Political Passions Research Articles

The myth of the civic nation

Abstract The idea of a purely civic nationalism has attracted Western scholars, most of whom rightly disdain the myths that sustain ethnonationalist theories of political community. Civic nationalism is particularly attractive to many Americans, whose peculiar national heritage encourages the delusion that their mutual association is based solely on consciously chosen principles. But this idea misrepresents political reality as surely as the ethnonationalist myths it is designed to combat. And propagating a new political myth is an especially inappropriate way of defending the legacy of Enlightenment liberalism from the dangers posed by the growth of nationalist political passions.

Mikhail Ivanovich Demkov

Russia at the turn of the century. Private, elite educational institutions are being opened as alternatives to the state-run schools. Market relations are increasingly penetrating the sphere of education. Since the well-known Tsarist Manifesto, dozens of political practices have sprung up, and their programs include requirements on public education. Political passions are invading the schools. Schoolteachers are coming to be divided into "conservatives" and "progressives." All of this can be examined in numerous dissertations by Soviet historians.

Stabilising inflation in Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia: How independence has affected macroeconomic policy outcomes

THE NATIONAL QUESTION, seen most of all in disagreement about the competencies of the federation versus the republics, and compounded by the emergence of the aggressive Milosevic regime in Serbia, brought about the break-up of Yugoslavia. Economic forces certainly played their role; resentments about the Federal Fund for Less Developed Regions, disputes over stabilisation policy, tariffs and wages brought out intense rivalry among Yugoslav republics and their constituent nationalities. And Yugoslavia's macroeconomic instability and falling living standards in the 1980s made it clear that the existing political arrangements were inadequate for the tasks of economic management. Still, it seems fair to say that the ending of Yugoslavia was less a rational economic choice than the triumph of national and political passions. It remains useful to ask about the economic effects of separation. Given the continuation of war and diplomatic turmoil in the region, it may be too early to address this question fully. I limit the task by limiting the sample of countries to Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia.1 The other two ex-Yugoslav states, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Federal Yugoslavia, are excluded because of the war in the former and the comprehensive economic sanctions on the latter. Rather than attempt to decide whether the new states will be economically better off than ex-Yugoslavia, this article looks only at initial efforts to create a stable macroeconomic environment, in particular to bring inflation under control. The premise is quite rudimentary: inflation of 20% or more a month is incompatible with satisfactory economic performance.2 What are the keys to combating inflation? Monetarist theory would argue that an independent, inflation-fighting central bank is the crucial institution, and that a tight monetary stance is the most crucial policy measure. This article takes a broader view, inspired by post-Keynesian thought, arguing that the creation of economic institutions and economic policies to mediate distributional conflict is central. Stabilisationoriented monetary policy and institutions are only one element of macroeconomic stability in this view; a degree of political consensus over fiscal matters, and

The politics of passion: Flamenco, power, and the body

Abstract Flamenco is a test case for understanding the politics of popular music. Though said to bear on subjective conceras—love, hate, anger, joy—that are independent of ideological positions or political movements, flamenco songs realize politics in their practice if not in their intent. For example, the embodiment and subsequent interpretations of any flamenco song draw that song into the politics of Andalusian autonomy, or of gitano ethnicity, or of Francisco Franco's government. Ironically, any song can both resist and comply with forces in all these political arenas at the same time.

Sukchong's Triangle: The Politics of Passion

By the latter half of the Chosŏn period, the Korean vernacular written in hangŭl had become a well-established means of descriptive and imaginative expression, even though Chinese written in hanmun continued to be the preferred medium for documenting and authenticating the historical record. This study compares the official and impersonal record in the Sukchong shillok against the more colorful and subjective text of the Inhyŏn wanghu chŏn to flesh out both the politics and the personalities in the dramatic story of a love triangle involving King Sukchong (r. 1674-1720), the noble and virtuous Queen Inhyŏn, and the low-born and passionate Lady Chang.

