Publication date: 30 March 2017 Source: Author: Tahereh Rezaei, Mohsen Hanif Art in general and fiction in particular have had close affinities with politics throughout history. When there is a close tie between a narrative fiction and political issues then critics may deem it as “committed fiction”. Political fiction is at the crossroads of political science and the art of fiction. And more often than not, novelists are involved with politics but not all of them are (...) dubbed as or even consider themselves to be political novelists. In this article I attempt to investigate political fiction as a distinct genre produced consciously by a range of novelists and critics. The authors discussed in this paper demonstrate dissimilar perspectives on freedom and democracy. Also, regarding political fiction and the responsibility of author, we will see how divergent is the attitudes of critics such as George Orwell, Allen Robbe-Grillet, Juan Goytisolo, Mario Vargas Llosa and Isabel Allende. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Religio-Political Narratives in the United States: From Martin Luther King Jr. to Jeremiah Wright by Angela D. Sims, F. Douglas Powe Jr., Johnny Bernard HillOluwatomisin OredeinReligio-Political Narratives in the United States: From Martin Luther King Jr. to Jeremiah Wright Angela D. Sims, F. Douglas Powe Jr., and Johnny Bernard Hill New York: Palgrave, 2014. 216PP. $90.00In a world where racial identity can serve as a means (...) to power or disempowerment, privilege or disadvantage, Christian prophetic speech can offer a corrective to subjugative realities. In Religio-Political Narratives in the United States: From Martin Luther King Jr. to Jeremiah Wright, Angela Sims, F. Douglas Powe Jr., and Johnny Bernard Hill attend to prophetic speech and its direct impact on the political through examining the politico-spiritual discourse and work of three storied black figureheads with roots in the black church: Martin Luther King Jr., Jeremiah Wright, and Barack Obama.It is not surprising that black ecclesial rhetoric is found within the orations of these prominent leaders, but what this work reveals is the relationship between social location, religious constitution, and political alignment. Black identity connected to the prophetic expressive tradition directly confronts any model of relationality that constructs injurious sociality. The prophetic, expressed through particular bodies, makes impossible the separation of church and state. As black identity was historically discoursed through deformation, devaluation, and dehumanization, black prophetic speech sought religious premise to speak back to and refute these ill-constructed social and political “realities.” Religiosity and sociality are affixed, adjoined in, on, and through the tongues of these three black influential figureheads of justice. The voices of King, Wright, and Obama move discursively between the religious and the political, using prophetic speech toward active political policy and toward recognizing those who are invisible in the United States and in the world. Employing the language and ideology of citizenry and community, their work and words ultimately move to emphasize human interconnectedness.Religio-Political Narratives in the United States reaches far and wide within academic discourse. A seminal work for black church studies, politics courses, ethics studies, courses in racial discourse, and Christian theological studies, it traces how the prophetic-political “verse” of these black leaders speaks back to the sinister forces that directly shape the experiences of many in the United States and the world. Blackness, an “invisibilized” identity, is ironically the space from which visibility and justice can materialize. Black identity, then, is prophetic in itself; it teaches audacious sight and visionary speech. [End Page 207]The brilliance of Religio-Political Narratives in the United States is in its characterization under one of its series headings, “Womanist Thought.” This identification is its most subtle yet forceful claim. Arguably grounded in the prophetic, womanist thought seeks to engage in “speaking back” to modes of oppressive practices within the black community and Christian context as a whole. Strangely, though, black women are absent from the text. Sims, Powe, and Hill honor womanist thought through recognizing its prophetic tone but overlook its advocates. Its womanist commitment is thus only partially seen, and questions emerge, such as: How did black women influence King, Wright, and Obama, and how can this be accounted for? How did black women historically influence other black women across time? Cannot voices such as those of Ida B. Wells and Pauli Murray be connected to the cadence of Loretta Lynch or Michelle Obama?The presence of black women’s voices is especially important in order to grant stability to the narration of political influence in the United States from within the black community. What must be avoided is the potential alignment of some sort of messianic imagery (and imagination) onto black male figures—and further, and arguably most importantly—aligning political and social change primarily with black males. Messianic mediation must be distinguished from prophetic illumination. Religio-Political Narratives in the United States wisely illumines the connections between body and policy; now we are prompted to ask: whose bodies are storied as legendary, influential, and worth giving account of?Oluwatomisin OredeinDuke Divinity SchoolCopyright © 2016 The Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In an age of immediate and global exchange of information, the ability to theorize about political conditions remains largely an elite, technocratic, and esoteric enterprise. In this timely intervention, Dean Caivano and Sarah Naumes argue that storytelling in the form of narrative and autoethnography creates an emancipatory potential through its ability to theorize from below, welcoming marginalized and excluded voices. Drawing from the disciplines of political studies, philosophy and literary studies, this volume offers a new assessment of (...) political texts through the lens of the sublime as a fertile terrain to challenge who can write and disseminate political ideas - and how"--Back cover. (shrink)

