Ideological History Research Articles

How Lenin’s language is made: Material of history and technique of ideology

T here is a connection between the formal theory and the history in which formalists were submerged, the history which they represented and the history which they reflected in their scholarly and literary works. This connection is not limited by the use of historical, biographical or artistic material for the illustration of theoretical ideas. Formalists described literature as the destruction of the habits of perception and interpretation formed by the everyday life. In this sense the mechanisms of literature and history turned out to be isomorphous with each other. The concept of defamiliarization formulated by V. Shklovsky becomes, then, not only a universal mechanism of art, but also an immanent law of history. While formalists tended to bare the device — the “literariness” of literature, the revolution was seen by them as “baring” the historical device of history itself. A special issue of the journal LEF published in 1924 under the title “Lenin’s Language” was dedicated to the study of the political language of the revolutionary leader. Participants of this special issue included representatives of OPOIAZ and the Moscow Linguistic Circle. Description of V. Lenin’s language as one which followed the laws of poetic language that had been “discovered by Formalists” was an official opportunity for them to extend their theory of literary evolution into the sphere of social history as a whole. T he very concept of the “device” that bares the “completeness” of a literary work found its application in the critical analysis of ideology. In this manner, ideology is revealed as opposed to history in precisely the same manner as automatized practical language is opposed to poetic language. Lenin’s language is transformed into an agent of poetic, revolutionary disavowal of ideology, the durability of which relies on the ideological automatization of false consciousness and everyday habits of perception.

WANTON GODDESSES TO UNSPOKEN WORTHIES: GENDERED HERMENEUTICS IN THECHU CI ZHANGJU

AbstractThe influentialChu ci zhangju楚辭章句, the earliest received edition of the foundational poetry anthologyChuci楚辭, performs a distinct gender bias in its exegesis of deities, and this bias accords with the Eastern Han ideology of the editor Wang Yi 王逸 (2nd c. CE) more than with immanent features of the original Warring States texts. The gender bias is an essential feature of Wang Yi’s canonization of theChuci, and it lays the groundwork of the allegorical tradition of interpreting theChuci. This paper analyzes thezhangjupresentation of archetypalChucitexts to elucidate the hermeneutic transformation of gender and religion in early China, comparing the Eastern Han exegeses with earlier and later interpretations, immanent textual features, and fresh perspectives on Warring States and Han culture that have emerged from archeological evidence. The analysis demonstrates that theChuci zhangjutreats the male deities more literally than the female deities, reflecting the reduction in status of goddesses in late Han discourse. The history of gender ideology is an essential critical lens for understanding theChuciand the tradition that emerged from it.

Samoupravni socijalizam i urbanističko planiranje - studija slučaja generalnog urbanističkog plana Beograda iz 1972. godine

This paper aims to open up a discussion about relations between former Yugoslavia's socialism and planning practice resulting from self-managing system established in early 1950s. Although this system was applied through a top-down approach, it implied, at least allegedly, coordination, integration and democratic harmonisation of particular interests with common and general ones on local level. The paper will briefly review the history and concept of socialist ideology and consider the impact that it had on institutional arrangements evolution and planning practice in Serbia. It will then touch on the role of ideology for urban planning process at the local level, understanding self-managing planning principles, their benefits, role and significance in planning practice.

Hume’s Place in a Hypothetical Natural History of Political Theories.

En su obra Historia natural de la religion, David Hume narra la historia de las religiones intentando encontrar sus causas psicologicas y sociales. El presente escrito intenta aplicar esta metodologia humeana a su propia teoria politica, senalando su significado politico y cultural. El resultado es considerar a Hume un pensador realista que combina la historia y la filosofia con el objetivo de moderar las pasiones frente a la supersticion y el entusiasmo, de forma que la organizacion de la sociedad sea de acuerdo al principio de utilidad (justicia). En suma, podemos ver en el un profeta de un nuevo mundo feliz: el protocapitalista y burgues.

Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation by Peter Marshall

Reviewed by: Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation by Peter Marshall Korey D. Maas Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation. By Peter Marshall. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017. xix + 652 pp. + 22 plates. Over the past generation, those pressed to recommend a readable and reliable history of the English Reformation have faced a quandary. A.G. Dickens' venerable The English Reformation (1964) has not only grown long in the tooth; many of its conclusions have been subsequently and persuasively challenged by scholars such as J. J. Scarisbrick, Eamon Duffy, and Christopher Haigh. Despite the import of their findings, however, this revisionist school has not produced anything like a major overview for mainstream readers. Peter Marshall's book is advertised as just such an overview, the first in a generation—and rightly so. Organizing seventeen chapters into four chronological yet broadly thematic sections, Marshall skillfully and lucidly guides readers through the complex vicissitudes of the English church in the sixteenth century. The first section, "Reformations before Reformation," establishes the late medieval context in such a way as to emphasize that the changes of the sixteenth century were neither inevitable nor merely reactionary, but were in important respects "a flowering of late medieval developments" (xvii). Part two, "Separations," narrates the events still most familiar to a popular audience: the Luther affair and its reverberations across the channel, Tyndale's New Testament and the mediation of continental evangelicalism, Henry VIII's marital crisis and the ambiguous status of English religion following his break with Rome. Section three, "New Christianities," picks up in the final decade of Henry's reign, when that ambiguity allowed [End Page 484] proponents of various theological visions to vie for royal support— and when the same ambiguity made it just as likely that advocates of each would be silenced and suppressed. It proceeds through the brief reign of Edward VI and the tenuous evangelical establishment crowned by Cranmer's Prayer Book, and concludes with the equally tenuous but ostensibly successful reestablishment of Roman obedience under Mary I. The final section chronicles the first three decades of Elizabeth I's rule; its title, "Unattainable Prizes," illuminates the potentially counter-intuitive stopping point. By 1590 the old faith had been effectively reduced to the dissenting posture of a minority; but it had also become clear—not least because of still, and increasingly, divergent Protestant visions—that a realm united in a common faith would remain beyond reach. Marshall's outline, then, is hardly novel. But the synthesis of previous research, complemented by his own insights and interpretations, is masterful. Limpid prose and arresting anecdotes ensure that, even at 600 pages (with, as the preface forewarns, "a lot of names"), the mainstream reader will remain engaged. Other readers, including this one, will lament the lack of bibliography, and even the choice of endnotes rather than footnotes. Some will be put off by the occasionally jarring anachronism or too-clever colloquialism; the early Henrician supremacy as sports car test-drive comes immediately to mind (230). Minor quibbles aside, though, and despite the gestures to mainstream readers, Marshall's book is a monument of scholarship. Marshall consistently, if subtly, nods toward ongoing academic debates, while explicitly stating many of his own convictions up front. The "lot of names" mentioned above, for example, serves to emphasize the decisive role continually played by individual agency—and the impact of events on real human beings. Although by no means embracing an ideological history from below, Marshall is clearly dismissive of the still sometimes heard claim that England's Reformation was simply an "Act of State." He gives equally short shrift to the notion that religion itself was only a secondary, or even tertiary, concern of those involved, a mask behind which to hide political or economic motives. With an eye toward wider implications, he also notes with some regularity the manner in which the Tudor Reformation did not merely change the religion of the [End Page 485] realm; it also changed the way many, even into the present, would come to understand the nature of religion itself. Given what Marshall here accomplishes, and the flair with which he...

Getting Air: An Ideological History of Sports Media Technology

Getting Air: An Ideological History of Sports Media Technology

Research on the epistles of Su Mansh

With the in-depth study of Su Manshu , the value of his epistles has received increasing attention from the academic community. The epistles spanned the important stages of his life and the whole literary creation period, which reflected Su Manshu’s life, thoughts, emotion, character and literary achievements comprehensively and authentically. Based on examining and analyzing an abundant collection of the epistles, by looking into his poetry composition and literature translation, the thesis studies Su Manshu’s “unspeakable agony”of his life, his character, his mentality of life worries, his attitudes towards friendship and the functions of epistles in his novel creation. An overall and better understanding of Su Manshu will be achieved by studying above mentioned aspects which plays an important role in helping evaluate Su Manshu’s position in history of modern ideology , Buddhism and literature comprehensively, objectively and impartially.