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Textuality and Subjectivity: The Poetics of Reading (review)

398Philosophy and Literature politics ofde Man and Heidegger do not discredit their criticism or philosophy, any more than Derrida's or Foucault's leftist engagement credit their thinking, he argues that diese political scandals do show that this flunking is inherently apolitical. The finale of the book is a rousing call to action for leftist politics: It is time to go out and change the world. But for all of his lucid argumentation, Holub never responds to the central claim ofdeconstruction that such thinking might have conservative aspects as well. By the end of Holub's book, there are clearly two groups: bad guys—Nazis, in fact—and good guys. That sort of dichotomy has always prevented self-analysis and self-critique. Nor does Holub refute the notion that attention to the signifier, playful and nonserious as it might seem, could have potential for a truly profound revolution. Overall, the dichotomies between French and German, frivolous and serious , deconstruction and Marxism quickly become predictable. Nonetheless, CrossingBorders is worth reading. Even if one disagrees with Holub's conclusion on the relationship between deconstruction and Marxism, one can appreciate his clarity and his political passion. Like Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory, Crossing Borders can give lucid summaries of difficult arguments while simultaneously maintaining a clear Marxist perspective. Whitman CollegeRobert Tobin Textuality and Subjectivity: The Poetics ofReading, edited by Eitel Timm and Kenneüi Mendoza; 129 pp. Columbia, South Carolina: Camden House, 1993, $48.00. In general, the essays in this collection view the textuality of language as a quality that defers the identification of subjectivity as self-present meaning or being. A "poetics of reading," then, offers a strategy of interpretation able to examine subjectivity as a construction of textuality and not vice versa. As a prime example, the excellent initial essay by Gerhard Richter argues that Kafka's "The Burrow" "textually reenacts the existential struggle of the writing subject" (p. 5) . The paranoid vigilance of the creature in the burrow is a replication of the subject's attempt to maintain authority despite its imperfect cognition of its own textual situation. The unidentified creature has no contextual ground outside the burrow and can only vainly posit an "ideal Other" who is not similarly constrained. The political implications of the way in which textual or rhetorical signifiers determine subjectivities, or "others," is explored in several essays. Brent Gowen speaks of an awareness of the power of those-who-name over those-who-arenamed (p. 21) in the writings ofWalter Benjamin and Paul Celan; both writers Reviews399 present traces of a belief in a paradisiac language in which signifier and signified are holistically related, but both are wary of naming as a means of ascribing an identity that limits the scope of the individual. Cezar Omatowski examines Renaissance rhetoric as a "government of the tongue" that emphasizes eloquence and decorum to establish the linguistic practices necessary for negotiating the social order and constituting oneself as a political subject. Yuan Yuan argues that the importation of communism into China involved a textual displacement in which an absence was replaced by a presence; by deliberately mistranslating Marx's "workers" as "proletarians," Chinese communists were able to present a political agenda that had no actual basis in the underclass. Yuan uses this example to make a larger point that is somewhat overstated: all translation is a form of misrepresentation. Several essays in the collection are not wholly satisfying; Paulo Medeiros insists that Nietzsche's imagery of consumption and digestion is not "solely . . . a metaphor for interpretation" (p. 103), but is not clear about how Nietzsche's blurring of epistemology and ontology should be interpreted. John Rice and Paul Malone provide a concise account of arguments that favor performance over text—as in Artaud—or text over performance—as in Michael Fried—but the conclusion that drama involves both text and performance does not resolve the problem in a convincing way. Kenneth Mendoza's attempt to provide theoretical grounds for the importance of die performer's presence in the oral tradition fails to make its distinctions clear. "Recovering Presence" could have offset this collection's tendency to privilege textuality over subjectivity. However , Mendoza's assertion that the Western...

Economic Theory on the Path to a New Paradigm

Everyday concerns, numerous preoccupations, and political passions absorb a large part of modern man's time and effort. The majority of society and statesmen burdened by current problems can hardly reflect seriously on global changes taking place in the world and the historical fate of mankind.

If Pornography Is the Theory, Is Inequality the Practice?

