Methodological Problems in the Phenomenology of Time

Author(s): Gianfranco Soldati / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2015

It is difficult to develop a coherent conception of time on the basis of our experience of time. The philosophical analysis of our experience of time is a central topic in phenomenology. So one might expect phenomenology to deliver a contribution to the solution of the most challenging puzzles of the philosophy of time. This paper deals with some methodological issues related to such an expectation. It opposes two main conceptions of the role of phenomenology in the philosophy of time. On the first conception phenomenology draws conclusions about the nature of time from the description of the qualitative features of our experience of time. On the second conception, phenomenology determines what we are rationally entitled to believe about the nature of time on the basis of the way we experience time. It is argued that if one aims at integrating different approaches in one’s philosophical conception of time, then it is the second conception one ought to choose.

Implications of Paternalism and Buck-passing: A Reply to Quong

Author(s): Mats Volberg / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2015

In his latest book, Liberalism without Perfection (2011), Jonathan Quong argues against liberal perfectionism and defends Rawlsian political liberalism. In the course of his argumentation he presents us with a judgmental account of paternalism and the buck-passing account of truth in political philosophy. The aim of this paper is to critique both of those elements in Quong’s argumentation. I will first present the judgmental account of paternalism and then demonstrate that it will place impossible demands on us, insofar as paternalism is a prima facie wrong and we have a duty to reduce wrongness in the world. I will then turn to the buck-passing account of truth; after introducing it, I show that it will generate uncertain results for political philosophy, making it an unsatisfactory solution for the political liberal making truth claims in political philosophy

Models as Make-Believe: Imagination, Fiction and Scientific Representation, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 168 pp., ISBN 9780230202108.

Author(s): Daniel Vecchio / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2015

Introduction

Author(s): Virginia R. Dominguez / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

An introduction to this special issue of RIAS on walls, in light of President Trump’s proposal to build a tall and beautiful wall along the US-Mexico border and the multiple concerns it raises, this essay, like this issue of RIAS as a whole, provides comparative background on walls built at different times in the past and in different locations around the world, exploring their intended efficacy and questionable results, their transformation over time into sites of tourism, uncertain peace, and unstable truces. Raising questions about both rhetoric and materiality, it suggests that the matter does not just concern Trump’s views and policies but, rather, much more general views in the US toward Mexico and Mexicans. The essay raises the specters of both racism and imperialism in the rhetoric and proposals coming from the White House, and it seeks to use contributions from scholars in Italy, Israel, Mexico, the U.S., Hungary, South Korea, Denmark, and Canada to put it all in broader perspective.

Photo Essay: Re-Mapping the US-Mexico Border/lands

Author(s): Alejandro Lugo / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

The United States-Mexico international border has been unilaterally remapped by the US government for almost three decades. A series of US congressional acts have intensified efforts to secure the border, inlcuding by building fences and walls. This photo essay presents images of the border barriers as well as borderland images. The fence or wall images are then intended, on my part, to be juxtaposed with borderland images that capture the social and political relations that manifest the complex ways the borderlands are being remapped through walls and their consequences—all in the context of the still so-called ‘American Dream.’ The goal of the photo essay is to help identify the different ways the remapping of the U.S.-Mexico border itself is being carried out, with or without the “great, beautiful wall” Donald Trump and his supporters are currently imagining and proposing.

The Many Forms and Meanings of (Peace) Walls in Contemporary Northern Ireland

Author(s): Laura McAtackney / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

Peace walls are a longstanding materialization of the conflict in Northern Ireland, known as the Troubles c.1968–c.1998. The walls have been one of the only security infrastructural forms associated with the violence to have continued and grown into the post-conflict context. They have often been a forgotten materialization of conflict due to their ‘temporary’ nature and their restriction to working-class, urban areas. While there are increasing moves to have these walls removed, or at least to put policies in place to allow them to be taken down in consultation with the communities beside them, there has been little consideration of the long-term impacts on public memory of material segregation. This article uses peace walls in Belfast as a case-study of the unforeseen repercussions of long-term segregation of divided communities. It offers a warning to the current generation of politicians regarding not only the role of what ideological walls are intended to do, but also the impacts they can have that were not intended.

