Cultural Debates Research Articles

Revisiting Edward Said: Culture vs Materiality (A study of his positionality Conflicts in Al-Ahram's articles)

Keeping in view the distinct status of Edward Said in postcolonial discourse, the contexts of his intellectual endeavors reflect an unconscious or innocent indifference to material issues the post-colonial societies were immediately facing after the end of formal colonization. This research article seeks to understand the politics of discourse that Edward Said’s formative works and his Al-Ahram articles exhibit by deconstructing the texts to revisit his celebrated intellectual cum political status among the postcolonial cultural and academic intelligentsia during the previous century. Edward Said seems a significant cultural force behind the curtain who helped the socio-cultural identities of marginalized communities to attain their socio-political exterior in a discourse that was essentially a sovereign attempt to voice the marginalized people enjoying the territorial place only. He substantiated his intellectual position in Culture and Imperialism (1993) and cemented it with historiographic evidence from the text and tradition that constructed the cultural space only, for that matter; but when he started authoring articles for Al-Ahram (An Egyptian Newspaper), he foregrounded his positional interior that was conflicting with his own previously established positions. He shifted the material debate to cultural lifeways, societal experiences, and nativity, and in doing so he innocently facilitated capitalism in establishing the fruitless discourse of cultural politics. but when Edward Said started writing for Al-Ahram, he concentrated more on material issues than cultural debate, especially when he started emphasizing his concerns regarding the Palestine issue. This is what I understand as positionality conflicts. This article attempts to investigate Edward Said’s articles to unearth his determined ideological/political narratives constructing cultural discourse and later confrontation with space, place, culture, and identity, which turned out to be more material than mere ideological. In a way, Edward Said realized over time that his earlier works were not grounded which signified the cultural exterior only.

Who controls ‘the narrative’? journalistic emplotment and political discourse in the networked public sphere

Over the last decade there has been a massive spike in use of the word ‘narrative’ in both media reportage and political discourse. This essay interrogates the rhetorical function and theoretical assumptions of this widespread usage, arguing that narrative rhetoric operates as a form of metajournalistic discourse shaping coverage of domestic politics and international relations while revealing an anxiety about the authority of contemporary news media. The prominence and semantic variability of the word narrative in public discourse is both a symptom of and a response to an epistemological crisis wrought by information overload and a fragmented public sphere in the digital age. The essay examines usage of the familiar phrase ‘control the narrative’ to reveal how journalistic discourse self-reflexively frames the dynamics of cultural debate. In this formulation, ‘the narrative’ operates as a synonym for what Chadwick (2017) calls the ‘political information cycle' in a hybrid news system, signifying an ongoing discursive struggle in which news media construct their moral and epistemological Others in a global communications network: social media, foreign state-run media, and competing news media. By tracking the phrase in coverage of the global COVID-19 outbreak and the notorious Steele Dossier in five major US dailies throughout 2020, this article demonstrates how the metajournalistic quality of narrative rhetoric facilitates an intramedia struggle for moral and referential authority in the networked public sphere.

A Standing Invitation to the Gods: Philosophy of Religion and the Phenomenology of the Sacred

Does philosophy of religion, specifically, have anything to contribute to the cultural debate about the modern crisis of meaning, and particularly to attempts at retrieving a sense of enchantment beyond human construction? Suggesting a methodological rapprochement between philosophy of religion and phenomenology, I explore a recent popular attempt to reenchant the world through a retrieval of the sacred: All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age (2011) by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly. Using their work as a foil, I discuss the relation between phenomenology and metaphysics in the experience of the sacred, specifically the possibility of a pluralism that is nonetheless realist; the necessity of social embeddedness and pedagogy in the constitution of sacred meaning; and finally, the problem of moral discrimination within this sphere. Through this critical discussion a constructive argument emerges: philosophy of religion done in a phenomenological mode has resources to address these difficult issues, and thus to explore experiences of the sacred in ways that are metaphysically sophisticated, attentive to historical tradition and pedagogy in the constitution of meaning, as well as to the need of communal moral deliberation in the sphere of the sacred.

