Identities in Flux

2016 ◽  
pp. 67-82
Author(s):  
Régine Robin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Regine Robin ◽  
Political Right

‘Identities in Flux’, written by Régine Robin, is the first essay in the ‘Contemporary Politics and French Thought’ section and traces the major forces that have impacted post-colonial France: global capitalism, immigration and its resultant multiculturalism, the rise of the political right, and the persistent crises of memory that have occupied the second half of the twentieth century.

The political role of Christian churches

2020 ◽  
pp. 136-149
Author(s):  
Gregory Deacon
Keyword(s):  
Public Services ◽  
Central Place ◽  
The Political ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Political Realm

Christianity has been intimately involved with power in Kenya since the country’s birth even though much has changed with regards to what Christianity is and what it does. Today, as during the colonial and early post-colonial periods, the political role of Christian churches includes the activities of individual clergy and organized churches, both of which make periodic public statements, provide public services, and support local and national governance. However, increasingly important is the central place of neo-Pentecostal ideas, concepts, and imagery in Kenyan society, which pervade the political realm. This chapter outlines the role of Christian churches as organizations. It also analyzes the growth and spread of Christianity as a religion and as a discursive institution as well as associated understandings and practices. Together, this analysis contributes to an understanding of contemporary politics in Kenya, including the place of neo-Pentecostalized Christianity in the 2013 and 2017 elections and Jubilee regime.

scholarly journals LANGUAGES OF FREEDOM IN DECOLONISING AFRICAThe Gladstone Prize Winner

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 253-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

ABSTRACTThe ‘triumph of liberalism’ in the mid-twentieth-century west is well known and much studied. But what has it meant for the way the decolonisation of Africa has been viewed, both at the time and since? In this paper, I suggest that it has quietly but effectively shaped our understanding of African political thinking in the 1950s to 1960s. Although the nationalist framing that once led historians to neglect those aspects of the political thinking of the period which did not move in the direction of a territorial nation-state has now been challenged, we still struggle with those aspects of political thinking that were, for instance, suspicious of a focus on the individual and profoundly opposed to egalitarian visions of a post-colonial future. I argue that to understand better the history of decolonisation in the African continent, both before and after independence, while also enabling comparative work with other times and places, we need to think more carefully and sensitively about how freedom and equality were understood and argued over in local contexts.

A Subjective Jurisprudence

2020 ◽  
pp. 55-92
Author(s):  
Edward A. Jr. Purcell
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Judicial Power ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional Goals ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Power Limit ◽  
Political Right ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines Justice Antonin Scalia’s jurisprudence dealing with the U.S. Constitution’s two structural axes, separation of powers and federalism. It argues that both constitutional principles are general, largely indeterminate, and easily manipulable and that Scalia construed them in light of his own subjective goals and values. He was determined to use them instrumentally to expand executive power, limit Congress, and severely restrict federal judicial power. The chapter argues that Scalia regarded separation of powers as more critical and important than federalism because it was better suited to serve his political and institutional goals and that, in joining the Rehnquist Court’s “federalism revolution” in the early twentieth century, he contradicted the position he had taken in his Senate confirmation hearing about the propriety of the Court giving special deference to Congress on federalism issues. Finally, the chapter shows that before he went on the Court, Scalia had made it clear that he viewed both separation of powers and federalism as principles that could and should be interpreted to serve the practical policy goals of the political right.

The Curious Origins of Airline Deregulation: Economic Deregulation and the American Left

2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (4) ◽  
pp. 729-753 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reuel Schiller
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
New Left ◽  
The Political ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Regulatory Policies ◽  
Airline Deregulation ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Political Right ◽  
American Left

This article examines the politics of airline deregulation in the 1970s, and the events that led to the passage of the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. It links the antibureaucratic, antiregulatory policies of the 1970s to ideas closely connected to the New Left, the counterculture, and other left-wing subcultures that dominated high and low thought in the 1960s. By linking this source of antibureaucratic sentiment to the politics of airline deregulation, this article suggests a new direction for historians who study the American state in the last decades of the twentieth century. As they focus their attention on the rise of market-based, neoliberal regulatory policies, they should look for their origins not only in the growing strength of the intellectual and political right, but also in the political thought and practice of the 1960s left.

Constraining Leviathan

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Boucher
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Secret Ballot ◽  
Contributory Factors ◽  
Contemporary Politics

In this chapter the place of Hobbes in relation to the twentieth-century crisis of civilization is explored through the writings of Schmitt and Oakeshott. The nature of the crisis is explored, and it becomes evident that the pernicious elements that one perceives as the contributory factors in the decline are what the other claims are the strengths which are being undermined by the crisis. Both Oakeshott and Schmitt are critics of liberalism, but whereas Schmitt sees parliamentary democracy as a weakness emanating from liberalism, Oakeshott believes that parliamentary democracy predates modern liberalism, and is one of the strengths of contemporary politics with the potential to resist the decline. Individuality, pluralism, the secret ballot, and the rule of law are for Schmitt unnecessary constraints contributory to the depoliticization of the political, undermining the capacity of the sovereign to determine, or decide who are friends and enemies.

Conclusion

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicitas Becker
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Social ◽  
Full Participation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Islam And Modernity ◽  
The Village ◽  
Big Men

The future of relations between Tanzanian Muslims and the state is in the balance as recriminations between reformists and Bakwata continue, and the outline of potential compromises between Ansar and Lailah Muslims is as yet hard to see. Beyond the acceptance of basic religious practices, being Muslim meant very different things to different people at different times: a privileged connection to coastal sites of exchange for pre-colonial big men; social ascendancy for pre-colonial patricians, but social equality to inter-war immigrants; full participation in the social and ritual life of the village for rural converts in the mid-twentieth century; an increasingly problematic separate allegiance for post-colonial Tanzanians. The permutations of public ritual are covered. The concern about ignorance is not in itself a product of post-colonial political rhetoric. The chapter then discusses the political topography and the distribution of religious affiliations. The history of town and countryside helps in the understanding of the context that has shaped academic representations of Swahili culture as an urban culture. The Ansar and the debate on Islam and modernity are explained. The Islamist movements in the Southeast and East Africa at large draw on allegiances and grievances rooted in both recent and long-term history.

