This essay reconstructs the German philosopher and cultural sociologist Helmuth Plessner's reading of Germany's fall into the catastrophe of National Socialism. The conceptual foundations for his reading were developed in The Limits of Community (1924). There he argued that post-WWI political extremism was characterized by the anti-modernist concept of “community.” In The Belated Nation (1935/59), he went on to identify the Lutheran Reformation as the determining turning point in German history. The Lutheran type of consciousness stands at the origin of (...) a self-destructive hermeneutics of suspicion that finally resulted in völkisch thinking. Second, unlike the formation of a democratic spirit in the Calvinist middle classes in Holland and England, in Prussia the Lutheran alliance of throne and altar led to the exclusion of the middle classes from politics, relegating them to the liberal professions of science and art. Finally, I argue that Plessner's own theoretical model of a political anthropology was developed in opposition to the German intellectual classes’ failure to prevent or oppose Hitler's rise to power, including his plea for Germany to align with Western European nations shaped by the Calvinist version of the Reformation. (shrink)

One of the most enduring legacies of the Cold War period was the rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States. This is especially true if one considers the ‘Space Race,’ of the mid 1950s-1960s, where each country tried to out-do the other in all manner of space technology. This paper, while acknowledging the importance held by military and scientific goals, argues that it was matters of nationalism and prestige that provided the biggest motivation for the creation of new (...) space technologies during this time. (shrink)

As a response to the question posed in the title, this article presents a critical assessment of how the works of the nationalist–ideological philosophers can be seen as evidence against David Hume’s and Immanuel Kant’s ideas of race. Hume and Kant have certain ideas about race; if these ideas are true, then there is—and indeed, can be—no African philosophy. But there is African philosophy—that of nationalist–ideological philosophy; therefore, Hume’s and Kant’s ideas about race are incorrect.

This paper deals with the memoirs of two Bengali revolutionary women, Bina Das’ Srinkhal Jhankar published in 1948, translated as Bina Das: A Memoir, and Kamala Dasgupta’s Rakter Akshare (Written in Blood) in 1954 to argue how their subjective desire and experience dismantle the gendered rhetoric of nationalism in colonial Bengal. The accounts of Bina and Kamala present their involvement in militant activism and subsequent imprisonment. Notably, there is an inherent urge in their writings to sacrifice life for the nation (...) and a determination not to retreat from the torturous conditions of the colonial prison. The paper contends that the rhetoric of nationalism in colonial Bengal is embedded in hegemonic masculinity that initially confined women to the spiritual and domestic realm and later allowed them to be educated and modern without acknowledging their subjectivity. Activities of these political women thus destabilise the gender discourse prevalent in the private and public sphere of colonial society, which calls for a revision of the nationalist historiography. So, this essay will examine how tropes of the body, self-sacrifice, and penal experience, as produced in these memoirs, negotiate the nationalist ideology, subvert the binary of masculine and feminine, and establish their political subjectivity. (shrink)

The paper deals with the phenomenon of mythicism of the history in the contemporary period of globalisation. It pays attention also to its roots in the history of Slovak nationalism in the first half of the 20th century. The author points to the importance of the mythicized history not only for nations involved in the processes of their national emancipation, in which it serves the legitimization of national communities, but also for the preservation of the national idea even in fully (...) developed and stabilised nations. She focuses mostly on several basic kinds of myths, often recurring in the ideologies of nationalism and having their representations also in the history of Slovak nationalism. (shrink)

The main intention of this article is to analyze the role of Islam in post-Soviet Kazakhstan and its utilization in the nation-building and state-building processes. It is argued that Islam in post-Soviet Kazakhstan is a cultural phenomenon rather than a religious one and is an important marker of national identity despite the competition of radical movements in the “religious field.”.

Daga (the Bulgarian word for “rainbow”) was a Bulgarian comic magazine launched in 1979 and regularly published until 1992. Its remarkably westernized aesthetic greatly impacted an entire generation of readers. Included in its variety of stories (history, sci-fi, literary classics) is an action-packed account of Spartacus’ exploits. For ten consecutive issues (1979–1983), the story spanned the hero’s life from a more fanciful narrative of his early years in Thrace to the better-documented events in Italy and his death. The paper explores (...) the plotline, characterization, and visual aspects of “Spartak” to reveal the eponymous hero’s significance for young Bulgarian readers in the 1980s. Drawing on the cultural and historical context, I argue that Spartacus was well suited to serve as a role model and a national hero by embodying the proletarian anti-imperialist struggle and also, notably, because of his supposed place of birth near the river Strimon in modern-day Bulgaria. I also look at examples of contemporary comics, including a new graphic novel based on Daga’s story published in 2020, and consider the transmutations of the hero to suit the post-communist (and anti-communist) ideological agenda, characterized by a departure from the proletarian image of Spartacus in favor of more conservative, aristocratic features. (shrink)

In a comparative context, Danish national identity and political culture combine features of what is often referred to as East European integral nationalism , typical of smaller, recently independent nation-states, and the patriotic concept of citizenship in the older West European state nations. The explanation of this apparent paradox is that Denmark belongs to both families. A former multinational, composite state in 1864 was cut down to a size that enabled a class of about 60,000 peasant-farmers to establish an ideological (...) hegemony in the diminished and nationalized, yet still fully legitimate, state. A libertarian ideology of social solidarity ended up dominating this rump nationstate. The net result in Denmark has been a political mentality stressing the importance of consensus among all the people, in Danish ‘folk’. This populism or ‘popular’ ideology ( folkelighed ) is shared by virtually all political parties. Thus Danish modernity was characterized by industrialized agrarian capitalism with a socially and nationally homogeneous face, i.e. a folkish democracy which I have elsewhere baptized ‘Peasants and Danes’ (Østergård, 1992). (shrink)