A qualitative exploration of young female Muslims’ perspectives of abortion and belonging following the 2018 Irish Abortion Referendum

Abstract Introduction In 2018, Ireland conducted a referendum, ultimately supporting the legalisation of abortion. The views of religious minority groups can go unheard ‘by an insensitive majority’ in national cultural debates. This study explores female Muslim Irish university students’ perspectives on abortion and the impact of the 2018 Irish abortion debate on their sense of belonging within Ireland. Methods Ten female Muslim university students completed semi-structured interviews. The interview comprised seven open-ended questions examining perspectives on abortion and a sense of national belonging. A thematic analysis was carried out on the data. Results Six major themes emerged: (1) specific circumstances, (2) Islam, (3) family, (4) misuse of new laws, (5) stable sense of national belonging, (6) consequences of historical abortion legislation. Participants were largely supportive of the legal changes. Participants indicated that their sense of national belonging might have been affected if their religious beliefs had conflicted with the referendum outcome. Conclusions Participants largely supported the legalisation of abortion in Ireland, provided that the new laws aligned with their Islamic beliefs. The research indicated the referendum did not affect young Muslim women’s sense of belonging in Ireland. Policy Implications Many national debates on social issues focus on winning majority support. This research highlighted the importance of canvasing and reflecting on the perspectives of people from minorities in order to reinforce a sense of larger political belonging.

The Dissident Power of Queer Art and Curating in Central Eastern Europe

The text aims to explore the political, cultural and artistic implications of LGBTQ+ art and curatorial practices in Central Eastern Europe in the 21st century. Currently, queer exhibitions, are on the rise in post-communist Europe, especially those held in contemporary art centres and museums. They cast light on new queer art and activism and the volatile sexual politics in the region because of the significant increase in the number of artists working with LGBTQ themes and the topical political background of this movement and its impact on cultural debates. Curators are developing innovative perspectives on sexual, social and artistic dimensions of queer exhibitions in this geographic context still seriously affected by homophobic state policy. The objective is to feature three art shows of major queer artists which have been organised in Hungary, Poland and Estonia in the last decade. The exhibitions are: The Survivor’s Shade: The Life and Work of El Kazovsky at the Museum of Fine Art- Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest in 2015/16; Daniel Rycharski: Fears at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw in 2019 and Jaanus Samma. Not Suitable for Work. A Chairman’s Tale, Museum of Occupations and Freedom, Tallinn in 2016. The three artists and their exhibitions have been selected because they were organised by major cultural institutions in the capitals, they have achieved a significant social impact and huge audience and the artists have played an important role in the contemporary art scene in each country. Their work is a current manifestation of the queer artistic and intellectual culture that has been developing slowly in the region since the 1980s and has come to play an increasingly important role in recent years. The exhibitions and art of the three artists are a starting point for a broader outline of the themes and important figures in recent queer art in Central Eastern Europe (CEE). Moreover, in each case, they appear in a complex and difficult political context related to the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights. Hence, I would like to propose a thesis about the dissident power and status of queer art and curating in CEE.

When decorations have a function. Technology and aesthetics in contemporary facades

This paper, starting from a reflection on the role of decoration and ornament in history, their evolution in the cultural debate, and some significant case studies, discusses the relation between function and decoration in the artistic and architectural discussion from the 20th century until nowadays. The representational function of architecture has always been based on the ornamental and decorative elements, which allow the readability of the building and the transmission of meanings and information. This function is even paradoxically performed in works conceived as manifestos of anti-decorativism. In light of the most recent trends, architecture reclaims this communicative function, manifesting the tendency to be an image, primarily through the design of the external surfaces and envelopes on which the semantics and iconicity of the new languages of contemporary architecture are based. The architectural object becomes an image – an image of itself, its designer, the context and the culture that generated it – precisely thanks to its ornamental and decorative dimension, which is discussed and analysed in this article.

