Is the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in an Existential Crisis?

Employing a sociological perspective on the law, this study explores instances of resistance against the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Union’s continental human rights judicial body. This approach allows us to examine different forms of resistance that might not necessarily be of a legal character, but which may still have profound implications for the Court’s authority, legitimacy, and operation. Accordingly, the article identifies two forms of resistance against the African Court: ‘pushback’ and ‘backlash’. The former refers to an ordinary form of critique directed against the overall development of an international court, while the latter is understood as an extraordinary form of critique that puts the fundamental authority of a court at stake. While pushback was mainly seen in the early stages of the Court’s establishment, backlash started to emerge following its ground-breaking judgments that caused heated debates on controversial topics. This article concludes that based on the identified and analysed forms of resistance, it is doubtful that the African Court can maintain and fulfil the purpose for which it was established: the protection and promotion of human rights in Africa.

Humans, among Other Classical Animals

This book considers the question of how studying Classics can be relevant at the present moment of environmental and existential crisis. In a series of encounters from the European assimilation and destruction of the New World to our present environmental destruction of our shared world, it explores an answer by demonstrating how the Classics have been implicated in the structures of thought that have ultimately led us to our present historical moment. Telling the story of anthropology’s Classical entanglements from its inception to its growth to critical self-awareness, it demonstrates that Classical ideas have played a crucial—and often deleterious—role in the Western placing of the human and in the discipline that claimed the study of humanity as its own. Responses to our present crisis, it argues, should therefore include, as a prerequisite, considering the origins and implications of these Classical foundations because only by so doing can we attain the full self-awareness necessary to think beyond them and consider the alternatives we now need.

The Problem of “Higher Individuals” in the Works of F.M. Dostoevsky

This article deals with the controversial issue of F.M. Dostoevsky’s concept of “Higher Individuals.” The latter are people who rise above other people and have a special influence on society and on history. The authors argue that this concept is most clearly expressed in “The Diary of a Writer” (1876) as well as in the story “The Sentence”, along with Dostoevsky’s commentaries on this story. By means of a detailed analysis of Raskolnikov’s “theory” within the novel “Crime and Punishment”, it is demonstrated that only a superficial version of the concept of “higher individuals” is refuted in the heroes’ argumentations; at the same time, the novel’s characters – Marmeladov, his wife Katerina Ivanovna, and Raskolnikov – can be viewed as examples of different degrees in the personal accomplishment of this “higher personality” state. In conclusion, it is observed how a person must go through three stages of development in order to become a “higher character”: firstly, the experience of an existential crisis and the understanding of the lack of meaning in one’s life; secondly, the “rebellion” against the Creator of the world and its laws along with the rejection of the traditional church faith, whose rejection leads this person on the edge of suicide; thirdly, the acquisition of a new faith, first of all, a faith in one’s immortality, which happens in an unusual, unorthodox form, as is well demonstrated by the character of Svidrigailov in Dostoevsky’s novel. According to Dostoevsky’s doctrine, the meaning ofimmortality lies in the continuation of a person’s existence in a new form in the earthly world or in a “parallel” world similar to the earthly one, and not in the ideal Kingdom of Heaven, as the church claims. Finally, the authors maintain that the process of a character’s transformation into a “higher individual” was consistently and fully described by Dostoevsky in the stories of Raskolnikov and Ivan Karamazov.

THE EXISTENTIAL NATURE OF THE HIKMETS OF AHMED YASSAWI

This article analyzes existential concepts in the work of Ahmet Yassawi “Diwani hikmet”, which forms the Sufi direction of the deeply rooted Turkic civilization, using comparative research methods. In this context, the article collected and investigated the following metaphysical problems, such as the unity and struggle of time and being, disinterested attachment to the Creator, as well as the phenomenon of life and death. The content of the Hikmet is an existential representation of a religious preaching orientation, filled with the principles of a nomadic civilization developed in the Kazakh steppe. Although the main goal of the Hikmet is religious, there are often such existentials as the existence of the Creator and the problems of human existence, life and death, morality, justice, responsibility, conscience. The main position of the Hikmets is to point out a direct path to the Islamic world and suggest ways to form a “True Muslim”. The concepts of the book of wisdom are a way of revealing transcendental contradictions for those who are in an existential crisis. For those who cannot understand the meaning of life and are in existential stagnation, we decided to use the hikmet of Ahmet Yassawi to explain the meaning of real life.

Survival or Crisis? Funding Distribution from Grant-Making Foundations to Grassroots Social Organizations in China

The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake increased the need for disaster relief and reconstruction projects in China. This disaster created an upsurge of Chinese grant-making foundations, which then increased funding expectations. Many grassroots social organizations (SOs) in China believed that going forward, this level of funding would continue. However, the majority of grassroots SOs in China are currently facing an existential crisis. Their survival is being threatened by a shortage of funding from both local and foreign grant-making foundations. This research uses an empirical analysis of grant-making foundations and in-depth interviews, as well as observational evidence accumulated over a 10-year period, to explore the distribution of funding from foundations to grassroots SOs in China. The findings show that there are a limited number of Chinese grant-making foundations and that the foundations that exist do not include grassroots SOs in their funding scheme.

SUBALTERN PERSPECTIVES IN MAHESH DATTANIS BRAVELY FOUGHT THE QUEEN

Mahesh DattanisBravely Fought the Queen elucidates the defaulted picture of the Indian society, where the characters face a tremendous existential crisis. The women are badly dependent on the men characters for their survival, whereas the male characters are badly dependent on the patriarchal system for proving their dominant existence in the society. Every character in the play whether a man or a woman faces a gruesome crisis for their survival. They are not free birds who can drive their life by their free will. Women in the play are portrayed as the victims under the tyrannical hands of patriarchy, from which they are trying to escape from the claustrophobic existence to their own shaped world of independence. This paper is an earnest endevour to explore the existential crisis of the characters and search a probable solution.

