Political Paths Research Articles

The Blasé and the Flâneur. Simmel and Benjamin on Modern and Postmodern Forms of Individualization

Simmel’sblaséand Benjamin’sflâneuras symbols of their models of metropolitan subjectivity can be the necessary reference points for delineating two models, sometimes converging, other times diverging, regarding the representation of the individual and its possible autonomy in the context of the “aestheticization” of contemporary daily life. Simmel does not stop looking – albeit with an accent on the tragic that grew ever stronger in last stages of his reflections – at the individual and the process of individualization from the perspective of the ever more marked differentiation and growth of the vital possibilities of the individual. Simmel’s conception of life as Adventure expresses an irreversible trend of contemporary subjectivity, which is towards the realization of its peculiarity and uniqueness. Benjamin, on the contrary, criticizes the conception of the adventure as the very search for true “lived experience” (Erlebnis), because it would lead directly to the aestheticization of politics, the exaltation of the noble gesture, the search for the authentic − all the forms of cultural expression that led to fascism and war. He seems rather prefer going beyond − in the utopian and/or ideological sense − the individualistic structure of contemporary society. His hope was that the void created by the disappearance of the western individual could be filled by new forms and figures of subjectivity and intellectuality made possible through the means offered by the technical reproducibility of artwork. From an exquisitely theoretical point of view, nothing can guarantee a priori that the search for authenticity does not head in this regressive direction, instead of establishing a point of departure towards new ethical and political paths.

Cabral, Césaire, Du Bois : Trois Voix Atlantiques pour Amplifier la Portée des Luttes d’Émancipation

The Black Atlantic has become a key reference in postcolonial studies. This concept is extremely useful to examine the presence of hyperviolence and struggles for emancipation in literary works and political paths. This article addresses the link between the Atlantic and the notion of identity. This metaphoric place, where a wide variety of symbolic goods circulates, tends indeed to favour dynamic processes of identification, less marked by a rooted and exclusive Us. Then, this article examines how Cabral, Cesaire and Du Bois have, from that symbolic space, thought the forms of emancipation. When considered from the global South, emancipation requires an analytic space that goes beyond the local setting. This article argues that the Atlantic imposes itself not as a resource among others, but as a necessity given the nature of the object being studied.

O Estado de Coisas Inconstitucional na ADPF 347 e a sedução do Direito: o impacto da medida cautelar e a resposta dos poderes políticos

Resumo Este artigo pretende analisar o Estado de Coisas Inconstitucional a partir da avaliação dos impactos nos três poderes da República da medida cautelar deferida pelo Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) e da possibilidade de mudanças sociais a partir dela. Ao tratar da decisão do STF na ADPF 347 como uma decisão que cria caminhos políticos a serem percorridos pelos agentes envolvidos, no caso, os Poderes Executivo, Legislativo e Judiciário, busca-se avaliar a viabilidade das respostas apresentadas no sentido de alcançarem, ou não, as exigências formuladas pela decisão judicial. Os dados coletados no âmbito dos poderes foram contrastados com os objetivos das medidas cautelares e com as justificativas do Estado de Coisas Inconstitucional. Em seguida, argumenta-se a impossibilidade de mudanças na situação fática apontada por meio das categorias jurídicas, com base nas teses de Gerald Rosenberg sobre quando ocorrem mudanças sociais por intermédio do Direito. O estudo conclui que as medidas cautelares deferidas não são efetivas, pois os poderes apresentaram respostas que seguem a mesma natureza das políticas tradicionalmente desenvolvidas no Brasil, e que é pouco provável uma mudança social por meio da declaração do Estado de Coisas Inconstitucional.

