Violence, coloniality and a vision of nonviolence for education

We see images of violence of all kinds in the media on a daily basis. Moreover, violence associated with extreme political/religious beliefs has increased in the twentieth century and is particularly disturbing. In this article the author points out that violence is not a biological tendency but the effect of ever-increasing organisation capacities. As a consequence, violence is committed by people across the political spectrum, including the radical left and the extreme right. Carriers of violence are highlighted in the article, including coloniality and its effects on society generally and education specifically. Given that there is a force field of violence, a vision for non-violence for education is argued for. Inspiration for such a vision could come from traditional indigenous values such as the African value of ubuntu.

Excavating Europe’s last fascist monument: The Valley of the Fallen (Spain)

Since 1945, most fascist monuments have disappeared or been deactivated in Western Europe. There is one in Spain, however, that remains fully operative: the Valley of the Fallen. The complex, devised by the dictator Francisco Franco, celebrates the Nationalist victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), keeps the bodies of thousands of victims of the conflict, as well as the leading fascist ideologue and the dictator himself, and provides a material narrative that exalts the dictatorship. With the advent of democracy in 1978, the Valley remained unchanged, untouchable, and an important focus for fascist and extreme right celebrations, both national and international. However, with the new progressive government that came to power in 2018, it has become the object of an ambitious program of resignification in which archaeology has an important role to play. In this article, I describe how archaeological work undertaken at the Valley of the Fallen is contributing toward destabilizing the dictatorial narrative by opposing the monumental assemblage of fascism to the subaltern assemblage of those who built it.

Octobrists and nationalists in the III and IV State Duma

The State Duma of the third and fourth convocations were represented by a wide range of factions, among which were intermediate groups, namely nationalists and Octobrists, conservative-liberal and liberal-conservative, respectively. In historical science, it is generally accepted that the only allies of the Octobrists (in the full sense of the word) were the All-Russian National Union. The purpose of the article is to determine the specifics of the relationship between Octobrists and nationalists in the III State Duma and in the Duma of the fourth convocation. The study is based on an array of sources on the work of both state dooms, as well as on articles and monographs on this issue. Based on the analysis of these sources and special literature, the main areas of activity of the two factions, the places of their rapprochement, the reasons for the separation of nationalists from the right-wing forces were identified. The work of the III State Duma is connected with the fact that not a liberal majority was formed, but the right, but at the heart of it was not the extreme right, but the October-nationalist bloc, but its stability was very controversial. The novelty of the study is a systematic and multilateral study of all the specifics of relations between the Union of October 17 and the All-Russian National Union, which may call into question the full solidarity of these factions on all issues from the III State Duma to 1917.

Public Intellectuals and Islamophobia in Greek Society: Entrenching the Discourses of Fear

The largest part of the existing literature with regard to Islamophobia in Greece focuses primarily on the policies, activities and discourse of politicians and political groups of the extreme right, Orthodox Church figures, state authorities, the media and the Internet. The purpose of this article is to cast light on an aspect which is frequently neglected in the study of Islamophobia, i.e., the role of public intellectuals, through a series of questions: Where do public intellectuals in Greece stand with regard to Islamophobia? What are the main themes in their public discourse with regard to Islam and Muslims? What is the role they play in the reproduction of Islamophobic views? Having in mind the debates over the concepts of Islamo-Fascism, Islamo-leftism, Islamophilia and Islamophobia, this article builds on the literature about the role of intellectuals in society with a special focus on their views about Islam. Analysing the discourse of three public intellectuals, the main argument is that Islamophobia in Greece is not an exclusive element of the extreme-right or the Orthodox Church. Self-proclaimed progressive or liberal intellectuals, through their public discourse, also contribute to the reproduction and entrenchment of the fear and moral panic about Islam.

Conclusions

A decentralist history of Lyon’s musical life (Reuchsel, 1903) offers a springboard for rethinking the themes of decentralization, regionalism and deconcentration as they played out in France’s urban centers across the century from the 1830s to the 1930s. Comparison of decentralist and regionalist practice within the visual arts sets in relief the complex problems musicians experienced—from the ephemerality of composer groups to the state’s inability to showcase regional student compositions. Opera presented more opportunity to showcase regional difference, but the spectre of “colonization” remained, and local demands for “authentic” use of local material existed in tension with the vague atmospherics necessary for Parisian acceptance. The Vichy régime’s centralist appropriation of regionalism tainted the musical work of half a century as ruralist reaction of the extreme Right. New paradigms of thought stemming from ecomusicology suggest ways beyond the impasse of Left–Right politics that have dominated recent study.