Cold War Discourse Research Articles

“A Russian Journal” by John Steinbeck and Robert Capa: “Us” and “Them” in Photographs

Introduction. The article is devoted to the analysis of the images of “us” and “them” in the photographs of Robert Capa on the pages of “A Russian Journal,” the text of which belongs to John Steinbeck. Containing both explicit and implicit markers of otherness, this text is an early example of nascent Cold War discourse. Methods and materials. Using methods of media and visual studies as well as photograph theory, the author of the article considers “A Russian Journal” as a single media text. Its specificity lies in the interaction of two media within it: visual (photo) and verbal (text). Analysis. The author of the article traces how the meaning of the images arises from their connection with text and how the presence of the images affects the whole narrative of “A Russian Journal.” The photographs here function on two levels. First, they certify the sincerity of the writer, as Capa is represented as an observer, and the very function of the photograph-document is informational. Second, the very presence of a camera is considered a threat and means power. The photographs construct the meaning of reality and implicitly become an instrument to reveal the differences between the two powers, the USSR and the USA. Results. The photographs, as a discursive element of “A Russian Journal,” mark an insurmountable barrier between the two countries. The specifics of photographic media and the discourse built around this media influence the creation of the image of the “other”, which turns out to be a potentially dangerous “alien”.

Beyond the Grey Zone: The Production of Space in Eastern European Neo-Avantgarde

The spatial metaphor that dominates the historical overviews dedicated to neo-avantgarde art of Eastern Europe from the last decades of state socialism is the “grey zone”—a metaphor deeply rooted in the dichotomies of Cold War discourses, which understood the “socialist space” as being roughly split between an “official” and an “unofficial”/underground/hidden space of dissent. However, the grey zone metaphor fails to account for the diverse, complex, and nuanced ways in which unconventional art practices from the region engaged with a wide range of spaces, from the institutional (and official) ones to spaces of everyday life, delocalized spaces of a likeminded artistic community, and to the space of the image understood outside of the confined territory of traditional practices. By engaging a theoretical perspective drawn from the so-called “spatial turn” in the post-colonial discourse, I will try to argue that the “species of spaces” (Kemp-Welch) defining the neo-avantgarde art practices in the region were not conquering but were producing cultural and socially relevant spaces while blurring/widening the conventional boundaries of art’s territory, and that this complexity cannot be understood by relying on the binary terminology of the geopolitical discourses of the Cold War.

Escape from the Cold War Mindset to Set Up a Post-Cold War History of Philosophy

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0in">In the pre-Independence era, our
 republic founders held the Cold War mindset strongly. Consequently, the
 Indonesian republic proclaimed in 1945 was based on a Cold War mindset; our
 state philosophy (<i>Pancasila</i>) and the Constitution (<i>UUD '45</i>) were
 understood and construed on the Cold War discourse basis; and binary
 oppositions of capitalism-socialism and liberalism-communism since then have
 been created. Up to the 2020s, the Cold War mindset has still been held by
 public intellectuals and the binary oppositions have still been rampant in
 intellectual discourses. If the mindset were still held for three decades to
 come, it would cause a setback to the development of Indonesian philosophy
 history. This article is a call to stop and an invitation to escape from the
 retrogressive mindset. As a call, the article exposes first the evil root of
 the Cold War mindset as well as the philosophical critique towards it. Then, as
 an invitation, it suggests three realistic alternative mindsets to replace the
 Cold War mindset, i.e. post-Cold War capitalistic mindset, deconstructive
 mindset, and utopian mindset, which are called herein as three growth
 scenarios. It is believed that, if the three generating scenarios are followed,
 they will move Indonesian philosophy history forward, and its ongoing development
 will not hinder or retard<span lang="IN">.</span><o:p></o:p></p>

