Political Icon Research Articles

Political icon and role model: Dimensions of the perceived ‘Greta effect’ among climate activists as aspects of contemporary social movement leadership

The 2019 Fridays For Future global climate strikes were extraordinary protest mobilisations in many respects, both in terms of size, age composition and the absence of a specific external triggering event. To properly understand it, one must account for Greta Thunberg's leadership role in the mobilisation – the ‘Greta effect’. We contribute to such an account by linking the ‘Greta effect’ on individual mobilisation to theories of political iconicity and political role models. Empirically, we use unique data from two waves of international surveys of participants in European Fridays For Future protests – on 15 March and 20–27 September 2019 – demonstrating that the perceived individual impact of Greta differs considerably among those who were mobilised in climate strikes. Through multilevel regression analysis, we furthermore show that (a) young women were especially prone to have been inspired and mobilised by Thunberg as a role model and (b) subjectively assessed mobilising influence by ‘Greta’ – in her capacity as a political icon – is positively related to protest participants’ instrumental motivation, sense of solidarity and collective identity. We argue that our results contribute to a better understanding of informal social movement leadership in contemporary political mobilisations.

Sul Ross at Texas A&M by John A. Adams Jr

Reviewed by: Sul Ross at Texas A&M by John A. Adams Jr Dan R. Frost Sul Ross at Texas A&M. By John A. Adams Jr. Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students, Texas A&M University. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2021. Pp. xiv, 269. $32.95, ISBN 978-1-62349-938-9.) The title of this book is slightly misleading. Sul Ross at Texas A&M covers more than just Lawrence Sullivan “Sul” Ross’s time as president of the [End Page 166] Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (Texas A&M) from February 1891 until his death in January 1898. The work also provides solid background information on Ross’s previous roles as a Texas Ranger, Confederate brigadier general, and governor of Texas. John A. Adams Jr. demonstrates that Ross’s popularity in these earlier occupations paved the way for his tenure as the college’s president. The book also more fully develops Ross’s time at Texas A&M than the two other key works on the subject, Henry C. Dethloff’s A Centennial History of Texas A&M University, 1876 to 1976 (College Station, Tex., 1975) and Judith Ann Benner’s Sul Ross: Soldier, Statesman, Educator (College Station, Tex., 1983). Aside from the typical duties of running a college, Ross spent much time mulling requests to return to political office, including a possible third term as governor. Nevertheless, through the copious use of Ross’s personal correspondence, Adams reveals that Ross, although attracted to the intrigues of Texas politics, decided to remain at the college and forgo a resumption of his political career. Politics nonetheless intruded on Ross’s time as president. Like other leaders of agricultural and mechanical colleges during the Gilded Age, Ross annually lobbied sympathetic legislators for appropriations and fought those who doubted the value of the applied scientific, agricultural, and mechanical engineering courses provided by the college and who would have scrapped the institution altogether. His popularity and political connections prevailed in getting the larger budgets necessary to accommodate the growing number of students and faculty during what Adams rightly touts as Ross’s successful administration. This accomplishment is especially remarkable given that it coincided with an economic depression during the 1890s. Still, Adams’s treatment of Ross is adulatory. If Ross made any mistakes, either before or during his time at Texas A&M, one would never know it from reading this work. Ross’s efforts in behalf of his school are portrayed as selfless and in the best interests of all Texans. The author dismisses contemporary critics of Ross and his administration at A&M, who questioned the school’s classical courses or military instruction at the expense of scientific, agricultural, and mechanical engineering education, as ignorantly, politically, selfishly, or even nefariously motivated. Yet academics and legislators throughout the South legitimately debated such issues regarding the proper courses of instruction for agricultural and mechanical colleges. Adams needed not impugn the motives of all of Ross’s critics over their valid concerns to demonstrate what the author believes was the Texas A&M president’s outstanding character. Like his detractors who supported other schools, Ross fought politically to advance his college’s interests. The Texas legislature, Adams notes, struggled to appropriate funds to at least four state-supported institutions of higher learning during the late nineteenth century. The post–Civil War proliferation of schools offering similar curricula occurred throughout the South, and, as in Texas, it left behind more academically and financially weak institutions than strong ones. In this environment, the political and personal interests of collegiate presidents in acquiring larger appropriations than their competitors were inevitable and made Ross no more innocent of political machinations for his school than any other collegiate president. Ross was an influential former governor; it is not surprising that he triumphed over adversaries with less political influence. [End Page 167] Adams credits much of Ross’s fame in Texas to an emerging “celebrity journalism” that “heightened the visibility of business and political icons, lionizing these key personalities and their activities” (p. 204). This ode to Ross includes him among such accomplished figures as Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and William Jennings...