Walls that Bridge; or, What We Can Learn from the Roman Walls

Author(s): Giorgio Mariani / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

When, during the latest US electoral campaign, Pope Francis criticized Trump’s idea of building a wall between Mexico and the US, reiterating his favorite point that “we do not need to build walls, but bridges,” the Trump camp retorted that the Pope lives in a city state surrounded by walls, in a city itself surrounded by other walls dating back to ancien Roman times. Why wasn’t he concerned with those walls? As one can see, even though Roman walls have completely lost their original function and survive mainly as tourist sites, they also remain powerful political and cultural symbols. The scope of this essay is to offer, from the perspective of an Americanist who was born and raised in Rome, some comparative reflections on what we can learn today from the history of Roman walls, as well as from their symbolic afterlives.

Fence Walls: From the Iron Curtain to the US and Hungarian Border Barriers and the Emergence of Global Walls

Author(s): Éva Eszter Szabó / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

This paper considers the resurgence of the Iron Curtain metaphor and its appropriateness in relation to the current border barriers in the US and the EU. It addresses the impact of the Iron Curtain both on Eastern Europe and on Western Europe, and it explores the legacy of this nearly hermetically sealed off borderland in the different border security and migration control approaches within the EU in the current era of emerging global walls. In my view, while the Iron Curtain metaphor is mistakenly applied to the current border barriers in the US and the EU alike, its legacy does contribute to the marked difference between Eastern and Western European attitudes and policies to the massive influx of migrants. From the Iron Curtain to the Hungarian border fence, the fence walls of the spatially identical border sections reflect not only the changing concepts of walls, but also the distinct historical experiences with migration. The current border barriers in Hungary and the EU, however, draw on the US–Mexican border barrier that aims to stop unauthorized entry while keeping the gates open in both directions for legal cross-border movement in contrast with the prison walls of the Iron Curtain.

Konfidenci służb bezpieczeństwa II RP w środowisku białoruskim

Author(s): Eugeniusz Mironowicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2018

According to different estimates, the Second Polish Republic was inhabited by from 1.5 to 2 million of Belarusians who, in the Polish authorities’ plans, were to be shorty assimilated into the Polish culture. These plans to be implement required a full and accurate picture of the situation within the Belarusian minority. Surveillance was conducted under the pretext of concern for the security and integrity of the state. Attempts were made to enlist informers from among activists of Belarusian organizations. They were paid for information according to their value. Informers were working under work contracts with local police chiefs. When it was realised that, to increase their gains, they fabricated stories, the authorities resigned from this form of cooperation. The highly paid were information about illegal political activity. This was the reason why informers denounced innocent people. The authorities tried to develop a network of informers without any additional expenses. Cooperation with the state organs was to be motivated by various forms of administrative aids and shortcuts, such as business operating licences or state commissioned procurements. It were local police chiefs who were interested in increasing the feeling of threat and tightening the control over Belarusian communities, for they wanted the central authorities to grant funds for salaries and wages of informers.

Niemiecko-estoński i niemiecko-łotewski układ o przesiedleniu Niemców bałtyckich (1939 rok)

Author(s): Andrzej Topij / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2018