ГОЛОСА ЯПОНСКИХ ДЕТЕЙ В СОВЕТСКОЙ ДЕТСКОЙ ПЕРИОДИЧЕСКОЙ ПЕЧАТИ

The article reviews the history of publications in the Soviet children’s periodicals (Pionerskaya Pravda (“Pioneer Truth”), Pioneer (“Pioneer”), Koster (“Bonfire”), etc.) of drawings, letters and artistic texts created by Japanese children. Mention is made of articles by Japanese specialists in children’s art education published in the journal Detskaya literatura (“Children’s Literature”). The main body of publications is identified; letters, stories and poems are cited, drawings and engravings are described. The materials are covered in chronological order and considered in the context of Soviet-Japanese relations. Their themes are compared with the image of Japan that was relevant in the USSR in the corresponding period. The material makes it possible to trace how the ideological factor influenced the formation of the image of Japan in Soviet periodicals for children. During Thaw, the letters contain elements of the image of Japan that are inherent in the official Soviet Cold War discourse: social problems after World War II, remilitarization, US military aggression, the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, anti-nuclear and anti-American struggle, Japanese national identity. Since the 1970s, these topics have disappeared from the letters of Japanese children, replaced by a benevolent interest in the USSR, almost devoid of an ideological component.

Escape from the Cold War Mindset to Set Up a Post-Cold War History of Philosophy

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0in">In the pre-Independence era, our
 republic founders held the Cold War mindset strongly. Consequently, the
 Indonesian republic proclaimed in 1945 was based on a Cold War mindset; our
 state philosophy (<i>Pancasila</i>) and the Constitution (<i>UUD '45</i>) were
 understood and construed on the Cold War discourse basis; and binary
 oppositions of capitalism-socialism and liberalism-communism since then have
 been created. Up to the 2020s, the Cold War mindset has still been held by
 public intellectuals and the binary oppositions have still been rampant in
 intellectual discourses. If the mindset were still held for three decades to
 come, it would cause a setback to the development of Indonesian philosophy
 history. This article is a call to stop and an invitation to escape from the
 retrogressive mindset. As a call, the article exposes first the evil root of
 the Cold War mindset as well as the philosophical critique towards it. Then, as
 an invitation, it suggests three realistic alternative mindsets to replace the
 Cold War mindset, i.e. post-Cold War capitalistic mindset, deconstructive
 mindset, and utopian mindset, which are called herein as three growth
 scenarios. It is believed that, if the three generating scenarios are followed,
 they will move Indonesian philosophy history forward, and its ongoing development
 will not hinder or retard<span lang="IN">.</span><o:p></o:p></p>

Mental Maps of Eastern Europe: States, Mentalities, Modernisation

AbstractEastern Europe has been the object of orientalising discourses portraying it as a region defined by problematic statehood, underdevelopment, and nationalist‐religious warmongering. These discourses have produced 19th‐century mental maps of Europe contrasting a perceived ‘core’ European area ending with the Frankish Empire's eastern border and coinciding with later Enlightenment influence and an indistinct ‘Orient’ or ‘East’, bypassed by “modernising” processes. This contribution focuses on (post‐)Cold War discourses in social science and shows how these discourses re‐produce 19th‐century layers of orientalising map‐making and keep East‐West differences alive by tracing deficient, fragile or repressive state institutions back to alleged Eastern European ‘mentalities’.

The making and screening of independent films in the absence of radical Revolution: An interview with Augustine Mok Chiu-yu on social movements, technology, and censorship

This is a wide-ranging interview with Augustine Mok Chiu-yu. It focuses on topics including film exhibition in Hong Kong of political films from across the globe and the making of independent and experimental cinema in Hong Kong. This contributes to an assessment of Hong Kong left-wing cinema in the 1970s that transcends and moves beyond the limiting boundaries of the US-Soviet Union Cold War discourse. Mok discusses his own role and history in producing and screening of progressive films in Hong Kong during this period. Augustine Mok Chiu-yu was a founding member of The 70’s Biweekly, an independent youth magazine first published on the first day of 1970. He was a social/political activist in The 70’s but he became more a cultural activist involved in writings and cultural work in subsequent years. He moved into theatre, performance art and community cultural development work and has performed in the US, UK, Poland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Kathmandu, Bangla Desh, Myanmar Republic, South Korea etc. He has organized many cross-cultural projects that toured in Asia and Europe. He won the first ever Award for Theatre of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council for the year 1998 and has been a great promoter in arts and disability, community arts and community cultural development in Hong Kong. He helped to found the Hong Kong International Deaf Film Festival and has been its hearing organizer for the 12 editions of the Festival. He was the producer of the 35 mm film entitled An Open Letter to Hong Kong’s Literary Youth and the documentary Black Bird - A Living Song. He has acted in Life and Times of Ng Chung Yin (Evans Chan), Ordinary Heroes (Ann Hui), Port Unknown (Mamunur Rashid), and N+N (Mo Lai).

