Narrative Of Emancipation Research Articles

On the Borders of European Pluriversalism. Thinking Europe With/Beyond the Limits of Balibar

ABSTRACT The article aims to initiate a dialogue with Étienne Balibar’s writings on borders, Europe, and universalism, in the context of the contemporary transformations of the borders of Europe and the current crisis of universalist politics. Its first motivation is to demonstrate how Balibar’s work could serve as a theoretical framework for border studies to understand the link between the vacillation of borders and the crisis of European universalism. The figure of boundary, limit, or horizon played a key role in the emancipatory narratives on the idea of Europe. Balibar recognized how the metamorphoses of borders revealed the fundamental aporia of European universalism of any kind: each universalism, no matter how inclusive and radical, has to adopt the particular carrier and designate its limits. Hence the politics of universality tends to be border politics: it rests on constant and infinite transgression of the limits to universalism, without the prospect of overcoming the aporia. The second motivation is to revisit Balibar’s philosophy of borders of Europe by drawing out lessons from contemporary research on border transformations. Answering Balibar’s call to the need to theorize pluriversalism, the article shows how European borders became recently the new sites of pluriversal politics.

After Hegel: A postmodern genealogy of historical fiction

In this article, we analyze a possible form of the relationship between modernity and postmodernity by examining the transformation of the place of enunciation of criticism as a philosophical narrative and using it as a historical and philosophical criterion. To achieve this, we first focus on key moments in the critical discourse of modernity, and then analyze the role of Kantian criticism in the formation of a postmodern imaginary associated with the notions of useful fiction and linguistification. Finally, from a Hegelian perspective, we consider the validity of the idea of universal history and its connections to emancipatory narratives.

“Don’t Dig in the Graveyard”

Abstract This article fills the gap on the research of memory of the Croatian War of Independence (1991–1995) in film and theatre and demonstrates that so far the arts have been the main channel of the emancipatory narrative, challenging the mainstream collective memory of a victim and victorious nation and serving as a space of fostering debate on the country’s recent past. The article focuses on the cultural representation of the war in Croatia in the last decade, since Croatian accession to the EU, while paying special attention to the reactions of the wider audience to such works, especially the key mnemonic actors, such as the war veterans and the nationalist politicians. The results show that even though theatre and film offer counter-narratives on the Homeland War and spur and spark the debate, it is yet to be seen if they can lead to a wider discussion in the society.

In different states of indifference: movement, friction, and resistance

In different states of indifference: movement, friction, and resistance

Women's participation and social demands in the Italian 1960s: the case study of the National Council of Italian Women

ABSTRACT The National Council of Italian Women (CNDI) was an internationally-oriented confederation of women's associations founded in Rome in 1903, which was affiliated with the International Council of Women (ICW). Previous studies on the Italian Council have considered its origins and the biographical aspects of its members in the first half of twentieth-century Italy, while the Council developments and action during the democratic regime of the second half of the twentieth century have been less studied. First, this article aims to understand the impact of female associations on Italian social policy developments by examining the CNDI between 1958 and 1963. The study makes a historical reassessment of an emancipatory narrative, addressing the participation and social demands of Italian women in the context of the ‘economic miracle’. Second, this article reflects on the role of NGOs and voluntary activism in shaping welfare state developments in the post-war period. The analysis will use primary and edited sources from the CNDI and the Ministry of Labour held at the Central Archive of the State in Rome. The CNDI represents a significant case study that aids in our understanding women's social demands from below.

