Political Passions Research Articles

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This article is related to:Ron Grele’s Lifelong Passion for Conversational NarrativeThe Poetics and Politics of Ron Grele’s ConversationsRonald J. Grele: History, Politics, and StoriesGuest Editors’ Introduction: The Contributions of Ronald J. Grele to Oral HistoryIn Conversation with Ron GreleQuestioning Historians: Oral History as a Historiographic and Political ActRonald J. Grele: Selected BibliographyThe Poetics and Politics of Ron Grele’s ConversationsGuest Editors’ Introduction: The Contributions of Ronald J. Grele to Oral HistoryRonald J. Grele: History, Politics, and StoriesQuestioning Historians: Oral History as a Historiographic and Political ActRonald J. Grele: Selected BibliographyIn Conversation with Ron GreleRon Grele’s Lifelong Passion for Conversational Narrative

Ronald J. Grele: Selected Bibliography

This article is related to:Ron Grele’s Lifelong Passion for Conversational NarrativeCommentThe Poetics and Politics of Ron Grele’s ConversationsRonald J. Grele: History, Politics, and StoriesGuest Editors’ Introduction: The Contributions of Ronald J. Grele to Oral HistoryIn Conversation with Ron GreleQuestioning Historians: Oral History as a Historiographic and Political ActThe Poetics and Politics of Ron Grele’s ConversationsCommentGuest Editors’ Introduction: The Contributions of Ronald J. Grele to Oral HistoryRonald J. Grele: History, Politics, and StoriesQuestioning Historians: Oral History as a Historiographic and Political ActIn Conversation with Ron GreleRon Grele’s Lifelong Passion for Conversational Narrative

Questioning Historians: Oral History as a Historiographic and Political Act

This article is related to:Ron Grele’s Lifelong Passion for Conversational NarrativeCommentThe Poetics and Politics of Ron Grele’s ConversationsRonald J. Grele: History, Politics, and StoriesGuest Editors’ Introduction: The Contributions of Ronald J. Grele to Oral HistoryIn Conversation with Ron GreleRonald J. Grele: Selected BibliographyThe Poetics and Politics of Ron Grele’s ConversationsCommentGuest Editors’ Introduction: The Contributions of Ronald J. Grele to Oral HistoryRonald J. Grele: History, Politics, and StoriesRonald J. Grele: Selected BibliographyIn Conversation with Ron GreleRon Grele’s Lifelong Passion for Conversational Narrative

Ronald J. Grele: History, Politics, and Stories

This article is related to:Ron Grele’s Lifelong Passion for Conversational NarrativeCommentThe Poetics and Politics of Ron Grele’s ConversationsGuest Editors’ Introduction: The Contributions of Ronald J. Grele to Oral HistoryIn Conversation with Ron GreleQuestioning Historians: Oral History as a Historiographic and Political ActRonald J. Grele: Selected BibliographyThe Poetics and Politics of Ron Grele’s ConversationsCommentGuest Editors’ Introduction: The Contributions of Ronald J. Grele to Oral HistoryQuestioning Historians: Oral History as a Historiographic and Political ActRonald J. Grele: Selected BibliographyIn Conversation with Ron GreleRon Grele’s Lifelong Passion for Conversational Narrative

Passion, Desire, Perversion: Love and Death in Psychoanalysis.

This paper contrasts full passion with what I am calling empty passion. As examples of full passion, Melanie Klein's lovehate, Kristeva's maternal passion, Žižek's political passion, and the passion of friendship are discussed in relation to empty passion, a narcissistic desire to fill a lack or a hole at the center of being. This empty passion is related to the Lacanian demand to serve or to become the desire of the Other and to André Green's concept of the psychic dilemma of the Dead Mother. Clinical and literary examples of empty passion are provided as illustrations.