Lumumba in the Arts

Lumumba in the Arts

NORAS UTVIKLING MOT «JÆVN NATURSANDHED»: Utviklingen av realistisk skuespillerkunst sett gjennom Henrik Ibsens Nora

Abstract
 Henrik Ibsen’s dramaturgy, physical score and knowledge of theatre changed the way actors work to portray a character. This historiographic article addresses the development of acting methods seen through Henrik Ibsen’s Nora and Ibsen’s revolutionary renewal of drama and female representation. From Betty Henning created the first Nora in Copenhagen in 1879 three main traditions can be traced: A Nora with roots in melodramatic acting, a Nora as a political icon and a Nora portrayed through psychological realism. The three categories mix together in a complex loom. This article will reflect on how Ibsen’s Nora required that actresses made their characters life-like and credible to the audience through what he called being continuously true to reality, "jævn natursandhed" (Ibsen 1878). By doing so he changed the very concept of acting.

Political deification of Lord Parshuram: tracing Brahminic masculinity in contemporary North India

ABSTRACT This article explores the rising prominence of subterranean caste antagonism within the ideology of Hindutva within the Indian political landscape. It primarily analyses social media-based content like memes, posts, images, comments and other features to understand the contemporary processes of political deification of the Hindu god, Lord Parshuram. This article sees Parshuram’s popular emergence as a political icon as reflective of a masculine, militant face of contemporary Brahminic assertion. The article argues that, even though the ideological mandate of Hindutva apparently proposes a unity amongst its diverse sections, Parshuram’s contemporary politicization in digital social media reflects the dominant caste antagonisms within. In the process, this article engages with the complex relationship between the social structures of masculinity, religious majority and caste hierarchy, and study how they affect region-specific political consolidations in contemporary North India.

