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This paper analyzes Caryl Churchill’s play in the light of Riane Eisler’s theory of Cultural Transformation, expressed in The Chalice and the Blade: Our History Our Future and centered on the shift from “the partnership model“ to “the dominator model” of society. Churchill’s play The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution, Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth on which it is based, and Aime Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism, show how colonialism functions as a manifestation of “the dominator model”, represented by the blade. In keeping with Naomi Wallace’s view that writing should be a transgression and liberation from ideologica prejudices, and Harold Pinter’s view that the search for truth should be the subject of art, this paper higlights the links that exist between imperialism, colonialism, and Nacism, and exposes the traumas that destructive social organizations continue to inflicts upon man.
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The article focuses on the materiality of ideology and the idea of art and life as an ideological accident, using the specific example of the (anti)artistic activism of the Alytus DAMTP (Duomenkasių ir psichodarbininkų sąjūdis, Eng. the Coalition of Data Miners and Psycholabourers). The article discusses the specific situational concept of art blending in with life and generating alternative meanings. Ideology is specifically material. This means that even though this ideology does not ‘exist’, it manifests itself through the subject and for the subject, to be more precise, it creates the subject, questions it through a certain situation or daily practical rituals and through material forms of being and institutions, creating the material or substance of the ideology. However, this matter is also a “falsifying conscience” that institutionalises and falsifies the (daily) situation in the broader sense, creating a regulatory structure of alienation and spectacle. Ideology is related to the logic of theatre performance (let us not forget that there is always a relationship between theatre, acting and daily life). A “great accumulation of plays” is generated, where everything that was ever experienced withdraws into the area of representation. Besides, the play or spectacle is not simply an entirety of events, but the social relationship established by these events between individuals made to act out a certain (social) role. 161POLITINIO ĮVYKIO REMATERIALIZAVIMAS MENINIO AKTYVIZMO PRAKTIKOSE The falsification of daily life is undertaken by the modern bureaucracy and the netocracy of today’s worldwide web. However, despite the tendency for societal power to become more virtual, softer and an ever more streamlined falsifying conscience, the intersectionality of social relationships is still an issue, in other words, the problematic question of social class emerges once again. This also means the reemergence of political/aesthetic situations such as the importance of a method of revealing this falsifying conscience. Withdrawing from the level of daily falsification, the “societal play”, and the transferral of expression to the proletariat level or the level of direct action was a relevant issue for many (anti)artistic activist movements after World War II, from the Lettrists and situationists up to the early (political) fluxus movements and present-day activism/sabotage tactics. Jacque Rancière discusses the internal structure of politic and its core, which can also be called “aesthetic”. It can be interpreted as a certain internal and basic structure that (dis)organises and questions space, time and society’s activity within these dimensions. Certain political/aesthetic situations reemerge, such as the importance of a method of revealing this falsifying conscience. One of the methods that an artist or intellectual can use to escape this falsification, is by betraying their (small) bourgeois social class. The Alytus DAMTP invokes a similar logic in its activity. It could be called a complex or network art strike or a similar activist phenomenon.
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Suprotno Sloterdijku Habermas smatra da je Hegel svojom Jenskoin filozofijom nadmašio svoje stajalište iz Fenomenologije duha i Enciklopedije, te da teze iz Jenskih predavanja mogu biti dobra osnova za njegovu Teoriju komunikativnog djelovanja. Teoriju koja na području stvarnog života i neporecivih oblika egzistencije traži istine i zakonitosti, neprolazni um i konstituciju smisla života uopšte. To je područje jezika, rada i interakcije (međusobnih odnosa) koje se ne da izvoditi iz nekih temeljnih pretpostavki i osnova datih po sebi. To nije područje na kome se iskazuje i objektivira apsolutni duh, nego obrnuto: to je polje neponovljivih istina na kome se udomaćuje sve u ljudskom svijetu pa tako i ono što je Hegel nazvao apsolutnim duhom. Ali značaj Hegelovih jenskih spisa je prvenstveno u tome što je ova "tri dijalektička obrasca”, pojmio kao međusobno nezavisna i heterogena među kojima nema nužne dijalektičke veze. Svaki ima svoju "logiku” i svoju zakonitost.
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The aim of the paper is to draw politico-aesthetic consequences from Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. It is argued that this can be achieved by focusing on the notion of vulnerability implied by the idea of capabilities. The recognition of the vulnerability of the human good inspires a new model of practical rationality based on perception. This idea, in turn, explores the aesthetic connotations of perception implied by its etymology (the ancient Greek for perception being aesthesis). Thus, political aesthetics is understood as the inquiry into the political consequences of the affinity between ethics and aesthetics, as well as the political relevance of the notion of beauty.