Anthropological Dimensions of the Political Culture in Transition Societies. Political Culture versus Political Memory

The authors discuss the significance of anthropological concepts in the analysis of political culture as carried out in both applied and theoretical studies of current political communications in transitional political processes. Drawing on a history of methodological and theoretical debates in political science and anthropology, the authors examine methodological issues of studying discourses of political memory as a symbolic representation of socio-cultural specifics of temporal dimensions of a given political culture. They emphasize the importance of describing and theoretically analyzing the role of political myths and symbols present in political memory in transition societies and point out that analysis of political myths as a symbiotic mechanism (or as a source of reproducing and delineating ‘political passions’) closely connected with symbolic practices of coercion highlights the role of culture in variability of political transition processes. They argue that a focus on political culture as a historically specific form of social memory allows one to examine differences in models of political culture within structures and practices of everyday life. Using an anthropologically oriented political analysis as a theoretical basis, the authors suggest a new theoretical approach to the study of contemporary political communications and argue for a need to develop new strategies of research of political culture in sociology and political science.

Liu Cixin's Three-Body Trilogy and the Status of Science Fiction in Contemporary China

The recent success of Liu Cixin's hard sf trilogy Santi [The Three-Body Trilogy, 2006-2008] is symbolic of the important rise of Chinese science fiction both in China and in the rest of the world. This trilogy tells the story of the future invasion of Earth by a belligerent extraterrestrial civilization with advanced technology and the ways in which humans try to defend themselves. It begins with the Chinese Cultural Revolution and ends with the heat death of the universe. A huge bestseller and great critical success, it is also being adapted to film. The English translation of the first volume also won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2015. With the considerable success he achieved with this trilogy, Liu Cixin has become for the readers, critics, and supporters of Chinese soft power the standard-bearer of a new “era” of Chinese science fiction, called upon to promote the “Chinese dream” to the international community. In light of the history of science fiction in China since 1949 and its political reappropriation, this present contribution offers an examination of the conditions of production and reception of The Three-Body Trilogy in China and abroad and details the reasons for the critical, academic, and even political passion that it arouses today.

The political passion of a young historian

The political passion of a young historian

Cosmopolitanism: Reflections at the Commemoration of Ulrich Beck, 30 October 2015

This is a tribute to Ulrich Beck and a rumination on his legacy in work on cosmopolitanism, translation, anxiety, and memory. Historical transitions and symbolic transmissions open up urgent questions about the connection between the structure of collective memory and the system of cosmopolitical thought. Public memory is embedded in an affective matrix of anxiety which is capable of creating the conciliatory conditions of political virtue and of fueling the terror of political passion. The vicious and sudden turn of cosmopolitan memory from reconciliation to revenge is less surprising if anxiety is seen as the translational moment that mediates relations between remembering and forgetting. Anxiety forces the discourse of cosmopolitan memory to confront its own alterity, negotiating a knife-edge balance between sympathy and antipathy. The ethics of cosmopolitanism is an anxious ethics of the past that refuses to die, confronting a future that will not wait to be born.

Left-wing populism within horizontal and vertical politics: the case of Kurdish-led radical democracy in agonistic pluralism

ABSTRACTIn the post-political period, the Kurdish-led Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has offered a radical democratic political project by adopting a left-leaning populism to challenge the political establishment (elites) through the construction of a new concept of ‘the People’ (underdog) in a new political grammar. This article outlines the feasibility of applying Laclau’s populist discursive in analysing the notion of radical democracy, which is conceptualized in terms of Mouffe’s agonistic approach, as a ‘real’ alternative in the organic crisis of the ‘new Turkey’. The inclusive populism of the HDP mobilizes the collective passion in politics, with its common affects, in order to create a counter-hegemonic bloc. This left-wing populist ontology aims to reform the existing democratic institutions in terms of an egalitarian and libertarian rhetoric to challenge the Justice and Development Party's(AKP) right-wing conservative populism that has recently transformed into authoritarianism, majoritarianism and illiberalism in the post-democracy era.

«Hamlet» y «Segismundo» como emblemas políticos del sistema de estados europeos del siglo XVII: Algunas perspectivas teóricas internacionales

To consider once again the symbolic correlation between the protagonists of the archetypical Baroque dramas –The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark and La vida es sueno– would not provide any substantial novelty to the mainly concerned studies: Literature, Theatre… But to analyze them from an International Relations Theory perspective could imply an alternative view; intertwined with the historical circumstances, emerge crucial political-philosophical notions: reason of State, balance of power, European State system, sovereign power’s legitimacy, rejection of tyranny. Besides, it would be also possible the appraisal of some of the ‘biopolitical’ conditions involving the modern subject of liberty –reduced to a mere ‘body’ imprisoned within the ‘reason of State’– confronted to the Absolutist oppression: the reflection about the government’s functions helps to elucidate the political reason and the political passion (Foucault). Taken as ‘emblems’, ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Sigismund’ express significant ideas, concepts and political beliefs of their time, revealing essential aspects of the European History.