Julius Caesar

Reviewed by: Julius Caesar Gabriella Edelstein Julius Caesar Presented by the Sydney Theatre Company at the Wharf 1 Theatre, Sydney. 19 November–19 December 2021. Directed by Kip Williams. Designed by Elizabeth Gadsby. Lighting by Amelia Lever-Davidson. Music and sound design composed by Stefan Gregory. Video design by David Bergman. Fight direction by Tim Dashwood. With Geraldine Hakewill (Mark Antony/Casca), Zahra Newman (Brutus/Lepidus), and Ewen Leslie (Julius Caesar/Cassius/Cinna the Poet/Octavius). Australian politics is blighted by a revolving door of Prime Ministers. Due to the quirks of our democracy, in which parliamentary terms are a short three years, and political party members can easily “roll” a leader in the face of another election cycle, Australia has had six Prime Ministers since 2011. Kip Williams’s production of Julius Caesar is well situated in this Australian context, where internecine party politics have been so ruthless that one former Prime Minister, John Howard, likened the leadership spills to the “Night of the Long Knives,” the 1934 Nazi purge of political opponents. But rather than only focusing on the results of (metaphorical) assassinations in Australian political culture, this production was also interested in examining a pervasive cynicism in Western politics at large, particularly the verbal and visual rhetoric that is used to mask or legitimize violence. Performed in the round on a bare white stage that looked like a boxing ring, the center of this production—both literally and figuratively—was a substantial cube made up of LED screens, designed by Elizabeth Gadsby. Over the duration of the show, the screens projected pre-recorded and live footage, stage directions indicating who was entering and exiting, text setting the scene (“OUTSIDE THE CAPITOL SENATORS PETITION [End Page 283] CAESAR ON THE STREET”), and montages of political icons and Roman imagery. The cube rose and fell throughout the performance, with the actors either performing around or underneath it. At the beginning of the production, the cube lit up with paintings of Tarquin’s exile from Rome in 509 BCE with text superimposed upon the images, giving the audience a potted history of the Roman Republic. The actors entered and walked around the cube, explaining the particular importance for Brutus of maintaining the Republic, whose ancestor five hundred years prior had banished Tarquin and in doing so overthrew Rome’s monarchy. At several points in the play’s opening exposition, the actors mentioned—albeit anachronistically—Roman “democracy.” It became clear to me that this production would follow in the footsteps of other recent Julius Caesars—such as Nicholas Hytner’s 2018 production at the Bridge Theatre in London, or the infamous 2017 Public Theater Julius Caesar in New York—that used the play’s interrogation of authoritarianism and republicanism to express anxieties about the steady backsliding of democracy worldwide. But whereas other productions of this play have been interested in the power of the mob or a particular blonde and coiffed American President, Williams’s Julius Caesar cast its satirical and critical gaze at two of our modern afflictions: the contemporary politician, and the smartphone. The floating cube was not the production’s only use of technology. For much of the play, the actors circled the stage, holding out smartphones which they used to video each other. Their recordings were projected onto the cube in real time. Seeing the actors’ faces magnified on the screens reminded me of Cassius’s question to Brutus, “Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?” and Brutus’s response: “No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself / But by reflection, by some other things” (1.2.52–4). In the twenty-first century, these reflections, these “other things,” are our faces cast back to us on our smartphone displays. The smartphones were used to interesting effect when the characters were soliloquizing. When projected in tight rectangles upon the cube, their speeches became claustrophobic confessions. At times, I found the spectacle of the actors following each other with their phones outstretched as they passionately disputed Caesar’s assassination unintentionally comical or frustrating. Screen-fatigued after two years of lockdown, I felt my attention was constantly drawn towards the cube when I would have preferred...

Examining the Intricacy of Character Formation among Kenyan Children: The Diminishing Role of Schools


 
 
 
 Kenya, like the rest of the world, is grappling with the problem of undesirable character among its citizens. Whereas the country’s system of education identifies character formation as one of the aims of its education, the same is not reflected in the products of the system. This paper sought to reflect over the whole affair of character formation, with special focus on why schools have not been able to successfully achieve this important learning outcome. The paper, drawn from an earlier analytical study on pedagogies of character formation among Kenyan schools, exposed the underbelly of society in general, where the latter passed as a major impediment towards character formation efforts. Some influencers, among them showbiz celebrities and political icons, proved quite impressionistic to youngsters, hence drawing them into the vices they portrayed. Families, on the other hand, had not fully lived up to their primary duty of moulding children into righteous beings, and various reasons were advanced. However, schools, despite their infirmities, were established as the better option, owing to their relatively structured way of forming character among children. Whereas they were variously blamed for the mess in the society, they still remained the only reliable agent that the country relied on – given the professionalism within them, and the amount of time children spent there. It is for this reason that the paper advocated the strengthening of character formation programmes in schools, specifically, finding ways through which knowledge on and conviction for good character could best be communicated to learners.
 
 
 
 

Iconography as a Means of Reaching Political Power: A Case Study of Three Georgian Presidents

This paper focuses on analyzing the structure of political iconography as one of the methods to achieve political power. On this basis, the political iconography of three Georgian presidents is analyzed. In the modern world, the most important tool for politics and politicians is creating a political icon. Political iconography is directly connected with Christian iconography. It is widely known that in order to get the desired impact on the society, various forms and means of mass communication are used such as personal, social, visual, rhetoric, audio, and communication. Using them without creating iconographic image from politicians does not have any result. Political iconography reaches and mostly remains in the mind of the society, and this leads people to make their decision to support the politician who is a hero of the iconography. This fits the narrative, meaning, and common discourse of the society, which formed an iconographic image of the certain politician. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new type of political iconography of Georgia was born which is essentially different from the Soviet iconography. The political iconography of these three Georgian presidents is based on the narrative of creating a modern state. There is however a substantial difference between them. Zviad Gamsakhurdia created the political iconography of a savior, Edward Shevardnadze was seen as an iconic politician, and Mikheil Saakashvili was a creator of power and savior.