This article critically examines the 1992 decision by the Supreme Court of Canada on pornography (Butler v. the Queen). The decision, like the LEAF (Legal Education Action Fund), argues that the dehumanizing and degrading images of women in pornography undermine the achievement of gender equality and reinforce existing inequality. Section 15 of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms takes precedence over Section 2(b) freedom of expression. More immediately, Section 163(8) of the Criminal Code of Canada remains the primary instrument for dealing with pornography. These arguments fail to distinguish between degradation and devaluation; they offer no evidence of a connection between pornography and its effects on gender stratification, nor do they feel obliged to offer such evidence despite the extensive literature on inequality by the social science community. Citing the Sears-Roebuck case on gender discrimination, the author demonstrates that the enemy of gender equality is the stereotype of the idealized traditional woman, not the one-dimensional lust-driven nymphomaniac of pornography. Her opposite is not the "stud" of pornography who is in a constant state of tumescence but "economic man" who sublimates his sexual passion in sports, cars, politics, and money. Censorship, it is suggested, infantilizes women and contributes to their dependency. The article comments on the doctrine of "balancing" rights and on the meaning of "equality" within a feminist context. The larger questions of a trend toward the legalization of cultural issues and the role of the judiciary (weak in European democracies but strong in the American tradition) are raised.

Political Passions and the Creation of the American National Community: The Case of Alexander Hamilton

Political Passions and the Creation of the American National Community: The Case of Alexander Hamilton

The Current of Romantic Passion

Robinson's short essays are forays into the centre of the Romantic imagination and into current thinking on its workings. Deftly probing the ambivalence of Romantic writers on the subjects of and beauty, Robinson shows how this ambivalence is also central to the experience of the modern critic in Western society. Is the reader's experience of beauty in art an escape from troubling reality? Or does desire for beauty spur social criticism and reform? Does the representation of erotic passion, as a sign of social critique, exist to be transcended for disinterested spirituality? Or is such passion the very site the struggle for individual and class rights? Robinson explores the problematic place of passion and beauty in Romanticism's radical sentiments and reformist politics. Tracing the intertwining of desire and disturbance, of eros and subversion, his meditations encompass poems, novels, diaries; key terms (such as Rousseau's (sentiment of existence); writers' characteristic forms of expression habits of mind (Wordsworth's or grammar); figures in literary works (Goethe's Werther, Byron's Lambro); problems of genre (the relationship of the Romantic poem and the Romantic essay, the problem of closure, the nature of a scene); and larger political questions (feminism in Romantic literature, erotic passion and representations of radicalism). Evoking the original meaning of essay as experiment, Robinson has essayed a topography of the Romantic landscape.

Passion in politics and the science of politics

The article was delivered as the Presidential Address at the Fourth Annual International Conference of The Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, University of California, Irvine, March 28, 1992. It expresses some concerns about the way academic research approaches contemporary politics, and concludes that economics, political science, and psychology are in some ways poorly equipped to analyze passion in public life.

The Supreme Court, liberty, and abortion.

Abortion has aroused intense personal and political passions for almost two decades in the United States, and demeaning sloganeering has long substituted for reasoned discourse. Just as few people have actually read the 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade,1 few people who have expressed their opinion on the Supreme Court's ruling in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey,2 which has been condemned by activists on both sides of the debate about abortion rights, have read it. In one poll, however, more than 70 percent of Americans agreed with the restrictions upheld by the Court as they understood . . .

John Dos Passos' Correspondence with Arthur K. McComb or "Learn to Sing the Carmagnole" (review)