The Degeneration of Grand Narratives into Local Narratives: A Postmodern Analysis of the Shazaf Fatima Haider’s Novel “How It Happened”

The present study is a postmodern analysis of the Pakistani author Shazaf Fatima Haider’s novel “How It Happened” which is built on meta-narratives about marriages, religion, sects and gender in local culture. Metanarratives can be defined as interpretive frameworks or ways of understanding the world and are considered valid and true regardless of the spatial and temporal boundaries. The study explores the sociocultural metanarratives and the process of their replacement by local narratives’ by applying Jean Francis Lyotard (1979)’s theoretical framework of postmodernism. Lyotard believes that micro-narratives provide a more detailed picture of the fragmented society and comparatively grand narratives hold very little credibility regardless of what mode of unification it uses, i.e. speculative narrative or a narrative of emancipation. The study answers how the novel challenges long-existing sociocultural metanarratives and which local narratives have replaced them in Pakistani society. The study concludes that Shazaf Fatima Haider, through her postmodern characters, challenges the long-standing metanarratives of Pakistani culture and replaces them with local narratives.

Family members' experiences of seeking help for a young person with symptoms associated with the psychosis spectrum: A narrative review and synthesis.

Young people often rely on family carers to access support for their mental health. However, stigma can be a barrier to help seeking for young people and families. Little research has been undertaken with young people who experience highly stigmatised symptoms, such as psychosis spectrum symptoms, and even less research has been conducted with parents and carers, meaning barriers to help go unchallenged. Therefore, this narrative review aimed to explore stories of family experiences of seeking help for young people with symptoms associated with the psychosis spectrum. Sources searched were PsycINFO and PubMed. Reference lists of the selected papers were also cross-checked to ensure the search had not missed potential papers for inclusion. Searches returned 139 results, of which 12 were identified for inclusion. A narrative analytic approach was adopted to synthesise qualitative findings to provide a nuanced interpretation of help-seeking experiences. The narrative synthesis provided an opportunity to identify differences, similarities, and patterns across the studies to tell a cumulative emancipatory narrative of family experiences of seeking help for psychosis spectrum symptoms. Help-seeking experiences had a relational impact on families, with stress adding to conflict and anxieties inhibiting hopefulness, although families could emerge stronger and assertively with compassionate support.

Narratives of Emancipation through Language Learning: The Case of Refugees and Migrants from Former Yugoslavia in Multilingual South Tyrol

This paper investigates how thirty-eight people who emigrated from the former Yugoslavian countries to trilingual South Tyrol represent and negotiate language power relationships in their narratives of language learning and use. Power relationships are strictly mediated through language competencies at both the community (i.e., with regard to the institutional distribution of resources) and individual levels (i.e., with regard to how individuals can get access to them) in the province of Bolzano/Bozen. As for our dataset, several participants declare having at least low competencies in both Italian and German, while a few of them also understand a local Austro-Bavarian dialect. Specifically, four types of stories are identified in the interviewees’ language biographies. These are labeled as narratives of i) exclusion, ii) assimilation, iii) empowerment, and iv) emancipation. In the first two types of stories, narrators mainly reproduce master narratives concerning newcomers’ language learning habits and outcomes in South Tyrol. By contrast, narratives of empowerment and emancipation are ‘contesting’ strategies (e.g., Fairclough 1989/2001; Pennycook 2001). However, they differ in terms of their underlying conception of power – i.e., as a property vs. as emerging from social relations – and in terms of the linguistic and textual strategies employed by tellers to convey their moral position (also: moral agency) and align their interlocutors to it.

Duterte's “War on Drugs” Rhetoric

Duterte's “War on Drugs” Rhetoric

Diminishing Dreams

Diminishing Dreams

Decolonizing Open Science: Southern Interventions

AbstractHegemonic Open Science, emergent from the circuits of knowledge production in the Global North and serving the economic interests of platform capitalism, systematically erase the voices of the subaltern margins from the Global South and the Southern margins inhabiting the North. Framed within an overarching emancipatory narrative of creating access for and empowering the margins through data exchanged on the global free market, hegemonic Open Science processes co-opt and erase Southern epistemologies, working to create and reproduce new enclosures of extraction that serve data colonialism-capitalism. In this essay, drawing on our ongoing negotiations of community-led culture-centered advocacy and activist strategies that resist the racist, gendered, and classed structures of neocolonial knowledge production in the metropole in the North, we attend to Southern practices of Openness that radically disrupt the whiteness of hegemonic Open Science. These decolonizing practices foreground data sovereignty, community ownership, and public ownership of knowledge resources as the bases of resistance to the colonial-capitalist interests of hegemonic Open Science.