Exode des cerveaux et traumas culturels dans Avalon : Les secrets des émigrants heureux par Bogdan Suceavă (I)

Despite its impact on the education, research and health system, Romanian brain drain is still neglected in both the political agendas and cultural debates. Furthermore, the theme is almost absent within contemporary literature starting with the writings anchored in the transition period, which is precisely that of the first significant waves of labor and high-skilled emigration, but also that of some major social and cultural traumas. In this context, Avalon: The Secrets of the Happy Émigrés (2018) by Bogdan Suceavă fill up a main cultural gap as far as it individualize the social-historical traumatic experience of brain exodus by means of an autobiographical narrative which offers at the same time a realistic image of the so called “happiness” of émigré scholars, comprising their big efforts for achieving the highest performances in their field of research. Revealing the differences between the American and Romanian academic systems, which are condensed in the illustrative story of the hero-narrator, Avalon… incorporates, as Bildungsroman, a “cultural pedagogy” shaped especially under the guiding of one of the leading mathematicians on the world, Professor Bang Yen-Chen, but which is also grounded into the significant previous formative experience. In the same time, Avalon… offers a lesson of cosmopolitanism, which integrates, by means of literary memory, the cultural values of the post-communist East, especially those of Romanian recent pasts. Our analysis of the novel is focused on the “cultural-pedagogical” dimension of its multilayered architecture, in which the intertwined autobiographical, historical, and sociological levels are mobilized for converting the personal and collective traumas in a project of identity revision and rebuilding.

‘Pour constituer une “Bibliothèque de Littérature Nègre”’

Arthur Barnett Spingarn (1878–1971) was a Jewish American lawyer who during the early twentieth century built an extensive personal library of books by authors of African descent. In 1937, Spingarn delivered a speech in Washington, DC entitled ‘Collecting a Library of Negro Literature’, which sought to expand his audience’s understanding of black literature beyond the United States. The following year, Spingarn’s address was published in anonymous French translation by the Haitian literary and political journal La Relève (1932–1939). This article is an enquiry into how this translation, entitled ‘Pour constituer une “Bibliothèque de Littérature Nègre”’, was used by editors Jacques Carméleau Antoine, Jean Fouchard, and Jules Blanchet to feed into the cultural debates taking place in Haiti during the 1930s. I focus on two key aspects of Spingarn’s text: firstly, his vision for a transnational and transhistorical ‘bibliothèque de littérature nègre’, the broad scope of which corresponded to two related, yet ultimately divergent, cultural ideologies prevalent in post-occupation Haiti, namely, the cultural syncretism of the Indigenists and the ethno-nationalism of the Noirists. Secondly, I assess Spingarn’s schema for the individuals involved in building an archive of black literature, revealing parallel ‘bourgeois public literary spheres’ (Stieber, 2020, p. 13) in Haiti and the United States. The inter-American trajectory of Spingarn’s address reveals a transatlantic interest in collecting practices associated with black literature. A close reading of its republication in La Rèleve offers new directions for French postcolonial studies by demonstrating the value of periodicals as literary sites which juxtapose competing cultural visions and raise important questions regarding the collection and commodification of Africana.

"Il monocolore non esiste": Postcolonial ekphrasis in Igiaba Scego's novel La linea del colore. Il grand tour di Lafanu Brown

Igiaba Scego’s novel La linea del colore. Il grand tour di Lafanu Brown (2020) is a historical novel, a feminist Bildungsroman, a contemporary migration novel and a global, political novel. It is also a novel of colours and images. The aim of this analysis is to investigate the function of ekphrasis – defined as verbal descriptions of visual representations – in La linea del colore. The question is how this literary device contributes to Scego’s pedagogical and political project of rewriting national history from the point of view of the subaltern, black Italians. Like in her other novels, Scego uses the past to illuminate the present. She relocates colonial memory at the centre of cultural debates in today’s Italy, deconstructing official colonial history. By analysing a small sample of ekphrases, regarding both real and imaginary statues and paintings in the novel, I would like to demonstrate that Scego adds new postcolonial interpretations to the described images. By doing so, she expresses ethical, ideological and poetological contents, aiming to convince her readers that the colour line between black and white people has to be overcome. Scego uses a classical literary device, the ekphrasis, to demonstrate that the line of colour is not only present today but also in Italian Renaissance and Baroque culture.

