History Of Dissent Research Articles

Progressive Laments and/on Partition: The Cost of Freedom in Khadija Mastur’s Aangan (1962)

During the 1947 Partition, the new manifesto of the All-India Progressive Writers’ Association (PWA), which had committed to portraying the ‘radical changes’ within Indian society, demanded ‘neutrality’ from its writers to dissuade ideas of communalism. Using Khadija Mastur’s 1962 novel Aangan (The Women’s Courtyard), this paper analyses women’s writing as embodying, and yet encoding ambivalence towards, the PWA’s directives on progressivism. In the novel, Mastur takes readers behind the scenes of established narratives, destabilising preconceived notions of men’s freedom-fighting and its aftermaths. This utilisation of women’s Progressive Partition literature will thus showcase women’s history of dissent in the Indian subcontinent’s freedom struggle through the interweaving of autobiography within the literary landscape of their fictional works.

‘A New Prague Spring, but from Below?’ Socialist Dissent in the Last Soviet Generation and the Emergence of Solidarność in Poland, 1980–1981

This article examines the Young Socialists, a left-wing dissident circle of intellectuals from the last Soviet generation, and focuses on their contacts with Solidarność during 1980–81. These dissidents, located in Moscow and Minsk, interpreted the Polish strikes as the possible beginnings of a wider move to socialist reform in the Eastern Bloc. Using oral history and samizdat materials from the Russian and Polish archives and the former archives of Radio Free Europe, the article demonstrates how the Young Socialists’ interactions with Poland developed in the wider context of the transnational history of dissent in the Eastern Bloc at the turn of the 1980s. It argues that a combination of internationalist values and bloc-wide dissident solidarities caused socialist dissidents to view nationalist movements on the Soviet periphery and Eastern Europe as potential drivers of socialist reform on the eve of Perestroika.

Ciliga Papers, an uncharted territory in the history of dissent and communism

Cet article vise à mettre en avant le parcours fascinant d’Ante Ciliga, journaliste, écrivain, dissident communiste et émigré politique, et à mettre en valeur l’histoire de son fonds d’archive (Ante Ciliga Papers) déposé à la Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire de Zagreb. Cet article révèle également la singulière histoire des archives de Ciliga et montre comment elles ont récemment été exploitées par l’historiographie.

Review: Contesting Modernity: Informalism in Venezuela, 1955–1975, edited by Mari Carmen Ramírez and Tahía Rivero, and El Techo de la Ballena: Retro-Modernity in Venezuela, by María C. Gaztambide

Review: <i>Contesting Modernity: Informalism in Venezuela, 1955–1975</i>, edited by Mari Carmen Ramírez and Tahía Rivero, and <i>El Techo de la Ballena: Retro-Modernity in Venezuela</i>, by María C. Gaztambide

The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions Volume III: The Nineteenth Century, edited by Timothy Larsen and Michael Ledger-Lomas