‘Dere never wuz a war like dis war’: The WPA Narratives and the Emotional Echoes of the Civil War

ABSTRACT The value of the interviews conducted with the formerly enslaved of America’s South by the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s can tell us much not just about antebellum enslavement but about the long-term emotional impact for families and individuals of the Civil War. They can provide a different perspective from the immediate responses to the war experience that scholars whose focus is on the refugee experience, the refugee camps, and the health crises that often accompanied freedom have relied on. Although the reliability of childhood memories has been questioned, for this article the extent to which accurate recall of enslavement in older age is compromised by chronological distance or neurological condition is less important than the ways in which in the Civil War is located within the autobiographical memory of the interviewee. What it finds is that the emotional echoes of that conflict are more complicated than we might suppose, evincing a combination of pride in personal as well as familial involvement in support of the Union, veiled critiques of enslaver behaviour during the war, and accounts of active involvement in escaping enslavement that together constructed an emancipatory narrative without the trauma and terror of an enslaved past.

Nancy is a Thinker of Radical Emancipation

Nancy has been criticised for rejecting the politics of emancipation that characterises the thought of some of his more militant contemporaries. To be sure, he does distance himself from the rhetoric of emancipation. He considers that the grand modern emancipation narrative of the Enlightenment, and of the revolutions of the late eighteenth century, expired with the end of the Cold War, and that the ideal of emancipation carried by this narrative is dangerous insofar as it imposes “ultimate sense” on history and assumes an “essence of humanity” that is to be liberated. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that Nancy’s rejection of the modern, linear account of emancipatory politics is a refusal of emancipation per se. Indeed, his reason for rejecting modernity’s simple narrative of emancipatory progress is that this framing of history is by a long chalk not emancipatory enough, and that it has far too much in common with the identitarian politics against which it seeks to set itself. So it should come as no surprise that Nancy uses emancipatory language in his very rejection of the politics of emancipation, arguing for example that we need “emancipation from a certain thinking of emancipation.” This article makes the case for Nancy as a rich and radical thinker of emancipation whose thought, far from being apolitical when it comes to liberation, offers us a broad, robust and practical account of the emancipatory. This case is made by weaving together two important strands of Nancy’s thought. First, his deconstruction of Christianity is examined in the light of the claim that Christianity is “in itself and by itself in a state of surpassing” and that Christianity’s self-surpassing is “perhaps its deepest tradition.” This leads, secondly, to a consideration of Nancy’s frequent meditations on Pascal’s statement that “man infinitely exceeds/surpasses man.” When they are taken together, what emerges from these two strands of Nancy’s thought is a pattern of emancipation that goes beyond simple historical ruptures to operate across multiple temporalities at once, each populated by plural vectors of continuity and change. Nancy seeks emancipation from a double slavery: the slavery of absolutising a continuity with the past, and that born of the ideological fantasy of a simple rupture with the past. Instead, he offers us an account of emancipation that is capable of navigating a subtler course through multiple dynamics of continuity and change. The article concludes by briefly examining Nancy’s use of the term ressourcement to characterise this radical account of emancipation, evoking the importance of the gesture described by this term for the biblical prophets, for the magisterial reformers and for Vatican II. Far from being weak in its emancipatory potential, Nancy’s thought takes the modern emancipatory imperative and returns it to us with greater depth, breadth and potency.