This paper aims at unfolding political conspiracies that help to manipulate political reality in Pakistan. It significantly builds on the empirical data to show how language and social semeiotics are used to coin catchy slogans to serve the politicians. Political narratives remained a field of utmost interest to the discourse analysts since they offer a rich data for a significant use of persuasively manipulative language, and they signify one of the most implicit ways in which socio-political (...) dogmas are disseminated so they are to be carefully crafted to help model linguistic choices. Based on Discourse Historical Approach the present study highlights that the identifiable linguistic patterns perform a greater role in shaping political reality, and those are influenced by the sociopolitical and historical perspectives of the society concerned. The data comprises slogans from different registered political parties in Pakistan such as Pakistan People’s Party, Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz and Pakistan Tehreke’ Insaf. The study has found that the political parties in Pakistan use to craft new slogans to manipulate reality to legitimise political environment in their favour and in doing so, they use different semiotic resources including entities, socio-cultural circumstances and verbal exchanges. (shrink)

This dissertation investigates how art, truth, and politics are tightly integrated in Raphael's historical narratives in the Stanza d'Eliodoro. ;The first chapter argues for the importance of paying careful attention to pictorial structure--that close analysis of painting can make a strong contribution to the social history of art. The second chapter begins this interpretive path. It first describes the room's decorative ensemble as a whole and how the histories are located within its complex figurative scheme. Then, drawing upon Martin Heidegger's (...) analysis of postmedieval processes of Vorstellung, it defines the pictorial narratives themselves as representations and concludes that as pictorial representations these narratives appear unable to ground the truth of sacred history. ;Chapter 3 focuses on the Expulsion of Heliodorus, a mural replete with self-referential models of both its own mode of authorship and mode of reception. These self-referential cues help define what it means for the Heliodorus to be not only a pictorial representation but more extensively a work of art. It is Raphael's art of representation that shows forth and validates the metaphysical truth of papal history. ;The latter part of Chapter 3 and all of Chapter 4 offer readings of the Heliodorus as well as the three other histories--the Liberation of St. Peter, Mass at Bolsena, and Repulse of Attila--construing them as theologico-political narratives of the divinity of papal power. All four histories express at the level of narrative form the dilemma of the papacy's contemporary political trajectory only for this predicament to find imaginative "resolution" through the movement of the narrative action. This chapter expounds upon the configurations of historical time in the decorative scheme and how this projects the political unconscious of papal desire. Yet the fifth and final chapter concludes that the Eliodoro narratives are not simply collective wishfulfillments but more properly public symbols that rhetorically address a beholder so to persuade him to accept as true the papacy's desired self-image of its own historical mission. Raphael's art of representation was essential towards this end. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Promise of Martin Luther's Political Theology: Freeing Luther from the Modern Political Narrative by Michael Richard LaffinCandace L. KohliThe Promise of Martin Luther's Political Theology: Freeing Luther from the Modern Political Narrative Michael Richard Laffin NEW YORK: BLOOMSBURY / T&T CLARK, 2016. 272 pp. $121.00Is Christianity antagonistic of the political, as Machiavelli, Rousseau, and Nietzsche have all claimed? Michael Laffin (...) argues against this position for "the life-affirming, this worldliness of Christianity" by pointing to the "theologically saturated politics of [Martin] Luther" as one historical possibility (4). In particular, Laffin elevates Luther's notion of the three estates, the locus of sanctification in Luther's thought, and the Reformer's doctrine of the "two ecclesiae" as concepts holding together the "this-worldly" dimension of life with the theological tension of the fall and redemption. In this way, Laffin identifies a truly political life lived in community and a thoroughly theological politics extending from faith in the justifying God (3). Laffin defends Luther against charges of violent individualism (contra John Milbank) and quietism (contra [End Page 202] Jennifer Herdt) by highlighting the importance of the theology of the Word for Luther's treatment of politia. Per Laffin, Luther understands the Word as Christ's radically incarnate presence that transforms this-worldly communities by sanctifying the Christian's affections, which are then lived out in political relationships (chaps. 1–3). The politia therefore becomes a place of encounter with God in which the re-created human heart commits acts of moral beauty that are distinctively Christian (chaps. 4–5).One strength of Laffin's argument is his thoroughgoing critique of the constructed narratives in contemporary political theology and philosophy that construe Luther as the harbinger of modernity's ills, as the inventor of the desocialized individual via his notion of faith and a proponent of quietistic authoritarianism in his elevation of human passivity in justification. By looking outside Luther's classic "political" texts, Laffin shows that careful study of Luther's broader writings on scripture, the sacraments, and ecclesiology actually reveal complex theological theories about the place of the political in realizing the good in human life and community. Both Laffin's critique of Milbank's ontology of violence and his assertion about human moral agency in the politia presuppose, however, that Luther's theological move from justification to sanctification includes the possibility for some kind of real, effectual change in the human person. This requires a metaphysical language capable of describing ontological change, something Laffin negates when he denies Luther's creative reliance on nominalism (39). Laffin wants to assume this ontological change that makes human moral agency possible but restricts himself from engaging the historical realities of Luther's intellectual life that make his assumptions plausible. Laffin's deft critique of Milbanks and Herdt would be strengthened by a more nuanced understanding of Luther's simultaneous critique and use of nominalist theology and philosophy for contemplating human action in both divine and political relations. Here real possibilities exist for showing how Luther used nominalist principles to construct a view of human moral agency for political relationships through the theological locus of sanctification (contra Herdt) by rehabilitating human persons in relation to God (contra Milbanks).Despite this critique, Laffin's book opens up new questions about the historical narratives surrounding the secularization thesis and exactly what we mean by "political theology." Advanced political philosophers, theologians, and Christian ethicists must now reckon with the possibilities he creates for rethinking Luther's place in this narrative and the Reformer's ongoing relevance in current discussions. Laffin prompts these audiences to reconsider the extent to which the political and the theological can and do hold each other in tension, as he shows that Luther does. [End Page 203]Candace L. KohliNorthwestern UniversityCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

