Obedient Subjects Research Articles

POST-APOCALYPTIC IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION IN AYN RAND’S ANTHEM WITH REFERENCE TO CULTURE/NATURE DUALITY

The present article endeavors to explicate the process of identity construction in Ayn Rand's post-apocalyptic dystopian novel, Anthem. The utilisation of language and the dissemination of symbolic meanings are significant factors that contribute to the formation of identity, which enchains individuals, transforming them into obedient subjects. Fiske's perspective on identity construction elucidates the interplay between power and resistance, which appears to be absent in this post-apocalyptic work. The imperialising power is predominantly responsible for the mechanism of identity formation in the subjectivity of the characters, as there is no discernible systematic resistance to the dominant representations of power throughout the novel. Despite the absence of the duality of power and resistance, the duality of nature and culture is at play, significantly impacting the way identity is constructed. The imperialising power aims to eradicate or limit representations of nature, as the semantic burden that nature carries poses a threat to its existence. We aim to clarify how the imperialising power responds to the representations and meanings that nature embodies. Lastly, we posit that the imperialising power's reaction towards nature is stronger in post-apocalyptic contexts, where representations of nature are highly restricted, confined only to the "Uncharted Forest."

Висвітлення М. Грушевським козацької політики Варшави у першій половині 20-х рр. XVII ст. у праці «Історія України-Руси»

Th e purpose of the article is to clarify the views of M. Hrushevskyi on the essence and peculiarities of the Cossack policy of the ruling elite of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the fi rst half of the 1620s. Methodological principles are based on the application of theoretical principles of historical knowledge (objectivity, historicism, comprehensiveness and systematicity) and specifi c historical methods (problematic-chronological, historical-genetic, synchronous, diachronic and systemic analysis) of research. In such a formulation, the specifi ed problem was not studied, which is why its scientifi c novelty is determined. Conclusions. It has been found that the scientifi c potential of M. Hrushevskyi’s work “History of Ukraine-Rus”, in parti cular the 8th chapter of the 7th volume, in the study of the Cossack policy of Warsaw aft er Khotyn is extremely valuable: fi rstly, the scientist reconstructed the essence of the Cossacks for the fi rst time in historiography the politics of Warsaw and the peculiarities of its conduct in the fi rst half of the 20s of the 17th century, and, secondly, the source material used by him has a powerful informational potential for studying the policy of the Polish elite in solving the Cossack problem. On the basis of his analysis, the distinguished historian drew a conclusion that is con- fi rmed by modern historiography, namely: the Polish political elite completely ignored the out- standing role of the Zaporizhzhya Army in the successful completion of the Khotyn campaign for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and therefore tried anything, including a force scenario, to keep it in the status of “obedient subjects”. Th is short-sightedness hid a real danger of aggrava- tion of social and national-religious contradictions in Polish society, as was clearly manifested in the uprisings of the 1630s.

Rereading the Zimbabwean “Land Question”: Gender and the Symbolic Meanings of “Land”

As the source of all food production, land in southern Africa has been highly contested. Using a variety of texts that express themes relating to land, I show that in Zimbabwe, in the face of massive political competition, land became the foundation for reform and national sovereignty in dominant nationalist, patriarchal and gendered discourses. I demonstrate that cultural texts centred on land have been embodied and generated in familial troupes, revealing dominant gendered and sexualised overtones that naturalise land ownership and particular land uses. At the same time, these texts reveal symbolic violence meted out on particular bodies. This discursive analysis of texts examines the gendered and sexualised discourses associated with Zimbabwe’s national reforms and security, where the imagining of the security, protection and sanctity of land has been driven by nationalist ideas about its centrality in the healthy (re)production of obedient social and national subjects.