Recalling Socialism through Clubbing Posters: A Visual Analysis of Grassroots Alternative Memory Practices

This article explores a particular marketing trend operating online during the 2010s and consisting of promoting clubbing parties using communist-style posters. The first part of the paper is dedicated to the theoretical framework and approaches the study of the posters also as an alternative memory practice that digitally marked the online landscape of leisure promotion, participating in the making of a nostalgia economy. A socio-semiotic analysis is used for a body of 118 communist themed clubbing advertisements posted online between 2009 and 2019, where content analysis provided data that narrowed the duration of the aforementioned marketing practices to a time span of six years. Content analysis also yielded an overview of the most used visual patterns, while the examination of the production techniques showed that most of the posters displayed extensive digital alteration of the ideological insignia, consistent with the conversion of political icons into kitsch practiced elsewhere in Eastern Europe. These findings are put in perspective within the context of a generational change, while the posters could be the basis for future research under the framework of collective and cultural memory.

"A Place on the Banknote": The Year in Malawi

"A Place on the Banknote"The Year in Malawi Nick Mdika Tembo (bio) In his introduction to Political Prisoner 3/75, Sam Mpasu berates Malawian writers for what he suspects is their disinterest in documenting the lives of Malawi's many notable figures since independence. "There are no biographies or autobiographies in our bookshops," he laments: "We know little or nothing about the leading personalities who risked life and limb to fight for our freedom and independence" (ix). Mpasu further observes that this lack of interest remains well after Malawi returned to multiparty democracy in 1994,1 for there are no biographies or autobiographies of all the presidents and vice presidents who have since come and gone in Malawi's political history. What baffles Mpasu even more is that this dearth of biographies and autobiographies is not only limited to political figures, but also extends to those in academia, the business community, civil society, and religious organizations who played critical roles to bring about multiparty democracy (xii). However, Timwa Lipenga's Lomathinda: Rose Chibambo Speaks and Ndongolera Mwangupili's A Gift to the People: Sr. Beatrice Chipeta's Legacy could be seen as recent responses to Mpasu's call on writers to gather the stories of figures who have impacted the lives of so many Malawians. In this review, I will focus on Lipenga's biography of Rose Chibambo, which was inspired by the author's desire to document "women of substance and women's contribution to history" in Malawi ("Biography" 38). A lecturer in French at the University of Malawi, Chancellor College, Timwa Lipenga teamed up with two like-minded academics, Jessie Kabwila and Hendrina Kachapila-Mazizwa, to found a self-funded initiative called the Malawian Women's Voices Project to curate the life stories of "women who had engaged in struggles in Malawi in various domains, such as politics, religion, popular culture, education, health and entrepreneurship" (iv). At the project's inception ten years ago, the three scholars drew up a wide range of the women they wanted to feature, including politicians, academics, businesswomen, and traditional birth attendants (iv). Lomathinda was birthed out of this coordinated effort. Niculin Jäger aptly summarizes the book in the following terms: [End Page 106] Coming five decades after [Malawi's] independence, this book provides an insight into the life of Rose Chibambo. It […] tells us the story of her life and how she naturally got involved in politics the moment she sensed the injustice of segregation. It is the story of a woman who stood up and lived up to her convictions, fighting for self-determination, shaping the history of her country, Malawi. Without any preceding experience in politics but with a natural sense of justice and solidarity, she and her fellow colleagues confronted the ruling system, in colonial times and after independence. (ii–iii) The book is shaped around the life and afterlife of Rose Chibambo, one of Malawi's most remarkable and committed political icons, freedom fighters, and philanthropists. Born Lomathinda Ziba, Chibambo is presented in the book as not only surviving her own difficult birth and childhood but also forging a formidable women's political movement to fight against colonial injustice and the neopatrimonialism that followed in its wake. "I went, talking to my friends, from house to house" (87), Chibambo recalls to Lipenga, adding that she "drafted a constitution, on a very plain paper" (88) to guide the operations of the newly formed Women's League. Chibambo was, in a way, incensed by a local chief who had belittled her at the time, saying that she, a woman, should leave political matters to men (86).2 Therefore, she decided to join in the fight against tyranny and injustice. In many ways, Chibambo was challenging the troubling constructions of women in most sub-Saharan societies, and she was speaking against a cultural text that erroneously deems women incapable of doing anything worthwhile on their own. Chibambo went on to become the only female member of parliament and the first female deputy cabinet minister when Malawi gained independence from Britain in 1964. Lipenga opts for a style where narration interrupts speech to present Chibambo's life instead of just...