IntroductionIn recent years, there has been something of an explosion of news stories about various college and university campuses across North America experiencing heightened levels of political advocacy and political unrest. Visible examples include the “canceling” of invited speakers who have been deemed offensive by select student groups1 or petitions calling for the removal of instructors who have been accused of using harmful language.2 While these examples shed light on some of the more intense political debates circulating (...) in higher educational institutions, they are also newsworthy stories precisely because they suggest strong divisiveness in worldviews in action—the contradiction between different…. (shrink)

By revealing the centrality of stories to action, to social life and to inquiry together with the implicit assumptions in polyphonic stories about the nature of humans, of life and of physical reality, this paper examines the potential of stories to transform civilization. Focussing on the failure of environmentalists so far in the face of the global ecological crisis, it is shown how ethics and political philosophy could be reconceived and radical ecology reformulated and reinvigorated by appreciating and exploiting (...) the potential of stories. This could enable radical ecologists to effect the major social and economic changes necessary to meet the global ecological crisis. What we need, it is argued, is a new, polyphonic grand narrative. (shrink)

The article suggests a new framework for the structural analysis of political narratives using the concept of ‘concise narrative’. These are segments of a speech that contain its entire temporal range in a few paragraphs. Based on the analysis of Israeli ministerial discourse during the early years of the state, the article argues that these ‘concise narratives’ can shed light on the infrastructure of political narratives. A study of ‘concise narratives’ can also illuminate how political values, (...) identities and ideologies are combined with day-to-day politics while being transferred from the speaker to his audience. The epilogue examines the intertextual relations between different political narratives, focusing on the transition of ‘concise narratives’ from the early days of Israeli politics to contemporary political discourse. (shrink)

In this ground-breaking and influential study Fredric Jameson explores the complex place and function of literature within culture. At the time Jameson was actually writing the book, in the mid to late seventies, there was a major reaction against deconstruction and poststructuralism. As one of the most significant literary theorists, Jameson found himself in the unenviable position of wanting to defend his intellectual past yet keep an eye on the future. With this book he carried it off beautifully. A landmark (...) publication, The Political Unconscious takes its place as one of the most meaningful works of the twentieth century.century. (shrink)

In this ground-breaking and influential study Fredric Jameson explores the complex place and function of literature within culture. At the time Jameson was actually writing the book, in the mid to late seventies, there was a major reaction against deconstruction and poststructuralism. As one of the most significant literary theorists, Jameson found himself in the unenviable position of wanting to defend his intellectual past yet keep an eye on the future. With this book he carried it off beautifully. A landmark (...) publication, _The Political Unconscious_ takes its place as one of the most meaningful works of the twentieth century.century. (shrink)

This book offers an opportunity for an anti deficit and positive examination of Black/Black-multiracial culture and its role in creating educational efficacy among academics of color. Through personal narrative, educational and learning theory, and creative writing/poetry, this hybrid text examines the cultural path to the doctorate.