The “nurse as hero” discourse in the COVID-19 pandemic: A poststructural discourse analysis

BackgroundNurses have been labelled “heroes” by politicians, the mass media, and the general public to describe their commitment to providing front-line care to people with COVID-19, despite the risks of exposure and lack of clinical resources. Few studies have examined the implications of the hero discourse to nurses’ professional, social, and political identities. ObjectiveTo critically examine the effects of the hero discourse on nurses who are contending with the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and to consider the political, social, cultural, and professional impact of this discourse on nursing work. MethodsA poststructural discourse analysis, employing the theoretical ideas of truth, power, knowledge, subjectivity, and normalization, was conducted to explore the mass media's constructions of nurse as hero in the contexts of COVID-19. Media electronic databases were searched between March 1, 2020 to August 1, 2020 to locate newspaper and magazine articles, corporate advertisements, videos, social media postings, and institutional/corporate websites. SettingData sources included English language media accounts that originated from Canada, the USA, and the UK. ResultsThree main elements of the hero discourse include: 1. Nurses as a “necessary sacrifice” - portraying nurses as selfless, sacrificing, and outstanding moral subjects for practicing on the front-line without adequate protective gear and other clinical resources; 2. Nurses as “model citizens” - positioning nurses as compliant, hardworking, and obedient subjects in contrast to harmful individuals and groups that ignore or resist COVID-19 public health measures. 3. Heroism itself as the reward for nurses - characterizing hero worship as a fitting reward for nurses who were unappreciated pre-pandemic, as opposed to supporting long-term policy change, and highlighting how heroism reconfigures nursing work from the mundane and ordinary to the exciting and impactful. ConclusionsThe hero discourse is not a neutral expression of appreciation and sentimentality, but rather a tool employed to accomplish multiple aims such as the normalization of nurses’ exposure to risk, the enforcement of model citizenship, and the preservation of existing power relationships that limit the ability of front-line nurses to determine the conditions of their work. Our study has implications for approaching the collective political response of nursing in the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and formalizing the ongoing emotional, psychological, ethical, and practice supports of nurses as the pandemic continues.

Are Milgram’s Obedience Studies Internally Valid? Critique and Counter-Critique

This article challenges the most significant methodological criticism directed at Milgram’s obedience studies, namely, that they lack internal validity because most obedient subjects probably did not believe that the “learner” was actually receiving dangerous electric shocks (Orne & Holland, 1968). This criticism has been bolstered recently by data that claims to show that this was indeed the case (Perry et al., 2020; Hollander & Turowetz, 2017). We argue instead that while Milgram’s experimental paradigm has minor methodological flaws, the resilient issue of believability is actually a red herring, because Milgram’s procedure ensured subjects remained uncertain about the reality of the shocks they were ostensibly delivering. This uncertainty forced all subjects into resolving the experiment’s inherent moral dilemma. That is, would they prematurely end a potentially real experiment and secure the learner’s safety? Or would they continue to inflict “shocks” they believed were perhaps, probably, or even most certainly fake, thus still running the risk of potentially being wrong? We believe the obedience experiments remain, for the most part, internally valid, and that they continue to be externalisable to other moral dilemmas. They help in understanding the perpetration of the Holocaust, contrary to the opposite claim made by some of Milgram’s critics.

Social Control in Late Antiquity: The Violence of Small Worlds ed. by Kate Cooper and Jamie Wood