On 6 October 1939, the Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler gave a famous speech in the Reichstag. He proposed, among others, the resettlement of German minorities from a number of European countries to avoid possible conflicts with Germany. In fact, the proposal concerned mainly the Germans living in the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union, including two of the Baltic States: Latvia and Estonia.Otherwise, the Baltic Germans – as they were called – had expressed their desire to leave for the Third Reich in the first weeks of World War II. They – quite rightly – supposed that shortly the Baltic States would be incorporated into the Soviet Russia. This was corroborated by Soviet demands towards Estonia at the end of September. As a result, the Estonian Germans began to leave their houses in panic, followed by their compatriots in neighbouring Latvia. In this situation, the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office) itself came into contact with the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) in order to make it possible for the Baltic Germans to leave for Germany in the event of a possible occupation of Latvia and Estonia by Soviet military forces. Naturally, top officials had already known about the intention of Hitler, contrary to German diplomatic posts in Riga and Tallinn, confused on the matter and not knowing what to do during an impending crisis. After Hitler’s Reichstag speech, the German government made an official proposal to Latvia and Estonia to resettle their citizens of German origin. They wanted to conduct the resettlement as quickly as possible, almost instantly, even at the cost of financial disadvantage to the local Germans. Nonetheless, neither Latvian nor Estonian authorities agreed to such a swift action. They were of the opinion that the proposed resettlement should be based on a legal basis. As a result, the German authorities were obliged to enter negotiations. German-Estonian talks proceeded in a friendly mood and a final agreement was reached in five days. On 15 October, a German-Estonian protocol on the matter was signed. It was favourable for the Germans, since it took into account the issue of properties of churches, organizations, schools, etc. left by repatriates. It was a different story in Latvia, where a traditionally anti-German regime of Kārlis Ulmanis made demands difficult for Germans to accept. For a time, the talks were deadlocked, but after the intervention of the State Secretary at the Auswärtiges Amt Ernst von Weizsäcker they were shortly reopened. As a result, the Latvian-German treaty was signed two weeks after the Estonian protocol. It was less favourable for the Germans, especially in the area of their property. The resettlement action itself was carried out very swiftly and efficiently. By mid-December of 1939 13,700 Baltic Germans left Estonia and 52,383 left Latvia. It was an overwhelming majority of the German population in the two Baltic States. Those who decided to stay on in their old homeland where not regarded as members of a national minority. Especially the Latvian authorities were eager to erase any German traces from the public life.

Fencing In and Out: Israel’s Separation Wall and the Whitewashing of State Violence

Author(s): Amalia Sa'ar,Sarai B. Aharoni,Alisa C. Lewin / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

This essay uses the case of Israel’s Separation Wall to address the role of walls in the articulation of security, violence, vulnerability, and danger. In Israel, “security” refers exclusively to the Jewish citizens, whether they are fenced in (residing within the Green Line) or outside it (such as West Bank settlers). For the Palestinians, by contrast, the wall is yet another instrument of structural and symbolic violence. While Israeli Jews are vaguely aware of “the occupation,” they largely remain blissfully unaware of the violent under-side of everyday civil security, which the wall represents. Tracing the ways in which Jewish citizens living inside the Green Line experience and accommodate the wall, this essay analyzes its role in whitewashing state violence and in the ongoing construction of subject positions with respect to the security-violence complex.

To Build a Wall: Imaginaries of Identity in Yucatan, Mexico

Author(s): Gabriela Vargas-Cetina,Steffan Igor Ayora-Díaz / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

Here we consider ideas related to walls, roads, bridges, doors and tunnels and the materialities they name as a general frame of reference, to reflect on the manifold relations between imagined insides and outsides generally implied when discussing the wall already splitting Mexico and the US, but also regarding Yucatecan identity. We explain the ways in which Yucatecans have often seen themselves as different from “Mexicans” and why. Yucatecans have sometimes expressed the wish to build a wall around the Yucatan peninsula. We propose that such a wish is based on an erroneous perception of Yucatecans as intrinsically better people than non-Yucatecans, upholding ideals of “peacefulness” and “goodness,” and on the rhetorical inclusion of all inhabitants of the Yucatan peninsula within an imagined single “Yucatan.” Yet the wished-for Yucatecan unity is impeded by the current political and identity divisions within the Yucatan peninsula, which comprises three different states, each with its own economy, specific regional identities, and its own internal problems. We believe that to make Yucatan more inclusive, Yucatecans ought to start imagining more and better roads and bridges.

Mending Wall? The War over History in South Korea

Author(s): Sangjun Jeong / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

Until Korea was divided into North and South in 1945, it had maintained its territorial unity on the Korean peninsula for well over 1,000 years. Then, two young US officers drew an arbitrary line along the 38th parallel. Developing into a heavily militarized zone only several years later, ironically called the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ), that division has lasted for decades and into the present. Recently, several symbolic acts were performer in the zone and innovative plans were suggested to make the land strip into a peace park as a symbol of ideological reconciliation and ecological paradise. Yet to many Koreans, the zone is still inscribed as a wall permanently bisecting the peninsula not only physically but also culturally. Through an analysis of Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall,” this article contemplates the divisions within South Korean society over the North-South divide as a war over the telling of history. This history, however told, must be understood alongside the sentiment of han, a Korean word loosely defined as frustration, anger, and sadness, something that has been shaped by centuries of suffering from wars, invasions, colonization, injustice, and exploitation.