_‘Every now and then a book appears which is literally ahead of its time... _The Political Unconscious_ is such a book... it sets new standards of what a classic work is.’_ – Slavoj Zizek In this ground-breaking and influential study, Fredric Jameson explores the complex place and function of literature within culture. A landmark publication, _The Political Unconscious_ takes its place as one of the most meaningful works of the twentieth century. _First published: 1983._.

This paper begins with a brief examination of the contemporary American political landscape. I describe three recent events that illustrate how attempts to control the narrative about events that transpired threaten to undermine our shared reality. I then turn to Book I of Plato’s Republic to explore the potentially tyrannizing effect of Socrates’s narrative voice. I focus on his descriptions of Glaucon, Polemarchus and his slave, and Thrasymachus to show how Plato presents Socrates’s narrative activity as (...) a process that controls how the auditor understands the events that follow. I then turn to an alternate understanding of Socratic narrative which extols its philosophically and politically liberatory possibilities. I use my own previous work on Socratic narrative, Jill Frank’s Poetic Justice, and Rebecca’s LeMoine’s Plato’s Cave as three examples that emphasize the more positive dimensions of Socratic narrative. Finally, I end with a brief exploration of Cornel West’s Democracy Matters, and bell hooks’ works on pedagogy to argue for the possibility a Socratically-informed public space for political discourse. (shrink)

How can human beings acknowledge and experience the burdens of political responsibility? Why are we tempted to flee them, and how might we come to affirm them? Jade Larissa Schiff calls this experience of responsibility 'the cultivation of responsiveness'. In Burdens of Political Responsibility: Narrative and the Cultivation of Responsiveness, she identifies three dispositions that inhibit responsiveness - thoughtlessness, bad faith, and misrecognition - and turns to storytelling in its manifold forms as a practice that might facilitate (...) and frustrate it. Through critical engagements with an unusual cast of characters hailing from a variety of disciplines, she argues that how we represent our world and ourselves in the stories we share, and how we receive those stories, can facilitate and frustrate the cultivation of responsiveness. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary essay considers how legal and philosophical ideals relate to contemporary politics. The essay takes a discursive approach—drawing upon Appalachian culture, popular culture, and personal narrative—to highlight a trajectory away from liberal norms.

Using insights from two of the major proponents of the hermeneutical approach, Paul Ricoeur and Hannah Arendt—who both recognized the ethicopolitical importance of narrative and acknowledged some of the dangers associated with it—I will flesh out the worry that “narrativity” in political theory has been overly attentive to story telling and not heedful enough of story listening. More specifically, even if, as Ricoeur says, “narrative intelligence” is crucial for self-understanding, that does not mean, as he invites us (...) to, that we should always seek to develop a “narrative identity” or become, as he says, “the narrator of our own life story.” I offer that, perhaps inadvertently, such an injunction might turn out to be detrimental to the “art of listening.” This, however, must also be cultivated if we want to do justice to our narrative character and expect narrative to have the political role that both Ricoeur and Arendt envisaged. Thus, although there certainly is a “redemptive power” in narrative, when the latter is understood primarily as the act of narration or as the telling of stories, there is a danger to it as well. Such a danger, I think, intensifies at a time like ours, when, as some scholars have noted, “communicative abundance” or the “ceaseless production of redundancy” in traditional and social media has often led to the impoverishment of the public conversation. (shrink)

This book analyses Hannah Arendt's conception of storytelling and endows it with relevance in historical and political thinking.

