Rethinking the Formation of Public Distribution System: A Class-Focused Approach

Using the methodology of overdetermination, class process of surplus labor as the entry point and socially determined need of food security, we deliver an alternative class-focused rendition of the public distribution system (PDS) in India. We first surmise our theoretical framework to infer that the overdetermined and contradictory relation of class and social needs matter for PDS. Beyond the reasoning of being pro-poor, fair, or wasteful, we deploy this framework to reinterpret the formation of Indian PDS in the 1960s. Its demonstration requires revisiting the historical condition that shaped capital’s passive revolution through the post-independence Indian state and its subsequent crisis arising out of the contradictions and conflicts in the class-need space. We argue that PDS signals a case of success and not failure of capitalism.

ANALISIS GENDER DALAM CERITA RAKYAT (KAJIAN SEMIOTIKA ROLAND BARTHES) (GENDER ANALYSIS IN FOLKLORE (THE SEMIOTIC STUDY OF ROLAND BARTHES))

Tulisan ini membahas tentang relasi gender dalam dua cerita rakyat berjudul Tempiq Empiq dari Nusa Tenggara Barat dan Mencari Ilmu Berumahtangga dari Kalimantan Selatan. Hubungan hierarki dianalisis dengan perspektif semiologis Roland Barthes. Metode penelitian terdiri dari pengumpulan data dan analisis data. Data primer dalam penelitian ini adalah cerita rakyat. Sedangkan data sekunder berupa sumber tertulis dan elektronik terkait dengan kondisi sosial budaya dan sejarah Nusa Tenggara Barat dan Kalimantan Selatan. Analisis data dilakukan dengan teori dan konsep Barthes sebagai pendekatan untuk mengetahui sistem semiotik orde satu dan dua yang mengungkap mitos-mitos terkait isu gender dalam teks. Setelah itu, mitos-mitos yang terkandung dalam teks tersebut dihubungkan dengan niat, motivasi, atau ideologi tertentu yang diyakini pada budaya atau masyarakat tertentu sebagai latar belakang cerita rakyat tersebut. Hasil penelitian menemukan bahwa analisis sistem kebahasaan teks mengungkapkan dikotomi peran dan fungsi antara laki-laki dan perempuan. Analisis makna konotatif menemukan mitos-mitos seksualitas dan maskulinitas yang mengacu pada ideologi patriarki. Kata kunci: Cerita Rakyat, Semiologi, Barthes, Mitos This paper studied about gender relation in two folklores entitled Tempiq Empiq from Nusa Tenggara Barat and Mencari Ilmu Berumahtangga from Kalimantan Selatan. The hierarchical relationship was analyzed by the semiological perspective of Roland Barthes. The research method consisted of data collection and data analysis. The primary data in this research was the folklores. Meanwhile, the secondary data was the written and electronic sources related to the socio-cultural and historical condition of Nusa Tenggara Barat and Kalimantan Selatan. The data was analyzed by the the theory and concepts of Barthes as the approach to find out the first and second order semiotic system revealing the myths related to the gender issues in the text. Afterwards, the myths contained in the text were connected to the specific intention, motivation, or ideology believed in particular culture or society as the background of the folklores. The research found that the analysis of linguistic system of the text revealed the dichotomy of roles and function between men and women. The analysis of connotative meaning found the myths of sexuality and masculinity which referred to patriarchal ideology. Keywords: Folklores, Semiology, Barthes, Myths

Review of Disruptive Situations: Fractal Orientalism and Queer Strategies in Beirut by Ghassan Moussawi (Temple University Press)

Ghassan Moussawi’s Disruptive Situations challenges the exceptionalist representations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) experiences in Beirut through a focus on the everyday queer strategies and tactics. Moussawi analyzes the everyday practices of LGBT interlocutors navigating al-wad’ (the situation), a term that refers to the normative order of disruptions, precarity, and instability that permeate daily life across contemporary Beirut. Al-wad’ simultaneously features as a historical condition of perpetual instability bearing on daily life in Beirut, as well as a lens to analyze the practices of everyday life for Moussawi’s LGBT interlocutors. Moussawi’s inductive ethnographic approach charts the strategic use of identities, visibility, and “bubbles” or sources of solace in order to challenge exceptionalist representations of Beirut and LGBT experiences in the city. Moussawi critiques these reductive representations as “fractal orientalism”, a reductive representation that embeds hierarchies and exclusion through geographic associations, such as in fashioning Beirut as the “Paris of the Middle East”. Beirut becomes charming and “cosmopolitan” in a way that is similar to, but not quite, the same as Paris. Moussawi’s focus on queer daily practices against the backdrop of al-wad’ shows the limitations of these reductive representations in an effort to reimagine queerness, subjectivity, and politics.

What is a Classic in History?