This essay traces threads of nationalist sentiment from three different historical periods of 19th Century Britain, to pre-World War II Germany, to the United States of post-9/11, and evidences how even most noble expressions of nationalism and patriotism might be corrupted by the dominant cultural hegemonies. The term “nationalism” is frequently considered a synonym of “patriotism.” Although the terms emphasize the value of self-determination and solidarity among members of nation-states, nationalism is the governing principle that unifies disparate social entities (...) through a common national identity that is made accessible to many but not all members of the public. Patriotism is the attitudes and behaviors we exhibit within a public forum to validate our placement within national discourse. How we synchronize nationalist agendas with patriotic fervor determines our success in nation-building and in the creation of a global community responsive to needs and interests of our human condition, a condition that dwarfs and precedes all other ideologies and modes of classification. The prefigurations of culture and society predispose us toward assuming a normalized subjectivity that predicts potential patterns of behavior and attitudes in response to hegemonic domination. In seeking to refine and preserve national identity, each of these societies has embraced the replication of hegemony and situated oppositional narratives within coercive doctrines of patriotism and national unity. (shrink)

오늘날 한국에서 민족주의는 회의와 기피의 대상이다. 그것은 한편으로 과거 권위주의 정권 시절 민족주의가 권위주의를 정당화하는 이데올로기로 복무했던 데 따른 반발 때문이며, 다른 한편으로 최근 정부 정책에서 중시되는 다문화주의와 민족주의가 친화적이지 않다는 인식 때문이다. 그러나 민족주의는 강력한 사회 통합의 동력을 제공하며, 현대 민주주의 국가에서도 시민종교로서 기능할 가능성이 충분하다. 특히 시민혁명의 유산이나 공화주의 운동의 전통이 미비한 한국의 경우, 민족주의가 쇠퇴할 경우 각자의 사적 이익 추구에만 몰두하는 원자적 개인으로 시민사회가 파편화되며 공론장의 형성이 제한될 우려가 상당하다. 따라서 민족주의의 비합리적, 반민주주의적 가능성을 최소화하면서 그 통합 (...) 역량은 보존하는 방법을 모색할 필요가 있다. 이때 재조명되어야 할 역사적 시기는 ‘해방공간’으로, 이후의 역사 전개에 따라 반공주의와 권위주의에 속박되기 이전의 민족주의가 다양한 이념과 결합하며 강력한 사회개혁의 배경 이념으로 작옹하던 시기이다. 당시 극좌에서 극우에 이르는 거의 모든 이념 세력들이 민족주의를 존중하고 그에 따라 각자의 강령을 조정했으며, 민족주의를 근거로 사회개혁을 추진할 것을 주장했다. 이런 기억을 재생시키고 오늘날의 사회 통합, 민주주의 심화, 통일 의식 함양 등의 과제에 민족주의를 활용한다면 민족주의는 한국적 시민종교로서 21세기에도 긍정적인 역할을 할 수 있을 것이다. (shrink)