Introduction: the neuroscientific turn in political science The observation that brains and political orders are interdependent is almost trivial. Obviously, political orders require brain processes in order to emerge and to remain in place, as these processes enable action and cognition. Conversely, every since Aristotle coined man as “by nature a political animal” (Aristotle, Pol.: 1252a 3; cf. Eth. Nic.: 1097b 11), this also suggests that the political engagements of this animal has likely consequences for (...) its natural development, including the development of its psychological functions. Given these mutual interdependencies, it is remarkable that only since the 1960s, the more general domain of ‘biopolitics’ has attracted attention though first particularly in the form of behavioral politics (Alford and Hibbing). Since then biopolitics has gained in interest, so much so that different subdomains can be identified. Indeed, a 2008 review of the field of biopolitics identified five ‘headings’ of it: “(1) the case for a ‘more biologically oriented political science’, (2) ‘biologically related’ public policy issues, (3) physiological measures of political attitudes and behaviour, (4) the influence of physiological factors on actual political behaviour, and (5) the manner in which our species’ evolutionary history has left homo sapiens genetically endowed with certain social and political behavioural tendencies” (Somit and Peterson 43). Striking is how the relation between biology and politics is taken here in a rather unidirectional way, emphasizing particularly the decisive power of biology upon politics. The reverse relation is not mentioned specifically, reflecting the field of biopolitics, perhaps until quite recently. This absence of studies of political influences on our biology may have to do with the difficulty in investigating such influences. Empirical studies in biopolitics have two foci, broadly speaking: genetics and the brain, both of which have turned out to be complex and dynamic phenomena (Alford and Hibbing). Yet the studies of genetics and brain processes have made much progress in the last few decades, thanks to the development of research instruments - like fMRI brain scanners and TMS brain stimulation instruments - and of computational tools for data analysis and the simulation of explanatory models. For the field of biopolitics it is particularly relevant that within cognitive neuroscience the study of social and political issues has witnessed an increasing interest of researchers even more recently. Indeed, aware of the enabling and mediating role of the brain regarding those issues, a truly ‘neuroscientific turn’ can be observed in the social sciences, testified for example by the emergence of the field of ‘neuropolitics’ (Connolly; Vandervalk). Developing a systematic neuropolitics or biopolitics in general is a difficult challenge because of the wealth of causal influences on and interdependencies between biological, brain, cognitive and socio-political factors. Taking a somewhat more abstract perspective, this paper focuses on the process of emerging complexity in adaptive systems, enabling those to conduct ever more complex processes. Yet, parallel to that development can be observed that such systems, or organisms, are also capable in reducing the complexity of the information they are to process. Once they’re capable of developing and adjusting such compressed and complex representations of information, those systems or organisms can handle more information faster and more efficient and adaptive, yielding important benefits to the organism in navigating its environment (Halford, Wilson and Phillips). Before focusing on the role of narrative as a cognitive strategy for such a reduction of informational complexity, I will discuss the development of stable structures and increasing complexity in dynamic systems. Such a more general perspective prepares our discussion of the structures of both narratives and politics and in doing so contributes to the explanation of their interaction. (shrink)

Deliberative democrats have argued that democracy requires citizens to seek consensus, using a familiar style of principle-based moral argument. However, critics like Iris Young object that deliberative democracy’s favoured model of reasoning is inadequate for resolving deep value conflicts. She and others have suggested that the aim of improving understanding across political differences could be achieved if our conception of legitimate democratic discourse were broadened to include a significant role for narrative. The question is whether such a revision (...) would amount to abandoning the deliberative democratic goal of seeking reasonable resolutions of value conflict. This thesis argues that a narrative approach to deliberative democracy can realize its commitment to reasoned justification, while preserving the significance of differing perspectives and promoting mutual understanding. The narrative-contextualist approach is developed and illustrated with reference to public debate over issues such as cultural accommodation and historical justice. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that the ordering of the speeches in Plato’s Timaeus indicates two things. First, each speech represents one of the three genera or principles Timaeus discusses. Socrates’ summary represents the forms, Critias’ Atlantis story embodies Becoming, and Timaeus’ cosmology serves as χώρα. Second, Timaeus responds to the other speakers in the order in which they were presented before beginning again with χώρα. Once Timaeus introduces χώρα, one of his tasks is laying the groundwork for Critias’ war (...) story. My reading would prioritize the moral and political underpinnings of Timaeus’ cosmology over the more scientific or metaphysical interpretations of the text. (shrink)

One striking observation in the history of rational choice models is that those models have not only been used in economics but spread widely across the social and behavioral sciences. How do such model transfers proceed? By closely studying the early efforts to transfer such models by William Riker – a major protagonist in pushing the adoption of game theoretic models in political science – this article examines the transfer process as one of ‘translation’ by which abstract and mathematical (...) rational choice models were constructed and modified such that they applied to a specific target system in a new domain. In this paper, we argue that to overcome a set of challenges that hampered the straightforward transfer of game theoretic models into political science, Riker complemented theoretical and conceptual modifications of von Neumann and Morgenstern’s game schemes with the use of narratives to turn them into applicable and testable models. As such, those narratives played a crucial role in enabling their transfer and ultimately facilitated the applicability of game theoretic models in political science. (shrink)

Publication date: 21 March 2019 Source: Author: Remi Chukwudi Okeke The impact of music on politics in Africa has seemingly remained dominant. But the overall sway of the African political processes has also become bewildering. The panacea to the disconcerting results of these political procedures in Africa is the adequate levels of social mobilization, while music ostensibly mobilizes massively. This chapter thus examines the linkages among politics, music and social mobilization in Nigeria. Framed on the hypothesis that the (...) relationship among politics, music and social mobilization in Nigeria is now downbeat and using the elite theoretical and the political economy frameworks of analyses, the authors study the intervening factors responsible for the observed gloom in what had amounted to progressive relationships among politics, music and social mobilization in Nigeria and the wider continent. The research setting is qualitative. The chapter delves into its premises through the historical and descriptive research methodologies and logical argumentation. (shrink)