Reviewed by: Social Control in Late Antiquity: The Violence of Small Worlds ed. by Kate Cooper and Jamie Wood Kristina Sessa Kate Cooper and Jamie Wood, editors Social Control in Late Antiquity: The Violence of Small Worlds Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020 Pp. xiii + 380. $120.00. In Social Control in Late Antiquity: The Violence of Small Worlds, a group of international scholars brings the insights of past studies on power relations and early Christianity, such as contributions by Michel Foucault, to bear on a set of still relatively understudied contexts: smaller-scale social configurations, such as the household, the schoolroom, and the monastery. Here the emphasis is on [End Page 643] personal relationships (parent-child, slave-master, cleric-parishioner, teacher-student, abbot-monk), and on various forms of social control used within these contexts to shape discourse, behavior, and subjectivity. As stated in the volume's introduction by its editors, Kate Cooper and Jamie Wood, "[s]chools, monasteries, and churches played a pivotal role in enforcing and reproducing the social order, and their work of cultivating obedient subjects often involved symbolic or actual violence" (10). Drawing inspiration from microhistory and the study of "small worlds," the editors explain how the fifteen essays contribute to a singular goal: to elucidate and analyze the ways in which a range of Christian powerbrokers used violence (understood capaciously in both the physical and discursive sense) to "draw members into their communities and to intensify the commitment of new members once they had joined, drawing them into alignment as sharers of an independent subjectivity" (10). Following the editors' introduction, the book's contents are arranged in four parts, each preceded by a succinct summary of the section's general arguments. (In my opinion, sectional mini-introductions should appear in all edited collections, since they both convey general points of interconnection between the essays and provide readers with a sort of "cheat sheet" for what follows.) Part One, "Women and Children First: Autonomy and Social Control in the Late Ancient Household," features four essays that examine violence and social control within the context of the household (understood primarily as a social relationship), with essays on the monastic confinement of female family members (Hillner); Gregory of Nyssa's highly personal take on the corporeal punishment of children (Limberis); the household master-slave relationship in the preaching of John Chrysostom (Tallon); and Augustine on concubinage, and the framing of his remarkably nuanced, if not utterly idiosyncratic, understanding of male-female sexual partnerships (Cooper). Part Two, "'Slaves, Be Subject to Your Masters': Discipline and Moral Autonomy in a Slave Society," features three essays that interrogate discourses and material practices of humiliation and subordination within the context of the eastern Mediterranean monastery. Slavery in these essays is explored in both the concrete legal sense and a more abstracted, symbolic sense, so as to apply to the subjectivity of both the technically free and unfree. (Indeed, several authors underscore the fluid semantic overlap of these categories, especially within a monastic setting.) Thus, there is an essay on the discursive impact of slavery in the formation of the Syrian monastic subject and body (de Wet); an essay that explores the hermeneutic complexity of using early Christian sources to reconstruct the intersection of asceticism and slavery (Larsen); and a chapter on children in Egyptian monasteries, whose upbringing and employment within this particular ascetic space sometimes blurred the boundaries between filii and famuli (Giorda). Part Three, "Knowledge, Power, and Symbolic Violence: The Aesthetics of Control in Christian Pedagogy," tackles the important question of social control, subject formation, and the use of violence (not always symbolic) in schools and other teaching contexts, such as the church service. In what is the longest section with five essays, we read about John Chrysostom's employ of the "strategic utility of fear" to generate a particular type of ethical self and a more coherent group [End Page 644] identity (Leyerle, 173); the parallel uses of violence and humility in the training of both elite laymen in rhetorical schools and Christian ascetics in monastic contexts (Wood); Eusebius's acts of intellectual violence to pagan philosophical texts in the Praeparatio evangelica through his strategic "poaching" of pagan sources (Johnson...

Responsibility to choose: Governmentality in China’s participatory dam resettlement processes

Abstract This contribution analyzes the social impacts of participatory approaches introduced by international development agencies and the Chinese central government on dam resettlement in China. By analyzing resettlement villages in Yunnan Province, we first explore the complex ways in which local governments implemented one specific participatory approach, namely the right for dam resettlers to choose between self- or government-organized resettlement. We examine the reactions and specific responses of dam migrants to this participatory approach and probe how this ‘right to choose’ testifies to political rationalities that convey a narrow understanding of participation and shift responsibility for resettlement outcomes from the state to households. Secondly, we highlight the ways in which migrant households navigate the new participatory approach and its impacts on post-resettlement livelihoods. We notably highlight how the ‘right to choose’ reshuffled pre-resettlement social and power relations between local authorities and self- and government-resettlers. Our study demonstrates, first, that in China’s (neo)socialist governmentality, participatory approaches create (neo)liberal and (neo)socialist dam migrant subjectivities. The former cope with various disincentives and are successfully responsibilized and turned into obedient subjects. The latter are incentivized to be obedient and responsible, but instead frequently challenge the local state. Second, households which have decided to self-organize their resettlement in line with (neo)liberal rationalities are socially and economically marginalized regardless of their earlier social status. By applying a governmentality analytics, this study thus provides a nuanced picture of processes of marginalization and contestation in the course of dam-induced resettlement. Instead of running along the lines of rich and poor, marginalization through participation cuts across the economic divide and can better be explained by differentiating between (neo)liberal and (neo)socialist subjects.

