Beastly Condemnation: The Representation of Oldenbarnevelt’s Twenty-Four Judges as Animals

The Rijksmuseum’s History Department holds a remarkable early eighteenthcentury album titled Regtspleging van Oldenbarnevelt (The Trial of Oldenbarnevelt). The album contains a collection of thirty-eight watercolour drawings on parchment with written explanations on paper and deals with the infamous trial of the Land’s Advocate. At its heart are cartoons of the twenty-four judges who signed Oldenbarnevelt’s death warrant, with the judges depicted as animals. The Rijksmuseum album is similar to albums in the National Library of the Netherlands and Rotterdam City Archives. In this article we show that Oldenbarnevelt’s judges continued to be subjects of general interest for more than a century. We locate the satirical portrayal of the judges as animals in the broader tradition of animal allegories used as a vehicle for political criticism, and explore the function of the album. It probably served as a key to a painting – not Cornelis Saftleven’s famous work Satire op de berechting van Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (Satire of the Trial of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt) in the Rijksmuseum, but a later composition by an anonymous artist now in the Six Collection. Finally, we come to the conclusion that the album is part of a game of concealment and revelation that is typical of the Remonstrants’ memorial culture.

Writing in Franco's Spain: Censorship, gender and social criticism in the postwar novel

<p>Following the Nationalist victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), General Francisco Franco’s authoritarian regime ruled Spain in a dictatorship that lasted almost forty years. In order to preserve the dominance of the regime and its ideology in Spain, all cultural activity was strictly censored, with censorship being particularly severe in the immediate postwar years. The regime’s censorship board, often with the involvement of Catholic clergy, had to approve all types of public communication, from poetry to television, before it could be published or broadcast. The censor was to ensure that the material in question was not critical of the regime or its ideology and that it did not challenge Catholic morals and traditional Spanish family values. Despite the regime’s efforts, however, writers who wished to convey their opposition to the dictatorship turned to a realist, objective narrative style that would allow them to denounce Francoist society without causing concern for the censors. In this thesis, I examine five Spanish postwar novels, published between 1945 and 1961, that provide a critique of Francoism and its associated values: Carmen Laforet’s Nada (1945), Luis Romero’s La noria (1952), Ignacio Aldecoa’s El fulgor y la sangre (1954), Juan García Hortelano’s Nuevas amistades (1959) and Dolores Medio’s Diario de una maestra (1961). This particular combination of novels has been selected in order to examine social and political criticism in the postwar novel from a wider perspective than that which is traditionally assigned to the Spanish novela social. In each case study, I identify which aspects of the Franco regime and postwar society the author sought to denounce and discuss how the author manages to convey these critical views despite the constraints of censorship. Themes include the misery and hunger that plagued Spain in the 1940s, the harsh repression suffered by the losers of the war, class and wealth inequality, the subversion of the regime’s ‘official’ historiography and the adoption of the Catholic Church’s ultra-conservative moral values. There is a particular focus on the critique of social themes that most affected women, such as the strict moral code assigned to women by the regime and the double moral standards with regard to issues such as premarital sex, prostitution and abortion; these themes are prominent in all of the selected novels, regardless of the gender of the author. In the first chapter, I outline the historical background that led to the Civil War and the establishment of the dictatorship and describe the literary context of the early Franco era. The following five chapters consist of my case studies which are examined in chronological order: each novel is examined separately in the context of social and political history, although I will draw parallels where suitable. The analyses are framed by theories of political and social commitment in literature; I draw also on gender and memory studies, and critics who discuss the relationship between literature and censorship. I have consulted the official censor’s report for each novel and discuss how each novel was received and altered, if at all, by the censor, as well as speculating as to how each author may have tailored his or her work in order to avoid such censorial intervention.</p>

Writing in Franco's Spain: Censorship, gender and social criticism in the postwar novel