Reviewed by: The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions Volume III: The Nineteenth Century ed. by Timothy Larsen and Michael Ledger-Lomas Mark Knight (bio) The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions Volume III: The Nineteenth Century, edited by Timothy Larsen and Michael Ledger-Lomas; pp. xix + 546. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2017, £103.00, $145.00. Timothy Larsen and Michael Ledger-Lomas’s The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions Volume III: The Nineteenth Century makes a wonderful contribution to Oxford University Press’s five-volume history of Protestant Dissent, and the editors and contributors are to be congratulated for the expert way in which they help us understand the complex contours of this part of the church. Protestant Dissent played a pivotal role in the nineteenth century theologically, politically, and socially, and its influence grew as the decades went on. One of the contributors to this volume, Eugenio Biagini, describes the years between 1862 and 1922 as a “golden age for British Dissenters in politics,” and he is far from alone in calling us to recognize the reach of Dissent across different areas of the Anglophone world (416). The volume is impressively wide-ranging in its scope, focusing on both sides of the Atlantic but looking more globally, too, and the editors have assembled a strong team of scholars to help them in their theological and historical explorations. Among the many things the contributors do well is finding an appropriate balance as they seek to convey the unity and diversity of Dissent. The vision of Dissent that emerges in the volume is coherent enough to hold the essays together but alert to the differences and diversity of those who identified with this part of the church. Bill J. Leonard writes compellingly about the ways in which Baptists in North America “searched diligently for common threads of theology and praxis that provide continuity,” finding them on some occasions but not on others (233). And as the other contributors to the volume consider different denominations, such as the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Quakers, and the Methodists, we are led to see how the Dissenting impulse gave rise to multiple movements, fractures, and new communities of faith, some of which were too small to merit a denomination label. Ledger-Lomas acknowledges that “the history of nineteenth-century Anglophone Protestantism is often largely identified with global evangelicalism,” but he still insists on [End Page 156] the value of shifting the spotlight from evangelicalism to Dissent (2). The positive results of such a shift in focus are evident throughout the volume—but it is noticeable, too, how many of the histories of Dissent written by contributors lean heavily on evangelicalism. Timothy Larsen’s essay on the Congregationalists observes how closely the denomination was incorporated “into the wider evangelical movement” (41); Thomas C. Kennedy’s chapter dwells at length on the evangelical orientation of many (though certainly not all) of the Quakers; Janice Holmes’s essay on the Methodists remarks at one point the ways in which the denomination was “like many other evangelical groups in Britain” in its struggle “to maintain its distinctive identity and presence” (124); Mark A. Noll’s discussion of the Bible and scriptural interpretation is heavily indebted to evangelical thought; and David Bebbington’s chapter on theology draws extensively on his expertise as a historian of evangelicalism. Evangelicalism may not be the only way of conceptualizing Protestant Dissent, but it is vital to that tradition and rightly given a great deal of attention in this volume. Recognizing the central role of evangelicalism in our stories of Dissent does not need to blind us to other actors, and the “sheer variety” of Dissent, as Tim Grass puts it, is fundamental (150). In a chapter on the Unitarians, Shakers, and Quakers in North America, Stephen P. Shoemaker reminds us that “[w]hile evangelical Protestantism held a hegemonic position in American culture, plenty of religious groups deliberately swam against that cultural tide” (256). There are similar instances elsewhere across the volume where the accounts of Dissent (and evangelicalism) highlight this plurality and difference. This can be seen in the careful explanations of the ways in which denominations such as...

The Revolution of Our Times: Hong Kong's History of Protest and the 2019 Protests

