectory as one of increasing political apathy from the 1950s onwards is inaccurate. The article then demonstrates that throughout the post-war period, including in his project for a new ontology, Merleau-Ponty believed that a revised version of Marxism would provide the methodological framework within which philosophical work could address the political challenges of the present. This revised Marxism was to be a direct alternative to the reifying uses of Marx’s thinking. It would rely upon the latter’s self-reflexive historicism, which meant its very failures showed how philosophy might transform itself in connection with its own time. Cet article tente souligner la place du politique dans la pensée de Maurice Merleau-Ponty. On contestera d’abord la description faite par Sartre de sa trajectoire intellectuelle, selon laquelle il aurait fait preuve d’une apathie croissante, à partir des années cinquante, vis-à-vis des questions politiques. On montrera ensuite que durant toute la période d’après-guerre, jusque dans les recherches ontologiques ultimes, Merleau-Ponty a pensé qu’un usage renouvelé du marxisme permettrait au travail philosophique de répondre aux défis politiques du présent. Une telle révision du marxisme représentait une alternative directe aux usages réifiant de la pensée de Marx. Cette révision serait rendue possible par la réflexivité historiciste de cette pensée, qui fait que, dans ses erreurs mêmes, celle-ci révèle la capacité de la philosophie à se transformer au contact de son temps.

Righteousness or the right to drink? The debate on the ration book in Sweden and Finland during the 1950s

2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 359-370
Author(s):  
Matti Peltonen
Keyword(s):  
Control Policy ◽  
Alcohol Policy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Swedish Version ◽  
Alcohol Control ◽  
Political Left ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Right

Sweden and Finland reviewed their alcohol control policies in the 1950s at more or less the same time. Sweden abolished its ration book system and lifted restrictions on the sale of medium strength beer, Finland in turn revised its mechanisms for controlling the purchase of alcohol, a version of the Bratt system. In Sweden, alcohol consumption increased sharply and the number of drunkenness offences doubled. In Finland, by contrast, nothing happened. Why? History provides one possible source of explanation. The Swedish version of the Bratt system was much stricter (with monthly rations allocated on the basis of social class and sex) and therefore there was greater pressure towards a liberalisation of alcohol policy than was the case in Finland. During the war and in the post-war years Finland had a strong labour movement, which was keen to underline and demonstrate that the working class were in every respect decent and upright people. The debate that was touched off by the General Strike in 1956 is particularly interesting. On the political right, workers were frequently portrayed as heavy drinkers; the political left worked hard to fend off this propaganda attack. In this kind of atmosphere it was impossible to seriously call for a liberalisation of alcohol control policy in Finland.

scholarly journals University Art History in Slovakia after WWII and its Sovietization in 1950s

2019 ◽  
pp. 161-190
Author(s):  
Katarina Kolbiarz Chmelinová
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
History Instruction ◽  
New Rhetoric ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The University

In post-WWII Slovakia, art history was available only as a university field of study at Bratislava University (in 1954 regaining its name Comenius University) at the Seminár pre dejiny umenia / Seminar of Art History, a separate part of the Faculty of Arts of the university, where art history had been taught as an independent discipline since 1923 before its conversion to a department. Post-war changes in state structures and the new political system radically affected Slovak society and the education system in the country. This article is the very first attempt to present in detail the extent and character of changes in university art history instruction in the part of the socialist era of the Czechoslovak Republic. It is based on the study and comparison of previously unprocessed sources from various university and state archives and their classification in the context of known historical facts. This contribution represents an in-depth probe into the post-war efforts to build a new university foundation and system of art history instruction in Slovakia within the Czechoslovak Republic, and its Sovietization as well. The text analyzes the university environment, the curriculum, the study program of art history and the relevant changes resulting from political pressure from 1945 to 1960. They were the consequence of two directly related, significant moments in the history of Slovakia: the establishment of the Third Czechoslovak Republic in 1945 and the communist coup in 1948, which was followed by the most totalitarian period in the history of the state. The article also discusses the personal changes in the art history staff forced by the political situation (J. Dubnický, V. Wagner, V. Mencl, A. Güntherová-Mayerová, R. Matuštík, T. Štrauss, K. Kahoun). After a brief presentation of the situation in Czechoslovakia at the time, the article first deals with the ad hoc activities and efforts of scientists seeking to maintain art history studies in Slovakia at the university level immediately after the end of the war. The central issue in the article is the changes in the way of teaching resulting from the political upheaval in February 1948. Against the background of political and social changes, the new law on higher education (Act No. 58/1950), which forces significant organizational transformations, is discussed. As part of the process of Sovietization of university education in Slovakia, the modified Seminar of Art History lost its independent status for a long time, and its staff was largely replaced. At the same time, throughout this period, there was a visible tendency to stabilize the teaching system and attempts to become independent again and to develop discipline, undertaken contrary to the imposed system. The 1950s, with their new rhetoric and propaganda optimism, appear to be a decade devoid of internal consistency. It started the most totalitarian period, which lasted until Stalin’s death in 1953, but was followed by a short thaw and then by a new wave of repression after 1957, which chose victims even at the beginning of the next decade. The article focuses on two sides of the 1950s – centralization and the dominant ideological control of the Communist Party, on one hand, and on the other, the obvious effort to unify and professionalize the teaching of the discipline. The factual material presented here shows the scale of changes interpreted in the context of the political and social changes of that time. The case study provides an analysis of system efforts made in the 1940s and 1950s to establish new principles of university teaching for the history of art in Slovakia as part of the Czechoslovak Republic. It aims to broaden the factual basis and existing overview of knowledge of art history in Slovakia and supplement existing studies on the history of art history in the country (J. Bakoš, I. Ciulisová, B. Koklesová).

