Идеологията като комплекс от структури и идеологиите като разкази

Author(s): Iva Kuyumdjieva / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 5/2016

This article discusses the problem of “deideologization” as an element of modern ideological production in Bulgaria after the fall of state socialism. It systematizes different theoretical approaches to conceptualizing the term “ideology” and presents an overview of two models of interpreting how ideology works: in terms of multiple narratives and in terms of ideology as a power structure. The emphasis of the article is on the analysis of the structural path to dealing with the problem of ideology in the works of post-Marxists such as Althusser, Foucault and Bourdieu. In situating their theories in the contemporary context, the author aims to create an instrument for the analysis of the working of ideology today as a set of formalized ideological apparatuses of the government and as informal networks of institutions and individuals whose actions are not determined by a homogenized and “canonized” ideological narrative.

Политиката като обоняние и парфюмерия

Author(s): Petya Pachkova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 5/2016

Семантични манипулации в публичния дискурс

Author(s): Martin Tabakov / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 5/2017

The article discusses semantic manipulations in which manipulative suggestions are made using specially selected words. Some of these examples of manipulations have become established and are very hard to refute. The notions of “left-wing” and “right-wing” are mutually related mainly in terms of state intervention in the economy and redistribution. It is not correct to qualify populist, nationalist, xenophobic political parties – or, recently, anti-immigrant parties – as “extreme right”, when there is actually a very small “right-wing” component in them and they are primarily “left-wing”. In referring to the National Socialists as “Nazi”, the word “Socialist” is manipulatively concealed. The article also indicates the semantically incorrect use of phrases such as “Turkish slavery”, “corruption”, “king”, “Russophile”, “majority”, etc.

Психологически трудности на левите ни идеолози

Author(s): Martin Tabakov / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 3/2018

The consistent and logical assessment for the so-called “Socialist system” is „state Capitalism“ and all Marxist tenets about Capitalism -- class, class struggle, exploitation, nepotism, comprador bourgeoisie….should be applied to this system. Also the consistent and logical Marxist assessment of the actions of “Czarist Rus-sia" and USSR to Bulgaria would be being imperialistic. But although until 1940 Bulgarian Marxists sharply criticized „Czarist Russia“, Bulgarian Left today find it difficult to make such assessments.The reasons are not theoretical but psychological. As consecutive Marxists, they should come to uncomfortable conclusions about the System and about „Czarist Russia“ and USSR But for biographical reasons they have a deep personal sympathy for them. They believe that their prosperity has behaved to the "System", which in turn is the result of the occupation of Bulgaria from the USSR. And any negative assessment would be for them the attempt to destroy the world they have created and believe that this world was real, and challenging their value system. And often prefer to ignore all facts and logical analyzes, but to maintain their mental balance and to live in their artificial but beautiful world.

Защо марксистите станаха путинисти?

Author(s): Momchil Badzhakov / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 3/2018

The article discusses the process of strange transformation of Marxists into Putinists and Marxism in Putinism. This process is traced as a transformation of communist utopia and ideology into Orthodox fundamentalism and neo-eurasianism; the transformation of the totalitarian regime into a regime of "rival authoritarianism" and the communist nomenclature in a pseudo-capitalist oligarchy. The conclusion is that post-communism in Russia resembles Nazism rather than former communism.

Frič, Herzen, and Bakunin: The Clash of Two Political Cultures

Author(s): Zdeněk V. David / Language(s): English Issue: 01/1998

The location of Central Europe and its participation in the Slavic language group has created a tension in Czech political thinking between two basic allegiances: Slavic solidarity and political liberalism. The corresponding historical constructs are as follows: (1) The Czech national awakening (after a virtual assimilation into the Austro-German world) received much of its inspiration and sustenance from the awareness of a strong Slav community, underwritten by the size and power of Russia and the Russians. And although this Slavic influence did not become a cultural and political force until the late eighteenth century, its origin in the Czech intellectual milieu dated at least to the prominent baroque encyclopedist Bohuslav Balbin in the seventeenth century. (2) The opposing force derived from a realistic awareness of the difference between Russia's autocratic tradition and the more humane political culture with which the Czechs had historically been associated. [...]

Class and Nation: Competing Explanatory Systems

Author(s): Gale Stokes / Language(s): English Issue: 01/1989

The series of articles that follows confront a fundamental question of socio-political development-the nature of social allegiances, and the two main classification systems that have been proposed to explain them-class and nation. All of the articles revolve around issues raised by Roman Szporluk in his book Communism and Nationalism: Karl Marx versus Friedrich List, published by the Oxford University Press in the spring of 1988. Readers who would like to enter fully into the themes of the articles may wish to read Szporluk's book first, but this is not a prerequisite, since the issues raised are of such far-reaching importance in the debate over the relationship between social and political explanations, not to mention the theory of nationalism, that each article stands on its own as a commentary on these issues. [...]