continent. 2.3 (2012): 218–223 Vijay Prashad. Arab Spring, Libyan Winter . Oakland: AK Press. 2012. 271pp, pbk. $14.95 ISBN-13: 978-1849351126. Nearly a decade ago, I sat in a class entitled, quite simply, “Corporations,” taught by Vijay Prashad at Trinity College. Over the course of the semester, I was amazed at the extent of Prashad’s knowledge, and the complexity and erudition of his style. He has since authored a number of classic books that have gained recognition throughout the world. The Darker (...) Nations , a peoples’ history of the Third World, sent defibrillating shockwaves through an academic world that had almost forgotten the epic scope and historic dignity of the non-aligned movement and post-colonial struggles. In his recent, award-winning work, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter , Prashad delves into his capacious knowledge of the Third World to excavate the discourses and narratives surrounding the upheavals of 2011. “Revolutions have no specific timetable,” states Prashad in the opening line of this exciting and provocative look at contemporary events. Instantly, an atmosphere of suspense emerges. The reader is alerted to the problem of history. Does the making of history then involve a suspension of historical time, or is it a continuous narrative structure into which events must eventually be integrated? Arab Spring, Libyan Winter shows that the answer to the question, “How is history made?” lies just as easily in the asking. The first half of the book works through the events that transpired to bring about the explosive popular uprisings of Arab Spring: Tunisia and Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain. But the events are not put together in a cohesive, chronological fashion. Using an uncommonly gripping style more akin to the folk-story motif of the djeli than to traditionally Orientalist academia, Prashad suspends a given situation, points out its components, and traces back the characters and genealogies that define each link before resuming a narrative. Every moment is an end to itself, and an origin of something different. Thus, the making of history becomes the suspension of its own progress, it’s catastrophic 'stability,' in a process of differentiation through inclusion. Empirically, one might suggest that history is a condition of time, and by extension, of the subject, but history is also an eminent producer of the Subject and her concept of time through memory and narrative. Hence, history is often overdetermined by a dominant narrative of the sovereign. The apparently chaotic composition of Prashad’s historicity is, then, an interstitial morphology of resistance. It illustrates that the time to act for the revolutionary lies in the gaps within the dominant historical realities. It points out the sorties of signifiers constituting nothing in the obliterated ruins of history. Through such illuminations, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter breaks through “the surface of history” to elaborate revolution’s snapping synapses, exploding interruptions and breaches, connecting flows. Messianic Politics It is tempting to think, 'History is either singular, or it is diffuse. It is either one coherent factual narrative, or it is comprised of the aletheia of the multitude.' Yet the reader finds Prashad examining the structure of history on multiple levels. For Prashad, world history is shaped by geographically defined political movements, such as communism or national liberation, with historical agents like the working class for the former and the nationalist militant for the latter. Religion, however, is another matter: “Religion has an unshakable eschatology which a post-utopian secular politics lacks.” Within the telos of religion, there appears on the horizon the image of Benjamin’s thoughts on messianic time—time as “a small fissure in the continuous catastrophe,” a break with history, may contain an ultimate redemption of the human beyond the political power struggle. Succoring the split between geo-political and utopian-religious (messianic) time in the context of Arab Spring, Prashad indicates that the base of “the deep desire and commitment to some form of democracy” is forged by the affinity between eschatological Islamist politics with the People. To think about the Subject of messianic time in the context of the lack of a “coherent timetable” for emancipatory politics, it is perhaps best to return to the modern tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose prefigurative blending of liberation theology and emancipatory politics became most important during his works of 1963, the climactic year of “The Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” the March on Washington, and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. In “The Letter,” King states the point bluntly: Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was “well timed” in view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant ‘Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” The timing of rebellious action must not be a part of history. It must change history. The kairos appears spontaneous and untimely in its convulsive, shocking presence, yet it is, deeper still, a path, a longue durée , forged through diligent and rigorous praxis. King put a finer point on the path of historic liberation in his declaration in his 1963 speech at Western Michigan University: “[T]ime is neutral.... Somewhere along the way we must see that time will never solve the problem alone but that we must help time. Somewhere we must see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels on inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. Without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the insurgent and primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social stagnation. We must always help time and realize that the time is always right to do right.” Time, then, exists in “the neutral,” while action must turn to the kairos , not only of taking time, but taking the right time. By turning our relation to time into kairos , we move time from its context within history to a duration between histories—the longue dure?e of Messianic time. The implementation of neutrality in this context suggests a broad space of time to extend through the valley of positive and negative. In Roland Barthes’s lectures from 1978, the neutral takes place in this minimal distance of non-conflict that exists outside of two extremes. It is, in the words of Maurice Blanchot, “the non-general, the non-generic, as well as the non-specific.” For Blanchot, the neutrality of time permeates life as death, impassive and beyond control; such is the neutrality of messianic time, which permeates the charge of history, changing the "I" into the "one." The neutrality of time therefore implicates history in a case against extremism, showing that the work of the radical is not to tend to any particular side, but to have the time to navigate through the terrible terrain of history by altering its course, its patterns and rhythms of movement, connection, sociality. Hence, one does not simply “make history,” one alters the course of history in accordance to “the right time.” The historical path toward emerging power is transmitted as a gesture to the outside of history, against history; a gesture as simple as reaching out. Thus a counterhistory, to use Foucault’s term, is brought forward as the guide of time past a point of no return, a Rubicon, the point where the normal path of history falls to the past. The subject, who must be the only true agent of history, facilitates time through helpfulness, and both the Subject and her history become decentered in relation to one another. Yet history negates the neutrality of time. As Barthes discloses, although the neutral is the “thought and practice of the nonconflictual, it is nevertheless bound to assertion, to conflict, in order to make itself heard.” Engaged with history, time is charged with a destiny, and becomes an opposition. As Prashad insists, “For Arab lands, the events of early 2011 were not the inauguration of a new history, but the continuation of an unfinished struggle that is a hundred years old.” The emergence of the Subject during Arab Spring did not conceive of a new history, but changed the path of history toward a different destiny. “Historical grievances combined with inflationary pressures now met with the subjective sense that victory might be at hand—this was not simply a protest to scream into the wind, but a protest to actually remove autocrats from their positions of authority. The facts of resistance had given way to the expectation of revolutionary change.” The negativity of this charge toward “revolutionary destiny” rendered control, as a positive force, seriously lacking. The lack of control lies in the problem that the Subject is not totally detemporalized or timeless, but untimely in her presence. The Subject is untimely, because her work is visionary, and it is only through such visionary work that the Rubicon can be crossed. Still, the crossing of this border is haunted by anxiety over an impending disaster that lays in wait. It is only through the form of what Benjamin calls divine violence, captivated not with the justice of the means, but the ends—the transformation of history—that a revelation of history’s traumatic foundations can be liberated, and patterns and rhythms of time developed throughout obscured traditions awakened. In this situation, the Subject appears to be outside of right, but setting the state to rights. Because her position is correct, in-so-far as the rebelling subject rebels due to a lack of recognition, her representation appears outside of the norm, which is mistaken as right. Therefore, such visionary work must be carried out through obscured traditions, underground, away from the surveillance of empire. Explaining his method from the start along the lines of Marx’s metaphor of the mole, Prashad insists, “It is the burrowing that is essential, not simply the emergence onto the surface of history.” Arab Spring, Libyan Winter is a book on uncharted networks of time, spread out