Situationism, subjunctive hypocrisy and standing to blame

ABSTRACTPhilosophers have argued that subjects who act wrongly in the situationist psychology experiments are morally responsible for their actions. This paper argues that though the obedient subjects in Milgram’s ‘Obedience to Authority’ experiments are blameworthy, since most of us would have acted in the same manner they did, it is inappropriate for most of us to blame them. On Todd’s ([2019]. “A Unified Account of the Moral Standing to Blame.” Noûs 53 (2): 347–374.) recent account of standing to blame, agents lack the standing to blame others for a wrong when they are not sufficiently committed to the moral values which would condemn that wrong. I argue that the obedient subjects lack sufficient commitment to the kinds of values which would condemn their wrongdoing. This is evidenced by the fact that the wrongdoing was severe, that the subjects had the capacity to avoid wrongdoing, and that there was very little cost to avoiding wrongdoing. Since these studies are very well-replicated, most of us in the moral community would have acted as they did for similar reasons. At least 80% of us therefore lack the standing to blame the obedient subjects.

Electrified Voices: How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868–1945 by Kerim Yasar

Reviewed by: Electrified Voices: How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868–1945 by Kerim Yasar Daqing Yang (bio) Electrified Voices: How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868–1945 By Kerim Yasar. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. Pp. 304. Beginning with the little-known fact that Japanese was the second language transmitted across telephone lines (after English), Kerim Yasar laments that the study of modernity has long favored the visual and overlooked the auditory. Indeed, sound, one of the ubiquitous key elements of social life, is usually absent in historians' reconstructions of the past. How to bring this muted subject back into historical inquiry? More than two decades ago, Japanese media scholar Yoshimi Shunya attempted just that with his pioneering study in Japanese, Capitalism of the "Voice": A Social History of the Telephone, Radio, and Phonograph (1995). Although Electrified Voices seems to bear certain resemblances, it is a very different book. Whereas Yoshimi emphasized auditory technologies breaking down the centuries-old dominance of print media, Yasar sees their advent in Japan not only as a technological rupture but also as a reformulation of past practices. As Yasar argues, "modern technologies, which have often been thought to go hand-in-hand with modern forms, became vectors for traditional arts and even for traditional lifeways and reactionary ideologies" (p. 7). If Yoshimi wrestled with introducing the study of voice and sound to his Japanese readers, Yasar makes the experience of modern Japan relevant to non-area specialists, in part through a critical dialogue with an impressive array of theories on sound and voice in recent decades. Trained in cultural history and media studies with a background in music, Yasar demonstrates in rich detail how Japan's cultural elites crafted specific types of orality conditioned by the different electronic media at different moments in their technological development and reception in modern Japan. The book begins with a discussion of voice and orality in the Japanese context, followed by a succinct assessment of the impact of the first electric technologies—the telegraph and the telephone (chapter 1). Both are shown to have shaped a language being standardized and a sense of national community [End Page 1233] at a critical time of nation-building in Meiji Japan. Next, Yasar examines in-depth Japan's traditional and modern soundscape—defined as sounds that comprise the auditory environment (chapter 2). While Westerners visiting Japan often described Japanese music as an alien acoustic experience, even rejecting it as barbaric, Japanese elites quickly embraced Western music, initially through military bands and music education in schools. This reflects the obvious power asymmetries rather than acoustic qualities. With the stage set, the rest of the book covers major auditory technologies. Yasar then examines the early use of the phonograph, introduced to Japan in 1877 (chapter 3). The recording and commercial duplication of popular entertainment in Japan such as naniwabushi and rakugo vividly illustrate the author's point that "Japan's oral performance traditions were not vanquished by modernity—on the contrary, they experience the renaissance while concurrently metamorphosing into new genres across new media and distribution platforms" (p. 7). Disputes over whether recorded voice constituted real art also shaped Japan's early copyright law. The electric medium that receives most attention is radio broadcasting, started in the mid-1920s and popularized as Japan embarked on new continental expansion in the 1930s. The book analyzes two of radio's public deployments: exercise and sport reporting, which created obedient subjects as well as an imagined community of listeners (chapter 4). Yasar then shows how the relatively short-lived but immensely popular radio drama offered democratic potential, opening the door for amateurs to create content, albeit with elites exercising gatekeeping (chapter 5). The final chapter is devoted to uses of voice (and sound) in Japan's nascent film industry, above all highlighting both the spatial and temporal importance of spoken Japanese. Electrified Voices is situated between studies of technological developments that emphasize social negotiation and technological determinism and universalism. Its main protagonists are writers, actors, directors, and occasionally private entrepreneurs, rather than engineers or industrialists. Addressing specific local demands and conditions, these acoustic pioneers in Japan also tuned...