The Dynamics of ‘The British Identity’ as a Concept in Contemporary British Mass Media: A Discursive Analysis

This article explores the multifaceted nature of “The British Identity” within the context of political discourse, focusing on its representation in The Guardian newspaper. The aim of this study is to investigate the content specificity of the concept and its transformation under the influence of socio-cultural and extralinguistic factors. Through a qualitative analysis of selected articles from The Guardian, the paper examines the linguistic units used to represent the British identity and the evaluative nature of their expression. The study adopts a conceptual framework that considers the British identity as a political and cultural concept, susceptible to diverse interpretations and judgments within the ideological context. By employing a content analysis approach, the research reveals the tensions arising from the attempt to cater to both conservative and progressive factions of the UK society. The findings indicate that the representation of the British identity in The Guardian is influenced by socio-cultural factors, reflecting the evolving dynamics of British society. The analysis highlights the presence of evaluative expressions, reflecting the conceptual domain’s evaluative nature and its connection to political and cultural debates, particularly those concerning multiculturalism. While the study predominantly relies on articles from The Guardian, it acknowledges the need for broader source diversity to capture a more comprehensive understanding of the British identity. Moreover, the paper suggests that further research in this field holds promise for exploring the evolution and adaptation of conceptual domains in an ever-changing world. This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by shedding light on the complex and evolving nature of the British identity within political discourse. The research serves as a foundation for future investigations into the concept of identity and its representation in professional media outlets, and its implications for social cohesion in diverse societies.

Widerständige Sprachpraxis und literarische Selbstermächtigung: Postmigrantische Perspektiven auf Ein- und Mehrsprachigkeit in Lena Goreliks Roman Wer wir sind (2021)

ABSTRACT This article analyses Lena Gorelik’s latest novel Wer wir sind (2021) in terms of cultural debates on postmigration diversity and multilin-gualism in modern Germany in recent years. The novel Wer wir sind can be read as a process of dealing with the family experience of migration, shown across generations, as well as the difficult process of learning German and settling into a culturally different context. The analysis of the novel focuses on linguistic and narratological means through which the opposition to the national concepts of monolingualism and the identity of migrants as ‘others’ is expressed. The process of learning German, the role of the German-speaking writer and multilingual identity are presented in the novel as strategies of opposition to the hegemonic national discourse. On the one hand, learning German and writing literary works in this language appear to be subversive activities in relation to oppressive cultural and social norms and acts of self-empowerment. On the other hand, literary images of linguis-tic resistance and self-determination are marked by an awareness of linguistic unattainability and uncertainty. ‘Mastering’ a language, as well as writing literature, is an ambivalent process and work in progress.

Feeling connected to nature: validation of the connectedness to nature scale in the Italian context.

Environmental issues are at the center of the political and cultural debate, representing one of the greatest challenges of our century. Sustainability and pro-environmental conducts are recognized as increasingly urgent to address the decay of ecosystems. To support the acquisition of attitudes that give greater consideration to environmental issues, experiencing a sense of connection with nature has been acknowledged in psychology as a particularly relevant individual component. Among the most commonly used scales in Anglo-Saxon context to analyses this feeling is the Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS) assessing the emotional and experiential bond between humans and nature. To examine the reliability and validity of this scale in the Italian context, a study including 271 Italian adults (44,3% female; 55% males; Mean age = 34.70; SD = 13.584; age-range = 18-65 years) was conducted to establish evidence supporting the internal consistency of the CNS, as well as its ability to measure convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity. A Confirmatory Factor Analysis showed that CNS in Italian has a single-factor structure as reported in the original version by Mayer and Frantz. Furthermore, as expected, positive correlations were observed between the CNS and pro-environmental attitudes and negative correlations with civic moral disengagement. Finally, as assumed, the CNS positively correlated with mental well-being. A broad vision of this study concerns the idea that individuals who have a stronger connection with nature are likely to exhibit reduced tendencies to cause harm to it.