<p>Following the Nationalist victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), General Francisco Franco’s authoritarian regime ruled Spain in a dictatorship that lasted almost forty years. In order to preserve the dominance of the regime and its ideology in Spain, all cultural activity was strictly censored, with censorship being particularly severe in the immediate postwar years. The regime’s censorship board, often with the involvement of Catholic clergy, had to approve all types of public communication, from poetry to television, before it could be published or broadcast. The censor was to ensure that the material in question was not critical of the regime or its ideology and that it did not challenge Catholic morals and traditional Spanish family values. Despite the regime’s efforts, however, writers who wished to convey their opposition to the dictatorship turned to a realist, objective narrative style that would allow them to denounce Francoist society without causing concern for the censors. In this thesis, I examine five Spanish postwar novels, published between 1945 and 1961, that provide a critique of Francoism and its associated values: Carmen Laforet’s Nada (1945), Luis Romero’s La noria (1952), Ignacio Aldecoa’s El fulgor y la sangre (1954), Juan García Hortelano’s Nuevas amistades (1959) and Dolores Medio’s Diario de una maestra (1961). This particular combination of novels has been selected in order to examine social and political criticism in the postwar novel from a wider perspective than that which is traditionally assigned to the Spanish novela social. In each case study, I identify which aspects of the Franco regime and postwar society the author sought to denounce and discuss how the author manages to convey these critical views despite the constraints of censorship. Themes include the misery and hunger that plagued Spain in the 1940s, the harsh repression suffered by the losers of the war, class and wealth inequality, the subversion of the regime’s ‘official’ historiography and the adoption of the Catholic Church’s ultra-conservative moral values. There is a particular focus on the critique of social themes that most affected women, such as the strict moral code assigned to women by the regime and the double moral standards with regard to issues such as premarital sex, prostitution and abortion; these themes are prominent in all of the selected novels, regardless of the gender of the author. In the first chapter, I outline the historical background that led to the Civil War and the establishment of the dictatorship and describe the literary context of the early Franco era. The following five chapters consist of my case studies which are examined in chronological order: each novel is examined separately in the context of social and political history, although I will draw parallels where suitable. The analyses are framed by theories of political and social commitment in literature; I draw also on gender and memory studies, and critics who discuss the relationship between literature and censorship. I have consulted the official censor’s report for each novel and discuss how each novel was received and altered, if at all, by the censor, as well as speculating as to how each author may have tailored his or her work in order to avoid such censorial intervention.</p>

The Image of a Soviet Woman as Depicted by Mass Media in the 1950s–1960s and Engraved in Social Memory (regional aspects)

В статье раскрываются репрезентативные формы образа советской женщины на материалах нестоличного города. Возможность привлечения сведений радиопередач и эго-документов как малоизученных форм женской репрезентации позволяет автору выявить и сравнить идеализированный и реально существующий образ советской женщины 1950–1960-х годов. Средства массовой информации формировали идеологически одобренный женский портрет, являясь транслятором допустимых и запрещенных норм, которые жительницы города старались соблюдать. Превалирующий образ «женщины-работницы», активно вовлеченной в семейную и общественную жизнь, был недосягаем для «обычных» советских женщин. Несмотря на это, многие из них стремились занять лидирующие позиции хотя бы в одной из сфер. Несовпадение идеализированного и реально существующего женских образов влекло за собой критику со стороны власти и общественности. Опасение быть осужденной и желание обличать накладывали на женщин определенные каноны поведения, которые исподволь внедрялись массовой культурой. The article investigates the image of a Soviet woman as portrayed by provincial mass media. The article analyzes such underrated sources of reliable information as egodocuments and radio performances, which enables the author to compare the idealized image of a Soviet woman and the real image of a Soviet woman of the 1950s–1960s. Mass media created an ideologically “proper” image of a female worker who was actively involved in family and social life. Despite the fact that many “ordinary” Soviet women did their best to fully realize their potential in at least one sphere of life, they had no means to conform to the ideal image broadcast by the media. Due to the discrepancy between the ideal and realistic images, Soviet women often fell victim to social and political criticism. Gnawed by the fear of censure and the desire to condemn others, women were forced to acquire certain behavior patterns dictated by mass culture.

The Shifting Legitimacies of Price Measurements: Official Statistics and the Quantification of Pwofitasyon in the 2009 Social Struggle in Guadeloupe

In 2009, Guadeloupe experienced a historic 44 day-long strike against the high cost of living. The union-led collective (LKP) leading the strike used calculations and figures as a weapon to prove that players holding dominant market positions captured undue profits (“pwofitasyon”). Also, official price indexes were subjected to radical political criticism by the LKP actors. Yet, by using averages, these calculations could not account for the existence of individual abusive prices. The “statactivistic” momentum resulted in a shift of the legitimate price measurement methods. Calculation was, however, also the collective’s Achilles heel. LKP members’ use of numbers established only a temporary favourable balance of power in the negotiations. It was not enough for them to compete with the state’s calculative skills on an equal basis.