One way of characterising the present political conjuncture - worldwide, not just in Europe and North America - is to point to the rise to power of politicians best described as demagogues. Trump, Duterte, Putin, Modi, as well as the leaders of Europe's neo-fascist racists have in common not just certain policies and attitudes, but, significantly, a political style: that of the demagogue. Thinking through that term, ‘demagogue', is instructive in helping us to understand this phenomenon, no less (...) historically than politically. (shrink)

The article examines three dimensions of the interpretation of both historical and modern war events as they are perceived and undretstood at the level of official propaganda. First, it indicates that consequences of such propaganda are various manifestations of violence, and particular in many cases the emergence of repressive regimes and wars. Second, the article raises the issue of “politics of reconciliation”, the interpretive basis of which is a compromise reading of historical events by participants of conflicts or hostilities. Since (...) propaganda can affect not only interstate relations, but, above all, serve the need for domestic policy formation, the author of the article also pays attention to the interpretation of historical events within a country. In this context, the propagandists explore the idea of “positive reading of one’s own history”, i.e. they are focusing attention on those events that had a positive impact on the life of society. The other leading idea, which is used by propaganda to maintain unity in the state, is the idea of “policy of national unity.” The article concludes about the relevance of study of the phenomenon of propaganda, in particular due to new opportunities developed by modern social media. The author emphasizes the ability of propagandistic interpretations of events to disorient and engage citizens that will largely efect on which political forces a person will support in electoral races. Therefore, there is a need to develop a clear strategy for interpreting the events of history, filtering the mass media space from various manifestations of information distortion. And after all, the process of state formation involves, among other things, the implementation of a number of measures aimed at establishing national unity, i.e. «policy of national unity». (shrink)

There are more large-scale pregnancy trials that implement lifestyle interventions than ever before; yet, there is a dearth of information on pregnant peoples’ experiences in such trials. Contemporary lifestyle pregnancy trials draw on epigenetics and DOHaD research to design and justify prenatal interventions on the material environment to reduce health risks in future generations. This article draws on ethnographic data from a prenatal trial in the United Kingdom and focuses specifically on the experiences of pregnant participants during the intervention phase. (...) In this article, I develop the politics of postgenomic reproduction as a feminist and critical race framework to examine the complex and mercurial stakes of contemporary pregnancy trials. I argue that narratives of control and responsibility in epigenetic models are echoed and preceded by participants’ own embodied experience. The pregnant narratives show at once how their bodies are exposed to unpredictable and uncontrollable environmental exposures and that they are required to respond as if they have absolute control and responsibility. Attending to trial participants’ narratives from a feminist and critical race framework reveals how individualized lifestyle interventions are deeply political and racial, and carry implications for how pregnancy trials influence postgenomic reproduction. (shrink)

With the rapid development of the Internet, political culture plays an increasingly prominent role in ethical guidance and value orientation, and the intergenerational inheritance of political culture in various countries needs to be carried out in a sophisticated way. From the perspective of empathic narrative, this study applies the network text analysis method to detect the cultural communication regularities to the contemporary young adults in online political communication and explores contemporary young adults’ perception of online (...) class='Hi'>political culture through empirical analysis. Moreover, it proposes the empathic narrative logic of online political communication by comparing the existing communication elements and the urgently needed communication elements. Our findings suggest that we need to deepen the cognitive empathy, stabilize the emotional empathy, and adjust the emotional bias in online political communication. (shrink)

In this article, we explore the role of film in educational settings and argue that testimony and narrative are dependent upon each other for developing ethical judgments. We use the film 12 Angry Men to enhance our thesis that the emotional response that sometimes is intended in using film as testimonies in classrooms requires a specific listening; a listening that puts pupils at risk when they relate testimonies to their own life narratives. The article raises the importance of listening (...) in training narrative ethos in relation to violence witnessed in film. The article contributes by enhancing an understanding of a relational dimension to testimony and narrative, which, in an Arendtian sense, is also put forward as a political relation. (shrink)

CONSIDER THE PROBLEM OF INTEGRITY: we all aspire to be true to ourselves, to be today what we were yesterday, to fulfill our promises. One way of addressing the need for integrity, the need to be a whole person, is to think about what it would take to make an intelligible narrative out of one’s experiences. As Charles Taylor writes, “It has often been remarked that making sense of one’s life as a story is... not an optional extra; that (...) our lives exist also in this space of questions, which only a coherent narrative can answer.” What is intelligible about a human life, on this view, is its life story. (shrink)