1. Progress of a dream

‘The progress of a dream’ provides an explanation of the ‘Lahore Resolution’, which was passed by the All-India Muslim League (AIML) in 1940. The ‘two-nation’ theory paved the pathway to the creation of Pakistan at the time of Indian independence in August 1947. The spirit of struggle for Pakistan from 1940 to 1947 has been metamorphosed into the spectre of an existential crisis, as the Pakistan regime confronts challenges of consolidating a national culture and a political economy. A distinct identity for all territories was created as the heart of Pakistan’s political idea. There were fundamental challenges in comprehending the political construction of Pakistan.

In foro solitudo: Roman Elections and the Time of Cinna

<p>The aim of this thesis is to provide a constitutional history of the mysterious years in the 80s B.C. when L. Cornelius Cinna was re-elected to the consulship on four consecutive occasions. Further irregularities abounded in this period, raising the question of how Rome’s annual elections were conducted in this period. A large amount of the surviving literature is either biased or uninformed on such matters. As a direct result, few have attempted to interpret the role of Rome’s comitia, its voting assemblies, in this period in any sufficient detail. This survey aims to fill this lacuna. From close inspection of the scattered evidence, it may be argued that Rome’s comitia did indeed play a role in the so-called Cinnae dominatio, despite the hoarding of high magistracy by just a handful of individuals. There were laws designed to prevent this domination: men were theoretically allowed to hold the consulship once (at least within a ten-year period); continuatio was forbidden. This study sets out to investigate how Cinna’s continuatio came to be tolerated. Some scholars have attempted to explain away this irregularity as a simple product of the turbulent times. After all, electoral irregularities did indeed increase in frequency during times of existential crisis. But Cinna’s elections do not adequately harmonize with any precedent in Rome’s history. This study begins with a survey of the Roman constitution in the years leading up to the Cinnae dominatio. The years 91 to 87 were marred by almost continuous warfare in Italy and abroad. However, despite attempts at attaining the consulship by a couple of theoretically ineligible candidates, Rome’s electoral restrictions remained robustly in place. All of this changed in late 87 when Cinna marched on Rome with a large army: many political opponents were murdered or exiled; Cinna assumed the consulship soon after. The process by which he became consul has been the subject of great controversy. Although it would seem that comitia were called, the process was irregular. These irregularities would continue even after Cinna died in 84, coming to an end in the years following Sulla’s restoration of the traditional republic after 81.</p>

In foro solitudo: Roman Elections and the Time of Cinna

<p>The aim of this thesis is to provide a constitutional history of the mysterious years in the 80s B.C. when L. Cornelius Cinna was re-elected to the consulship on four consecutive occasions. Further irregularities abounded in this period, raising the question of how Rome’s annual elections were conducted in this period. A large amount of the surviving literature is either biased or uninformed on such matters. As a direct result, few have attempted to interpret the role of Rome’s comitia, its voting assemblies, in this period in any sufficient detail. This survey aims to fill this lacuna. From close inspection of the scattered evidence, it may be argued that Rome’s comitia did indeed play a role in the so-called Cinnae dominatio, despite the hoarding of high magistracy by just a handful of individuals. There were laws designed to prevent this domination: men were theoretically allowed to hold the consulship once (at least within a ten-year period); continuatio was forbidden. This study sets out to investigate how Cinna’s continuatio came to be tolerated. Some scholars have attempted to explain away this irregularity as a simple product of the turbulent times. After all, electoral irregularities did indeed increase in frequency during times of existential crisis. But Cinna’s elections do not adequately harmonize with any precedent in Rome’s history. This study begins with a survey of the Roman constitution in the years leading up to the Cinnae dominatio. The years 91 to 87 were marred by almost continuous warfare in Italy and abroad. However, despite attempts at attaining the consulship by a couple of theoretically ineligible candidates, Rome’s electoral restrictions remained robustly in place. All of this changed in late 87 when Cinna marched on Rome with a large army: many political opponents were murdered or exiled; Cinna assumed the consulship soon after. The process by which he became consul has been the subject of great controversy. Although it would seem that comitia were called, the process was irregular. These irregularities would continue even after Cinna died in 84, coming to an end in the years following Sulla’s restoration of the traditional republic after 81.</p>

Existential Thought in American Psycho and Fight Club

<p>Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho (1991) and Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1996) demonstrate a strong basis in existential thought. Both novels reference the philosophical and literary works of Sartre and Camus—two French intellectuals associated with the midtwentieth- century movement existentialism—as well as existentialism’s nineteenth-century antecedents Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche. More importantly, American Psycho and Fight Club also modify the philosophy and its expression, incorporating postmodern satire, graphically violent content, and the Gothic conventions of "the double" and "the unspeakable", in order to update existential thought to suit the contemporary milieu in which these texts were produced. This new expression of existential thought is interlaced with the social critique American Psycho and Fight Club advance, particularly their satirical accounts of the vacuous banality of modern consumer culture and their disturbing representations of the repression and violent excesses ensuing from the crisis of masculinity. The engagement with existentialism in these novels also serves a playful function, as Ellis and Palahniuk frequently subvert the philosophy, keeping its idealism secondary to their experiments with its implications within the realm of fiction, emphasising the symptoms of existential crisis, rather than the resolution of the ontological quest for meaning. While these two novels can be considered existential in relation to the tradition of classic existentialist texts, they also represent a distinctive development of existential fiction—one that explores the existential condition of the postmodern subject at the end of the twentieth century.</p>