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The article describes the model developed by Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), founder of English utilitarianism, for a way of life based on the principle of the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Bentham’s ideas are worthy of attention because they “helped to cast doubt on the validity of the ethical and political doctrines which held sway at the time, such as moral intuitiveness, social contract, state of nature and natural law.” It is an undeniable truth that Bentham’s counterarguments and the range of problems he elaborated occupied many moral and political philosophers of subsequent generations. Today as well the debate has not ended on the subject of Bentham’s theoretical legacy. The varied estimations of Bentham’s ideas are inescapable. But what is clear is that they fit perfectly within Western Europe’s contemporary cultural tradition, where society’s intellectual, social and political arrangement encourages one to seek life’s truths without skirting the eternal question of morality. Bentham treats the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people as the purpose of life, its moral criteria and the rationally organized form of being, which is formed by people’s actions, interests and inner preferences. Bentham’s utilitarianism of action identifies rationality as the essential moral quality and the condition for morality to exist. For him, morality is prior to action, in that moral intellect not only evaluates a utilitarian action according to its consequences, that is, according to how and how much it contributes to the increase in happiness, but also dictates certain rules of behaviour which depend on circumstantial utility and therefore acquire an ever changing meaning. In this way, Bentham treats material wellbeing as the basis for morality, noting that moral good becomes good only due to its capacity to produce physical wellbeing. Bentham asserted the relativity of moral norms, not taking any of their judgements as absolute. Bentham treats morality as a social product whereby the individual and society understand the ideal of the greatest happiness in the context of another’s interests. He grounds morality on arguments by reason, but morality is not an outcome of reasoning nor a simple calculation. Its origins lie in intelligent egoism, which is conscious of the utilitarian capacity to sacrifice on behalf of other people’s happiness. Bentham unjustifiably believes that an individual, consciously heeding society, with a guaranteed enthusiasm accepts and applies society’s dictated moral principles related to the pursuit of the greatest happiness. Such an enlightened interest is as if necessarily guaranteed by the modus vivendi of that state which seeks the greatest happiness. The lack of such motivation arises from the lack of education. Bentham’s person, though an independent, rational, passionless calculator of happiness, is not a free creator or a former of new meanings. Their rules for behaviour and their inner dynamics depend only on the utility of the situation. Thus Bentham as if dooms to inertia the society which seeks the greatest happiness through its most just regime. Such a society monitors the dynamics of life, sensitively reacts to all possible changes in reality, and responds to the challenges of an increasingly complex world. It aims at a useful social engineering and acts only as a catalyst of an evolutionary change.
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The objectives are to analyze the development of the relations in the sphere of the culture between Switzerland and Germany in the 1930-40’s and to determine the reasons for termination of the cultural dialogue between the countries after the arrival of national socialists in German and conditions of its recovery after the Second World War. The historical-genetic and comparative methods were chosen for the study. With the use of the historical-genetic method, the evolution of the German-Swiss cultural relations in the first half of the XX c. was explored. Appeal to the comparative method has enabled to draw the conclusions about the features of the bilateral cultural relations between Switzerland and Germany in the period between the two world wars, during the war of 1939 – 1945 and post-war years. Scientific novelty of the proposed article is that for the first time in Ukrainian historiography an attempt to explore the development of the cultural relations between Switzerland and Germany in 1930 – 40's was made. Conclusions. The main reasons of the Swiss efforts to withdraw from the involvement in the German cultural world in the late 1930's – 40's were memories of the First World War, when the conflict between the French and German communities had put in jeopardy the peace within the Swiss society, and a desire not to create the pretext for the global public accusations against Switzerland of its involvement in the crimes of the national socialists, which could raise doubts about the issue of Swiss neutrality. The background for the restoration of the cultural dialogue between the countries was the desire of Swiss to support the formation of a new democratic regime in the neighboring country, which was realized through the activities of both individual private artistic associations and institutions, and the work of the Swiss diplomacy, which through the analysis of the cultural situation of the particular German states was searching for the potential areas and ways of cooperation.