Circuitos latinos em SP e RJ: sentidos dos ativismos musicais migrantes

O artigo analisa aspectos dos circuitos musicais latinos em Sao Paulo e no Rio de Janeiro, buscando compreender as proximidades e disjuncoes entre as praticas protagonizadas por imigrantes oriundos da America Latina hispânica e os sentidos de “latinidade” que a partir dai se esbocam em cada cidade. Em um primeiro momento, retomamos algumas questoes da dinâmica historica dos (des)caminhos politicos do seculo XIX, nos quais uma ideia de America Latina e forjada e o Brasil desenvolve uma ambiguidade entre pertencer e nao pertencer a essa nocao identitaria e politica, construindo o latino como um Outro. Em seguida, apresentamos uma cartografia mais geral dos circuitos musicais latinos e a presenca da salsa como nomenclatura guarda-chuva para uma serie de ritmos, estilos e generos musicais do que se constroi em varias partes do mundo e no Brasil como simbolo de latinidade. Ao final, analisamos um grupo musical atuante em cada uma das cidades: o Batanga & Cia, em Sao Paulo, e o grupo Songoro Cosongo, no Rio de Janeiro. Buscamos assim compreender sentidos dos ativismos musicais migrantes que se articulam a construcao de identidades, aos usos e dinâmicas das cidades e as formas de producao cultural e midiatica alternativas que ressaltam especificidades dos contextos socioculturais de cada meio urbano analisado.Palavras-chave: comunicacao, cultura urbana, circuito latino, latinidade, ativismo musical.

Hegel, Deleuze/Guattari and Political Immanence: The Sons of Rousseau

AbstractIn the article I argue that Hegel and Deleuze/Guattari construct two distinct political paths toward immanence. Both of these paths have as their starting point Rousseau’s bourgeois. I show that both thinkers follow Rousseau in his attempt to construct political immanence and abandon the position of private man. However, in doing so they move in opposite directions. Hegel seeks to convert the bourgeois into the citizen, with the intention of reformulating the immanence of state-life presented in the The Social Contract by extending mutual recognition a distinct space in the form of civil society. In contrast Deleuze/Guattari move in the direction of becoming-animal along the lines of the Discourse on Inequality, by reformulating the relationship between life and society. At the same time, I argue that the overcoming of the problems that Hegel and Deleuze/Guattari identified in Rousseau introduces new ones and that the dangers inherent in the project of immanence cannot disappear.

Voces disonantes. Opiniones libertarias sobre Venezuela y Cuba (1958-1961)

Este ensayo plantea un acercamiento, desde la perspectiva de la prensa anarquista del exilio español en Francia, a los procesos político-revolucionarios de Venezuela y Cuba, que produjeron la caída de Pérez Jiménez y de Batista, pero que siguieron rumbos políticos diferentes. Los anarquistas españoles encontraron en Venezuela espacios de sociabilidad, se reorganizaron, generaron redes de solidaridad internacional y trataron de contribuir a deteriorar la imagen exterior del régimen de Franco. En Cuba, por el contrario, el movimiento anarquista local, que poseía una vieja tradición de origen hispano, tendió a desaparecer a medida que se cimentaron los postulados marxistas. Pero la revolución cubana generó vivas polémicas en la prensa libertaria del exilio español, a causa de sus singularidades y de su enorme popularidad

THE JASMINE REVOLUTION AND ITS IMPACT ON WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT IN TUNISIA

On Saturday December 17, 2016, Tunisia celebrated the six year anniversary of the Jasmine Revolution which was sparked off by the self-immolation of Bouazizi that started in Sidi Bouzid, a small town in the center of the country. The revo­lution in Tunisia led to a regional wave of uprisings spreading rapidly to Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Yemen, Jordan and Syria. For over half a century, Tunisia lived under a dictatorial re­gime with a single powerful political party. The other par­ties, allowed in-between, had no power, being restricted in their movements and actions and only served to make the world believe that Tunisia was indeed democratic, as daily reported by Ben Ali’s media. Since the independence of their country from colonial rule in 1956 Tunisia sustained major progress in relation to women’s access to health and education services and the labor market; maternal mortality and fertility rates were halved, girls’ enrolment in secondary school more than doubled and women were increasingly in paid employment. Moreover, despite the limited democratic space, the number of women in government grew significantly and women’s organizations began to play a role in shaping social and political transformation. This paper argues that women’s empowerment in Tunisia is largely rooted in the particular features of the elite post-independence bargain, early political choices regarding state–society relations and the associated policies in the areas of education, health and labor, which increased women’s access to resources. It also highlights the interaction between changes in law, policies promoting gender equality and women’s capacity to mobilize. Women’s increasing individual and collective agency in both the public and private spheres explains the existence of opportunities to consolidate women’s empowerment in contemporary Tunisia. Cumulative change in different spheres has been mutually reinforcing, and may also have created resilience regarding potential reversals associated with the political changes brought about by the ‘Arab Spring’. Tunisia’s progress in women’s empowerment provides valuable lessons on how women can obtain access to new resources and the way in which politics and power, and the struggles, dynamics and contestation that these generate can be used to challenge gender and social power relations. It demonstrates the importance of locating political paths of change – such as processes of women’s empowerment – in the context of wider political settlements. Article visualizations:

‘Milksops’ and ‘Bemedalled Old Men’: War Veterans and the War Youth Generation in the Weimar Republic

This article reconsiders traditional assumptions about the connection between the First World War and the rise of National Socialism in Germany, according to which politically radicalised war veterans joined the Freikorps after the war and formed the backbone of the Nazi membership and electorate. In questioning this view, the article first traces the political paths of actual veterans’ organisations. Whereas the largest veterans’ organisations were not politically active, the most distinctive ones – Reichsbanner and Stahlhelm – were not primarily responsible for a ‘brutalisation’ or radicalisation of Weimar political culture. Their definitions of ‘veteran’ and ‘front experience’ implicitly excluded the so-called ‘war youth generation’ from their narrative. Secondly, it is shown how representatives of this younger generation, lacking actual combat experience but moulded by war propaganda, determined the collective imagination of the First World War. The direct connection between the First World War and National Socialism can therefore primarily be found in the continuity of public and cultural imagination of war and of ‘war veterans’, and much less so in actual membership overlaps between veterans’ and Nazi movements.

Determinants of Preferential Voting in Italy: General Lessons from a Crucial Case

The Italian case can be considered one of the most seminal political systems that has adopted open-list proportional representation. We have tested the hypotheses related to the determinants of preference voting. In order to measure the consequences on the voting behaviour, different variables have been considered. Findings coherent with the literature on the topic have confirmed the effects of sociopolitical variables on electoral behaviour. A degree of counter-intuitive and innovative data is also presented, especially concerning the determinants of preference voting. Data vindicate some impressionistic interpretations of Italian political and electoral paths. Party size, social capital, and district magnitude among others predict a big share of variation in preference voting.

‘When Counting Counts’ – Europeanisation of Census-Taking in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

In 2000, the European Union (EU) extended the membership perspective to the Western Balkans; however these countries have taken different political paths towards EU accession at different speeds. The population census is one of the conditions for EU accession and part of the eighteenth acquis chapter on statistics. This article seeks to explain the variation in census-taking in the 2010 census round in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia considering two Europeanisation mechanisms: (a) the conditionality and (b) the legitimacy of the EU regulations in the area of census-taking. While conditionality assesses the cost-benefit calculation between the EU rewards/pressure and domestic adoption costs, legitimacy analyses whether the EU census regulations will be accepted based on their perception of appropriateness. Congruence analysis will be used to compare the effectiveness of the Europeanisation mechanisms on the censuses in the countries under investigation. The study concludes that in Croatia legitimacy had the most impact, whereas the cases of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia can be better explained by conditionality. Therewith this study contributes to the recent findings that conditionality as well as legitimacy matter for research on Europeanisation.

People of the Upper Cumberland: Achievements and Contradictions ed. by Michael E. Birdwell and W. Calvin Dickinson