What is the classic in history? What is a classic in historical writing? Very few historians and critics have addressed these questions, and when they have done so, it has been only in a cursory manner. These are queries that require some explanation regarding historical texts because of their peculiar ambivalence between science and art, content and form, sources and imagination, scientific and narrative language. Based on some examples of the Western historiographical tradition, I discuss in this article to what extent historians should engage the concept of the classic – as has been done for literary texts. If one assumes that the historical text is not only a referential account but also a narrative analogous to literary texts, then the concept of the classic becomes one of the keys for understanding the historical text – and may improve our understanding not only of historiography, but of history itself. I will argue in this article that it is possible to identify a category of the classic text in some historical writings, precisely because of the literarity they possess without losing their specific historical condition. Because of their narrative condition, historical texts share some of the features assigned to literary texts – that is, endurance, timelessness, universal meaningfulness, resistance to historical criticism, susceptibility to multiple interpretations, and ability to function as models. Yet, since historical texts do not construct imaginary worlds but reflect external realities, they also have to achieve some specific features according to this referential content – that is, surplus of meaning, historical use of metaphors, effect of contemporaneity without damaging the pastness of the past, and a certain appropriation of literariness. Without seeking to be normative or systematic, this article focuses on some specific features of the historical classic, offering a series of reflections to open rather than try to close a debate on this complex topic.

Responsibility

This chapter explores the importance of moral responsibility in Reinhold Niebuhr’s thought, which in turn allows the reader to interpret his work within the wider compass of Christian humanism. While Niebuhr’s ethics never showcased the concept of responsibility in the way other thinkers did during his time, he nevertheless insisted that the moral capability of responsibility is basic to human dignity. Utilizing the distinction Max Weber made between two forms of ethics, the chapter suggests that moral responsibility constitutes the ‘form’, rather than the ‘norm’, of Niebuhr’s anthropological project. Niebuhr’s project can be seen as an attempt to retrieve the lost insights of the Reformation regarding sin and grace within the historical condition of modern life initiated by the Renaissance. This orientation in Niebuhr’s work bears some of the features of Christian humanism. The final section discusses how Niebuhr’s theological and ethical vision can contribute to Christian thinking in our time.

Landscape and Its Double: The Technological Sublime

The essay inquires about the historical condition of representation in our present while invoking the modern experience of the sublime and landscape as the medium of that experience. Can the sublime as the experience of the subject confronted with the very limits of representation be extended to our late capitalist conditions of mediatized representations? What constitutes “a landscape” as the site of the experience of the sublime in late capitalism? The essay addresses these questions through a renewed discussion of Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility” (1936) by focusing on the discussion of the aura and the decay of the aura in relation to landscape. In the wake of the failure of a transformative praxis to bring about a new social order, the technologically hyper-mediated engagement of man with nature under the conditions of extreme alienation and reification results in the production of the aesthetics of destruction experienced as “supreme pleasure”. In the age of the atomic bomb and technological hyper-mediation, the singularity of the moment of the experience of the sublime is multiply reproduced. The essay ends with an analysis of Werner Herzog’s 1992 film Lessons of Darkness as an example of rendering cinematically the aura’s survival under the conditions of its decay in the burning oil fields of Kuwait. Capitalism’s “desert of the real”, as the vast desert in Kuwait in Herzog’s film, is precisely the landscape in relation to which the subject attempts to represent that which evades representation (the event, nature, capitalism, and so on).

Pós-verdade e adensamento social: o jogo político em torno do a-sujeitamento na contemporaneidade

The following article considers a recurrent topic in contemporary political analysis: what is truth in times when reality is faked? The main theoretical basis of study is Foucault’s philosophy, particularly in light of his inquiry into the dynamics and functioning of power, along with his observation that power undergoes metamorphoses. In our present times, configured in terms of a historical condition in which truth has come to reflect individual interests and behavior has been monetized and disciplined by the appearance of the individual in social networks, the figure of the thinker is weakened to give way to the replicant. In such conditions (favoring the replicant), critical thinking is submerged and “thought” appears as an outdated gesture, falling increasingly into disuse. It is therefore the body of this individual – conceptualized here as the replicant – that represents one of the most significant marks of power in the post-truth era.

THE ISSUE OF HUMANE VALUES: A NOVEL BY C.T. AITMATOV «WHEN THE MOUNTAINS FALL (THE ETERNAL BRIDE)»

The definite rejection of the contemporary vices, which is the writerly credo of C.T. Aitmatov, is clearly evident in his novel When the Mountains Fall (The Eternal Bride) . The view of the Kyrgyz writer is focused on an individual that has found himself in a new historical condition. The humanistic ideas are affirmed in the last novel of C.T. Aitmatov through a series of antitheses - good and evil, high and low, mountains and city, natural and social.

PERIOD AND PERSONALITY OF ALISHER NAVOI IN THE INTERPRETATION OF THE SCIENTIST OLIM SHARAFIDDINOV

This article is devoted to the problem of studying the socio-cultural environment of the period of Alisher Navoi and his life by Olim Sharafiddinov. It examines the views of a scientist about the literary process and the historical condition of the educated thinker. At the same time, the development of literature, art and culture created thanks to the civilizations of Amir Temur and the Timurids is revealed.