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New social movements in South Africa could play a prominent role in mobilizing the communities to reflect critically and address the repercussions of the neo-liberal agenda which manifests itself in perpetual exclusion of under-educated adults and provision of poor quality education. Few studies especially from the perspective of the activists leave a potential research area of a very interesting phenomenon of how people learn while struggling for social justice. Therefore this article based on a single multi-site case study on a social movement cohering around literacy issues in Gauteng, South Africa, aims at answering, what forms of learning and education the social movement encompassed, how did the group conscientization occur and what are the individual transformations. Semi-structured interviews and a focus group discussion were held with 13 learners activists and 2 adult educators. By applying Mezirow’s individual transformation and Freemen group conscientization models the analysis of primary and secondary data, revealed that the engagement in the social movement challenged and changed learners activists’ understanding of educational status within their respective communities. This in turn led to transformative action addressing the problems identify ed. On the individual level, some learners-activists became more tolerant and willing to cooperate with those of different political ideologies, able to tap into community resources. Finally, the potential of social movements as adult learning environments are outlined.
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The following article underlines the importance in identifying and adopting a new ethic and decisional transparency in the current especially corrupt Romanian public administration, updating the ethical law and the formation of civil servants at the European ethical standards. The administrative reform cannot be done without issuing new professional and morality standards. Our research starts from a clear and realistic analysis of the corruption phenomenon in the Romanian administration reality, which has outgrown social rationality. The existence of a system corruption in administration is an extremely serious fact, but not inevitable as long as they constantly act to sanction and diminish the phenomenon. The transparency of the processes in the public administration, especially those of decision making are crucial for keeping the corruption at acceptable limits.
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Review of: Lawrence W. Reed - Real Heroes: Inspiring True Stories of Courage, Character, and Conviction, Wilmington, DE: ISI Books (www.isibooks.org), 2016. xii + 279 pages. Drawings of book subjects. ISBN 978-1- 61017142-7. O jedność Europy: Antologia polskiej XXwiecznej myśli europejskiej (For the sake of Europe’s unity: An Anthology of Polish writings on European unity), edited by Sławomir Łukasiewicz. Introduction by Łukasz Machaj and Marek Maciejewski. Warsaw: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2015. 290 pages, photographs, index of names. ISBN 978-83-63743-38-3. Hardcover. In Polish. Citizens and Statesmen: An Annual Review of Political Theory and Public Life, vol. IX, edited by Bradley C. S. Watson (brad.watson@email.stvincent.edu). Latrobe, Pennsylvania: Center for Polish and Economic Thought at Saint Vincent College, 2016. 200 pages. ISBN 978-0967371771. Adam Wierciński - Przywracanie pamięci (Restoring memory), 2nd ed. Opole: Opole University Press, 1997. 153 pages. Bibliography, drawings. ISBN 83-85678-79-4. Paper. In Polish. Rafal Pomian - Sweet Days and Sour, by Rafal Pomian. Ottawa: Baico Publishing Inc. (info@baico.ca), 2016. 225 pages. ISBN 978-1-77216-065-9. Paper.
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The axis of the modern economy-world is capitalism in the neoliberal globalisation phase. Human population divided into local civilization and national communities found itself in the phase of another structural (or system) crisis: it must beat technological barriers (energy), institutional (global government) and social (adjusting mechanism of global capitalism to the needs of ageing societies of the North and poverty and global underdevelopment of the South). This problem will be resolved – if one may anticipate on the basis of knowledge of history course determinants – when climatic, food, resource wars and periods of recession and growth are over. Correcting its functional mechanisms in the transnational scale will require co-operation and international coordination (liquidation of tax havens) and qualitative changes in relations between the state an financial market (taxation subjected to satisfy the needs of ageing population and solving existential challenges from the world civilization). It will give the opportunity to create a new formula for the alliance between the financial and production capital, workforce and the state on the scale of national societies and the new world order – in the civilization of permanent development. The period of open phase of the next structural crisis might be foreseen for the next 30–40 years, or in the middle of 21st century.
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When we look at the prevailing retoric of fundamentalist islamic ideologies and political islam, the argument that islam is not a religion which only regulates single muslim subject’s life but has a total claim to regulate whole (e.g. political, economic and legal) area of social life. The reinterpretation and rebuilding of İslam in modern period make it not only a religion but also an ideology. The intellectuel actors of islamic ideology treat this ideology, which is called as political islam, as a holist, universal, trans-historical and esseantialist system. According to this lineer, progressive, secular or semi-secular understanding, İslam is a religion which will create in the future a civilisation born out of its fundamental roots; moreover, it is totally different from modernity and capitalism and the only alternative system to them. The opposite arguments suggest that political İslam is a product of specific historical conditions and processes, and it is a opposition within the system just like other intra-system socio-political movements. Thus, while the retoric of political İslam and islamic movements transform themselves according to their own historical, social and conjunctural conditions, they become important instruments for reproducing and retrasforming the existing system in itself. This study examines the arguments mentioned above in the context of the relationship of political İslam and modernity and the conditions in which islamic movements and political İslam have emerged and transformed itself.