The Economic Advantages of Being Peripheral: Subordinate Nations in Multinational Empires

Author(s): Martin C. Spechler / Language(s): English Issue: 03/1989

Does a small nation develop best as an open economy, as a self-sufficient one, or as a constituent part of a multi-national imperial system? For over two centuries political economists have debated whether sovereign protection helps develop the national economy. They have argued from two contending perspectives. Cosmopolitan liberals, like Adam Smith and the Manchester school, maintained that a country's economic development would proceed best with minimal state intervention in domestic markets and in trade with the outside world. Smith wrote that, "The division of labor," considered the mainspring of the wealth of nations, "is limited by the extent of the market." [...]

Georg Lukács on Stalinism and Democracy: Before and After Prague, 1968.

Author(s): David Pike / Language(s): English Issue: 02/1988

Georg Lukács spent the greater part of his life at odds with the party. Real deviations from the prevailing doctrine or disputes over tactical matters created some of the problems, for instance at times when Lukács knew exactly what the party expected from its intellectuals and risked testing those expectations anyway. Then again he often fell out of step either because he overlooked the subordinate relationship between interests of state and doctrine altogether or simply missed the internal political dynamics of an outwardly theoretical debate. But the party itself caused many of the difficulties with Lukács by frequently shifting its tactics and then flailing those intellectuals picked to serve as scapegoats for the failures of the earlier orthodoxy (or the ones who simply hedged too long before furnishing the expected doctrinal corollaries for the next). Still other disputes between Lukács and the party fit more into the category of confrontations caused when his rivals dredged up Lukács’ checkered past as a means of enhancing their own stature at the expense of his. [...]

Prikaz

Author(s): Barbara Mašić / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 4/2020

The review of: Andrew Heywood, POLITIKA; Mate d.o.o., Zagreb, 2019., 520 str.

“Čovjek je ujedno i ono što može biti”: interpretacija značenja termina otuđenje u socijalizmu i postsocijalizmu

Author(s): Andrea Matošević / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 01/2020

The paper analyses the notion of alienation in a dual sense: first, as a significant articulation of philosophical and sociological problems in Yugoslav socialist thought and beyond, but also as a very present accentuation of the work conditions detected in industry. This double position builds a partial comparison with and analysis of the context of today’s working conditions in the “cognitariat” sector, but from which detection of alienation is almost completely removed and replaced with terms such as “hopelessness”, “indifference”, “futility”, “self-exploitation”, or “burnout”. The paper interprets the lack of such substitution, since alienation, despite the constantly emphasized abstractness of its meaning, connotes criticism, change and overcoming the current issues. This implies strong effort towards disalienation, which is not the case with the mentioned substitutive terms. For this reason, linguistic analysis and attempts to answer the question on the possibility of speaking and analysing a part of today’s, especially working, conditions in terms of alienation are a dominant part of this paper.

Prikaz

Author(s): Karlo Jurak / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 03/2020

The review of: Jovo Bakić, Evropska krajnja desnica (1945–2018) Clio, Beograd, 2019, 699 str.

Коронакризата и дебатът за демокрацията

Author(s): Olga Simova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 10/2020

The paper discusses the question how the coronavirus crisis has influenced different aspects of the debate on democracy. In the beginning, those peculiarities of the crisis are outlined, that have an effect on decision making in governments and on the reception of governmental decisions by society. Next, an answer to the question is sought for, whether authoritarian regimes are more capable of dealing with thissort of crises than democratic. The paper then addresses the debate on how to overcome the health crisis, as well as the ethical basis of the diverging views in this debate. Here the balances between freedom and security, and freedom and equality in contemporary liberal democracies come into consideration together with the impulses to revise those balances as a result of the coronavirus crisis and the attempt to overcome its economic and social ramifications. The last section presents the problems that democracy has to face in relation to the expected slowdown or even reversal of globalization processes and the intensified regionalization coming up.

DRUŠTVENE PREDODŽBE, SLOJEVI VREMENA I ANTICIPACIJA U TRI POZNATA UMJETNIČKA DJELA

Author(s): Vjeran Katunarić / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1-2/2020