over the 252 pages like an elaborate spider’s web of passages intertwining with and overwhelming the machinery of the state. Although untimely, Arab Spring was not a flash in the pan, or a Facebook or Twitter revolution. Prashad notes that the government’s suspension of these tools led to further radicalism by furthering communications through face-to-face encounters. In existential terms, Arab Spring might be thought of as a revolution of Being over techne , an uprising of the unchartable, infinite potential of the Other. The name of this Other is found in Chance. The faith of the revolution lies in the proper decentering of the subject, its giving to the Other of time, for only with respect to time does history actually appear on the horizon of the subject, rather than as an imposition. This time of historical agency appears as a moment when anything can happen—a revolutionary truth event where everything comes into question while being realized in its Otherness as a community of the people begins anew in the streets amidst discourse, friendship, reconfigurations of hegemony, and a becoming of a constituent power. Throwing a wrench into the gears of the “cobwebbed tradition” of Orientalism, the decentering of history in Arab Spring, Libyan Winter is a defining quality of its impassioned revolutionary cry. But perhaps the most paradigmatic points of the book emerge from the unexpected voices. To make the connection between the particular manifestations of revolutionary demands to the general historic terms of revolution, Prashad quotes an anonymous young Egyptian in Tahrir Square, who reminds us, “[T]he French Revolution took a very long time so the people could eventually get their rights.” Far from timelessness, the historicization of Arab Spring must exist precisely within the most uncanny appearance of time, as something that does not appear to come from the natural state of time as we know it, but in arriving has completely transformed the way that we understand time. Strange Monsters Revolution is never as simple as a revolt from below against a rusting structure of elites trying to remain in power. As with the French Revolution, Arab Spring consisted of complex familial ties, outside interests, and religious factions fighting alongside, often in awkward juxtaposition to, liberals, working class parties, farmers, and students. It is perhaps because of this historically difficult and incongruous composition that the Arabic word for revolution is thawra , referring to the image of the bull, or thawr , which has religious significance as a pagan deity for the Ancient Semitic tribes and Cartheginians. If Daniel Guérin was correct in saying, “Anarchism and Marxism drink from the same spring,” then it is quite a different oasis that drove the thirsty beast of revolution through what Prashad calls, “the Libyan labyrinth.” Recalling Bataille’s Acéphale, the intestinal labyrinth gains significance as the mode of metabolism and rumination in which, “(the Acephale) has lost himself, loses me with him, and in which I discover myself as him, in other words, as a monster.” Unraveling the discourse of the revolution, the flows of power and hegemony—from Qaddafi’s nationalist coup in 1969 to the wars with Chad from 1978 to 1987, the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s to, finally, the War on Terror—we find that the metabolic process of Libyan Winter ends in the production of oil. In a process of what Prashad calls “involution,” Qaddafi’s bellicose policies, along with his attempts to nationalize Islam together with oil, mutated the source of his power, turning his house against itself. Already a divided nation, with its two major cities on opposite geographic sides of the country, Libya became split between two opposed political powers—liberal reformists and staunch nationalists—as Qaddafi’s political disengagement manifested through what can only be described in psychoanalytic terms as a recursive passage a l’act (mysteriously calling Wikipedia “Kleenex,” declaring that opponents drank hallucinogens with their instant coffee, and so on). Prashad declares, “The mercurial style that Qaddafi adopted was not about his personality alone, but also a leader’s natural response to a system that relied upon power brokers whose own loyalty… did not have any ideological commitment to the system.” As in the case of other nations during Arab Spring, the true expression of revolt was an outward exposition of what had inwardly been happening in microcosmic societies throughout the realm—from indigenous tribes to political parties, for a century, the people, partly motivated by (and in resistance to) economic impositions of development, had been changing the traditional social compositions and participating in what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls, “the relative autonomy of the movement from the leaders.” It was this empowerment of political reconfigurations taking place under the context of new democratic assemblages that shocked the elites and evoked such a powerful response. Unlike Qaddafi’s awkward policy choices and rants, real acts of power from the West were clear and decisive. Prashad sets the stages of war and diplomacy, far removed from the deserts, mountains, and cities that forged the backdrop of popular politics. Taking place under the now-classic architecture of the “four pillars” of US interests—oil, the War on Terror, Israel, and the circumvention of Iranian hegemony—we find elites rubbing elbows in “Heliopolist cocktail parties and hushed conferences in Kasr al-Ittihadiya” as well as the Concorde-Lafayette hotel in Paris, which provides the setting for a meeting of anti-Qaddafi figures consolidating their power. These scenes are buttressed with the careful portraiture of key historical actors. As Prashad brings the stage of history to life, we find the diplomats and liberals like Frank Wisner, whose career has brought him from Enron in the late 1990s to the Obama Administration, under the aegis of which he was meeting with Mubarak about military support during Arab Spring. We spy the provocateurs, for instance, gauche cavalier , Bernard Henri-Levy, who telephones Sarkozy from Benghazi about the need for more NATO air strikes. We follow the rebel military establishment as it suffers mysterious deaths and even more mysterious assents (like that of apparent CIA cohort, Khalifa Hifter). In each of these intriguing characters, we find different representations of the security state biopolitique: an oil-injected reification that drives Arab Spring from the resentment of rising food prices to the brink of implosion in Libyan Winter. Reminiscent of the scenes of Cold War soirées represented in old Bond films, the aristocratic fight for oil against democracy that was Libyan Winter presents a harsh truth that the new global crisis is simply the continuation of the old history: the global exploitation of capitalism waged against the imagination of the people. As Benjamin laments, “The labyrinth is the right path for the person who always arrives early enough at his destination. This destination is the marketplace.” Yet, “(t)he labyrinth is the habitat of… a humanity (a class) which does not want to know where its destiny is taking it.” Thus, the labyrinth leads, like the desert, only further into itself. As Blanchot explains, “The desert is even less certain than the world; it is never anything but the approach to the desert.” Only the visionary can take time out of the involution toward oblivion. It is here, in this approach to and escape from history, that we find ourselves within Benjamin’s Golgotha, Blanchot’s desert: A space of indeterminate uncertainty where we become familiar only with our own exile. Blanchot writes, “For the moderated and moderate man, the room, the desert, and the world are strictly determined places. For the man of the desert and the labyrinth, devoted to the error of a journey necessarily a little longer than his life, the same space will be truly infinite, even if he knows that it is not, all the more so since he knows it.” The desert, as allegory, provides an eschatology, a mortality in the destiny of Arab Spring. But any allegory of nature might lead to a labyrinthine eschatology (for example, in Bachelard, the forest presents "a limitless world"); the prescience of the untimely is always an uncanny acceptance of the infinite within the finite—the outside of what is understood. Transgenerational and occupied with the image of the future, the untimely makes otherness its home as it proceeds toward liberation. In the work of helping time navigate this dangerous passage of history, Prashad illustrates that the more violent break with history may have occurred in the peaceable struggles of Tahrir Square, and not in the military clashes of Qaddafi with his former Generals who defected to the CIA and NATO countries. It might be possible to suggest, then, that in the case of Tunisia and Egypt, the historical subject of the people was drawn together in a Dionysian dance of different rhythms in the marvelous realm of the ancients, while we fear that the case of Libya suggests an Apollonian future where time, itself, may lay dying under the machinic hand of history. The properly Nietzschean inversion would follow: time is dead, for history has killed it. Yet, if time is dead, struck down in Golgotha, exposed in the desert, mauled by the thawra , it is only in the present sense that it is rendered impossible outside of the context into which the untimely has thrown us. Thus, if history becomes an art of revolution, life as being-towards-death (death as the provocation of the neutrality of time) becomes what Benjamin calls “the allegory of resurrection” through the glorious ruins of history. Prashad ends his work with a rousing finale: “The time of the impossible has presented itself. In Egypt, where the appetite for the possibilities of the future are greatest, the people continue to assert themselves into Tahrir Square and other places, pushing to reinvigorate a Revolution that must not die… For them the slogan is simple: Down with the Present. Long live the Future. May it be so.&rdquo. (shrink)