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

PENSAMENTO POLÍTICO EM GIORGIO AGAMBEN

Professare ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Claudemir Aparecido Lopes
Keyword(s):  
Political Freedom ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Control ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social

<p class="resumoabstract">O professor Giorgio Agamben tem elaborado críticas à engenhosa estrutura política ocidental moderna. Avalia os mecanismos de controle estatal, nos quais os denomina ‘dispositivos’, cuja força está na imbricação às normas jurídico-teológicas com seus similares ritos e liturgias. Suas ocorrências e legitimidade preponderam no tecido social cuja organização sistêmica se põe quase como elemento natural e não cultural. O texto tem por objetivo explorar a concepção política de Agamben sobre a política contemporânea, especialmente considerando seu livro: ‘Estado de Exceção’, cuja investigação apresenta a possibilidade de atenuação dos direitos de cidadania e o enfraquecimento da prática da liberdade política e o processo de relação dos indivíduos no meio social através da redução das subjetividades ‘autênticas’. Analisamos ainda a transferência do mundo sacro elaborado pelos teólogos católicos presente na modernidade à política cuja democracia moderna faz do homem (sujeito) tornar-se objeto do poder político. Faz também, reflexão dos conceitos de subjetivação e dessubjetivação relacionando-os às implicações políticas do homem moderno. A pesquisa é bibliográfica com ênfase na análise dos conceitos elaborados por Agamben, especialmente quanto ao ‘dispositivo’. Conclui que o indivíduo ocidental, de modo geral, sofre o processo de dessubjetivação e está ‘nu’, indefeso e alienado politicamente. Ele precisa voltar-se ao processo de ‘profanação’ dos dispositivos para libertar-se das vinculações orientadoras que forçosamente o descaracteriza enquanto ser ativo e livre.</p><p class="resumoabstract"><strong>Palavras-chave</strong>: Política. Liberdade. Subjetivação.</p><h3>ABSTRACT</h3><p class="resumoabstract">Professor Giorgio Agamben has been criticizing the ingenious modern Western political structure. It evaluates the mechanisms of state control, in which it calls them 'devices', whose strength lies in the overlap with legal-theological norms with their similar rites and liturgies. Its occurrences and legitimacy preponderate in the social fabric whose systemic organization is almost as a natural and not a cultural element. The text aims to explore Agamben's political conception of contemporary politics, especially considering his book 'State of Exception', whose research presents the possibility of attenuating citizenship rights and weakening the practice of political freedom and the individuals in the social environment through the reduction of 'authentic' subjectivities. We also analyze the transfer of the sacred world elaborated by the Catholic theologians present in the modernity to the politics whose modern democracy makes of the man - subject - to become object of the political power. It also reflects on the concepts of subjectivation and desubjectivation, relating them to the political implications of modern man. The research is bibliographical with emphasis in the analysis of the concepts elaborated by Agamben, especially with regard to the 'device'. He concludes that the Western individual, in general, suffers the process of desubjectivation and is 'naked', defenseless and politically alienated. He must turn to the process of 'desecration' of devices to free himself from the guiding bindings that forcibly demeanes him while being active and free.</p><p class="resumoabstract"><strong>Keywords</strong>: Politics. Freedom. Subjectivity. </p><p> </p>

Espionage and Exile

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phyllis Lassner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Crises ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
John Le Carre ◽  
The Cold War

Espionage and Exile demonstrates that from the 1930s through the Cold War, British Writers Eric Ambler, Helen MacInnes, Ann Bridge, Pamela Frankau, John le Carré and filmmaker Leslie Howard combined propaganda and popular entertainment to call for resistance to political oppression. Instead of constituting context, the political engagement of these spy fictions bring the historical crises of Fascist and Communist domination to the forefront of twentieth century literary history. They deploy themes of deception and betrayal to warn audiences of the consequences of Nazi Germany's conquests and later, the fusion of Fascist and Communist oppression. Featuring protagonists who are stateless and threatened refugees, abandoned and betrayed secret agents, and politically engaged or entrapped amateurs, all in states of precarious exile, these fictions engage their historical subjects to complicate extant literary meanings of transnational, diaspora and performativity. Unsettling distinctions between villain and victim as well as exile and belonging dramatizes relationships between the ethics of espionage and responses to international crises. With politically charged suspense and narrative experiments, these writers also challenge distinctions between literary, middlebrow, and popular culture.

Process Philosophy and Political Liberalism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Dombrowski
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Process Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Static View ◽  
Process Oriented ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Right

In this work two key theses are defended: political liberalism is a processual (rather than a static) view and process thinkers should be political liberals. Three major figures are considered (Rawls, Whitehead, Hartshorne) in the effort to show the superiority of political liberalism to its illiberal alternatives on the political right and left. Further, a politically liberal stance regarding nonhuman animals and the environment is articulated. It is typical for debates in political philosophy to be adrift regarding the concept of method, but from start to finish this book relies on the processual method of reflective equilibrium or dialectic at its best. This is the first extended effort to argue for both political liberalism as a process-oriented view and process philosophy/theology as a politically liberal view. It is also a timely defense of political liberalism against illiberal tendencies on both the right and the left.

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