The Revolution of Our Times:Hong Kong's History of Protest and the 2019 Protests Matthew Jones (bio) Review of Antony Dapiran, City on Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong (Victoria: Scribe Publications, 2020). Few events captured the world's attention in 2019 like the anti-government protests in Hong Kong. What began in early 2019 as demonstrations in response to a proposed extradition law quickly became a larger pro-democracy movement that engulfed Hong Kong and received widespread international coverage. Antony Dapiran recounts these events and explores the effects of those protests in his most recent book, City on Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong. Dapiran, a lawyer and journalist based in Hong Kong and Beijing for over two decades, has covered Hong Kong protests at length. His body of work also includes the 2017 book, City of Protest: A Recent History of Dissent in Hong Kong, which focused on the 2014 Umbrella Movement.1 City on Fire is not just a continuation of his earlier work, but also a chronological retelling of the 2019 protests and its extensive connections to Hong Kong's unique history of civil disobedience. Dapiran opens City on Fire with a dramatic recount of an undated and tear gas-filled protest on the streets of Hong Kong. Such a scene was all too common during 2019, so close observers of the demonstrations are familiar with the events that Dapiran describes. Still, the vivid detail with which he describes both the physical and psychological effects of the tear gas on the protestors can only be written by someone who has lived those experiences. Dapiran's characteristic dramatic writing style persists throughout City on Fire. In recounting the immediate cause of the protests, Dapiran writes the tragic murder of Hong Kong national Poon Hiu-wing by her boyfriend in Taiwan was the "spark."2 While Hong Kong's Legislative Council (LegCo) justified the extradition bill with Ms. Poon's untimely death, the public remained wary of any extradition agreement with Beijing due to the extrajudicial extraditions of Hong Kong booksellers in 2015. With both the tinder and the spark, the March 2019 eruption of protest in Hong Kong was all but inevitable. [End Page 173] City on Fire benefits from Dapiran's first hand experiences during the 2019 protests and his knowledge of the political and social nuances in Hong Kong. Dapiran began his career in corporate law in Hong Kong over two decades ago. He subsequently worked for a number of Hong Kong and Beijing-based law firms where he developed a keen understanding of both the Hong Kong and PRC legal systems.3 While he is well known for advising a number of large Chinese state-owned enterprises on initial public offerings (IPOs) in Hong Kong, he is also a commentator on Hong Kong politics, known for his criticisms of Beijing's policies towards the special administrative region. His extensive time in Hong Kong and first hand experiences of its recent history of protest bolster his primary argument that there is a through line between Hong Kong's antecedent protests and the 2019 anti-government protests. Illustrating this point, he argues the underlying causes for the 2019 protests can be traced to unresolved issues from the Umbrella Movement, and to lingering economic inequality. Dapiran's experience and immersion in the protests also provides for incisive insights on how the 2019 protests learned from the shortcomings of the earlier Umbrella Movement. Specifically, Dapiran argues the failures of the central decision-making body of the Umbrella Movement prompted the 2019 protestors to "be water" and decentralize decision-making.4 This became clear to Dapiran as he watched a siege of the police headquarters during the 2019 protests and compared it to a similar but failed attempt he observed in the closing days of the Umbrella Movement. Instead of relying on a central figure with a loudspeaker to direct the protests (as seen during the Umbrella Movement), the 2019 protestors used online forums and secure messaging applications to coordinate regular protests and direct the wider movement.5 These technologies made the protest movement more resilient and difficult, if not impossible, for Hong Kong's police to contain...

Economics and American Literary Studies in the New Gilded Age, or Why Study the History of Bad Predictions and Worse Rationalizations?

AbstractThis introduction to the special issue on Economics and American Literary Studies in The New Gilded Age traces an underexplored history of dissent within the discipline of economics through presidential addresses to the American Economic Association and writings by John Maynard Keynes. It acknowledges the “vexed history” of interdisciplinary engagement between economists and literature scholars, including a recent, halfhearted call for “narrative economics” from 2013 Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller. Seybold suggests that new brands of econo-literary criticism have risen to promise in the last decade and that contributors to this special issue demonstrate the importance of historicism to this subfield, despite its apparent presentist tendencies.

Rage – beyond the Point of Boiling Over

Rage – beyond the Point of Boiling Over

The ultimate return: Dissent, apostolic succession, and the renewed ministry of roman catholic women priests

ABSTRACTSignificant numbers of practising Roman Catholics dissent from the Church’s orthodox teachings, especially those relating to sex, gender and contraception. Many such dissenters even occupy positions of ecclesiastical authority themselves. This raises interesting questions about how dissent manifests differently in various Christian traditions; how disagreement about fundamental principles only become legible if expressed in particular ways. This paper draws on research on Roman Catholic Woman priests whose claim to sacerdotal legitimacy rests on their having been ordained in apostolic succession by bishops within the Roman Catholic Church. It asks how do women priests negotiate both difference and repetition at the very same time. The ethnography prompts deeper reflection on Christianity’s long history of dissent which I argue has been written from a predominantly male and Protestant perspective. One in which dissent that leads to institutional differentiation is prioritized over dissent borne quietly that seeks to contain itself.