Reviewed by: John Dos Passos' Correspondence with Arthur K. McComb or "Learn to Sing the Carmagnole" John K. Hoppe Melvin Landsberg . John Dos Passos' Correspondence with Arthur K. McComb or "Learn to Sing the Carmagnole." Niwot: U Press of Colorado, 1991. 334 pp. No price given. In his introduction, Melvin Landsberg notes the wide political gulf between Dos Passos and his lifelong friend Arthur K. McComb. Early on they articulated their identities in relation to each other: Dos Passos was the romantic radical, McComb the "eighteenth century" elitist. What the two shared was a despair of the modern world; McComb writes for them both saying, "What an age! All reason, sanity, light, humanity gone!" Landsberg reports that each often regarded the other as needful of political guidance, and "there was mutual teasing in the correspondence . . . and certain subjects were touched on lightly." "Lightly" indeed; those seeking lengthy discourses on American society, literature, history, or politics from Dos Passos should look elsewhere. Instead, this book is valuable for recording—in sketch form—how Dos Passos wrestled with the two great ideas that polarize his writings: organization and the noble individual. The early letters are in many ways the most interesting, as they show most clearly Dos Passos' political passions. During this period his letters veer from radical fulminations and friendly castigation of McComb to detached and ironic despair. They show that Dos Passos could never take up a party line for long; his passions went to cataclysmic changes, not "policies." "Organization is death. Organization [End Page 475] is death—. . . I repeat the words over and over . . . " he writes in 1918 of Army life, although this will ultimately include organizations of both the left and the right. He hates the stupidity of the war and dreams of revolution and assassinating "statesmen, capitalists, war-mongers. . . ." But the letters are far from pedantic. A dedicated opponent of all cant, he can never fully accept even his own generalizations. Often in these letters Dos Passos follows passionate observations on politics with wistful invitations to McComb, all involving solitude: "Let's all find a retreat . . . among vineyards and there all go and solemnly renounce the world. . . ." This is not ideological waffling, nor fawning toward the "aristocratic" McComb. Dos Passos wants changes on a massive scale but is repeatedly disgusted and exhausted by the barriers against individual action and expression that he feels attend mass action. These letters are allusive notes between friends who don't need (or want) to dilate on their differences. Few discuss Dos Passos' novels, and none at any length; the letters are not manifestoes, aesthetic or political. On Dos Passos' side they are the often scattered, private thoughts of a writer who was intensely and personally invested in the ideal of the free individual, and who suffered greatly, especially as a young man, from every success of the forces of political orthodoxy over the individual. "Politically I've given up hope entirely. . . . It's rather a comfort. . . . You can take refuge in pleasantly cynical sullenness . . . and stride away from the whole human tribe. Of course I have twinges, and shall probably ere long take up again my self-inflicted burden. . . ." The burden of "telling the truth about the world" he would take up again, but these letters show how heavily he felt it. John K. Hoppe University of Iowa Copyright © 1992 Purdue Research Foundation

A passion for politics.

When Aileen Bates went to lobby her MP for the first time in 1978, she was told 'I've seen 300 teachers, but you're the first nurse'. Now, 13 years later, she's aiming to go one better. At the next election she hopes to be the first nurse to become an MP, fighting Glasgow Mill- head for the Conservative Party.

Making Free Trade Work: The Canada-U.S. Agreement (review)

216 SAISREVIEW dispute rages about the reasons for the breakdown and the necessary solutions. The old dogma has been replaced by a lively, absorbing dialogue. Second, the articles collected here also show the tremendous scope of the changes taking place. No aspect of Soviet life lies untouched by the new dialogue—perhaps because no aspect of Soviet life was untouched by 70 years of communist rule. In this survey alone, living standards, national identity, literature, and the role of God and religion are addressed. Even foreign policy, a subject long reserved for only the ruling elite, is subject to questioning by the general public. Finally, along with the recognition of diversity comes discomfort. America's founders sought to accommodate factions through the separation of powers; Soviet leaders sought to dominate factions with tanks and ideology. But the Soviet people never became true "comrades," and the failure of totalitarianism does not necessarily mean the flowering of democratic ideals—such as tolerance- —in a society unfamiliar with the concept. Long-standing hatreds and suspicions have reemerged. The greater "openness" ofglasnost reveals these darker aspects ofthe region's psyche—anti-semitism, authoritarianism, xenophobia—and all are represented in this book. A group of Russian writers warn against "the conductors of imperial aggression, the Zionists." From Kiev comes a letter in defense of the "strict, energetic and stern" leadership of Stalin. A monolithic workers' state was clearly never possible and never achieved. Recognition of this has ignited national, ideological, religious, and political passions long contained by totalitarian power. The editors ofthis book have performed an excellent service in collecting this display of Soviet public opinion. Unfortunately, the book's inherent limitations prevent a truly authoritative look at Soviet opinion on any particular subject. A reader profoundly interested in economic reform or a reassessment of Soviet history will be distracted by the editors' frequent, often excessive, comments between articles, and will come away only partially satisfied. Instead, TAe Glasnost Papers offers a look at glasnost itself. That alone makes for good reading. MakingFree Trade Work: The Canada-U.S. Agreement. By Peter Morici, ed. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1990. 182 pp. $17.95/Paperback. Reviewed by Alexander Wood, M.A. Candidate, SAIS. It is a sad, although perhaps inevitable, fact of life that Americans, having faced a veritable media deluge in the "changes" sweeping the world over the last two years, have been largely oblivious to significant changes closer to home. Indeed, if ever a testament to the truly remarkable pace of change that has occurred on the North American continent was needed, it is to be found in a collection of essays edited by Peter Morici—Making Free Trade Work. This book analyzes the challenges facing the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Canada and the United States. It fails, however, to account for the changes that have occurred in BOOK REVIEWS 217 both Mexico and Canada's domestic situations and so makes two critical errors: the first an error of appreciation, the second an error of omission. In fairness to the authors, their collective error was perhaps in arriving at their conclusions a few months too early. In failing to anticipate the changes in the Mexican economic and Canadian political situations, however, thy have done their otherwise excellent treatment of the subject a grave disservice. Making Free Trade Work does have significant value, especially for those unfamiliar with the FTA or with the world's largest bilateral trading relationship. Especially instructive are the first two chapters, which deal with the differences in each country's approach to the Agreement. David Leyton-Brown's analysis of the "asymmetry of interest" that exists for the FTA between the two countries holds important lessons for all students of bilateral relationships. The bulk of the book, however, is devoted to what are perceived to be the two greatest challenges to the FTA: the possible extension of the agreement to Mexico and the question of subsidies. It is in discussing these challenges that the author's conclusions tend to be overcome by events. On the first issue, Sidney Weintraub does a good job of analyzing the possible implications of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA...