Heritage conservation ideologies analysis – Historic urban Landscape approach for a Mediterranean historic city case study

This paper highlights the different ideologies in the history of the conservation movement. It shows a long progress of theories implied through history since it started in early classical ages until the modern globalisation era, and highlights certain points as optimistic strategy to be applied in the conservation of historic city. The ideologies' reviews both the material-based approaches in conservation applied in the beginning of the conservation movement in Europe and the later values-based approaches developed internationally.After reviewing history of ideologies, the methodology used in this paper is carrying an evaluation for the contemporary approaches – in the first part of the research – by analysing them according to three factors: selectivity, authenticity/integrity and sustainability, in order to find the optimum ideology that counters the challenges of the 21st century in historic city's cores. As a result of the analysis carried out, the Historic Urban Landscape approach was verified to be that optimum ideology. The application will be in the form of recommendations that address each step considered by the theory. The second part of the paper focuses on The Historic Urban Landscape Approach, and it includes its application specifically on a Mediterranean historic city (the old city of Tyre-Lebanon) and favours it as the optimum conservation ideology.The research aims to validate the progress in the conservation approaches by examining its historic evolution. The evaluation of the actual approaches in conservation projects demonstrates the positivism of the communal ideology to sustain these projects.

Transforming Work: Early Modern Pastoral and Late Medieval Poetry. Katherine C. Little. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. Pp. vii+256.

<i>Transforming Work: Early Modern Pastoral and Late Medieval Poetry</i>. Katherine C. Little. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. Pp. vii+256.

Exploring the Links of Contemporary Art and Anthropology: Archiving Epistemologies

The ethnographic turn and sensory ethnography have become the impetus to re-examine anthropology as a discipline, its boundaries, and its epistemologies. Recent work has drawn attention to similarities between ethnographic practice and contemporary art, and generative work towards explicative ethnography, through new communicative visual, sensorial, and aural forms. Contemporary artist Lia Halloran's exploration of generative notions of “scientistic” knowledge is used to clarify trajectories of anthropological histories (and futures). This paper analyses her series Your Body Is a Space that Sees to illuminate how her use of the archive and its objects, and histories of science driven by personal narratives, has served to foreground gender inequities that were reinforced through historic categorisations of the archive that are anchored in anachronistic ideologies but still continue in force today. How we, as academics, artists, and contributors to society understand the world is always based on a history of ideology. The idea of a socially constructed reality must remind us of our own fallibility in falling into our own epistemological traps. This paper proposes one collaboration that resulted from a series of conversations between an artist, her exhibition, and an anthropologist.

There is an alternative: homines curans and the limits of neoliberalism

Neoliberal policies around the globe have made caring more difficult. Yet, many scholars seem to have accepted neoliberalism as an inescapable reality. This article argues against this view. Instead, it suggests that care stands as a major alternative way to the neoliberal paradigm, both conceptually and historically. Formulating a conceptual account of people as homines curans (caring people) and drawing upon Polanyi’s history of market ideologies, the article argues that a democratic form of care – which makes the reallocation of care responsibilities its central concern – can provide the basis for a theoretical challenge to neoliberalism.

Historical Recognition in Post-socialist China : Re-reading Modern Theory of Ideological History of LI Ze-hou

Historical Recognition in Post-socialist China : Re-reading Modern Theory of Ideological History of LI Ze-hou

Equality, legitimacy, interests, and preferences: historical notes on Quadratic Voting in a political context

The history of political theory can shed light on the question of what political contexts are and are not appropriate for Quadratic Voting (QV), and the methods by which extra votes might be distributed when QV is appropriate. Ancient Greek and contemporary political thought draws attention to the connections between the assumed equality of moral worth among citizens and systems of voting, and to the relationship between equality or inequality of standing to the bases of dessert and the fair distribution of political influence in a democratic state. These matters in turn bear directly on democratic legitimacy, and thus on the stability of the social order. Some issues that must be decided in a democratic community concern common interests. Common-interest issues, based on widely held conceptions of equal moral worth, are not appropriately determined by preference intensity, and thus are inappropriate for a QV voting system. Real-money versions of QV risk undermining respect for law and democratic legitimacy. The costs of system-threatening civil conflict attendant upon loss of legitimacy outweighs any efficiency gains within the system. Token-currency versions of QV, which do not threaten democratic legitimacy, are a more plausible option for the application of QV to political issues in which correlating unequal influence with preference intensity does not conflict with assumptions of equal moral worth.