Tocqueville on the Needs of the Soul

ABSTRACTThis essay revisits Tocqueville's distinctive liberalism by placing the needs of the soul at the center of his political thought. By the soul, Tocqueville means humanity's capacity for thought and action to satisfy its deepest longings for political freedom and greatness in this world and immortality in the next; in short, for the spiritual side of human nature too easily lost sight of in democratic ages. In contrast to recent studies that take up the needs of the soul, I argue that Tocqueville's understanding of the soul is more theologically and metaphysically grounded than has been supposed. Tocqueville's distinctive liberalism thus rests on the following: criticism of modern materialist philosophy, including the social contract theorists, for neglecting the needs of the soul; analysis of religion in satisfying these needs, needs that are not simply “naturalistic,” that is, vain human hopes rooted in ignorance, fear, and superstition; recognition of the positive role that Christianity, especially a reformed Catholicism, can play in satisfying these needs, even as Tocqueville shows how democracy modifies religious belief; and finally, consideration of the needs of the soul in this world, and of the connection between the religious and political passions.

Liberty in Wordsworth's Sonnets

Wordsworth once declared that for an hour thought given to poetry, he had given twelve to the state of society. However true this declaration might be, it helps to remind us that some of Wordsworth’s noblest verse and prose was inspired by political passion. The most prominent fact about Wordsworth’s politics is that he was a trueborn Englishman, and his roots struck deep into English soil. He was country-born and country-bred. Besides, he belonged by birth to the middle class. Thanks to this middle class, upbringing. A sense of moderation governed his course in life and kept him away from committing himself to any definite party throughout his life. Wordsworth reached maturity without meeting anyone who claimed priority on the account of rank. It is because of this moderate temper coupled with impatience of restrictions that Wordsworth’s mind seemed to be a productive soil for the revolutionary notions of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. His interest in public affairs was motivated by the consequence of the American War as well as by the French Revolution. He had been too young, thoughtfully to consider the American War while it was going on. Therefore, when it ended, disbanded men began to return to the lakes. There he met some of these men and heard about others; and from what he saw and heard, he could conceive a horrible sense of war with all the suffering and evils it inflicts on the poor. On the other hand, in summer 1790, Wordsworth, accompanied by his friend Jones, set off for a walking tour in France and Switzerland – a tour that had significant consequences. Wordsworth landed at Calais on July 13th , 1790 – the eve of the day on which the king was to swear fidelity to the new constitution, and over-whelm people by a great tide of joy. In November 1791, Wordsworth went off again to France where he visited Paris, Orleans, and Blois in the main. In Blois, he made friendship with Michel Beaupy, a Republican officer in a mess of Royalists. The misery Beaupy witnessed among the extremely poor peasantry converted him not only to a Revolutionary citizen, but also to a patriot of the world. His heart was very much devoted to the cause of the common people and the poor. No other man, says Coleridge, had as great an influence upon Wordsworth as this benevolent and magnanimous patriot did.

Leo Panitch: political passions and socialist sobriety

Few Canadian socialist intellectuals have had the national and international impact of Leo Panitch. This brief tribute to his many accomplishments outlines the shifting nature of his intellectual concerns over the course of the last five decades, stressing the continuity of his socialist commitments and accent on the important place of the state in the development of both Canada and the global capitalism within which it is situated. This focus on the state, it is suggested, underscores Panitch’s socialist sobriety and its important contributions to an ongoing, transformative political practice.