Distant and Present Voices from the Soviet Gulag

Anna Artem'eva and Elena Racheva, 58-ia: Neiz'iatoe. Istorii liudei, kotorye perezhili to, chego my bol'she vsego boimsia (Article 58: Uneliminated. Stories of People Who Survived That Which We All Fear Most). 336 pp. Moscow: AST, 2016. ISBN-13 978-5170926398. A. Kozlova, N. Mikhailov, I. Ostrovskaia, and S. Fadeeva, eds., Papinypis 'ma: Pis 'ma ottsov iz GULAGa k detiam (Papas Post: Fathers' Letters from the to Their Children). 240 pp. Moscow: Izdatel 'stvo AgeyTomesh/WAM, 2014. ISBN-13 978-5910020379. It seems inappropriate to use the words Gulag and beautiful together, but two new Russian-language volumes addressing aspects of history are indeed beautiful. Printed on heavy stock and lavishly illustrated, these two works pull in readers with their visuals and hold them with their emotional texts. Anna Artem'eva and Elena Racheva--a photographer and journalist, respectively, for Nov aid gazeta--have put together a collection of interviews and stunning contemporary portraits of person's whose lives were connected to the Gulag. Meanwhile, a team from the International Memorial Society's archive and museum has compiled a volume of letters from imprisoned fathers to their children. Examined together, these books not only remind us of the broad sweep of suffering and hardship experienced by Soviet citizens in the 1930s and beyond, but they also illuminate new angles on preserving the history and memory of the for a generation that has grown up after the excitement about historical revelations that characterized the perestroika period. These volumes break the history of repression into discrete family stories that for the most part are left to speak for themselves, shorn of the pathos common in perestroika-era presentations. (By contrast, consider the narrative voiceover in the documentary film Vlast' Solovetskaia, dir. Marina Goldovskaia, 1989.) In 58-ia: Neiz iatoe, Artem 'eva and Racheva profile more than 50 elderly person's, mostly former prisoners but also some retired prison- or labor-camp employees. A few of the interview subjects will be familiar to those who have studied literature or the history of dissent. (1) Some respondents, however, are telling their histories for the first time. Indeed, in their introduction, Racheva and Artem'eva describe sitting with a former prisoner in her apartment, which ironically has a view of her former barrack. Yet as the woman tells her story, her no longer young son looked at his mother with horror and love; all this he was hearing for the first time (3). That stories of imprisonment have remained taboo in some families is a powerful reminder that the burst of enthusiasm of the late 1980s for filling in blank spots in history did not extend to everyone and that fear of being stigmatized as an enemy of the people still lingers. Artem 'eva and Racheva sought out histories not only from Moscow and St. Petersburg but from Ukraine, Lithuania, Vladimir, and the northern Russian region of Komi. Asking their respondents to reflect on moments of ugliness and joy, the interviewers captured diverse recollections from their subjects' long lives. No doubt to the frustration of historians, Racheva and Artem'eva elide their own questions from the text, making it difficult to know which opinions are spontaneously volunteered and what information is extracted by dint of repeated queries. (2) The artful distillation of interviewees' direct speech into powerful short accounts, however, serves the authors' purpose of making the book compulsive reading for a broad Russian-speaking audience. (3) Given the sentiments of their probably liberal readers, the authors of 58-ia: Neiz'iatoe took the bold step of mixing together the stories of camp guards, prison workers, and former inmates. The reader turning the page to a new entry cannot immediately discern from the luminous color portrait of the elderly subject or the accompanying black and white photograph of a younger self whether this is a victim or a perpetrator. …

Entangled Protest: Transnational Approaches to the History of Dissent in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, edited by Brier, Robert

Entangled Protest: Transnational Approaches to the History of Dissent in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, edited by Brier, Robert

Derek R. Peterson. Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent, c. 1935–1972.

Derek R. Peterson. Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent, c. 1935–1972.

DEREK R. PETERSON, Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: a history of dissent, c.1935–1972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (hb £62 – 978 1 1070 2116 7). 2012, 344 pp.