The curious case of Bakht er Ruda: liberal education, freedom and other technologies of colonial government

Drawing on the literature on governmentality, recent studies of colonial power emphasize the role of sovereign power and discipline as the means of creating obedient subjects in the exercise and maintenance of colonial rule. Through examining educational materials of the Bakht er Ruda educational institute of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and its work in liberalizing education, this essay argues for the significance of liberal technologies of rule as modes of exercising power and securing colonial rule over the natives. Specifically, we will look at two aspects of Bakht er Ruda’s programme. Through a close reading of colonial era documents, we will first examine the use of school societies as a means of training the Sudanese into a harmonious and orderly social whole through the interiorization of a set of norms, bringing together ideas and practices relating to freedom and responsibility. Secondly, we look at the introduction of psychology as a language and set of techniques utilized by the institute in the construction of political subjects skilled in the self-regulation of desires and actions necessary for the free and responsible subject, upon which liberalism as a strategy of power depends.

Oryginalność Komisji Edukacji Narodowej na tle europejskim

The uniqueness of the Commission of National Education in Europe As a result of the ban imposed on the Society of Jesus, post-Jesuit schools and funds had to be submitted to control. On 14 October 1773, on the initiative of king Stanisław August Poniatowski, the Commission of National Education (KEN) was appointed during a session of the parliament confirming the First Partition of Poland. The Commission was a body supervising the entire Polish education system, as well as an education fund created from the post-Jesuit assets. The king and the members of Parliament hoped that the Commission would reform the Polish education system and subsequently Poland would become a powerful state again. The Commission was a state institution appointed by parliament and answerable only to parliament. The Commission members included well-educated individuals, prominent politicians, representatives of the social elite who added to the Commission of National Education’s prestige. The school reform was inspired by the concepts of physiocracy (adapted to Polish conditions), the achievements of the pedagogy and philosophy of the Enlightenment, coupled with the local political and educational heritage, as well as the experiences of the National Academy in educating teachers and in cooperating with secondary schools. The Commission of National Education did not have any examples to follow, be it for institutional work or the planned school reform. The Commission managed to create a new type of state institution in charge of education. University-level education was provided to teachers, while the universities themselves were upgraded in terms of academic requirements and organisation. Departments were replaced with two equal-rank colleges. A Moral College was established with social science and humanities in mind, while a Physical College was created with mathematics and natural science in mind. The universities were delegated the responsibility of academic and pedagogic supervision of secondary schools. The Commission established the modern profession of teacher, the so-called academic estate. Polish was introduced to schools as a teaching language, accompanied by an encyclopaedic curriculum. Polish school books were developed. An enlightened and responsible nobleman-cum-patriot was offered as an educational model. The Laws of the Commission of National Education for the academic estate and the schools of the Polish Republic, an academic legal code, was developed and published in 1783. The Commission was appointed by parliament and had an educational fund at its sole disposal. It was esponsible only to parliament for its activity and financial policy. This significantly differentiated the KEN from the institutions supervising education in Russia, Germany or Austria, as well as other countries, which were financially and legally dependent on enlightened monarchs. The KEN schools educated patriots and citizens, while the schools in absolutist monarchies desired loyal and obedient subjects of the tsar or king.