Reengineering Social Work’s Political Passion: Policy Practice and Neo-Liberalism

Reengineering Social Work’s Political Passion: Policy Practice and Neo-Liberalism

Review

Abstract Disobedient Theatre: Alternative Ways to Inspire, Animate and Play by Chris Johnston (2017) London: Bloomsbury, ISBN: 9 7813 5001 4558, 238 pp., A$18.99

Between Commodification and Emancipation: The Tango Encounter

This article offers an examination of the aesthetics and philosophy of Argentine tango, arguing for tango's contradictory power of resistance to the tendency of cultural commodification in contemporary society. The dancing couple achieves a sense of sovereignty and improvisational freedom which is in tension with the increasing commodification and standardisation of art in the age of globalisation. Written partly from an auto-ethnographic, experience-based perspective, the article foregrounds tango's choreography of otherness, relationality, passion and playful improvisation in an attempt to elaborate on tango's significance as a dance of intimate resistance to political economy. What is produced in tango's ‘space of touch’ remains unproductive, unexplainable, and non-commodifiable. It is argued that Argentine tango might be able to resist total codification due to its improvisational nature and the politics of touch, passion and transgression that emerge from the ephemerality of the encounter, the ineffable ‘tango moment’. Tango here is considered as a subversion of the social framing which it nevertheless needs in order to function; it performs the possibility of a transgression, intimately yet publicly.

Humor and the Nineteenth-Century Reformer

ABSTRACT This article examines how American humorists from the 1820s through the 1870s treated the Reformer, that most American figure whose commitment to improving society embodied the optimism characteristic of the mid-nineteenth century. The satirical treatment of Reformers, with its emphasis on their marginality, served as both a punishment for their transgression and a way to define acceptable social mores. The picture that emerges reveals the strengths of the American Reformer—lofty ideals and daring positions—but also weaknesses, namely their single-mindedness, and at times unrealistic goals. It also demonstrates the wit and talent of the humorists, while reflecting their tendency to play it safe. Humorists aligned themselves with the already familiar and characterized new ideas and political passion as threatening or just plain crazy. Nineteenth-century humor about the reform movement sheds light on the crucial political and cultural ideas that preoccupied society and with which it struggled.

Cyborg activism: Exploring the reconfigurations of democratic subjectivity in Anonymous

This article develops the concept of cyborg activism as novel configuration of democratic subjectivity in the Information Age by exploring the online collectivity Anonymous as a prototype. By fusing elements of human/machine and organic/digital, the cyborg disrupts modern logics of binary thinking. Cyborg activism emerges as the reconfiguration of equality/hierarchy, reason/emotion and nihilism/idealism. Anonymous demonstrates how through the use of contingent and ephemeral digital personae hierarchies in cyborg activism prove more volatile than in face-to-face settings. Emotions appear as an essential part of a politics of passion, which enables pursuing laughter and joy, expressing anger and experiencing empowerment as part of a reasoned, strategic politics. Anonymous’ political content reconfigures nihilist sentiments, frustration and political disenchantment, on one hand, with idealist world views, on the other. This enables the cohabitation and partial integration of a great diversity of political claims rooted in various ideologies.

Between Breivik and PEGIDA: the absence of ideologues and leaders on the contemporary European far right

ABSTRACTIn the aftermath of the Norwegian terror attacks of 22 July 2011, the question of agency with regard to the convicted perpetrator, Anders Behring Breivik, has frequently been discussed. Did he really act on his own? Were his actions self-directed? Was he, as a typical ‘lone wolf’, inspired by the prevalent far-right concept of ‘leaderless resistance’ or, simply, a blind tool, a string puppet pushed and pulled by dark forces, as some commentators have claimed? His cut-and-paste manifesto points to inspiration from ideas circulating in the European Counter Jihad Movement (ECJM), in itself a contradictory mix of ideological positions. A number of these ideas were given new life when the so-called ‘populist right-wing movement of indignation’, the Patriotische Europäer Gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes (PEGIDA) took to the streets of Dresden in the autumn of 2014. The driving force behind PEGIDA, Lutz Bachmann, with a past as petty criminal and doorman, is an unlikely front man for one of the most successful political initiatives in post-unification Germany. Comparing Breivik and PEGIDA, Önnerfors argues that the ECJM is part of the ‘third generation’ of right-wing discourse that is without a consistent world view, dominant leaders and prolific ideologues. Instead, in a new atmosphere of ‘politics of passion’ and ‘post-politics’, fuzzy ECJM ideology turns into a screen upon which diffuse uneasiness with current political affairs can be projected and channelled. Outside the scope of Önnerfors's article but worth noting is the considerable impact these developments have had on electoral support for right-wing populist parties such as the Front National in France, the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany and the Sverigedemokraterna in Sweden.