The text offers an examination of socio-political bases, modes of functioning, and of the consequences of political instrumentalisation of popular narratives on Serbian disunity. The first section of the paper deals with what is being expressed and what is being done socially when narratives on Serbian disunity are invoked in everyday discourses. The next section investigates what political actor sty, by publicly replicating them, or by basing their speeches on key words of those narratives. The narratives on (...) Serbian disunity are then related to their historical and social contexts, and to various forms of identity politics with which they share common traits. The nineteenth century wars over political and cultural identity, intensified by the struggle between contesting claims to political authority, further channeled by the development of party politics in Serbia and radicalized by conflicts of interest and ideology together provided the initial reasons for the apparition of modern discourses on Serbian disunity and disaccord. Next, addressed are the uninnally solidifying or misinterpreting really existing social problems, or because of intentionally exploiting popular perceptions of such problems, the constructive potential related to existing social conflicts and splits can be completely wasted. What results is a deep feeling of frustration, and the diminishing of popular trust in the political elites and the political process in general. The contemporary hyperproduction of narratives on disunity and disaccord in Serbia seems to be directly related to the incapacity of the party system, and of the political system in general, to responsibly address, and eventually resolve historical and contemporary clashes of interest and identity-splits. If this vicious circle in which the consequences of social realities are turned into their causes is to be prevented, conflicts of interest must be discursively disassociated from ideological conflicts, as well as from identity-based conflicts, and all of them have to be disentangled from popular narratives on splits and disunity. Most important of all, the practice of political instrumentalisation of popular narratives on disunity and disaccord has to be gradually abandoned. U radu se istrazuju istorijske i drustvene osnove narodskih prica o srpskom nejedinstvu i neslozi, kao i posledice njihove politicke instrumentalizacije. Paznja se prvo usmerava na ono sto se narodskim pricama o srpskom nejedinstvu i neslozi najcesce postize u svakodnevnoj komunikaciji. Narodskim pricama se, pre svega, ukazuje na pretpostavljeno nepromenljivo svojstvo srpskog identiteta. Njima se odredjuje i glavni uzrok poraza ili neuspeha, u kom slucaju one neretko prerastaju u jeremijade nad istorijskom sudbinom Srba. Najzad, nesloga se moze predstaviti i kao posledica jednog, ili citavog niza faktora, od mentaliteta ili kulture Srba, pa do tudjinske zavere. U sledecem segmentu rada, istrazuju se vidovi politickog instrumentalizovanja narodskih prica o neslozi i ne jedinstvu Srba, odnosno njihova upotreba kao ogleda, modela i velova. U prvom slucaju, politicki akter narodsko vidjenje stanja stvari koristi kao izgovor za svoje neuspehe, ili kako bi naglasio razlike izmedju sebe, svojih takmaca i pobornika. Narativi o neslozi omogucuju akteru i da usmerava publiku na zeljeni nacin, bilo da zeli da unese nove podele u grupu, zaostrava sukob vec postojecih frakcija i povezuje se sa nekom od njih, ili a uspostavlja izgubljeno jedinstvo grupe. Obe prethodne mogucnosti akter moze iskoristiti da bi obezbedio retoricki veo kojim ce prikriti svoje prave namere. Analiza se potom pomera ka ispitivanju istorijskih i drustvenih osnova prica o srpskom ne jedinstvu. Ratovi oko politickog identiteta iz sredine i druge polovine devetnaestog veka, pojacani trvenjima izmedju rivalskih pretenzija na politicki autoritet, dodatno usanceni razvojem stranackog sistema, i radikalizovani novim oblicima sukoba izmedju interesa, vrednosti i identiteta na pocetku dvadesetog veka, zajedno su uslovili razvoj narativa o srpskom ne jedinstvu i rascepima. Na takvu osnovu su se potom nadovezivali rascepi izazvani dinastickim, konfesionalnim ili nacionalnim razlikama, svi zajedno zacementirani iskustvima ratova i revolucija. Analiza se najzad pomera ka nenameravanim posledicama narodskih prica o srpskom ne jedinstvu i razlicitih oblika njihove politicke instrumentalizacije. Zbog pogresnog predstavljanja ili objasnjavanja stvarnih problem a, karakteristicnog za narodske price, a pogotovu zbog politicke zloupotrebe narodskih prica o tim problemima, konstruktivni potencijal vezan za drustvene konflikte i njihovu narativizaciju biva ozbiljno ugrozen. Sledi duboki osecaj frustracije i opadanje poverenja u politicke elite i politicki proces uopste. U zakljucku se skrece paznja na cinjenicu da je savremeno umnozavanje narodskih prica o srpskom ne jedinstvu, kao i prakse njihove politicke instrumentalizacije, povezano sa nesposobnoscu srpskog partijskog sistema i politickog sistema uopste da se odgovorno suoci sa, a pogotovu da razresi splet istorijskih i savremenih sukoba interesa i identitetskih rascepa koji su izvoriste narodskih prica. (shrink)