The Decline of the Self: Est and the Critique of Therapeutic Culture

ABSTRACT Building on Fisher’s 2020 publication “Tearing Down the Self, or Transforming It? Est as Uncertain Gestalt,” this article tracks the emergence of a full-fledged critique of therapeutic culture, emanating from both American journalists and academic social critics in the mid-1970s. Since Erhard Seminars Training (est) and its founder, Werner Erhard, continued to attract media attention, it was often a focal point in this critique. While it drew on earlier criticisms of the human potential movement (HPM) that had centered on Frederick (Fritz) Perls, Esalen, and Gestalt therapy during the 1960s (detailed in Fisher’s 2017 “Gestalt Pathways of Dissemination, Part III: The Media Firestorm”), the 1970s critique of therapeutic culture branched into a wider mode of attack against both the founders and their legacies. Central to this critique was the concept of narcissism, which wedged itself in the pages of popular magazines and highbrow academic journals alike by 1976. In tracing this history, we see the roots of an ongoing cultural debate about the meaning and value of therapy, as well as the connections between individual pursuits of growth and the social conditions that frame them.

Det andliga nutidsläget och kyrkan

In April 1919, the publication of the first part of the edited collection Det andliga nutidsläget och kyrkan ("The Contemporary Spiritual Condition and the Church") caused an intense debate within the Church of Sweden and in the daily press. The editors of the book were driven by ideals of open and honest dialogue about religious and ethical reformation in a time of deep spiritual distress and invited contributions from academia and lay people as well as clergy. Some of the contributions have been analyzed in previous research, as examples of contemporary theological debates. This article presents an analysis of the contributions of the books and of the most salient themes in the debate, covering 192 newspaper articles between April 1919 and May 1920. The analysis contributes to previous research by the additional new material concerning how theological issues were connected to contemporary political and cultural debate. This concerns the implications of modernization in contemporary Sweden, such as individualization, social justice, and secularization. Furthermore, the debate in the newspapers, previously not thoroughly researched, highlights how the book became a locus for issues such as participation of the laity in theological debate, and the role of the Church as a public authority in a secular, modernized society. These themes present fruitful openings for further research on the role of Christian actors in new forms of public debate shaping modernity in Sweden.

Gaetano Salvemini and foreign policy during the First World War: the collaboration with The New Europe

AbstractIn 1958, A.J.P. Taylor's essay The Troublemakers explored the tradition of dissent against power politics in the United Kingdom. Gaetano Salvemini, who had always shown a consistent interest in British political and cultural debates, shared many of the positions put forward by these ‘troublemakers’, such as free trade, the fight against military expenditure, and suspicions regarding standing armies. At the outbreak of the First World War, Salvemini used these arguments to support Italy's involvement in the war against autocratic and militarist central powers. Salvemini's journal L'Unità reported the stances expressed by a ‘troublemaker network’ called the Union of Democratic Control, despite their criticism of the United Kingdom's line of action during the war. In the course of the conflict, Salvemini kept in close contact with a specific group of ‘troublemakers’ around Robert Seton-Watson's journal The New Europe. Salvemini championed The New Europe's fight for subject nationalities in the Habsburg Empire, though he criticised their support of Yugoslavian claims to Istria, Trieste and Venezia Giulia. This essay will focus on the complex relationship between Salvemini and these British ‘troublemakers’ through the former's writings and correspondence.

Sad Puppies and SJWs: Symbolic Revolution and Challenges to Field Orthodoxy in the Struggle for Control of Science Fiction’s Hugo Awards

ABSTRACT In 2013 a group of science fiction authors launched a campaign to reform the Hugos, one of science fiction’s most prestigious awards. Dubbing themselves “Sad Puppies,” these activists sought to correct what they viewed as a political imbalance. Science fiction, they argued, had moved away from entertaining story telling in favor of heavy-handed message fiction meant to spread pernicious liberal values. This article draws on an analysis of internet posts by actors involved in the movement to examine the Puppies’ efforts to reform the science fiction field, reclaiming it as a space for conservative authors and fans. I argue that the leaders of the movement were able to build small fan communities into a larger social movement by framing the movement in such a way as to link their efforts to exogenous political and cultural debates occurring in proximate social fields. This analysis demonstrates the processes by which tournament rituals in popular culture can come to serve as contests of values, arenas within which larger political and cultural conflicts are waged.