Czechoslovak Ruthenia's 1925 Latinization campaign as the heritage of nineteenth-century Slavism

In 1925, two newspapers, both published in Uzhhorod, advocated using the Latin alphabet in the Czechoslovak province of Ruthenia. Efforts by the Czech Agrarian party to consolidate the Republic played some role, but the plans mostly emerged from a longer tradition of Slavic thought which imagined literacy in more than one alphabet, conforming to more than one literary standardization. We trace the nineteenth-century history of Slavic linguistic ideologies from the original Panslavism of Jan Herkel, the “Slavic Reciprocity” of Jan Kollár and his successors, to the Kollárian Czechoslovakism used to legitimate the first Czechoslovak Republic. We survey Ruthenia's status within Czechoslovakia and then contrast two 1925 Latinization schemes: a proposal from Czech chauvinist František Svojše and a proposal from Rusyn journalist Viktor Barany. While Rusyns mostly remained with the Cyrillic alphabet, arguments made for and against Latinization show that nineteenth century Slavic ideals endured far into the twentieth century.

The Ambiguities of Nationalism

In Communism and Nationalism in Portugal, José Neves is more concerned with the ideological history of the Portuguese Communist Party, that is to say with what discursive terms it concerned itself, than with the particular historical issues posed by its concrete development, and with the party’s actual history. In a nutshell, what we have in this work is an attempt to grasp the history of a Marxist party in non-Marxist terms. The whole outlook of the work is therefore concerned with looking at the intellectual history of Portuguese Communism from the outside, in terms of the development of a discourse that is not taken as true or false, but as a thing unto itself.

Masonería, historia y memoria: la cuestión de los Orígenes

The article deals with Freemasonry and its myths of origin. It is a contribution to the new scientific history of Freemasonry developed in Latin America since the 2000, in response to the French and Spanish influences. From the best specialists of Freemasonry, of sociology of knowledge and of the history of ideologies, the origins of the two large neo-traditions available on the origins of Freemasonry (the myths of ancient origins and medieval origins) are summarized. Then, the article seeks to reflect on the ideological foundations of these neo-traditions. It polls in a preliminary way some variants and militant applications that resulted from this neo-traditions during the 20th century, glimpsing a link between the myth of the ancient origins and modern ideology of progress on the one hand, and between the myth of medieval origins and traditionalist, reactionary or conservative ideology on the other hand. At this point, the article only paves the way for a broader and more systematic study whose bases are proposed in the conclusion.

Fixing the Acropolis: William J. Stillman and the Restoration of Athenian Antiquity

William J. Stillman’s 1870 photographic album The Acropolis of Athens details, with extraordinary sensitivity, the classical monuments of the Athenian Acropolis. But the album itself is part of a larger transnational history of the production, representation, and circulation of Greek antiquity. It is also a central artefact of Stillman’s own life and affiliations. Tracing these two interlocking histories is to place the album’s imagery, narrative, and informational material within the larger ambit of individual, national, and Euro-American politics, historical ideology and aesthetics. Stillman’s album is centrally influenced by the German-led archaeological activity on the Acropolis, reflecting both its widely-held assumptions on the worth of Greek antiquities and the proper way to view them, as well as an ambivalence verging on antipathy toward indigenous Greek archaeological (and photographic) activity. This tendency complicates (but does not completely erase) Stillman’s powerful sympathy and outspoken activities on behalf of Greek and Cretan independence and self-determination. The moment that produced Stillman’s album is not the only one in which he photographed the Athenian Acropolis. Comparing his photography of 1870 with his 1882 rephotography of the site is to find changes and slippages that highlight the vicissitudes of Stillman’s own complex history. It also has significant implications for the imagery he produced earlier, connecting Stillman’s work to the larger constellation of nineteenth-century imagery of the Athenian Acropolis.