scholarly journals Tibetan Objects in the Náprstek Museum

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
Helena Heroldová
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
State Reconstruction ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Post War ◽  
Private Collections

Abstract The Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures acquired two hundred items from Tibet in the 1950s: bronze sculptures, paintings and ritual implements. These items came from private collections confiscated after the Second War World according to the presidential decrees dealing with the post-war state reconstruction. Although the administration of the confiscated properties was meticulous, the transfer of items to the Náprstek Museum interrupted the history of ownership and meant the loss of the historical knowledge of its origin. As the result, the Tibet collection in the Náprstek Museum reveals more about the political and social history of post-war Czechoslovakia than about the perception of Tibetan culture in Czechoslovakia during the first half of the 20th century.

Nazistowski mord na Żydach w prasie polskich komunistów (1942–1944).

2006 ◽  
pp. 54-75
Author(s):  
Klaus Peter Friedrich
Keyword(s):  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Polish Government ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Right

Facing the decisive struggle between Nazism and Soviet communism for dominance in Europe, in 1942/43 Polish communists sojourning in the USSR espoused anti-German concepts of the political right. Their aim was an ethnic Polish ‘national communism’. Meanwhile, the Polish Workers’ Party in the occupied country advocated a maximum intensification of civilian resistance and partisan struggle. In this context, commentaries on the Nazi judeocide were an important element in their endeavors to influence the prevailing mood in the country: The underground communist press often pointed to the fate of the murdered Jews as a warning in order to make it clear to the Polish population where a deficient lack of resistance could lead. However, an agreed, unconditional Polish and Jewish armed resistance did not come about. At the same time, the communist press constantly expanded its demagogic confrontation with Polish “reactionaries” and accused them of shared responsibility for the Nazi murder of the Jews, while the Polish government (in London) was attacked for its failure. This antagonism was intensified in the fierce dispute between the Polish and Soviet governments after the rift which followed revelations about the Katyn massacre. Now the communist propaganda image of the enemy came to the fore in respect to the government and its representatives in occupied Poland. It viewed the government-in-exile as being allied with the “reactionaries,” indifferent to the murder of the Jews, and thus acting ultimately on behalf of Nazi German policy. The communists denounced the real and supposed antisemitism of their adversaries more and more bluntly. In view of their political isolation, they coupled them together, in an undifferentiated manner, extending from the right-wing radical ONR to the social democrats and the other parties represented in the underground parliament loyal to the London based Polish government. Thereby communist propaganda tried to discredit their opponents and to justify the need for a new start in a post-war Poland whose fate should be shaped by the revolutionary left. They were thus paving the way for the ultimate communist takeover

What is a Complex? Freudian Resistances

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Morgan Wortham
Keyword(s):  
Value Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
The Common ◽  
Post War

This chapter evaluates the question of the ‘complex’ in a range of scientific, political and psychoanalytic contexts, asking not only where lines of connection and demarcation occur among specific distributions of meaning, value, theory and practice; but also probing the psychoanalytic corpus, notably Freud’s writings on the notion of a ‘complex’, in order to reframe various implications of the idea that this term tends to resist its own utilisation as both an object and form of analysis. This section establishes connections between three sets of theoretical questions: the common practice of describing modernity and its wake in terms of a drive towards increasing complexity; the meaning and cultural legacy of phrases such as ‘military-industrial complex’ and sundry derivations in the political sphere; and the intricacies and ambiguities subtending the term ‘complex’ within psychoanalytic theory. As a concept that Freud both utilised and repudiated, the provocative power of the term ‘complex’ is linked to the way it thwarts various attempts at systemization (providing nonetheless an apparatus of sorts through which contemporary science, Slavoj Žižek, Noam Chomsky, Freud, Eisenhower, and post-war politics can be articulated to one another).