Refugees and Fish Fingers

Emancipatory narratives and acts often emerge in struggle against injustice and marginalisation. This article shows the ease with which they can be employed to justify the denial of rights. The space-time is ‘post-socialist’ Eastern Europe, more specifically, the Visegrad platform set up in the 1990s to facilitate entry of three such states into the European Union (EU). The ethnography begins in 2015, when Arab and/or Muslim refugees appeared in Europe in what most EU politicians deemed as unsettling numbers. I read moments from conversations with policymakers and activists, as well as archive material, through lenses of solidarity and sovereignty. This approach allows us to see that delegitimisation of others’ rights can well be a product of relational insecurity, in this case, frustration in the Visegrad’s ‘policy world’ with the region’s recent Westernisation.

“Listen to the parents… really listen to the child!” Family narratives of supporting children hearing voices

ABSTRACT Background Despite the vital role parents play in caring for children with auditory hallucinations, very little research has garnered their experiences, opinions and recommendations for improving service design and delivery. Methods 132 participants (Mage = 39.11; SD = 8.50) from 14 countries completed an online qualitative survey, providing rich reflective narratives about their individual and systemic experiences of caring for a child with auditory hallucinations. Narratives were analyzed through a Foucauldian-informed narrative analysis, which recognized the influence of internalized stigma and societal narratives that surround hallucinations across Western cultures. Results Four emancipatory narratives provide novel insights into the experience of caring for a young voice-hearer. Participants discussed their first thoughts and reactions, which were often influenced by negative societal narratives surrounding voice-hearing and fears for the future, as well as how a lack of tailored systemic support could adversely affect family functioning. Conclusions Parents require greater access to, and inclusion in, intervention pathways within mental health services. Mothers may require additional resource due to a lack of systemic support and risks to their wellbeing as they care for their child. Participants recommend changes for clinical care, including earlier early intervention pathways for young children, easily accessible online information, support groups, and parent training programs.

Recovery from alcohol problems in the absence of treatment: a qualitative narrative analysis

Recovery from alcohol problems in the absence of treatment or mutual-aid is very common, but under-researched. This study explores the lives of people who had resolved their alcohol problems without treatment, seeking to situate experiences of recovery in social contexts and broader life narratives. The in-depth qualitative interviews were aided by a life-history methodology that invited participants to account retrospectively for their lives. A narrative analysis was undertaken. Two major cities (Sydney and Melbourne) in Australia. People who had resolved an alcohol problem in the absence of treatment (n=12) were recruited from the general community using convenience sampling. Eligible participants had received 'minimal treatment' for an alcohol use disorder: fewer than three sessions in an outpatient treatment programme or nine sessions with mutual-aid groups (e.g. Alcoholics Anonymous), or having accessed mental health treatment for problems other than drinking at least 2years prior or 1year after having resolved an alcohol problem. Participants were considered to have had an alcohol use disorder if they reported two or more symptoms (DSM-V) within a 1-year period prior to the past year, using questions endorsed by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). People were considered to have resolved their alcohol use disorder by responding to the recruitment message calling for people who "used to have an alcohol problem but no longer do". The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT-C) was used to understand participant's drinking behaviours in the past 12months. Four different narratives were identified in the analysis. In the emancipation narrative, identity development and major changes across the life-curve were associated with separating oneself from an oppressive circumstance. In discovery narratives, art culture and other consciousness-expanding experiences were sources of identity development, but sometimes a barrier to alcohol recovery. In mastery narratives, life events were understood as failures or successes, and recovery was positioned as an individual journey accomplished through increased problem awareness. Finally, in coping narratives, changes were understood as a series of continuous struggles, and recovery was made sense of through diagnostic discourses. People who resolve an alcohol use disorder in the absence of treatment or mutual-aid appear to explain their recovery in terms of at least four different life narratives: emancipation, discovery, mastery or coping. Social contexts and cultures outside the treatment setting, and the various identities and narratives they provide, shape change processes.