Hobbes and the Irrationality of Politics

IT IS COMMONLY UNDERSTOOD that concern with civil war dominates Hobbes's political theory. A few years before the Restoration, he said: all such calamities as may be avoided by human industry, arise from war, but from civil war.' His work is held together by the effort to understand the causes of civil war and to offer proposals for its long-term prevention. In Leviathani, his one political work written in the midst of civil war, Hobbes also hints at the most expeditious way of ending it; namely, to accept the conqueror as the new ruler and to do so without scrupulous legitimist worries over the dispossessed (and executed) ruler or his heir. Naturally, no political theorist is indifferent to civil war (or to the intense turbulence that may precede and augur it). Indeed, no rational person can be indifferent to it. But Hobbes is surely unsurpassed, perhaps unequalled, in his concern with it. Even people in Hobbes's situation, or in comparable ones, seem less agitated by it as a brute fact, less affronted by its mere occurrence. For Hobbes, civil war is always senseless. If he thinks that much of political, as distinct from administrative, activity is irrational, he finds in civil war the perfection of such irrationality: political passions, themselves intrinsically verging toward madness, going over the line and into wasteful darkness. The question is why his concern with civil war is as all-absorbing as it is. We must immediately add, however, that he confronts the prospect of perpetual tension and war among nations with an almost perfect equanimity.2 I do not think that the emphasis in the above quotation is on the greater chance of avoiding civil war in comparison to international war, but simply on the greater horror of civil war. If his immediate experience teaches him that it is chiefly civil war rather than international war that causes avoidable calam-

ACADEMIC RESEARCH LABS: NSF completes refurbishing plan

Sometime next week, Congress will receive a major report on what the National Science Foundation thinks ought to be done about repairing and rebuilding the deteriorating research labs of the country's universities. Because Congress probably won't provide any money for facilities for at least another year, NSF's Blueprint for the Future is essentially a make-believe document coming from a make-believe NSF unit. Still, it's important, and money is certain to come. Although never really a big public issue, the facilities problem has incited hot academic and political passions for over a decade. On Capitol Hill, people are going bananas over it, according to one staffer involved in the appropriations process. Frustrated institutions have taken to lobbying in recent years and have caused the current epidemic in Congress of pork-barrel funding of laboratories tagged onto appropriations bills without any review by scientists for their merit. So last year, Congress' authorization committees instructed NSF t...

Gaining and keeping interview access in political research: a South African case study

Abstract This sine qua non for all survey researchers in the social sciences involves gaining access to and eliciting rapport with one's respondents. In a society as beset by emotionally‐held political values and passions as South Africa, this aspect of operationalizing a research undertaking assumes added significance. It is also in the research spirit enjoined in the above quotation that a detailed exposition is given of one such attempt to gain and maintain interview‐access to and rapport with, a group of white South African respondents. The article also examines the interesting phenomenon of those scholars whose fieldwork strategy has taken the need for this research imperative at a large discount.

The Politics of Passion: Credibility Crisis for Academics and Practitioners

The Politics of Passion: Credibility Crisis for Academics and Practitioners