State-run celebration of Liberation Day in Czechoslovakia (based on audiovisual sources)

2019 ◽  
pp. 251-268
Author(s):  
Timur Gimadeev
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Military

The article deals with the history of celebrating the Liberation Day in Czechoslovakia organised by the state. Various aspects of the history of the holiday have been considered with the extensive use of audiovisual documents (materials from Czechoslovak newsreels and TV archives), which allowed for a detailed analysis of the propaganda representation of the holiday. As a result, it has been possible to identify the main stages of the historical evolution of the celebrations of Liberation Day, to discover the close interdependence between these stages and the country’s political development. The establishment of the holiday itself — its concept and the military parade as the main ritual — took place in the first post-war years, simultaneously with the consolidation of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia. Later, until the end of the 1960s, the celebrations gradually evolved along the political regime, acquiring new ritual forms (ceremonial meetings, and “guards of memory”). In 1968, at the same time as there was an attempt to rethink the entire socialist regime and the historical experience connected with it, an attempt was made to reconstruct Liberation Day. However, political “normalisation” led to the normalisation of the celebration itself, which played an important role in legitimising the Soviet presence in the country. At this stage, the role of ceremonial meetings and “guards of memory” increased, while inventions released in time for 9 May appeared and “May TV” was specially produced. The fall of the Communist regime in 1989 led to the fall of the concept of Liberation Day on 9 May, resulting in changes of the title, date and paradigm of the holiday, which became Victory Day and has been since celebrated on 8 May.

The Geography of War and Peace

2004 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Final Section ◽  
The Political ◽  
Complex World ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Peace Movements ◽  
Resource Conflicts ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Post War ◽  
Spatial Rhetoric

Our world of increasing and varied conflicts is confusing and threatening to citizens of all countries, as they try to understand its causes and consequences. However, how and why war occurs, and peace is sustained, cannot be understood without realizing that those who make war and peace must negotiate a complex world political map of sovereign spaces, borders, networks of communication, access to nested geographic scales, and patterns of resource distribution. This book takes advantage of a diversity of geographic perspectives as it analyzes the political processes of war and their spatial expression. Contributors to the volume examine particular manifestations of war in light of nationalism, religion, gender identities, state ideology, border formation, genocide, spatial rhetoric, terrorism, and a variety of resource conflicts. The final section on the geography of peace covers peace movements, diplomacy, the expansion of NATO, and the geography of post-war reconstruction. Case studies of numerous conflicts include Israel and Palestine, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzogovina, West Africa, and the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Towards the Final Legitimation of the Party

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piero Ignazi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Sole Source ◽  
The Political ◽  
Party Formation ◽  
Post War ◽  
Dominant Influence

Chapter 3 investigates the process of party formation in France, Germany, Great Britain, and Italy, and demonstrates the important role of cultural and societal premises for the development of political parties in the nineteenth century. Particular attention is paid in this context to the conditions in which the two mass parties, socialists and Christian democrats, were established. A larger set of Western European countries included in this analysis is thoroughly scrutinized. Despite discontent among traditional liberal-conservative elites, full endorsement of the political party was achieved at the beginning of the twentieth century. Particular attention is paid to the emergence of the interwar totalitarian party, especially under the guise of Italian and German fascism, when ‘the party’ attained its most dominant influence as the sole source and locus of power. The chapter concludes by suggesting hidden and unaccounted heritages of that experience in post-war politics.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aled Davies
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Development ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Financial Centre ◽  
Conservative Government ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This book is a study of the political economy of Britain’s chief financial centre, the City of London, in the two decades prior to the election of Margaret Thatcher’s first Conservative government in 1979. The primary purpose of the book is to evaluate the relationship between the financial sector based in the City, and the economic strategy of social democracy in post-war Britain. In particular, it focuses on how the financial system related to the social democratic pursuit of national industrial development and modernization, and on how the norms of social democratic economic policy were challenged by a variety of fundamental changes to the City that took place during the period....

The Politics of Banking and Social Democracy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aled Davies
Keyword(s):  
Banking System ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Industrial Economy ◽  
The Social ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Political Demand

This chapter concerns the politics of managing the domestic banking system in post-war Britain. It examines the pressures brought to bear on the post-war settlement in banking during the 1960s and 1970s—in particular, the growth of new credit creating institutions and the political demand for more competition between banks. This undermined the social democratic model for managing credit established since the war. The chapter focuses in particular on how the Labour Party attempted in the 1970s to produce a banking system that was competitive, efficient, and able to channel credit to the struggling industrial economy.

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