Sports Education in Colonial Bengal: A Double-Edged Sword?

Insufficient attention has been given to studies that relate sports, education and colonial policies in South Asia. Partly based on archival research, this article brings out different perspectives on the introduction of British sports into colonial Bengal as an educational device to produce obedient subjects. Several hegemonic and educational agenda intersected to formulate civilising ambitions. However, these turned out to be only partially successful, since the civilising aims of colonial sports education were constantly undercut by local acts of adaptation and modification. Dramatic evidence of Indians’ sports victories, in due course, severely challenged hegemonic agenda, so that strengthening and educating ‘the natives’ through sports turned out to be a double-edged sword. But this process also gave the Indian subcontinent a unique, exciting sports culture with nationalist colourings.

Out of the Ruins: The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces ed. by Robert H. Haworth and John M. Elmore

Reviewed by: Out of the Ruins: The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces ed. by Robert H. Haworth and John M. Elmore Sarah Moon Out of the Ruins: The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces Edited by Robert H. Haworth and John M. Elmore PM Press, 2017. 288 pp. Click for larger view View full resolution When Occupy Wall Street began on September 19, 2011, I was thrilled. Just out college, September 11th had been a wake-up call for me. I began reading too much on the internet and devoured Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, my first exposure to capitalist critique, in a couple nights. In 2007, I became involved in environmental organizing around mountain-top removal. I was drawn to the movement out of a deep-felt compassion for the people and land affected and I stayed involved for several years because of the sense of belonging the movement offered. It was the first time I had found a group of people that seemed to share the disenchantment I had experienced but who were also taking action against hegemonic powers: raising awareness, promoting legislation to end mountaintop removal, carrying out direct actions, and raising funds to bring clean drinking water to affected communities. Understanding the human cost and environmental impact of the legal crime of mountaintop removal forced me to acknowledge the extent to which our current system is not aimed at universal empowerment, health, well-being, and freedom. Out of the Ruins is based on the premise that many educators recognize the degree of harm perpetrated by the global capitalist system and believe that traditional education serves that system. The contributors to Out of the Ruins recognize traditional education as cooperating with the capitalist system to produce obedient subjects who will accept the existing system as the best possible reality and raise no challenge to it. Several of the authors throughout the text use the term "deschool," the process of helping individuals unlearn what they have been taught through traditional education, to describe the first goal of their work. But the authors in Out of the Ruins go beyond system critique to also share examples of a variety of informal learning spaces both with and without ties to the university. In the introduction, editor Richard Haworth quotes Max Haivan that living within our current system, "our ability to imagine possibilities beyond the confines of market values, especially those thoughts and ideas based in possibly futures outside our current practices is minimized or squashed" (6). Out of the Ruins [End Page 97] shows us that the work of critical pedagogy and radical informal learning spaces is to reawaken that imagination and connect with others also seeking what Deleuze and Guattari call "lines of flight." The collection moves from critiques of standard education to theoretical frameworks for alternative education and finally to depictions of radical informal learning spaces in cities across North America and the UK. Community literacy educators will find much value in this book, both on the theoretical front and in the examples of radical informal learning spaces that provide both inspiration as well as reflection on the pitfalls and limitations of such spaces. The opening chapter, "Miseducation and the Authoritarian Mind," serves as foundational for the collection by establishing the need for liberatory education to counter the rise of authoritarian thinking in education and society-at-large. John Elmore takes time to paint a picture of two authoritarian personality types, sadistic authoritarian and passive authoritarian, both plagued by fear of life's ambiguities, which drives them to seek the safety and predictability of hierarchical structure. By turns dominating those below and submitting to those above, authoritarian individuals affirm the hierarchy and thereby keep anxieties at bay. Elmore writes that traditional education has served the development of the authoritarian personality and ultimately become a "co-conspirator with despotism" (25) and calls for critical educators to "find ways to turn our classrooms into laboratories of critical consciousness" and "lead the way out of the ruins" (33). In "Don't Ask, Just Think," David Gabbard takes up the titular admonition of Slavoj Zizek and directs it at critical pedagogues. Gabbard challenges critical pedagogues to consider their potential idiocy (defined...