Participation of USA in the War in Vietnam in Soviet Press in 1965: the Specifics of the Photo Image of the Enemy

The article is devoted to how the image of enemy is built and how it functions within the Cold War discourse. Ideas presented within the article are based on research of the photographs published in official Soviet press, namely in “Izvestia” and “Pravda” newspapers, illustrating the articles about War in Vietnam. The period under consideration is 1965, when USA increased its military presence in the region mentioned above. The aim of the article is to figure out and describe the key elements of the image of enemy in the context of mass media. The article also suggests a conceptual and methodological frame of how the photographs represented can be read and interpreted. Thus, Walter Benjamin’s conception of the emptiness and meaninglessness of a photograph without a caption allows to show that a photographic image does possess a great potential for inserting an additional sense. Also, Benjamin’s notions of aesthetization of politics and politization of aesthetics are taken into account when dealing with aesthetics of the photographs used in press. As to the contents of the images, one can highlight a number of topics repeated through the visual elements. We face numerous images of protests against the war all over the world; we see the terrors of war (children and women); we see the aggressor itself represented through military equipment and soldiers; finally, we meet brave Vietnamese people resisting the Americans. The detailed analysis of the images representing the aggressor (soldiers and war equipment) allows to reveal key strategies of how the image of enemy is built within the Cold War discourse. It is shown that the enemy is cruel but one does not need to be afraid of him: the enemy is defeated and will be defeated. The enemy’s strength is visible only in comparison with a weaker opponent. The enemy is deceitful and hypocritical, he cannot be trusted. At the same time, America has also another face – the face of people who are against the war and who also suffer from cruelty and injustice.

Translating Diplomacy: President Juan Bosch, Ambassador John Bartlow Martin, and “The Indelible Spot”

By the time the English translation of Juan Bosch’s story “The Indelible Spot” was published in the Saturday Evening Post on November 16, 1963, his eight-month presidency was over. Bosch’s brief tenure was punctuated by growing unrest among Dominicans on the Left and mounting suspicion from those on the Right. Central to this tension was the question of his loyalties to US-style democracy, Soviet communism, and/or Castro’s Cuba. Against this backdrop, the tale of how his short story came to be translated and published is emblematic of the complex, contradictory, and confusing cultural and political discourses surrounding the future of the Dominican Republic within the sphere of US Cold War policies. Central to this analysis is the unique affiliation between two authors: Juan Bosch and John Bartlow Martin, the first US ambassador to the Dominican Republic after Trujillo’s assassination. Ultimately, the communiques and notes about the translation and two distinct versions of the final published story found in Martin’s papers at the Library of Congress reveal the ideological impasse between Cold War and Caribbean discourses of culture and power.

비동맹운동 60주년에 돌아보는 냉전기 북한의 유고슬라비아에 대한 인식 변화

본 연구는 냉전기 북한판 평화공존 담론 및 실천에서 유고슬라비아의 위치에 초점을 맞춘다. 1950년대 후반 중소대립 이후 반제국주의, 반수정주의 투쟁 노선을 강화한 북한의 ‘제3세계’ 정책, 혹은 ‘비동맹운동’ 외교의 맥락에서 유고슬라비아의 평화공존 노선에 대한 담론은 ‘적’, 혹은 ‘동지’로 극명한 변화를 보이며, 북한의 평화공존론, 비동맹운동에 대한 입장을 가늠하는 데 중요한 참조점을 제공한다. 본 연구는 1961년 비동맹운동 1차 회의 개최국으로 비동맹운동 창설 멤버인 유고슬라비아에 대한 북한 담론이 변화한 궤적을 검토하면서, 전후 1970년대에 이르는 북한의 평화공존론, 비동맹운동에 대한 관점을 파악한다.