Wall Art and the Presence of Absence

Author(s): Jasmin Habib / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

This photoessay takes the reader on a walking tour through Wadi Nisnas, Haifa, Israel, where art appears on walls and where walls become art. Using de Certeau, Jasmin Habib reflects on the way that these pieces represent the political and cultural histories of Palestinian displacement, a politics of belonging as well as their return. The artists’ imaginary of coexistence is set in stark contrast to the nativism that marks the world outside of these walls.

Epilogue: Turning to the Wall. Concepts across Space and Time

Author(s): György Tóth / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

The epilogue to this journal issue interrogates a variety of aspects of walls as mental structures and tropes of historical memory. Engaging with the issue’s contributing authors, Toth argues that the idea of the wall functions as metonymy, activating a siege mentality and mobilizing its target audience—hence its rhetorical power and attraction as policy. Discussing the wall’s symbology as a border of the nation state but also pointing out its increasing privatization, the piece concludes with an exploration of the potential that walls may have for the creative subversion of their original function to seal off, categorize and divide humans.

„America Unbound. Encyclopedic Literature and Hemispheric Studies” by Antonio Barrenechea (A Book Review)

Author(s): Juliana Nalerio / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

В одном строю: иностранные медсестры Немецкого Красного креста, награжденные в период Второй мировой войны

Author(s): Andrei Andreevich Samcevich / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2018

The present study is an attempt to examine the cases of foreign nurses who worked for the German Red Cross during World War II and were awarded Nazi medals for their service. The article is not meant to be exhaustive – a number of issues are left pending that concern the biographies and circumstances of rewarding even of the girls and women mentioned in the study, Moreover, it is safe to say, that in reality the number of foreign nurses awarded the Third Reich medals was even higher. The article is the first attempt to synthesise available information in a separate study and to create a basis for the further research by historians of this complex and undoubtedly important issue.

Współpraca kulturalna Polski z Węgrami w dziedzinie kinematografii w latach siedemdziesiątych XX wieku

Author(s): Joanna Szczutkowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2018

The article is devoted to well-documented, but seldom analysed by researchers cultural contacts of the Polish People’s Republic and Hungarian People’s Republic in the field of filmmaking in 1971–1980. In the so-called Gierek’s era, Hungarian films enjoyed great popularity and interest (especially among film critics and film societies), while in Hungary Poland and Polish movies were still “in vogue”. The study focuses on the course of Polish-Hungarian film cooperation in the area of coproduction, exchange of services, events, and festivals. An important part in the popularising of film achievements was played by the Centre of Polish Information and Culture in Budapest and the Hungarian Institute of Culture in Warsaw, but also by independent contacts.

Prymas Stefan Wyszyński wobec zagrożenia interwencją sowiecką i konsekwencje jego poglądów (1980–1981)

Author(s): Rafał Łatka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2018

The article’s author has decided to present Primate Stefan Wyszyński’s attitude towards the threat of Soviet military intervention in Poland in 1980–1981, and to indicate implications of his opinions and ideas. According to Cardinal Wyszyński, the risk of Soviet military invasion of Poland in the analysed period was serious and could produce unforeseen results. His opinion on the question had a bearing on his opinions that it was necessary for the Polish United Workers’ Party to exist within the system of “people’s” Poland, his distance to a political sphere of activity of the “Solidarity”, and a negative attitude towards operations of the Workers’ Defence Committee.

Rok 1920 i lata następne. Brytyjska polityka appeasementu i zdrady? Artykuł polemiczny

Author(s): Michał Jerzy Zacharias / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2018

The article is a polemics with the theses presented in the book by Andrzej Nowak Pierwsza zdrada Zachodu. 1920 – zapomniany appeasement (The First Betrayal of the West. 1920 – The Forgotten Appeasement) In the author’s opinion, Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s policy toward Poland in 1920 could be neither compared nor identified with later actions of the British known as “appeasement”. And to use the term of “betrayal” in scholarly studies of politics seems problematic to him. Mainly because such a term does not explain either motivations or possibilities, or conditions and expectations related to the decisions that are termed as the “betrayal”. It serves more to a specific historical policy, not to say propaganda, rather than the actual need to know the complex, complicated and multidimensional historic truth.