The book deals with the influences exerted by Social Darwinism upon Korea’s modern ideologies and discourses in the 1880s-1900s. It argues that Social Darwinism constituted the main keystone for many pivotal discourses in early modern Korea, especially nationalism.

There are no clear criteria regarding what kind of beliefs should count as folk-economic beliefs, or any way to make an exhaustive list that could be filtered through such criteria. This allows the target article authors, Boyer & Petersen, to cherry-pick FEBs, which results in the omission of some well-established FEBs. The authors do not sufficiently address a strong relationship between ideology and FEBs.

This book traces ideological trends in China through a range of historical and comparative perspectives, spanning the ancient belief systems of Confucianism, Legalism, and Taoism to political ideologies of the present day. Chapters in this edited volume are divided into four parts: traditional Chinese ideology, ideology of the Republic, Maoism as an ideology and post Mao ideology, zoning in on specific historical periods from the Qing and Republic periods to the reform era, as well as the (...) period after the founding of the PRC - through which Mao Zedong's political thought is notably discussed from the perspective of epistemology and the global impact of Maoism. Key topics include Sun Yat-sen as the Father of the Republic, Li Dazhao, the early Marxist theoretician, Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist Fascism, Liang Qichao's emotional appeals through liberal political discourse, Jiang Zemin's theory of 'Three Represents' de-emphasising the Marxist concept of class, Hu Jintao's theory of 'Harmonious Society' and Xi Jinping's political thought. Contributions from world-leading scholars take both comparative and critical approaches, examining not only how studies of ideology are relevant, but how Chinese ideologies have retained their own characteristics distinct to the West. As the first comprehensive study of this subject in the English language, Chinese Ideologywill appeal to students and scholars of philosophy, political science, history, and Asian studies more broadly. (shrink)

Drawing on empirical evidence from history and anthropology, we aim to demonstrate that there is room for genealogical ideology critique within normative political theory. The test case is some libertarians’ use of folk notions of private property rights in defence of the legitimacy of capitalist states. Our genealogy of the notion of private property shows that asking whether a capitalist state can emerge without violations of self-ownership cannot help settling the question of its legitimacy, because the notion of (...) private property presupposed by that question is a product of the entity it is supposed to help legitimise: the state. We anchor our genealogical critique in recent work on ideology in epistemology and philosophy of language, and in current debates on the methodology of political theory. But, unlike more traditional approaches that aim to debunk whole concepts or even belief systems, we propose a more targeted, argument-specific form of ideology critique. (shrink)

This article takes the linguistic space of North India during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and tries to see how a nationalistic linguistic ideology that was shaping up at that time, creating Hindi and Urdu linguistic communities, used gender as a tool to portray and assert a masculinist vision of language and nation. It involved not just censoring certain representations of women and their cultural spaces, but also using the issue of ‘vulgar’ representations as a premise to marginalize certain (...) languages and their literature. The article looks at the colonial ideology that worked as an enforcer for the nationalists to work towards achieving what they felt as a sanitized and moral form of literature and culture. The linguistic ideology that accompanied these revisions was of projecting Hindi (Khari Boli) as a national language while limiting spaces of other languages, such as Braj, Urdu and Bhojpuri, in the region, by criticizing either their use of sexual imagery or by stereotyping them in a gendered way. This article investigates the arguments of nationalist writers and highlights their masculinist and patriarchal ideas in their bid for the new national language. (shrink)

This paper contrasts five contemporary political philosophies – neutralism, postmodernism, pluralism, anarchism, and patriotism – and argues that the latter is superior. This is because of how patriotism relates to the various political ideologies, including liberalism, conservatism, socialism, nationalism, feminism, and so on. A new, patriotic conception of the political spectrum is then advanced, one based on how people should respond to conflict: those on the left would have us do so with conversation; those in the centre with negotiation; and (...) those on the right with force. -/- This is a new version of the paper originally published under the same name in Public Affairs Quarterly 15, no. 3 (July 2001): 193–217; as well as as chapter 1 of my Patriotic Elaborations: Essays in Practical Philosophy (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009). (shrink)

The paper is focused on ideological and political conflicts about popular music in Serbia, as a good example of wrong and confused searching for identity. Basic conflict that author is analyzing is about oriental elements and the question if they are legitimate parts of Serbian musical heritage or not. Author is making an analysis of three periods in twentieth century, in which absolutely the same arguments were used, and he's paying special attention to contemporary conflicts, trying to explain why all (...) of the theories are ideologically based. Author is insisting on role market played in development and modernization of popular music in Serbia. The article is ending with some recommendations for better understanding of cultural identity in Serbia, and for recognizing popular music as specific field of interest and research. Rad se bavi ideoloskim i politickim sukobima oko popularne muzike u Srbiji kao odlicnom primeru jednog konfuznog i lose postavljenog traganja za identitetom. Zapravo, sukob o kome je rec, sve vreme se vodi oko toga da li su takozvani orijentalni elementi legitiman deo srpske muzike ili ne. Autor se fokusira na tri perioda dvadesetog veka kada su se potezali potpuno isti argumenti, a narocitu paznju posvecuje aktuelnim sukobima i izlaze zasto su sve tri prisutne pozicije na sceni ideoloski zasnovane. Posebna paznja posvecena je uticaju trzista na razvoj i modernizaciju popularne muzike. Clanak se zavrsava preporukama za jedno bolje postavljeno razumevanje sopstvenog kulturnog identiteta. (shrink)