Reexamining Foucault on confession and obedience: Peter Schaefer's Radical Pietism as counter-conduct

This article engages with Michel Foucault’s idea of confession as the central Christian strategy of subjection or subjectivation and the link he proposes between confession and obedience. The article also wishes to show how confession can become counter-conduct. I apply Foucault’s conceptions to early modern Lutheran confessionalism, elucidating how the confessional apparatus of the orthodox Lutheranism of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Sweden strived to mold obedient subjects who are able to conduct themselves. I also examine the transformation and overthrow of these subjectivation techniques in Radical Pietism, analyzing a dissident confession of faith by the Radical Pietist Peter Schaefer, who exemplifies perfect subjection, constituting himself as a perfectly obedient subject, and yet a failure of subjectivation in the sense of submission, insofar as for him, obedience becomes a strategy of empowerment.

Emotional Memory Forever: The Cinematography of Paul Ewing

Emotional Memory Forever: The Cinematography of Paul Ewing

Of Shepherds, Sheep and Sheepdogs? Governing the Adherent Self through Complementary and Competing 'Pastorates'.

Foucault’s concept of ‘pastoral power’ describes an important technique for constituting obedient subjects. Derived from his analysis of the Christian pastorate, he saw pastoral power as a prelude to contemporary technologies of governing ‘beyond the State’, where ‘experts’ shepherd self-governing subjects. However, the specific practices of modern pastorate have been little developed. This article examines the relational practices of pastoral power associated with the government of medicine use within the English healthcare system. The study shows how multiple pastors align their complementary and variegated practices to conduct behaviours, but also how pastors compete for legitimacy, and face resistance through the mobilisation of alternative discourses and the strategic exploitation of pastoral competition. The article offers a dynamic view of the modern pastorate within the contemporary assemblages of power.

For a Proper Home: Housing Rights in the Margins of Urban Chile, 1960–2010 by Edward Murphy

Edward Murphy, For a Proper Home: Housing Rights in Margins of Urban Chile, 1960-2010. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015. 360 pp.In For A Proper Home: Housing Rights in Margins of Urban Chile, 1960-2010, Edward Murphy blends anthropology and history to tell story of generations of Chileans who have fought for right to a home of their own. No other quest, he argues, has so absorbed Chile's successive political regimes than making possible universal home ownership. Right wing governments believed that home ownership would turn urban rabble into obedient subjects. Christian Democrats believed that home ownership would weaken support for Marxist parties and turn urban poor into moral and proper citizens. Even Chile's Marxist parties prioritized home ownership, building thousands of single-family homes when they were in government and mobilizing illegal land occupations when they were outside.Murphy begins his book by discussing a dilemma: how to best help a poor family deal with immediate and dire circumstances they are confronting. Ironically, family's desperate situation coincides with fulfillment of their dream of home ownership. They are one of an array of families whose lives Murphy follows over a period of decades. In course of their valiant, almost futile, efforts to secure a home of their own, families face illness, job loss, drug addiction, beatings, torture, arrests, and multiple indignities. By end of book, most of these families have attained a home of their own. Contrary to their expectations, however, their suffering is far from over. By insisting that home ownership is an essential and non-negotiable right of citizenship, Murphy argues, Chileans now find themselves constrained by their achievement of home ownership and bounded notions of poverty reduction (270).Tracing theoretical literature, Murphy ponders paradox of Marxist parties promising private property in form of family homes. In Part One: Unsettled Foundations, he takes us back to mid-19th century Santiago to explain exactly how that happened. In colonial Chile, poverty and homelessness went hand in hand. President Vicuna Mackenna (1831 - 1886) constructed a sanitary buffer to protect Santiago's elegant, civilized, and enlightened center from barbarian and diseased African hordes on its periphery (45). The barrier rived city in two, a spatial layout that-despite shift of wealthy from center of Santiago to northwest suburbs-remains a defining feature to this day.1 Although President Mackenna renovated some existing tenements and low quality housing stock, his effort only succeeded in driving up rents, leading to mushrooming of makeshift shanties and spread of disease.Anarchist and Communist organizers in Santiago and Valparaiso responded to homeless crisis by launching massive rent strikes in 1925. A representative of Renters League, the umbrella group that had spearheaded protests, made following demand: We want each worker or employee to have his own hygienic and comfortable home... That is patriotism (54). Not only did Left make home ownership a central feature of society they proposed to build, they rhetorically mirrored elite's equation of home ownership with moral caliber, personal discipline, and appropriate forms of behavior (57). The homeless crisis grew more acute during Great Depression. Migration from countryside soared, continuing to climb even after country recovered. Between 1940 and 1970, Santiago tripled in size. Migrants slept in temporary shanties, pubic parks, and under bridges. Their dire situation made housing a central issue for left wing parties that constituted Popular Front (1938-1942) as well as for center left and center right governments that followed. Beginning in late 1950s, Marxist parties embraced illegal land occupations as a principal tactic and form of class struggle. …