Post/socialist chemical research: a gendered politics of visual representation

ABSTRACT This article explores changes to the strongly gendered politics of representation in applied chemical research using visual material from company magazines of Czech-based chemical plants (1969–2000). This representation overlaps with identified developments in the gender order and how these relate to the disputed Cold War discourse. The focus on visual representations gives us a novel perspective on the intersection of technology, gender and geopolitics and what it can tell us about the ways in which competing versions of modernity have been shaped. We find that in the 1969-1989 period, applied chemical research is primarily portrayed as interaction between women and chemical equipment, making the face of applied chemical research distinctly feminine. This is in line with the definition of socialist modernity through a stress on women’s emancipation and equality as part of the liberation of society as such. However, a detailed visual discourse analysis reveals that this visual representation is less about applied chemical research and more about femininity defined around a singular understanding of motherhood. The gradual dehumanization of chemical research in the visual material resonates with the onset of political and economic change around 1989 marked by a radical change in the overall visual culture.

Cold War Discourse and Geopolitical Flashpoints in Post-Covid-19 Northeast Asia

ABSTRACT This paper examines the possible ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic as they relate to changing American strategic posture and geopolitical dynamics in Northeast Asia. Since the spread of the pandemic, the overall security situation in Northeast Asia appears to be worsening, contrary to public expectations. Disputes over the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic between Beijing and Washington have aggravated the Sino-American relationship, already shifting from the existing “cold peace” between the two into a Cold War. The authors explore the new and rapidly evolving Cold War discourse in the United States and traces its geopolitical implications across Northeast Asia. The first section examines emerging patterns of new Cold War discourse and practice in the United States. The second discusses four major geopolitical flashpoints in the region: the dynamics of military modernization and strategic arms races between China and the United States, Taiwan Strait relations, the South China Sea, and the Korean Peninsula. Finally, the paper makes suggestions to mitigate rising geopolitical tensions in Northeast Asia.

The Neutrality Pyramid: A policy framework to distribute power over the net

The internet used to be considered as a catalyst of positive social change. Yet such claims have become rare. Structured as a document for action in four steps, this report seeks to provide a rough compass for those trying to understand the underlying causes of much of what is problematic with the internet and the web today. I argue that paying attention to who shapes internet traffic (and how) is crucial. It will allow us to understand the connection between issues often considered unrelated (such as net neutrality and misinformation), as well as to anticipate challenges that are yet to emerge. Step 1: Understanding the context: How the internet came to be seated on the defendant’s bench. Here I describe how the inventors and developers of the internet and the web upheld the principle of decentralization to ensure the network was robust in the face of failure, and how this sparked hope for systematically excluded groups that had long been marginalized from public debate. I then describe four types of problems for which the web is often considered responsible, and explain the subset of these that I believe can be resolved through digital policies, narrowing the scope of this report to the issue of centralization. Step 2: Understanding the present and future risks triggered by a centralized information system. Here I describe how the internet and the web have been centralized. I explain how, given the characteristics of the process of centralization, the ongoing deployment of connected devices (also known as internet of things), as well as the growing developments in the fields of augmented reality and virtual reality are likely going to fuel the process of centralization further. Lastly, focusing on search and person-to-person communications, I explore the types of risks centralization poses to the present and future of our political system. Step 3: Deploying the Neutrality Pyramid framework in order to redistribute power. Here I present the Neutrality Pyramid, a framework around which we can rally to neutralize the process of centralization and reduce the scope of power of the incumbent gatekeepers. After explaining how and why the framework builds upon and extends the definition of net neutrality to other layers of the stack, I describe the technological, regulatory and activist actions taking place around the globe to forward and enforce the principles of net neutrality, device neutrality, platform neutrality and personal control over personal data. Step 4: Enabling robust public deliberation towards a positive agenda. I go beyond negative actions and explain how the Neutrality Pyramid can enable the development of a positive agenda. I explain that even though the neutrality principle presupposes a hands-off approach, it does include a set of exceptions enshrined by law. I argue that we should leverage the process of defining such exceptions as a means to ensure the institutions of democracy play a role in guiding the process of development of the internet, and I suggest some of the key questions public officials need to put forward. This section then discusses the development of public infrastructure and services as a way to bake democratic institutions into the growing digital sphere. In the Conclusion, I outline the backdrop of weakened governments and global institutions of governance in which the upcoming debates regarding digital policy will take place, and the challenges the cold war discourse, with its militaristic undertones, poses in this context.