The Ideological Condition: Selected Essays on History, Race and Gender is a reader comprised of many of Himani Bannerji's English writings over a long period of teaching and research in Canada and India. Bannerji creates an interdisciplinary analytical method and extends the possibilities of historical materialism by predominantly drawing on Marx, Gramsci, and Dorothy Smith. Essays here instantiate Marx's general proposition that while all ideology is a form of consciousness, all forms of consciousness are not ideological. Applying this insight (...) to issues ranging from patriarchy through race, class, nationalism, liberalism and fascism, Bannerji breaks through East-West binaries, challenging the mystifying approaches to the constitution of the social, and shows that a sustained struggle against ideological thinking is at the heart of a fundamental socialist struggle. (shrink)

In his most recent books, Piketty offers a global history of inequality in its economic, social, political, and intellectual dimensions, arguing that history is moved by the struggle of ideologies. To take part in this battle of ideas, he conceives a new ideal model of society, ‘participative socialism’, as an egalitarian alternative to the dominant neoproprietarian ideology and to the dangerous resurgence of nationalism and populism. This paper provides a new interpretation of Piketty’s view of history and of his (...) participatory socialism in light of Paul Ricoeur’s study of the dialectics of ideology and utopia. First, I present Ricoeur’s singular analysis of ideology and utopia, which he sees as two inseparable facets of social imagination. Then I show how Ricoeur’s concepts can be fruitfully applied to Piketty’s conception of history and to his conception of a new form of socialism for the 21st century, drawing lessons from history and forming a ‘good’ or ‘realist’ utopia. Finally, I demonstrate that this interpretation of Piketty’s socialism can help to better understand some of the criticisms he has received. (shrink)

This paper presents a new perspective on British free traders’ economic thought in the first half of the twentieth century. Former studies have exclusively focused on the aspect of consumerism and idealistic internationalism as the characteristics of British free trade ideology. In so doing, they have overlooked another important aspect of British free traders’ thought. That is, especially within the tradition of left-leaning liberals or New Liberals, the discourse of producerism and a kind of economic nationalism emphasising the home (...) market rather than the external market paradoxically coexisted with fervent support for free trade. This paper elucidates that overlooked tradition of producerism and economic nationalism within liberal economic thought, mainly based on the analysis of the works of J. A. Hobson and J. M. Keynes. Both Hobson and Keynes are known to have frequently changed their opinions on external economic policy, and there has been controversy over how their changing economic thought should be interpreted. This article also suggests an original coherent interpretation regarding this matter by observing the contradictory coexistence of economic nationalism and free trade ideology within the liberal tradition and sheds new light on both Hobson’s and Keynes’s economic thought. (shrink)

This systems approach to the major schools of philosophy of education gives readers a cognitive map of the areas, as well as the ideology in relationship to educational theory. It carefully examines the major schools of philosophy of education; considers the relationship of education to major ideologies including Nationalism, Liberalism, Conservatism, and Marxism; and analyzes the impact of philosophy and ideology on educational theory and practice through the theories of Essentialism, Perennialism, Social Reconstruction, and Critical Theory. Previously published (...) as Philosophical and Ideological Perspectives on Education, and as New Perspectives on Philosophy and Education, this new version follows the content and organizational framework of these earlier editions. Each chapter includes: Definitions of terms; Historical contributors and antecedents; A general discussion of the particular philosophy, ideology, or theory; and Relationships and application to education, especially to schools, curriculum instruction, and to teachers and students. While retaining the helpful pedagogical aids that made the previous editions so popular-- Questions for Reflection and Discussion, Inquiry and Research Projects, Internet Resources, and Suggestions for Further Reading--this edition includes new marginal explanatory and cross reference notes and consistent updating throughout. Also from Gerald L. Gutek: 0205594336 - New Perspectives on Philosophy and Education, 1/e - ©2009 0205360181 - Philosophical and Ideological Voices in Education, 1/e - ©2004 0130122335 - Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Education: Selected Readings, 1/e - ©2001 020526106X - Philosophical and Ideological Perspectives on Education, 2/e - ©1997 0205132030 - Education and Schooling in America, 3/e - ©1997. (shrink)

Nationalism is a set of beliefs about the nation: its origins, nature, and value. For nationalists, we are particular social animals. On the one hand, our lives are structured by a profound sense of togetherness and similarity: We share languages and memories. On the other hand, our lives are characterized by deep divisions and differences: We draw borders and contest historical narratives. For nationalism, humanity is neither a single species-wide community nor an aggregation of individuals but divided into distinct and (...) unique nations. At the heart of nationalism are claims about our identity and needs as social animals that form the basis of a series of normative claims. To answer the question “what should I do” or “how should I live,” one must first answer the questions “who am I” and “where do I belong.” Nationalism says that our membership in a nation takes precedence and ultimately must guide our choices and actions. In terms of guiding choice and action, nationalist thought proposes a specific form of partiality. Rather than treat the interests or claims of persons and groups impartially, the nationalist demands that one favors one’s own, either as a group or as individual persons. While nationalism does not claim to be the only form of partiality, it does claim to outrank all others: Loyalty or obligations to other groups or identities are subordinated to national loyalty. Together, these claims function as a political ideology. Nationalism identifies the nation as the central form of community and elevates it to the object of supreme loyalty. This fundamental concern for the nation and its flourishing can be fragmented into narrower aims or objectives: national autonomy, national identity, and national unity. Debate on nationalism tends to divide into two clusters, one descriptive and one normative, that only make partial contact. For historians and sociologists, the questions are explanatory: What is nationalism, what is a nation, how are they related, and when and how did they emerge? Philosophers and political theorists focus on the justification of nationalism or nationalist claims: Is national loyalty defensible, what are the limits of this loyalty, how do we rank our loyalties, and does nationalism conflict with human rights? (shrink)