DEREK R. PETERSON, Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: a history of dissent, c.1935–1972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (hb £62 – 978 1 1070 2116 7). 2012, 344 pp.

Book Review: Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent, c. 1935–1972

Book Review: Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent, c. 1935–1972

Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A history of dissent, c. 1935-1972

Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A history of dissent, c. 1935-1972

Governing or Repressing Dissent via the Politics of Toleration: The Justice and Development Party versus the Working Class

This paper attempts to critically scrutinize the recent policies of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in relation to the Turkish working class by means of the liberal concept of toleration. In order to realize this objective, it investigates the links between the theoretical framework of toleration, the AKP policies toward the working class (conceptualized in terms of toleration) and the history of dissent articulated by Turkish workers under the AKP. The five most recent May Day demonstrations (2007–11) constitute the focus of this study as historical moments when this tripartite relationship became most visible. As such, this study discusses the relationship between class difference, toleration and the substitution of the binary value of justice-philanthropy for that of equality.

When Socrates Became Pericles

This essay is a memorial tribute from one member of the Common Knowledge editorial board to another. Adam Michnik, a cofounder of the first dissident organization in East-Central Europe, writes about the details and the symbolic importance of his first meeting, in 1978 on Mt. Snĕžka, with Václav Havel, coorganizer of Charter 77. From his insider’s perspective, the author retells the history of dissent in communist Europe from that time until the Velvet Revolution and Havel’s election as president of Czechoslovakia in 1989. He also assesses the impact of Havel’s work as a playwright and antipolitical essayist, but the emphasis of the essay falls on how Havel the man dealt with the disappointments he endured in political office, including the passage of “lustration” laws and the election of Václav Klaus as prime minister. The organizing principle of this essay is the distinction made by the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka between “great history” and “small history.” In periods of greatness, the Czechs led European civilization toward the path it would subsequently take; at other times, they withdrew into the “banality of provincialism.” This tribute to Havel ultimately argues that, after many decades of provincial Stalinism, Havel brought Czech history back to the path of greatness on which T. G. Masaryk had set it in the first part of the twentieth century.

Socially rejected while cognitively successful? The impact of minority dissent on groups’ cognitive complexity

The impact of minority dissent on group-level outcomes is explained in the current literature by two opposing mechanisms: first, through cognitive gains due to a profound change induced by minority members in the individual cognitions of the majority members, and second, through socio-affective process losses due to social rejection and relationship conflict. Groups are most effective in information processing if they succeed in solving this opposition and reduce the negative impact of process losses. The present study addresses this opposition using an experimental design in which we crossed minority dissent (presence vs. absence of minority dissent) with change in membership (groups with vs. groups without change in membership) to determine which condition leads to the highest group cognitive complexity. Our results show that groups with a history of dissent and where the deviant left the group have the highest cognitive complexity, followed by groups that experienced dissent and where no change in group membership took place. The groups without a history of dissent have the lowest cognitive complexity.

Concentration camps on the home front: Japanese Americans in the house of Jim Crow

Without trial and without due process, the United States government locked up nearly all of those citizens and longtime residents who were of Japanese descent during World War II. Ten concentration camps were set up across the country to confine over 120,000 inmates. Almost 20,000 of them were shipped to the only two camps in the segregated South - Jerome and Rohwer in Arkansas - locations that put them right in the heart of a much older, long-festering system of racist oppression. The first history of these Arkansas camps, Concentration Camps on the Home Front is an eye-opening account of the inmates' experiences and a searing examination of American imperialism and racist hysteria.While the basic facts of Japanese-American incarceration are well known, John Howard's extensive research gives voice to those whose stories have been forgotten or ignored. He highlights the roles of women, first-generation immigrants, and those who forcefully resisted their incarceration by speaking out against dangerous working conditions and white racism. In addition to this overlooked history of dissent, Howard also exposes the government's aggressive campaign to Americanize the inmates and even convert them to Christianity. After the war ended, this movement culminated in the dispersal of the prisoners across the nation in a calculated effort to break up ethnic enclaves.Howard's re-creation of life in the camps is powerful, provocative, and disturbing. Concentration Camps on the Home Front rewrites a notorious chapter in American history - a shameful story that nonetheless speaks to the strength of human resilience in the face of even the most grievous injustices.