Altered States: Psychedelic Experimental Cinema as Border Crossing in Bruce Conner’s LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS

ABSTRACT: This article offers a close examination of Bruce Conner’s LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS (1959–1967), which is considered an archetypal instance of experimental cinema’s engagement with psychedelic counterculture. By analyzing the film’s most prominent motifs—including ethnographic views of Mexican village life, hallucinogenic mushrooms, appearances from Timothy Leary, and multiple allusions, both symbolic and literal, to the atomic bomb—and contextualizing them within Cold War discourses of race and nationhood, it argues that the film’s engagement with psychedelia is shaped by a colonialist logic of “expansion” and (self-)discovery, in which primitivist projections of Indigeneity play a constitutive role.

‘Can You Imagine Such a Marshal?’: Hollywood Westerns and John F. Kennedy’s Cold War

Accepting the Democratic nomination for president in July 1960, John F. Kennedy exhorted his fellow Americans to join him in a mission of national sacrifice on the ‘New Frontier’. This article will explore the influence of frontier mythology on the foreign policy rhetoric of the Kennedy administration. It will show how the prevalence of the Western in U.S. popular culture led Kennedy and his advisers to carefully construct a meaningful Cold War discourse, one which attempted to situate the administration’s foreign policy within a heroic narrative of westward expansion. Yet this rhetorical strategy proved something of a double-edged sword; at key moments during his presidency, Kennedy found his ‘New Frontier’ rhetoric being turned against him by critics of his foreign policy. Led by Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, these opponents accused the president of deviating from the mythic narratives he appealed to in his speeches, charging that the ‘New Frontier’ was but a pale imitation of the old. By exploring this contest over frontier mythology and its interaction with U.S. foreign policy, this article seeks to add a new dimension to the recent ‘narrative turn’ in international history.

Marisol’s Antimonument: Masculinity, Pan-Americanism, and Other Imaginaries

Marisol’s assemblage The Generals (1961–62) assumes a guise of well-worn signifiers of midcentury US patriotic masculinity: equestrian statue, founding father, soldier, and cowboy. At the same time, this sculpture of George Washington and Simón Bolívar on a single horse invokes the very forces Cold Warriors vilified as un-American threats at home and abroad: homoeroticism and Latin American dissent. Marisol’s irreverent antimonument, which has garnered little analysis but performed a central role during her meteoric rise in the 1960s, tapped into Cold War discourses about sexual politics, freedom, national mythologies, and inter-American relations.

‘Ghastly marionettes’ and the political metaphysics of cognitive liberalism: Anti-behaviourism, language, and the origins of totalitarianism

While behaviourist psychology had proven its worth to the US military during the Second World War, the 1950s saw behaviourism increasingly associated with a Cold War discourse of ‘totalitarianism’. This article considers the argument made in Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism on totalitarianism as a form of behaviourist control. By connecting Arendt’s Cold War anti-behaviourism both to its discursive antecedents in a Progressive-era critique of industrial labour, and to contemporaneous attacks on behaviourism, this paper aims to answer two interlocking questions: Why was behaviourism overtaken by cognitivism as the dominant theoretical orientation of psychologists in the 1960s, and what role did the concept of language play in this shift?