The present study represents a preliminary theoretical attempt to analyse the socio-political influence and impact of the Romanian Orthodoxy within the Romanian public life and political culture since 1990, both through the relation between the Orthodox Church and the state, and its impact on the wider society. An open-ended reflection on a constantly unfolding reality, the approach focuses on demonstrating the profound “modernity”—not backwardness—of Orthodoxy’s implicit political theology and derived ideologies and their “modern” destructiveness. The pivotal segment of the study (...) is the relation between modernity and a theory of exclusion derived from a rather unorthodox (brief) interpretation of its emergence from the main carriers of modernity, namely Enlightenment and humanism. Instead of conclusion, the final section compiles and comments a few reformist initiatives and some possible philosophical-theological ways out of the deadlock of ideological self-centrism that still dominates our Orthodoxy. (shrink)

This study presents the particular discursive strategies used by some Arabic newspapers to serve the Islamist fundamentalists’ goals and strengthen their hegemonic ideology in the Middle East. It also describes the move to create and sustain a new wave of Occidentalism, the doctrine of negatively representing the West, a counterpart to Edward Said’s Orientalism, the doctrine of negatively representing the East. Occidentalism is a retaliatory ideological strategy that rebuffs hegemonic Western ideas; it is used by some chauvinistic Arabs trying (...) to create a distorted image of the West in the minds of Middle Easterners. In this paper, I will investigate the negative side of the concept of Occidentalism, as exploited by today’s fanatics in their justification for attacking the West. Some Arabic newspapers contribute to fanaticism through antagonistic rhetoric that glorifies Pan-Arab brotherhood, chauvinistic Arab nationalism, and martyrdom. By glorifying these demagogic mottoes, such newspapers create an ideological polarisation against the West, in that they try to win their readers’ sympathy, control their emotions, and deepen their nostalgic feelings for the great Arab past. (shrink)

In the space of barely more than five years, with the publication of four pathbreaking books, Slavoj Žižek has earned the reputation of being one of the most arresting, insightful, and scandalous thinkers in recent memory. Perhaps more than any other single author, his writings have constituted the most compelling evidence available for recognizing Jacques Lacan as the preemient philosopher of our time. In _Tarrying with the Negative_, Žižek challenges the contemporary critique of ideology, and in doing so opens (...) the way for a new understanding of social conflict, particularly the recent outbursts of nationalism and ethnic struggle. Are we, Žižek asks, confined to a postmodern universe in which truth is reduced to the contingent effect of various discursive practices and where our subjectivity is dispersed through a multitude of ideological positions? _No_ is his answer, and the way out is a return to philosophy. This revisit to German Idealism allows Žižek to recast the critique of ideology as a tool for disclosing the dynamic of our society, a crucial aspect of which is the debate over nationalism, particularly as it has developed in the Balkans—Žižek's home. He brings the debate over nationalism into the sphere of contemporary cultural politics, breaking the impasse centered on nationalisms simultaneously fascistic and anticolonial aspirations. Provocatively, Žižek argues that what drives nationalistic and ethnic antagonism is a collectively driven refusal of our own enjoyment. Using examples from popular culture and high theory to illuminate each other—opera, film noir, capitalist universalism, religious and ethnic fundamentalism—this work testifies to the fact that, far more radically than the postmodern sophists, Kant and Hegel are our contemporaries. (shrink)

In 1962, after insisting upon the Vienna moment and comparing the points in the second Leopold Diploma, the author believed that the union was fulfilled in Vienna where the imperial authorities played an essential role. The Jesuits, who were considered the artisans of the union up to that moment, were reduced to the role of negotiators and forgers of the documents of 1697, 1698 and 1700. Because of the resentments against the “traitors” of the nation, S. Dragomir could not or (...) did not want to understand the great change brought about in the history of Transylvanian Romanians by the political programme initiated by Inochentie. When we take into account the fact that Dragomir was one of the nationalists at the beginning of the 20th century in Transylvania, it is hard to understand his refusal to identify the birth of nationalism in Transylvania with the political action caused by the Greek- Catholic bishop. His historical writings were also influenced by the new political realities in Romania after 1944. The author hesitated to establish the causes of the religious movements led by Visarion Sarai and Sofronie of Cioara because he was influenced by the Marxist philosophy. In his interwar studies he thought the movements led by Visarion Sarai and Sofronie of Cioara had religious determinations and aimed at reestablishing the Orthodox faith. After 1955 the historian changed his conclusions, considering them social and national movements against the Hapsburgs. (shrink)

Language and tradition have long been relegated to the sidelines as scholars have considered the role of politics, science, technology and economics in the making of the modern world. This reading of over two centuries of philosophy, political theory, anthropology, folklore and history argues that new ways of imagining language and representing supposedly premodern people - the poor, labourers, country folk, non-europeans and women - made political and scientific revolutions possible. The connections between language ideologies, privileged linguistic codes, and (...) political concepts and practices shape the diverse ways we perceive ourselves and others. This 2003 book demonstrates that contemporary efforts to make schemes of social inequality based on race, gender, class and nationality seem compelling and legitimate, rely on deeply-rooted ideas about language and tradition. Showing how critics of modernity unwittingly reproduce these foundational fictions, it suggests strategies for challenging the undemocratic influence of these voices of modernity. (shrink)

Starting from a recent ideological and political controversy regarding the devaluation of the concept of “nationalism” in relation to that of ‘patriotism”, the author – following his own years-long investigations on the subject – historically and philosophically reframes each of these concepts from the perspective of rhetoric and argumentation. It is shown, in this context, that the arguments in question are fallacious (and even, in some applications, clearly perverse) and a radical and provocative reformulation of the aforementioned concepts and the (...) controversy involved is proposed – a reformulation which, eventually and at best, may give rise to a new historiography on the subject. (shrink)