Solon's cryptic injunction : "Call no man happy until dead" -- A mourning happiness : the Athenian funeral oration -- Difficult happiness : the case of tragedy -- Aristotle's hermeneutic of happiness : the first forgetting -- The trial narrative in Richardson's Pamela : suspending the hermeneutic of happiness -- Effects of the trial narrative on the concept of happiness -- Marriage plot -- The tragedies of sentimentalism -- Kantian ethics and the discourses of modernity -- Happiness in (...) revolution : erasing the political concept of happiness. (shrink)

‘Every now and then a book appears which is literally ahead of its time ... The Political Unconscious is such a book ... it sets new standards of what a classic work is.’ – Slavoj Zizek In this ground-breaking and influential study, Fredric Jameson explores the complex place and function of literature within culture. A landmark publication, The Political Unconscious takes its place as one of the most meaningful works of the twentieth century. First published: 1983.

Within the field of indie comics, politics are most visible–and most closely scrutinized–in the nonfictional genres of graphic journalism, history, and autobiography. Discussion of these tends to foreground questions of representation and identification; apart from them, as in the film criticism of the Screen era, a certain formalism predominates. Here, the unselfconscious narration of concrete facts and experiences supposedly typifying works such as Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis or Lynda Barry's One Hundred Demons may be taken as a shortcoming, a failure to (...) "lay bare the devices" and to foreground the medium, whereas a... (shrink)

In this article I explore relationships between love and politics by looking into Rosa Luxemburg’s letters to her lover and comrade Leo Jogiches. My discussion is framed within Hannah Arendt’s conceptualization of love as a manifestation of existence through the Augustinian journey of memory and as an existential force binding together the three faculties of the mind in her philosophical analysis: thinking, willing and judging. What I argue is that letters are crucial in enacting plurality and communication, and that Luxemburg’s (...) letters to her lover and comrade intensify rather than obscure the force of the political in opening up radical futures. (shrink)

A prevalent political narrative is that we are facing an epistemological crisis, where many citizens no longer care about truth and facts. Yet the view that we are living in a post-truth era relies on some implicit questionable empirical and normative assumptions. The post-truth rhetoric converts epistemic issues into motivational issues, treating people with whom we disagree as if they no longer believe in or care about truth. This narrative is also dubious on epistemic, moral, and (...) class='Hi'>political grounds. It is epistemically dubious in being largely insensitive to the problem of complexity in politics; it is morally dubious because “post-truth” is often a derogatory label for individuals or groups that are deemed stupid, irrational, or morally compromised; and it is a politically toxic neologism because it purports to use the language of ‘truth’ as a weapon against power, yet these truth-claims are often themselves attempts to exert power over others by delegitimizing their perspectives. While it may seem as if truth and democracy are on especially bad terms lately, politics and truth have long had a vexed relationship, and moral panics about the value of truthfulness in politics are as old as politics itself. (shrink)

This paper will explore the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights as an exemplar of political mythmaking, a genre of narrative designed to channel and thereby to quell social anxiety and to orient select groups toward desirable beliefs and practices. One of the Declaration’s most fundamental and forceful elements is its enshrinement of the “inherent dignity” of each member of the human family. Drawing upon contemporary theorizations of mythmaking and sacralization, this article will elucidate the manner in which (...) inherent dignity functions as the central item of sacredness within what we might call the “secular morality” of universal human rights. (shrink)

Philosophy is often depicted as generically distinct from literature, myth, and history, as a discipline that eschews narration and relies exclusively on abstract reason. This book takes issue with that assumption, arguing instead that political philosophers have commonly presented their readers with a narrative, rather than a logic, of politics. The book maintains that philosophical texts frequently persuade through the creation of a 'role' that they invite their audience to inhabit. The author also investigates the place of (...) class='Hi'>narrative in politics in two ways. It offers a hypothesis of a broad connection between political identity and narrative, and it analyzes three major figures in the history of political thought - Locke, Hegel, and Nietzsche - to demonstrate that their work is best understood through the hypothesis. The author argues that each of these philosophers rewrites the past in an attempt to direct the future. (shrink)