Iconoclasm in New York: Revolution to Reenactment by Wendy Bellion

Reviewed by: Iconoclasm in New York: Revolution to Reenactment by Wendy Bellion Michelle Sizemore (bio) Iconoclasm in New York: Revolution to Reenactment wendy bellion Penn State University Press, 2019 272 pp. On July 9, 1776, a crowd toppled the equestrian statue of King George III in Lower Manhattan after a public reading of the Declaration of Independence. They beheaded the leaden king, smashed him to bits, and shipped off his remains to be melted into bullets for Washington's army. This much is well-known. Wendy Bellion's new book completes the story, offering a fascinating chronicle of the statue from its creation, installation, and display to its destruction and afterlife. The book's expansive investigation [End Page 955] of the battered statue focuses an account of early British American iconoclasm as a national "creation story" (3). Indeed, a great strength of the study is its dilation from fine details such as choice of the statue's material and its orientation in Bowling Green park to the broader sweep of transatlantic protest. In Bellion's words, "Iconoclasm in New York asks why Americans destroyed the statue of George III in 1776—and why they keep bringing it back." The answers are rewarding. Iconoclasm in New York argues that this legendary mock execution of the king dramatizes a fundamental tension in early American identity formation, for it was an act that at once figuratively severed political ties and secured cultural ties with Great Britain. By enlarging her survey of the event, Bellion builds on histories that view the symbolic regicide exclusively as a sign of American independence. The transatlantic scope and extensive timeframe of the project elucidate the continuities between radical protest in Revolutionary-era New York and British folk and Reformation practices. Further, this research adds to art history's burgeoning study of destruction, of which iconoclasm forms a crucial subset. The book is divided into two parts, each containing two chapters. Part I, "Iconoclasm: The Eighteenth Century," explores American iconoclasm in the eighteenth century within a longer British history and larger Atlantic network of people and objects. Part II, "Afterlife: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," traces the material remains of the statue and subsequent representations of its demolition. This structure makes manifest "how iconoclasm has continually shaped American identities since the very formation of the United States" (13). To set the stage for a discussion of the king's statue, chapter 1, "Idols in America: Liberty Poles," examines its immediate antecedent: the cycle of creation and destruction of five liberty poles in Manhattan between 1766 and 1776. Converted from pine masts, the liberty poles were powerful symbolic structures paraded from East River shipyards to the Commons (now City Hall Park), along the northern border of the city. The rituals of raising and felling invested the poles with meaning and agency. Both the American patriots who celebrated the poles and the British soldiers who demolished them transformed wooden posts into animate forces, joined in a reiterative process of creation, destruction, and recreation. For this reader, a wonderful highlight of the chapter is the prehistory of the masts, when they were trees in northern New England. Considered "princes of [End Page 956] the American forest" (24), the extraordinarily tall and perfectly straight white pines were valued for their sublime natural beauty and for shipbuilding, especially for masts; in addition, the jurisdiction over cutting white pines had long been under dispute between colonists and royal authority, making the trees one of the most contested resources in the British Empire. As Bellion explains, the liberty pole preserved these economic, political, and natural associations in its charged symbolism. This example is representative of the thorough attention given to every facet of icon-making and-breaking throughout the book. This chapter establishes the book's emphasis on the "thing power" of political icons in eighteenth-century America and beyond. Following the work of Jane Bennett, Bellion conceives of these objects as vital matter and proposes that we approach iconoclasm not simply as the human destruction of things but as a phenomenon in which things act on people and participate in the rituals of destruction. Importantly, these objects signified differently among New York's diverse population...