While nationalism as a mental model that can be represented in text and talk, it has not been sufficiently examined in discourse studies. This study examines the discourse of nationalism in spoken texts of an elite cohort of Chinese speakers at the World Economic Forum. Through methodological integration of nationalism with the socio-cognitive approach anchored in critical discourse analysis, this study examines the structures of ‘national-We’ and ‘foreign-Others’ pervading discourse and linguistic levels with reference to China-specific origins of nationalistic (...) class='Hi'>ideology. By scrutinising appraisals, referential nouns/pronouns and value-laden metaphors as linguistic realisations, this study reveals three nationalistic discourses: an economic-leadership discourse for Self, a deterrent/delegitimisation discourse regarding Others’ threatening actions/views, and a common-community Self discourse that aims to solidify more countries with China in a common community with shared interests and future. The study suggests there is value in integrating sociology-oriented conceptual/theoretical tools with the socio-cognitive approach in disclosing latent ideological configurations. (shrink)

This paper attempts to critique the Indian ideology, its reproduction of caste identities, using the works of Slavoj Žižek. While Žižek’s direct engagement with anti-caste thinkers is minimal, Žižek’s works offers new dimensions of looking at social and political realities in India. This paper seeks to bring Žižek into a dialogue with the iconic Dalit leader BR Ambedkar and Periyar EV Ramasamy, the key leader of the non-Brahmin movement in South India, both of whom were trenchant critics of Indian (...) nationalism. Reading Žižek along with Periyar and Ambedkar, this paper looks at the Indian ideology as a manifestation of Brahminism. Periyar and Ambedkar, like Žižek much later, argued that prior to the British intervention, the lower castes had no rights, only duties – a permanent state of servility to the upper castes. Both saw the arrival of European modernity as an equalizer, much to the consternation of the Indian nationalists, and sought to promote egalitarianism and rationalism. Through a comparative theoretical engagement, this paper seeks to arrive at an understanding of Brahminism as an ideology, the Indian ideology at its purest, which prevents the emergence of any genuinely universalist politics. Further, this paper also seeks to address gaps in Perry Anderson’s controversial recent book The Indian Ideology through an engagement with the above thinkers. Finally, this paper concludes with a critical consideration of the importance of Žižek’s political thought for understanding Brahminism and challenges the accusation placed by 'postcolonial' scholars against Žižek, that of his irrelevance to the so-called Third World. (shrink)

In our present early Twenty-First Century epoch, in bold contradistinction with the 1989-91 end of the Cold War and subsequent reassurances of the 90s, that ‘The End of History’ had arrived, the past decade has seen the rise of populism and authoritarian would-be leaders worldwide. Similarly, both nationalism and outright fascism have once again become credible threats, whilst ‘the left’ has largely failed to respond or offer feasible answers to multiplying social problems. This belated and misfiring reaction to capitalism in (...) crisis, simply the year: 2008 will give all that is needed to explain what is being referred to. What has occupied the energies of substantial sections of populations angry at elites seemingly operating as usual and the same limited and fatally flawed system continuing as before. Those individuals and institutions who helped it teeter on the brink of terminal failure, were able to profit from this whilst populations suffered as states socialized debt making society pay with austerity measures. This left a power vacuum to which any adequate response was noticeably lacking. From 2016, and the date bookends the year in which populism and authoritarian leaders ‘first appeared’, the wave of similar populist reaction has continued globally. Part of this has been the contention over what constitutes ‘the truth’ and facts themselves and misinformation, disinformation and ‘fake news’ continue to persist as serious problems. The bigger issue it might be argued is the implication that these methods can be used to attain power, either political or in any other sphere: a secondary and no less alarming problem also covered by this essay. Explicating a materialist analysis of what exactly the problem and threats populism and authoritarianism embody, and ‘where they came from’, the essay is most heavily influenced by the dissident and unorthodox Marxism of the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research). This paper takes as its subject the weapons of Marx and the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory to critically analyze the concept of Ideology Critique, and how Marx and Marxism remain the ‘bad conscience of philosophy’. It also applies takes as its subject the concept of ideology critique to the unnerving predominance of right-wing and authoritarian narratives, still very much vying for political power in 2024. (shrink)

Abstract The concept of culture was originally an expression of German nationalism, which reacted to the French Enlightenment by asserting the uniqueness and incomparability of all cultures as historical creations. This understanding of cultural diversity, which prevailed in American anthropology, is widely understood to imply the moral equality of all cultures. Yet its relativism originally applied to different individuals socialized in the values of their culture, rather than to different cultures. The debate over multiculturalism, which presupposes cultural relativism, ignores this (...) distinction. The vogue of multiculturalism reflects the decline of the Left, quests for community and identity, and an actual reduction in diversity more than a genuine appreciation of different cultures. (shrink)

This book discusses the justifications and limits of cultural nationalism from a liberal perspective. Chaim Gans presents a normative typology of nationalist ideologies, distinguishing between cultural liberal nationalism and statist liberal nationalism. Statist nationalisms argue that states have an interest in the cultural homogeneity of their citizenries. Cultural nationalisms argue that people have interests in adhering to their cultures and in sustaining these cultures for generations. Gans argues that freedom- and identity-based justifications for cultural nationalism common in literature can (...) only support the adherence thesis, while the historical thesis could only be justified by the interest people have in the long-term endurance of their personal and group endeavors. The Limits of Nationalism examines demands often made in the name of cultural nationalism, such as claims for national self-determination, historical rights claims to territories and demands entailed by cultural particularism as opposed to cultural cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

Deftly combining political science and philosophy, Graham systematically examines the central political ideologies of the Western world, including liberalism, socialism, democracy, nationalism, fascism, anarchy, and conservatism. He provides a clear account of the place of ideology in politics, touching on various sociological explanations as well as Marxist definitions. He explores the ideas of Mill, Marx, Locke, Luther, Fanon, Mussolini, and Burke as well as those of recent writers such as Robert Nozick, Roger Scruton, and Michael Oakeshott.