The Dissenting Tradition in American Education (review)

Reviewed by: The Dissenting Tradition in American Education Joan Delfattore The Dissenting Tradition in American Education. By James C. Carper and Thomas C. Hunt. (New York: Peter Lang. 2007. Pp. xii, 286. $32.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-820-47920-0.) The central premise of The Dissenting Tradition in American Education is uncompromisingly stated in its introduction: "[T]he public school is the functional equivalent of an established church, buttressed with religious language, expected to embrace all people, legitimating and transmitting an orthodoxy or worldview, and underwritten by compulsory taxation" (p. 4). Beginning with Catholic opposition to the use of the King James Bible in nineteenth-century public schools and continuing through protests against the secularism of contemporary public education, The Dissenting Tradition examines not only challenges to specific viewpoint(s) promoted by publicly funded schools but also opposition to the very notion of state involvement in education. [End Page 861] The authors identify themselves as an evangelical Protestant (Carper) and a Catholic (Hunt)."Despite our differing theological traditions and educational experiences," they write,"we believe that . . . the current structure of public education is incompatible with America's confessional pluralism (citizens embrace different answers to 'first order' questions, such as 'What is the nature of the cosmos?') and our sacred commitment to universal liberty of conscience in matters of education and religion" (p. 5).Through a series of case studies, they demonstrate how America's secularist public-school system arose out of religious differences between Protestants and Catholics in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Faced with the likelihood that a significant proportion of public funding for religious schools would go toward the support of Catholic education, policymakers preferred to allocate tax funding only to state-run secular schools. Moreover, strong popular advocacy of public education as a means of promoting patriotism—most notably by "Americanizing" immigrant children—resulted in restrictions on alternative forms of education, such as parochial schools and home schooling. In recent years, however, attitudes and policies have changed, leading Carper and Hunt to suggest that the time may be ripe for what they describe as "the 'disestablishment' of public education" (p. 9). At the heart of The Dissenting Tradition lies the fundamental question of the state's proper role in education. Four models are discussed: the state supports only secular schools under its own control; the state runs secular schools while funding other schools, which may be religious; the state runs no schools but provides funds for religious or secular schools of the parents'choice;or the state plays no role in either funding or regulating the education of children, leaving that matter entirely in the hands of parents and religious communities. The case studies through which these alternatives are explored are compellingly presented, intertwining summaries of political and philosophical arguments with accounts of real people to whom they represent not abstract ideas, but a worldview on which the very meaning of life depends. As a history of Catholic and Protestant efforts to challenge the ideas promoted by public schools and to advance alternative forms of education, The Dissenting Tradition is highly effective. Its weak point is that even as it describes this long-running conflict clearly and cogently, it assumes that the existence of the controversy is, in itself, sufficient justification for "disestablishing" public education in some manner that includes the funding of alternative schooling, including religious education, but is otherwise unspecified. The book does not refute—or even acknowledge—the main points likely to be raised on the other side of the debate; in particular, it scarcely mentions either the political implications of "disestablishing" the public school system or the constitutional issues involved in state funding of religious education. To be sure, supporters of public education may be viewed as self-interested and wrongheaded, and Supreme Court decisions interpreting the First and Fourteenth Amendments may be deemed faulty. Nevertheless, arguing for a [End Page 862] dramatic change in the existing structure of the public-school system almost exclusively on the basis of longstanding religious opposition to it is unlikely to persuade anyone who was not already predisposed to agree with that premise. The book presents a compelling history of dissent and a ringing justification...