Greta Thunberg’s iconicity: Performance and co-performance in the social media ecology

Greta Thunberg’s meteoric rise from lonely school striker in August 2018 to global icon is one of the most remarkable political phenomena in recent decades, and one full of paradoxes. Thunberg started out with no resources, a child of 15 with limited experience and a history of Asperger’s. Thunberg’s iconic performance seems to have been able to turn these weaknesses into strengths. To understand how this happened, we must situate her analysis within the social media ecology. Two things distinguish this environment from previous phases: iconic protagonists now have wide degrees of control over their own performance, and audiences are no longer mere receptors of iconic performance, but active co-performers. Greta Thunberg is one of the first major political icons to have been fully formed within the new social media ecology. This article provides the first systematic analysis of this dynamic.

Thathagata Buddha Songs: Buddhism as Religion and Cultural-Resistance among Dalit Women Singers of Uttar Pradesh

This paper intends to understand music as a form of cultural expression that has enabled mobility to Dalit-Bahujan and their cultural production. This cultural production can be seen in the form of popular songs that are widely circulated among Dalits and is part of their religion, identity, as well as a cultural assertion. Tathagata Buddha songs, which this paper studies, has been specifically enabling for Dalit women as it gives them not only a sense of religiosity but it also opens them to the possibility of rationalizing their beliefs and practices. The paper will bring up an ethnographic account of some of these Dalit women singers and look into some of their composition and songs that have a specific invocation to Gautam Buddha and of political icons like Babasaheb Ambedkar, whom they revere. A study of Tathagata Buddha songs and Bhimgeet can provide an insight into how music has departed from being just an aesthetic sensibility to a language of resistance against the oppressive caste order. The paper also explores the material dimension of Tathagata Buddha songs understanding its circulation, production, and platforms through which these are popularized.
 Key words: Thathagata Buddha, songs, Dalit, resistance

Grabbing the Sharp End of the Knife to Bring Liberation, Peace and Justice to South Africans: lessons from Ellen Kuzwayo and Phyllis Naidoo

abstract The tableware sparkles, the fresh flower arrangements are fragrant, soft, live jazz music tones permeate the air as the luncheon, which is of a world-class standard, gets underway. I am attending the celebration to mark the opening of new teaching venues at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, named after political stalwarts Ellen Kuzwayo and Phyllis Naidoo. Tributes are paid to these prototypical giantesses, who had worked as teachers during a part of their lives. My interest is piqued: Who were these political icons whose memory was being preserved in the buildings? What obstacles did they experience as women in the struggle for political emancipation? How might these insights inform our cultural identity as South African women in modern day society? In the present, pluralistic, patriarchal South African society, women encounter a multitude of challenges, including HIV and Aids, gender-based violence, unemployment, poverty, workplace gender discrimination and child abuse. However, women have broken the shackles of the past by resisting gender oppression and political injustices. Historically, women experienced exclusion within social and political spheres. For example, it took 31 years before women were permitted to join the African National Congress (ANC). Currently, the invisibility of women, compared to men in South African political history, is attributed in a large part to patriarchy. In order to address this vacuum, I use a feminist lens to look into the past to understand the herstorical accounts of these women, and locate the challenges and enablers which can serve to inform the empowerment of women today and in the future.

Gallantry on the Shankill road: the British ‘soldier-hero’ and state-media relations in Northern Ireland, 1969-1979

ABSTRACT The study of the British ‘soldier-hero’ as a political and cultural icon after 1945 has been largely confined to literature concerned with the memory of historical figures. Rarely have scholars considered how post-war military deployments not only created contemporary soldier-heroes, but also transformed their place within politics and society as the moral interrogation of these wars threatened to encroach upon the prestige of these icons. This article examines how the soldier-hero interacted with one of Britain’s most contentious deployments, Northern Ireland, and how politicians sought to control narratives surrounding this figure to avoid public relations controversy in unusual political conditions.