Trans (legal) parenthood and the gender of legal parenthood

AbstractTrans identities are increasingly subjected to contentious public and political debate in the UK, and this has resulted in resource to the law across various contexts. Against that background, this paper considers trans legal parenthood after the decision in R (McConnell and YY) v Registrar General for England and Wales. This judgment held that a trans man who gave birth was the legal ‘mother’ of his child. The wider consequence is that trans legal parenthood will not reflect trans identities, but birth-assigned sex/gender, regardless of whether the parent holds a gender recognition certificate. Separate from this underlying social and political context concerning trans identities, the paper argues that legal parenthood is a flexible and pragmatic concept, which lacks inherent normative content, and which has previously proved capable of accommodating a variety of different familial and reproductive circumstances. The paper argues that the gendered descriptors of ‘mother’ and ‘father’, while remaining the law's default, are not inherent to legal parenthood. Thus, the paper concludes that, despite the ongoing political and cultural debates concerning trans identities, the existing concept of legal parenthood is capable of properly recognising trans parenthood, without requiring any fundamental changes to the concept itself.

Treatment of Cultural Services in Central American Countries’ Preferential Trade Agreements

Cultural products (including goods and services) encompass visual, performing and literary arts, as well as newspapers, magazines, books, films, video and music recordings, radio and television, either in traditional or digital format. To the extent that they reflect the cultural identities of states, their treatment in international trade has been debated as to whether, or the extent to which, they should be exempted from trade obligations. The proliferation of preferential trade agreements and of digital platforms has rendered the debate ever more salient. The article summarizes the provisions on cultural services in Central American countries’ preferential trade agreements and discusses the scope of these provisions, in light of the cultural policy measures involved and states’ ability to pursue cultural policies. The countries considered are those belonging to the Central American Common Market, namely Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. These countries share some characteristics which make them worth considering in regard to the trade and culture debate. They also vary widely with respect to the number and scope of their commitments and/or exceptions relating to culture within the preferential trade agreements to which they are parties. In turn, such significant variations are primarily attributable to the importance each Central American country attaches to the protection of its cultural sector.

Bawds, Midwifery, and the Evil Eye in Golden Age Spanish Literature and Medicine

This article explores the relationship between the alcahueta or bawd, the evil eye, and midwifery in the early modern Spanish cultural imaginary. The evil eye, though an ancient belief, received renewed attention in theological and medical texts, including midwifery manuals, from the late fifteenth until the mid-sixteenth century, coinciding with the popularity of texts such as La Celestina featuring bawds. This article explores cultural debates regarding whether the evil eye was a natural phenomenon caused by corrupted bodily fluids emanating from post-menopausal women, or a result of witchcraft. Midwifery manuals list the evil eye as one of the principal dangers to newborns and give advice regarding how to prevent it, perhaps implicitly providing another justification for women’s gradual exclusion from midwifery in the early modern period. Fictional texts portray the bawd as engaging in women’s healing practices such as midwifery and newborn care, and as casting and curing the evil eye. I argue that the literary archetype of the bawd-midwife reflects academic disagreements that alternatively portray the evil eye as a physical illness, superstitious nonsense, or the result of witchcraft. As such, the bawd becomes a focal point for expressing anxiety over perceived decadence and decline, often tied to witchcraft. By tracing the evil eye through the characterization of bawds, we can perceive subtle indications of ambiguity regarding women’s magical and medical practices that question whether their influence comes from the devil or from women’s inherently malevolent nature.

Trusting Truss: Conservative MPs’ Voting Preferences in the (First) British Conservative Party Leadership Election of 2022

ABSTRACT This paper identifies the candidate preferences of Conservative parliamentarians in the final parliamentary ballot and the membership ballot of the Conservative Party leadership election of 2022. We code each parliamentarians’ candidate preference within a wider dataset on the parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP) and test a range of hypotheses covering the following: a). personal factors relating to gender, sexuality, ethnicity and education b). political factors, relating to constituency marginality and type, as well as prior support for Johnson, and c). ideological factors, covering for example, attitudes towards Brexit, cultural debates, levelling up, economic liberalism, net zero and Covid restrictions. Our research findings demonstrate that despite common media narratives at the time of the party leadership election, variables capturing loyalty or opposition to Johnson did not structure patterns of support for candidates in either round. A parliamentarian's position on levelling up, as well as the UK's membership of, and relationship with, the European Union (based on whether they were remainers, leavers, or a member of the European Research Group) were more important in structuring support. However broader measures of ideology, as evidenced through the membership of extra-parliamentary groups, was found not to be important.