Human Dignity and Political Criticism

Many, including Marx, Rawls, and the contemporary 'Black Lives Matter' movement, embrace the ambition to secure terms of co-existence in which the worth of people's lives becomes a lived reality rather than an empty boast. This book asks whether, as some believe, the philosophical idea of human dignity can help achieve that ambition. Offering a new fourfold typology of dignity concepts, Colin Bird argues that human dignity can perform this role only if certain traditional ways of conceiving it are abandoned. Accordingly, Bird rejects the idea that human dignity refers to the inherent worth or status of individuals, and instead reinterprets it as a social relation, constituted by affects of respect and the modes of mutual attention which they generate. What emerges is a new vision of human dignity as a vital political value, and an arresting vindication of its role as an agent of critical reflection on politics.

WACANA EKSPRESI HUMOR DAN KREATIVITAS MEME FILM PENGABDI SETAN 2017

<p><strong><em>Abstract</em></strong></p><p><strong><em>Digital Democracy in Popular Culture: Meme and Political Critics</em></strong><em>. Meme has become a popular subculture that cannot be separated from the internet sphere. Meme have become an agent of free speech that allows a discourse to be communicated, modified, disseminated without the need of conventional conversation. The upcoming Presidential Election 2019 in Indonesia has become one of the discourses that often, using memes as its agent. Memes, while being a medium of expressed humor and satire, also become a media critic of Indonesian democracy practices. This journal sees the meme of Nurhadi-Aldo as a discourse of political criticism wrapped in comedy and satire in response to the 2019 Presidential Election using structuralism approach from Anthony Giddens.</em></p><p><strong><em>Keywords</em></strong><em>: Internet, memes, </em></p><p> </p><p><strong>Abstrak </strong></p><p><strong>Wacana Ekspresi Humor Dan Kreativitas Meme Film Pengabdi Setan 2017</strong>. Meme sudah menjadi subkultur populer yang tidak bisa dipisahkan dari dunia internet. meme sudah menjadi sebuh media ekspresi bebas yang memungkinkan sebuah ide dikomunikasikan, dimodifikasi, dan disebarluaskan tanpa harus mengalami dialog secara langsung. Meme selain menjadi ekspresi humor dan satir warganet. Tulisan ini melihat perkembangan meme sebagai media komunikasi dan perkembangannya seiring wacana ekspresi humor dan kreativitas meme film pengabdi setan 2017, dengan melihat aspek implikatur dan semantic yang digunakan dalam meme Pengabdi Setan 2017 <strong></strong></p><strong>Kata kunci:</strong> meme, Ekspresi Humor, Pengabdi Setan

Between The Symbolic And The Sublime : Slavoj Žižek In Film Studies ... And Out

The following dissertation examines film theory' s contribution to the Marxian theory of ideology. I argue that while early film theorists sought to develop a theory of film, film theory better serves the study and critique of ideology. I claim that the study of film and spectatorship can add to knowledge of ideology and subjectivity. To this end, I examine the relevance of the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, Slavoj Žižek, for contemporary film studies. I locate Žižek's place within film studies through a debate between himself and the prominent American film scholar, David Bordwell. Bordwell is well known for his advocacy of cognitive and middle-level research in film studies, and for his criticism of film theory (or, 'Theory'). He is one of the leaders of a movement in film studies known as post-Theory. I take up the debate between Žižek and Bordwell, and argue that the post-Theory rejection of Theory is an ideological effect of the class struggle. After carving out a place for Žižek in film studies, I examine the relevance of his psychoanalytic interpretations of cinema for a critique of ideology. Žižek is known for using examples from films as tools of exegesis for an interpretation of Lacanian psychoanalysis. However, I argue that while this is true for some of his writing on film, Žižek also practices a psychoanalytic interpretation of cinema that reveals something about the function of ideology. Referring to Žižek, I also argue against early film theorists who thought it possible to interpellate political subjectivities through alternative or avant-garde cinema. In contrast, I argue that the work itself in not powerful enough to interpellate political subjectivity. It is, rather, the interpretation that politicizes the work. I claim that films do not create subject-positions, as early film theorists argued; rather, they reproduce the already existing subject-positions of the spectators by reproducing pleasure or desire. However, without rejecting the efforts of early film theory, I conclude, against Bordwell and other post-Theorists, that Theory is still important in film studies, particularly in the area of political critique, and that Žižek's work is exemplary of the kind of political criticism needed in film studies.