Lu Xun in 1966: On Valuing a Maoist Icon

1966, the inaugural year of China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was also the thirtieth anniversary of Lu Xun’s death. Quotations from and praise of China’s best known and preeminent modern writer were in abundance that year and an official commemorative event, reportedly attended by more than seventy thousand people, was held in Beijing. The anniversary date presented the Maoist state with a prime opportunity for boosting the cultural and intellectual authority of their doctrinal assertions by association with Lu Xun. In asking what Lu Xun was in 1966, I seek to bring to view the thingness of his afterlife (or afterlives) under CCP rule. This paper discusses how the Maoist treatment of Lu Xun turned him into a political icon, to add aesthetic value to Mao Zedong Thought. Insofar as aesthetics turns on what can be felt, heard, seen, sensed, touched, or imagined, aestheticization is generally accompanied by a certain process of reification. I thus consider the concrete instances by which people came to experience Lu Xun—such as selected quotations from Lu Xun, Chairman Mao’s formulations about Lu Xun, and images of the writer in poster art—focusing in particular on the widely publicized speeches presented at the official commemoration of his death in October 1966. Since the 1980s, these 1966 commemorations have been routinely disparaged in China as an aberration. To take the Maoist version of Lu Xun seriously as the careful construction of an aesthetic object is to do more than elucidate its ideological abuse of Lu Xun. By engaging productively with the Maoist craving for an ideal revolutionary comportment, we may yet catch a glimpse of the kind of world it took for Lu Xun to make sense as a Maoist icon. Without this Maoist intensity of feeling, there would not have been the post-Maoist preoccupation with recovering or defending, as it were, Lu Xun’s true or real form (if such a phenomenologically pure act is even possible).

Kwame Nkrumah’s Overthrow and Its Effect on National Team Players (1957–1980)

Studies have revealed the evolution of African football from the 1980s to the 2000s by explaining how the migration of football talents from the continent intensified. Before the 1980s, African footballers were an integral part of sports labour migration to North America but this topic has evoked little scholarly interest in the history of football migration. This paper analyses the movement of African football talents, particularly West Africans, to leagues in the United States from 1967 to 1984. Data on this period of migration is lacking. The paper further provides insight into how the promotion of football by Nkrumah interplayed with political, social, and economic influences on the African continent. Firstly, it discusses several reasons behind Ghanaian players’ decision not to go abroad to play professionally after the country‘s independence in 1957 under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah. Secondly, it analyses the state of football in Ghana after Nkrumah was overthrown, especially from the perspective of the national team players and its consequences on their livelihood. The continued decline of the game in Ghana after 1966 resulted in several players migrating to the North American Soccer League (NASL) in 1968. This further explains some adverse effects after Nkrumah was toppled. This paper concludes by bringing to the understanding of readers the continent‘s political icon who used sport as a vehicle to champion African unity via the mantra of Pan-Africanism.

Representações estéticas de lideranças políticas no cinema – Lincoln (2012) e Getúlio (2014)

Esse artigo tem como objetivo analisar os filmes Lincoln, 2012, e Getúlio, 2014, verificando através da linguagem cinematográfica as representações estéticas dessas lideranças políticas emblemáticas. O cinema documental e de entretenimento carregaram historicamente formas simbólicas voltadas para construção de um discurso favorável a determinadas ideologias e/ou lideranças políticas. Logo, esse trabalho analisará os filmes selecionados que veiculam as imagens desses dois ícones da política, Getúlio Vargas e Abraham Lincoln, cada qual em seu tempo e local de atuação, buscando identificar nas formas simbólicas neles presentes como são representados e quais enquadramentos são mobilizados pelos diretores a fim de gerarem nos espectadores subjetividades a respeito dessas personas políticas. Para realizar esse trabalho, será efetuada inicialmente uma análise bibliográfica de teóricos pertinentes ao tema, assim como uma análise fílmica dos filmes de entretenimento previamente escolhidos, usando como referencial metodológico para ambas a Análise Fílmica proposta por Manuela Penafria (2009) e a Hermenêutica de Profundidade, utilizada por John Thompson (2002) em Ideologia e Cultura Moderna. Como resultados, observamos a representação estética de Lincoln como um líder político heroico e obstinado em promover justiça e inclusão social. Getúlio, por sua vez, é enquadrado como um político em decadência e desgastado. Apesar dessas diferenças, os sacrifícios pessoais e os momentos de prestígio popular estão presentes em ambas as representações.