From Dialectic of Nature to the Asian Mode: A Pre-history of North Korean Environmental Approach

ABSTRACTNorth Korea is not a nation or field that attracts a great deal of critically minded analysis which would address the processes and moments of its ideological history. This is especially true when it comes to matters of North Korea’s relationship with nature and the environment, and the ideologies which underpin developmental and productive strategies within that nation. The routes which Marxist analysis in general took to connect to the Korean Peninsula are themselves fairly obscure and rarely considered. This paper therefore seeks an examination of the generation of Marxist analysis of nature and of those modes of production which encounter, transform and interact with natural and environmental forms. It considers the work of both Engels and Marx on the subject before tracing the journey those theorisations took into the practices and articulations of later Marxists, communists and socialists tasked with applying Marxist principles more widely in the processes of nation building and governance. In particular, it analyses notions of an Asian Mode of Production and the debate in Marxist circles as to that mode’s veracity and utility. It also encounters briefly the work of Karl Wittfogel, a counter-Marxist theoretician, and his notion of Hydraulic Economy. Finally, the paper traces the journey made by these theoretical structures into the intellectual world of the Korean Peninsula, navigating the debates it generated among early Korean Marxist intellectuals and their embedding or otherwise within the ideological structures and processes of North Korea.

From whence cometh this Welfare consensus? US welfare policy discourse as class warfare in the 1980s and 1990s

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address the ideological narratives which came to comprise a new welfare consensus in the USA and subsequently a welfare state which was more fiscally austere, demeaning, and coercive. It also explores the role of the political and financial restructuring which facilitated the implementation of retrogressive reforms. Design/methodology/approach – Macro-level historical forces are investigated through various texts such as policy statements, journal articles, press releases, political addresses, congressional transcripts and testimony, archived papers, newspaper articles, and occasional sound bites and popular culture references pertaining to welfare and which have come to construct the common understanding of it. Findings – The formation of this consensus was due in part to three factors: first, the growth of and increased influence of an elite policy planning network; second, welfare program administration and financing had been decentralized which allowed greater autonomy of state and local governments to implement their own retrogressive reforms; and third, there emerged an overarching discourse and paradigm for structuring policy and explaining the causes of poverty which emphasized individual behavior. Originality/value – This paper focusses on the materialization of the contemporary welfare consensus during the 1980s and 1990s in terms of its ideological and political history and on its persistence which has affected the ensuing policy culture and which continues to constrain anti-poverty policy discourse as well as what can be accomplished legislatively. The paper is of value for for readers, fields, courses with work that encompasses an examination of political and social theory, ideology, social policy, power/hegemony, poverty, inequality, families, gender, race, and meaning making institutions.

Ideology and the crisis of affiliation and association in the professional life and career of the Drum School writer, Can Themba (1924–1968)

ABSTRACTThis article sketches a background of some 10 years of ‘Drum School’ history in the former black freehold township of Sophiatown, Johannesburg. By the term ‘Drum School’, I refer to a group of South African writers who worked under the aegis of the African magazine Drum, during that period of South African history which has come deservedly to be known as the Fifties. One of the arguments largely commented on in the popular discourse about this group of African writers is that their worth to South African society and institutions can be judged by the professional skills and qualifications they had as members of the educated African upper class: the writers represented a new class, a middle class – so the argument runs – which emerged to take its rightful place in the mainstream paradigm of the dominant culture of South African society, providing the strongest example for Africans’ transition to western culture and civilisation. The Drum School history is also approached as a topic of ideological history. The continuing interest in the writers comes from their importance for South African society as the chief exponents of the Christian humanistic tradition of the Church, which constituted a development of missionary ideas from the middle of the nineteenth century. Part of the problem with the ideological school of the Drum School history, it will be argued in the article, is that it ignores any explanation of human behaviour attributable to human agency. The implications that the cultural dilemma of the Drum School holds for the narratives of protest and resistance are also ignored. The argument about human agency and the cultural dilemma of the Drum School will be made based on the example of Can Themba (1924–1968).