The Downfall of All Slavish Hierarchies: Richard Price on Emancipation, Improvement, and Republican Utopia

Scholars have been paying increasing attention to the republican theory of liberty developed by the eighteenth-century British radical Richard Price. This article studies his narrative of a revolution of liberty, which consists in the downfall of oppressive powers, the establishment of republican institutions, and the introduction of a utopian age. In distinction from work that has focused on the millennial aspects of Price's narrative of emancipation, I highlight its political contexts and functions, situating its early development in utopian speculations about agrarian equality and population, demonstrating how the American Revolution had transformed it into a rallying cry for revolutionaries, and reconstructing its role as a source of politically mobilizing hope. This study differs from much of the scholarship on Price in looking beyond the Anglo-American context and presenting his work as part of a European conversation on the prospects of republican utopia, a conversation whose participants included Rousseau, Turgot, Mirabeau, and Condorcet.

Beyond Trump? A critique of Nancy Fraser’s call for a new left hegemony

Nancy Fraser’s essay ‘From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump – and Beyond’ is an important intervention in current discussions of Trumpism and how the left, broadly, should understand and respond to it. Fraser’s piece is an admirable effort to situate Trumpism in a broader and deeper political–economic context. At the same time, her argument suffers from a kind of reductionism and takes comfort from a questionable grand narrative of emancipation that is difficult any longer to take seriously. It thus warrants both careful attention and serious criticism. My basic political point: Fraser’s version of ‘socialism or barbarism’ is unconvincing, and the adamant and principled defence of liberal democracy, and its further reform, ought to be a priority for left liberals and leftists more generally who are serious about countering right-wing populist authoritarianism.

‘Dalits are in India, not in Pakistan’: Exploring the Discursive Bases of the Denial of Dalitness under the Ashrafia Hegemony

This paper is an attempt to investigate the discursive bases of the categorical and identity-based choices available to the Dalits under the Ashrafia hegemony, and the resultant denial of Dalitness prevalent among the Dalits and the Sindhi civil society in, Pakistan. Informed by the Ambedkarian (subaltern) perspective, I analyse the conversational interviews conducted with the Dalit activists (mostly Scheduled Castes), and with their Ashrafia class counterparts. Interrogating the superior status of Sayed caste(s), I contend that the the denial of casteism, the opposition to the use of the ‘Dalit’ identity marker and the negation of the Dalitness seemed to have as much to do with the belief in Ashrafia values as it had with the normative sanction of the Savarna. values.Both the Savarna and the Ashrafia values seemed to seek legitimacy from the dominant ethnocentric forms of the politicized Sufism. Political Sufism merges the Savarna and Ashrafia norms by means of the syncretic narrative based on interfaith harmony and the civilisational rhetoric. Ashrafisation (also Savarnisation) and the reverence towards Sayeds were the key self-perpetuating hegemonic processes underlying the attempts by the Dalits and the civil society activists to dissipate cognitive dissonance underlying the existing Dalitness and the Ashrafia hegemony. I, therefore, conclude that the practices and the narratives prevalent in Sindhi civil society undermined the Dalit agency to come up with their own counter-hegemonic and emancipatory narrative(s).

Integrating the Subject: Narratives of Emancipation in Regionalism

This article seeks to tease out how different regional organizations understand the subject and how that subject frames the process of integration. It does so in two steps. The first part of the article argues that the notion of emancipation is an interesting lens through which to approach this question in a way that allows for a meaningful and nuanced comparison of radically different projects of regional integration. Emancipation, at the highest level of abstraction, is concerned with the capacity of (public) power to dominate the subject in the ways in which she understands or realizes herself. The regional integration projects that have emerged as ways of overcoming quite specific and historically rooted state limitations, have a selective vision of who the subject is. This selective vision needs to be appreciated in order to understand the organization and process of integration. The second part of the article looks at the European Union, the African Union and Mercosur through this lens and traces different visions of emancipation and of the relationship between the subject, state and regional integration.