Kasaysayan, Sining, Lipunan: Ang Politika ng Panitikan sa Makabagong Panahon

Given the reality of our neocolonial situation, the discipline of literary study fulfills its received pedagogical function of converting reason-bearing individuals into obedient subjects. This normative ideology represses criticism, concealing the lived experience of exploitation and class conficts. The concept of ideology itself is suppressed, replaced with accepted terms and approved habits of interpretation. Meanings of art-works are identified with the single author’s identity, thus ignoring or excluding their enabling contexts and institutional practices. Using a symptomatic, historicist reading of Lualhati Bautista’s novel as an example, this essay argues that the ideology of texts differs from that of the author owing to diverse mediating factors. Current forces of alienation and reification intervene. Through their own mechanisms of interpellation, texts transform readers into subjects who attempt to imaginarily resolve real social contradictions. Given our multilingual and multiethnic audience, the choice of language for literary expression becomes crucial in the process of articulating textual meanings as multifaceted, dynamic reflections of specific conjunctures in Philippine history.

Kasaysayan, Sining, Lipunan: Ang Politika ng Panitikan sa Makabagong Panahon

Given the reality of our neocolonial situation, the discipline of literary study fulfills its received pedagogical function of converting reason-bearing individuals into obedient subjects. This normative ideology represses criticism, concealing the lived experience of exploitation and class conficts. The concept of ideology itself is suppressed, replaced with accepted terms and approved habits of interpretation. Meanings of art-works are identified with the single author’s identity, thus ignoring or excluding their enabling contexts and institutional practices. Using a symptomatic, historicist reading of Lualhati Bautista’s novelas an example, this essay argues that the ideology of texts differs from that of the author owing to diverse mediating factors. Current forces of alienation and reification intervene. Through their own mechanisms of interpellation, texts transform readers into subjects who attempt to imaginarily resolve real social contradictions. Given our multilingual and multiethnic audience, the choice of language for literary expression becomes crucial in the process of articulating textual meanings as multifaceted, dynamic reflections of specific conjunctures in Philippine history.

Responsible for the state: The case of obedient subjects

This article explains how we ordinary subjects of a state who are neither political leaders nor functionaries are responsible for outcomes that are properly attributed to that state and that took place during our adult lifetime. Its focus is on the connection we forge to those outcomes via our obedience alone. If our responsibility as subjects is justified, it would apply under all regime types including oppressive and authoritarian ones. The argument is that this responsibility can only be justified within a minimal account of agency and a bare-bones account of responsibility. Thus, while we incur a burden of responsibility for the state via our obedience alone, that burden does not suffice to either blame us or extract remedies from us for state injustices. For us obedient subjects, however, it is important that we be cognizant of this burden as it marks the most minimal agency we exercise in the state.