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Erisirgil, a positivist intellectual who believes that social development is possible only when it is accompanied by science, states that social causes that effect revolution must be analysed through a scientific attitude in order to be able to form an understanding of the Turkish Revolution and to make assumptions on its future. To Erisirgil, we can perceive the occurrence of revolution as we experience it. However, perceiving it may not be enough to understand and relate it. Unless we contemplated the causes of the perceived thing, systematized it and determined its philosophy, it would not be possible for it to be understood and adopted. That’s why, a stream of thought or a social change may possibly turn back to its position in the past if its ideology is not soundly established. Through a holistic perspective, Erisirgil defines the Turkish state as a whole with its new social understanding, the institutions that are based on this understanding and its approach to economy. And this whole must be scientifically analysed. Explaining the relation between modernity and secularity, Erisirgil asserts that “Revolution has necessitated the secular state”. To him, state, in this century, appears to be a secular institution. For a state to be an institution serving ethereal purposes, It must be devoid of ıts an entity as a state. It is not possible for a state to survive today if it is devoid of a secular content. To Erisirgil, for a state to preserve its existence, it has to struggle to rid itself of the dominance of ideas and groups that exert themselves as ethereal. This also complies with the nature of religion. From a secular viewpoint, Erisirgil also suggests that religious issues must be treated separately from state matters and revolution maintains the state independence as well as offering freedom to religion by directing it to its own premise.
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Capitalism cannot exist without a certain degree of liberalism. However, according to critics, neoliberalism has gone too far and has exceeded the framework of “adequate freedom” of capitalism. Neoliberalism brings to life the classic liberal doubt about the ability of the state to manage the economy. Aversion to “great government” and state intervention has acquired different theoretical forms. Monetarism, public choice theory, rational expectations and supply economics have expressed their doubts about state intervention and its efficiency in different ways and for different reasons. Obviously, the government (state) is not perfect. However, the market is also not perfect, which is admitted by both liberals and neoliberals. Thus, there will be continued attempts by both supporters of so-called free market and supporters of state intervention to “fix” this imperfect, capitalist world.
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U ovom radu želim najprije ukratko izložiti današnju diskusiju o globalizaciji, zatim kratki pregled povijesti globalizacije i pokazati da se dosadašnja globalizacija temelji na negaciji stranca, i to na dvostrukoj negaciji stranca: na negaciji stranca izvan sebe i stranca u sebi.
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Falih Rıfkı Atay, a writer and a journalist who had an elite position among organic intellectuals close to government during transition process from constitutional monarchy to republic, was embraced by every ruler as Talat Pasha, Cemal Pasha, Atatürk and İnönü. He tried to explain ideological and cultural saying of every period with that identity. He was always a man of government except when he remained independent as a writer during that transition process and Mütakere? period when he supported openly Anatolia liberation movement in İstanbul. Although using a populist saying, Atay determined various effects that made society mystic and miserable and made his duty and mission fighting with them. He believed illiteracy was the first reason that made Ottoman/Turkish society backwards among many. And he emphasized the importance of using a elegant language, a language of people and the function of secularism principle and Latin alphabet in terms of Turkish society in his works. The field that made him productive and fertile for us is works about his journeys around world.
More...Foucault, rat i metafore prema kojima živimo
Cet article examine l’utilisation du concept de guerre dans l’oeuvre de Michel Foucault. En renversant la célèbre déclaration de Clausewitz selon laquelle la guerre n’est qu’un prolongement de la politique par d’autres moyens, Foucault parle de manière ambivalente dans les années 1970 de la politique comme d’un prolongement de la guerre par d’autres moyens. Au sein de son analyse des rapports sociaux en tant que rapports de pouvoir, il se sert abondamment des métaphores de guerre telles que la stratégie et la tactique, mais utilise aussi une terminologie de guerre en abandonnant la métaphore. Il se distancie plus tard de ce discours qu’il qualifie de discours historique spécifique qui, de manière rétrospective, est soumis au discours analytiquementplus froid d’archéologie, à savoir, dans le sens foucaldien, à l’analyse dynastique/généalogique du pouvoir nominalement engagé. Il rejette également d’un point de vue normatif la métaphore de guerre dans certains domaines spécifiques, telle que dans sa problématisation du rôle des intellectuels. Cet article se limite à deux buts particuliers. Le but premier est, suivant le genre de l’herméneutique de Foucault, de reconstruire en tentant de classer de manière fidèle les différents genres de discours de guerre présents dans son oeuvre riche et variée. Le but second consiste, quant à lui, à valoriser ce discours d’un point de vue analytique, travail résumé en la question de savoir ce que l’on gagne et ce que l’on perd à travers le discours de guerre dans l’analyse des mouvements sociaux, tout en ayant à l’esprit l’intitulé de Lakoff et Johnson concernant les métaphores conceptuelles, qui, comme ils l’affirment, façonnent notre pensée et nos mondes réels. En d’autres mots, il s’agit de savoir ce que nous a réellement dit Foucault et ce qu’il a vraiment écrit, mais aussi, ce que cela signifie pour nous aujourd’hui au sein de l’analyse de la société et de la politique.