“What You Want Me to Be”: Documenting Muhammad Ali, 1970 to the Present

This article analyzes a selection of documentaries about the boxer and cultural and political icon, Muhammad Ali. I trace the evolution of dominant popular narratives about Ali, identify their underlying ideological positions, and argue for the role played by these films in the production and propagation of such narratives. I also explore how archival materials are incorporated into these films and how they can subvert or complicate the narratives they are intended to illustrate. I conclude by imagining a theoretical approach to studying Ali which is neither mobilized by nor confined to ideologically determined narratives, focusing instead on Ali’s acts of performance as represented in the archive.

Auto/Biography and Conflict: The Year in Spain

Auto/Biography and ConflictThe Year in Spain Ana Belén Martínez García (bio) Recent Spanish History and Politics It is little wonder that the majority of auto/biographical narratives in Spain published from mid-2017 to mid-2018 deal with "the Catalan question." A political conflict that has been latent for decades—some might say centuries—in Spain, it is part of our collective memory and national consciousness. Catalonia has become an unavoidable but thorny issue lately, with increasingly polarized views that may turn rather violent, of which there is already sad proof on both sides. One of the most striking examples of this subgenre is Peláez Viñas's El procés explicat als idiotes, roughly translated into English as "the procés for dummies," a graphic memoir of the four months that the movement for independence in Catalonia was at its height (September to December 2017). The Catalan word procés refers to the unilateral Declaration of the Initiation of the Process of Independence of Catalonia from Spain issued by the Generalitat on November 9, 2015. The word is usually left untranslated in Spanish mainstream news to refer to the pro-independence movement intent on establishing a republic in Catalonia. The procés is of particular resonance now, when the main leaders of the movement are being tried for rebellion, sedition, and misuse of power at the Spanish Supreme Court. Full of irony and a penchant for excess (drugs, alcohol, etc.), Peláez Viñas writes and draws himself into the conflict, criticizing politicians and intellectuals alike, and defying the Spanish justice system that has issued severe fines and/or jail time to several individuals found guilty of taking too much liberty with their freedom of expression. A similarly humorous work is Javier Marías's Cuando los tontos mandan, roughly translated as "when dumb people are in charge." Marías, a prolific writer whose novels fill Spanish libraries and bookshops, compiles here some of his critical essays published in the widely read weekly magazine El Semanal. Significantly, the collection was a No. 1 Amazon bestseller soon after its publication in March 2018. [End Page 147] Among the myriad topics he satirizes, the Catalan procés features prominently alongside global political icons such as Donald Trump. A slightly different tone is adopted by Santi Vila in his memoir De héroes y traidores: El dilema de Cataluña o los diez errores del procés. Vila, a former member of Puigdemont's cabinet before its collapse, blends the styles of confessional and political writing. Instead of highlighting his role in driving the region toward independence, he admits to his errors in judgement and his participation in the illegal referendum in Catalonia in October 2017. Finally, an interesting attempt at relating the current turmoil to its historical roots is ¿Seré yo español? [Am I a Spaniard?]. A posthumous edited collection of essays by Gaziel, a Catalan journalist who tried to explain Catalonia to the Spanish ruling elite under the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1925–1930), these reflections prove to be highly relevant and illuminating to address the Catalan conflict today. Strong assertions like the need to distinguish between what Gaziel calls catalanismo and catalanidad deserve some careful examination. This is an author who inhabited "tierra de nadie" [no-man's land] (11), as the prologue warns readers. He wanted to offer his personal version of Catalonia as an intrinsic part of a Spanish consciousness, and he did that by writing in Spanish and expressing his own doubts, as the title emphasizes. An appropriate summary, in Gaziel's words, is that one cannot see what happens in Catalonia without the "varita mágica" [magic wand] of "comprensión" [understanding] (138). Moreover, Gaziel expands, "Catalanidad es una voz hermana de castellanidad" [catalanidad and castellanidad are cognate words] (139). This peaceful message of brotherhood among inhabitants of an "España plural" [plural Spain] (502) is a constant throughout this must-read. Political memoirs, a recurring presence in Spanish bookshops every year, are worth mentioning. Jaume Aurell rightly argued in his essay for the International Year in Review last year that this is one of the main...