From "Asia's East" to "East Asia": Aborted Decolonization of Taiwan in the Cold-War Discourse

From "Asia's East" to "East Asia": Aborted Decolonization of Taiwan in the Cold-War Discourse

Biblical Studies, COVID-19, and Our Response to Growing Inequality

Biblical Studies, COVID-19, and Our Response to Growing Inequality Roger S. Nam SBL promotes the academic study of biblical texts to foster the understanding of religion and to cultivate empathy in our diverse world. —Society of Biblical Literature1 Our interpretations of what it means “to cultivate empathy in our diverse world” have surely shifted since the beginnings of the present pandemic. This brief essay will explore the potential impact of COVID-19 on our guild, particularly as it relates to the growing inequality made stark in recent events. As a comparison, I will present a summative review of shifts in the field of economics in light of the 2008–2009 Great Recession and the 2020 pandemic. This review will propel a self-reflective question: How will the biblical studies scholarly communities respond to the experiences of COVID-19? As an academic society, we may choose to ignore the inequalities magnified by the pandemic and reify the existing norms of our field. Or perhaps these events can catalyze the beginnings of a transformation to more profound societal impact congruent with our official statement. I propose that the tragic pandemic and its racialized responses can compel biblical scholars to renew our commitments to mediate between texts and reading communities, particularly in the face of endemic patterns of inequality. By doing so, we may more effectively abide by our own stated mission to cultivate empathy. COVID-19 has negatively affected people across different economic classes, with the greatest devastation on underprivileged populations. The economic burden of COVID-19 falls more heavily on those with less access to resources, access that is both racialized and gendered. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) declares, “There is increasing evidence that some racial and ethnic [End Page 600] minority groups are disproportionately affected by COVID-19.”2 African Americans have much higher contraction rates and death rates of COVID-19.3 The impact is further seen in the outbreaks in incarcerated populations and the disparity of resources in education across underprivileged school districts under lock-down. In contrast to prior recessions, the social distancing shutdowns harm women employees more than men.4 With the closures of schools and concomitant disruption in household labor, such gender disparity will surely continue through the life of the pandemic. These disruptions have brought further precarity to the most vulnerable, who have limited options to shelter in place and face increased challenges with food insecurity. The economic repercussions of increased racialized violence stemming from COVID-19 are substantial though difficult to quantify. As COVID-19 has delivered an unprecedented shock to the global economies, it will surely generate major changes in the field of economics. As a biblical scholar interested in wider economic systems, I am observing the various reactions to this pandemic. When I majored in economics as an undergraduate in the 1990s, the field was still deep in the neoliberalism characterized by scholars such as Milton Friedman, who provided theoretical support for the laissez-faire policies of influential politicians like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Grossly oversimplified, this period advocated for fewer government controls and the promise of capitalism in generating broad societal wealth across all classes.5 This flourishing [End Page 601] of neoliberalism was tied to the Cold War discourses, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and broad disdain for government interventions. This neoliberal tendenz is reflected in the revisions of the standard textbook, Paul Samuelson’s Economics, which dominated introductory economics classes for five decades and is still one of the most successful textbooks of all time.6 The book was first published in 1948 and appropriately reflected Samuelson’s own advocacy for a Keynesian approach to interventions aimed at market failures.7 In later revisions, including the 13th edition (1989) assigned to me as an undergraduate, Samuelson and new coauthor William Nordhaus were distancing themselves from Keyesian interventions as a general norm.8 The Great Recession of 2008–2009 generated a different line of thought in regard to economic neoliberalism. Politicians targeted economists for their failure to predict this crisis. A group of economists began to question the merits of unregulated capitalism, using growing inequality as evidence. Advocates for intervention emerged, labeled...

Subaltern South Korea's Anti-Communist Asian Cooperation in the Mid-1950s

This article considers the 1950s postcolonial period in Korea after Japanese colonialism and the international context of the Cold War from the standpoint of the ROK and examines how the subaltern South Korean state (re)appropriated and (re)formulated the Cold War discourse of anti-communism in Asia. During that period, South Korea, along with other East Asian states, formed an international association called the Asian Peoples' Anti-Communist League (APACL). During the 1950s, the subaltern ROK thus joined a new, nuanced, Western-centric (if not colonial) structure—the Cold War—and proactively and strategically appropriated anti-communism to ensure its national survival. Carving out a place at the bottom of the Western-centric Cold War hierarchy became part of state building for non-Western South Korea. Moreover, the Cold War was a context in which ideology (anti-communism) mixed with blood (war and violence) on a daily basis. Subaltern South Korea was constitutive of the Cold War in Asia and beyond. Indeed, this article illustrates that the Cold War itself was a co-construction between the hegemonic powers and subalterns.