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Since premodern narratives on translatio imperii, across the role of the Greco-Persian Wars and the Crusades in Hegel’s philosophy of history, the world-historical meaning of great conflicts represents one of the main issues of universal history. After premature quasi-Hegelian and postmodernist theses on the end of history and the end of the philosophy of history, this theme obtrudes the confrontations with the legacy of the twentieth century. The hegemonic Western recapitulation of the period in question depends on the concept of totalitarianism. In the case of historical revisionism, this implicates not only the accusation against the October Revolution because of the launching of the “international civil war”, but even the critique of the wider revolutionary cycle initiated in 1789. However, the revisionist manoeuvre works only under the condition of Eurocentric optical illusion which throws back colonialism as the key dimension of the modern progress. Moreover, the reasons for the failures of the contemporary left ought to be sought in the underestimation or neglect of the anti-imperialist struggles and their geopolitical conditions. This paper endeavours to respond to actual challenges by means of an overview of Domenico Losurdo’s interdisciplinary philosophy of history.
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In his influential Orientalism Edward Said placed British statesman and writer Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) in the long line of the Western writers who cultivated particular stereotypes about the Muslim East, with the hidden intention of imperial subjugation. On the other side, Said’s critics Patrick Brantlinger and Mark Proudman asserted that Disraeli was not an Orientalist, but rather an admirer of the Arabic and Ottoman civilizations and determined defender of the Ottoman Empire. However, Disraeli’s novels, correspondence and his policy in the Great Eastern Crisis give more complex evidence, which does not support any of these views. Th is paper emphasises the point that during his long career Disraeli was changing his views of the Turks and the Ottoman Empire, which even Patrick Brantlinger’s balanced approach to the issue of Disraeli’s Orientalism misses.
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The research on the pluralistic nature of the phenomenon of “ketman”, which is at the same time as the art of duplicity, manifested in the sphere of (political) communication, social- psychological and psychological level is the main topic of this paper. Czeslaw Milosz‘s interpretation of this phenomenon was more than instructive in this regard, so his insight gained the central importance in the paper. As a form of dissimulation, the system of response to the political repression, a hidden form of (political) differences and socially shaped form of concealment, “ketman” presents a very complex phenomenon that goes well beyond such a term for masking the sheer fear and opportunism, as determined by one of the critics of Czeslaw Milosz’s study. Starting from the idea of a religious mask, taken from the Islamic tradition, Czeslaw Milosz singled out two of its dimensions: the moral principle that justifies the application of religious cunning disguise, thus providing a kind of satisfaction and sense of superiority of one who practices “ketman”, and the moment of the hypocrisy of skills. Th ese two dimensions of Gabineau’s idea were developed by deepening their psychological, cultural and anthropological sense. Exploring the phenomenon of “ketman” in Polish society under Stalinist repression, the author has come to the definition of modern ideological forms of “ketman”: “national ketman”, “ketman of revolutionary purity”, “ketman metaphysical”, “aesthetic ketman” and “ethical ketman”. Offering meticulous analysis of the circumstances, reasons and consequences of each of these types of “ketman”, both for those who practice them directly and for the society as a whole, the author has focused on the socio- psychological level of phenomena. Th us, in the falsification of identity to the public in its need to survive revealed a complex acrobatics of the mind which should do the cunning duplicity and preserve the moral and psychological coherence despite segregation, and destructive consequences of this form of selfmanipulation. Taking into account all these dimensions of its expression, it can be concluded that “ketman” is transcivilisational and transideological phenomenon, and that the degree of application of “ketman” in a society is an indicator of its repressive system of government, disorders in relations between the private and public spheres, and the states of the public life of that society, as well as its political culture.
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