The paper starts with the conceptual/theoretical approaches to social representations, structures of time, and vision of the future (anticipation) in three works of art. Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes is a model example for illustrating the stated approaches. The concept of social representations (Durkheim, Moscovici, Abric) can be illustrated by the protagonist in Cervantes’ novel. Cervantes’ implicit vision of the future, except a turnover at the end of the novel, is closer to Sancho’s realism and pessimism than Don Quixote’s idealism and optimism. Such a shift in the central field of social awareness has a double impact on the way of understanding social reality. First, complementarity between the central (visionary) and the peripheral area (of everyday experience) of social consciousness is reduced, and contradiction is enhanced. Second, this contradiction exacerbates reversal in the relation between the sublime and banal for the sake of the unfettered market. The conclusive remarks offer a new research field concerning the impact of the subsequent epoch of the Enlightenment on the levelling of the values in the name of both the scientific disenchantments of the world and the expansion of the centrifugal forces of the marketplace. The concept of anticipation is further discussed with two works of art from the Renaissance: Jan van Eyck’s “Portrait of Arnolfini” and Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”. Both works anticipate the coming of capitalism. The first painting points out the function of marriage as the institution of inheritance and accumulation of private property, as a part of the new alliance of power between the new middle class and the old upper (feudal) class. In the second painting, Jesus’ announcement of his death results in the emptying of the moral centre-stage of Christianity. This moment opens the space for the penetration and eventual hegemony of capitalism in society. The morality of the Church is rather provisory and fluctuates between two contrasts: One is the illusion of the return of Jesus, and the other is the rise of the new secular power, the totalitarian capitalism, which does not permit any alternative, as if wanting to replace the “only one God”.

PHENOMENOLOGICAL VARIATION AND INTERCULTURAL TRANSFORMATION: MERLEAU-PONTY’S PHENOMENOLOGY AND ABU-LUGHOD’S ETHNOGRAPHY IN DIALOGUE

Author(s): Laura McMahon / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

This paper develops phenomenological resources for understanding the nature of intercultural understanding, drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty in dialogue with feminist anthropologist Abu-Lughod. Part One criticizes Western framings of non-Western violence against women that render the experience of non-Western Others inaccessible. Part Two discusses how certain strains in Western feminism reinforce some of these problematic framings. Part Three offers a phenomenological account of our experience of other persons, and Part Four argues that intercultural understanding takes the form of a “variation” between one’s own and the other’s experience. Part Five explores the implications of this phenomenology of cross-cultural understanding for interpreting dynamic cultural transformations, and the politics of violence against women, in an interconnected and unequal world.

THE MENDING OF A FRACTURED SELF. ON THE SELF AS A PRODUCED AND SUSTAINED ENTITY

Author(s): Sterling Hall / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

Experientially, we often have a sense of self which is relatively constant across moments in one’s personal timeline. There are instances where this sense of self fractures, though, and self-identity becomes difficult to sustain. This essay argues that such fracturing is the result of an interruption in a process of self-narrativization—an interruption which can be mended, at least partially, through creative and communal practices which allow for the possibility of recreating narratives at the site of their failure—and explores the meaning of this fracturing and mending process in terms of colonial violence as an example of a fracturing situation.

Higher Education and the Politics of Disruption

Author(s): Henry A. Giroux / Language(s): English Issue: 54 (1)/2020

At its best education is dangerous because it offers young people and other actors the promise of racial and economic justice, a future in which democracy becomes inclusive and a dream in which all lives matter. In a healthy society universities should be subversive; they should go against the grain, and give voice to the voiceless, the unmentionable and the whispers of truth that haunt the apostles of unchecked power and wealth. Pedagogy should be disruptive and unsettling and push hard against the common sense vocabularies of neoliberalism and its regime of affective management.

Ленин и Сталин как историки: сравнительный анализ воззрений

Author(s): Vardan Ernestovich Bagdasaryan,Sergei Ivanovich Resnianskiy / Language(s): Russian Issue: 32/2020

This article reconstructs the historical views of the leaders of the Soviet state, V. I. Lenin and I. V. Stalin, as an important component of their ideological projects. The comparison of their views on history is an indicator of differences between the Leninist and Stalinist versions of Soviet ideology. The authors conclude that the continuity of views on the history of Lenin and Stalin is maintained within the framework of the general methodological platform of Marxism (formation theory, class struggle theory, adherence to the macrosocial approach to history). Stalin developed a number of Leninist provisions regarding the understanding of history and, above all, related to the combination of Marxism with the theory of imperialism. At the same time, certain differences are found in content used — mainly the history of European revolutions by Lenin and the history of Russian state-building by Stalin. Lenin placed more emphasis on universal laws of history, while Stalin recognized the originality of the Russian historical process. There were certain differences in emphases on their interpretations of national relations and foreign policy in Russian history. Such differences in views of history were correlated with differences between the tasks Lenin and Stalin faced at different stages of the Soviet project.

Ruiny dialektyki

Author(s): Michał Pospiszyl / Language(s): Polish Issue: 18/2020

Zeki Nedžib Mahmud i savremeni arabizam

Author(s): Orhan Bajraktarević / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 24/2020

Zaki Naguib Mahmoud is one of the most prominent thinkers and philosophers of contemporary Arab thought, modern Arab philosophy, culture, art, literature and literary-artistic journalism of the modern Arab and Muslim world. Understanding the conflicting relationship of past and present in the Arabs of today, the relationship of the modern Arab-Islamic East and the European West, in the broadest sense of the word: with all it implies in science, philosophy, art, religion, literature, culture, etc. represent Mahmoud's dominant topics and great thought projects for which he has always been inescapable in the considerations of Arab modernity, Arab culture and Arab society as a whole today.