Reviewed by: People of the Upper Cumberland: Achievements and Contradictions ed. by Michael E. Birdwell and W. Calvin Dickinson Edward Salo People of the Upper Cumberland: Achievements and Contradictions. Edited by Michael E. Birdwell and W. Calvin Dickinson. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2015. Pp. xxiv, 434. $54.95, ISBN 978-1-62190-109-9.) More than a decade ago, Michael E. Birdwell and W. Calvin Dickinson edited a seventeen-essay collection, Rural Life and Culture in the Upper Cumberland (Lexington, Ky., 2004), which examined popular music, movies, architecture, folklore, religion, and literature of the Upper Cumberland, a region usually thought of as distinct from the rest of the nation. Even though that work received excellent reviews, Birdwell later mentioned in an interview that many of the reviews discussed the book that the authors did not write, rather than the book they did. With critics' suggestions in hand, Birdwell and Dickinson present this new volume to address the perceived holes in the first book. What they have produced is another important addition to the historiography of the region and to southern history. After an introduction by the editors that provides the reader with an overview of the region, the book is divided into five sections: "Regional Overview," "Politicians and Politics," "Lawyers and Law Breakers," "Medical Men and Women," and "African Americans and Race Relations." However, unlike in many similar works, the editors do not provide a summary of the essays in this book. The section "Regional Overview" offers one of the more enjoyable essays in the book because of the newly researched material being examined; archaeologist Randal D. Williams explores the relatively unknown history of Native Americans in the Upper Cumberland. Next, Michael Allen examines how the Cumberland River was used for both work and play, although much of this essay discusses areas outside the Upper Cumberland region. Finally, Ann [End Page 487] Toplovich pens an exciting essay on the changing roles of women in the region, which fits nicely with other important work being done on Tennessee and other regional historiographies. The section on "Politicians and Politics" contains a chapter by Al Cross and David Cross on Republican politics in the Kentucky portion of the region and an essay by Mark Dudney on Cordell Hull and John Gore, law partners who took different political paths. Finally, Mary A. Evins's fascinating essay on Tennessee congressman Joe L. Evins, a post–World War II Democrat, examines the forces that were in play in rural areas of the South during the 1950s and 1960s. In the section "Lawyers and Law Breakers," Birdwell and John Nisbet III look at the career of John Catron, the Andrew Jackson–appointed Supreme Court justice from the Upper Cumberland who was instrumental in the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision of 1857. Also, Troy D. Smith showcases Champ Ferguson, a Confederate guerrilla, and Birdwell explores moonshine and its place in the region's heritage. The next three essays on the development of medicine in the Upper Cumberland are arguably the strongest and most interesting in the collection. Opless Walker, a pharmacist, explores the early medical practices of the region and how traditional healers treated common ailments. While Walker examines traditional healers, Janey Dudney and W. Calvin Dickinson highlight early medical doctors of the region. Finally, Dickinson tells the story of Dr. May Cravath Wharton, one of the first female physicians in the area, who was instrumental in the establishment of hospitals and clinics in Cumberland County, Tennessee. The final three essays examine race relations in the Upper Cumberland, a subject that was often not investigated in the previous volume. Wali R. Kharif provides an overview of African American lifeways in the region, and Laura Clemons studies the relationship between the white composer Charles Faulkner Bryan and his African American student J. Robert Bradley. Finally, Birdwell presents the story of John's Place, an African American bar and honky-tonk where music and entertainment aided in the integration of the races. One of the strengths of this collected work is that rather than rely solely on academic historians, Birdwell and Dickinson have enlisted authors from outside the academy, including a lawyer and a pharmacist, to examine topics through...

QUEM QUER A SUA MTV? CAMINHOS DE UMA NOVA EMISSORA NO BRASIL (1984-1990)

This paper analyzes MTV's attempts to enter Brazil throughout the 1980s, during the historical context of democratic transition and the promulgation of the 1988 Federal Constitution. MTV Brazil started operating in 1990, through the business agreement between Grupo Abril and Viacom. It was the first segmented television channel in the country that was aimed at young audiences and broadcast on UHF. MTV’s particularity lies in the transmission on an open network and inserted in the context of renewal and freedom of Brazilian society, which structured narratives of political, social and cultural opening, having as a landmark the promulgation of the 1988 Federal Constitution. Thus, this article seeks to approximate the reasons why MTV's entry proposals did not take effect, in the agreements with TV Gazeta in 1985, and Rede Manchete in 1986, and the post-dictatorial process involved by ruptures and permanencies in the construction of democracy. The agreement between MTV and Grupo Abril was made possible due to the effectiveness of the Constitutional Charter, which guaranteed the end of the state censorship apparatus, and the new regulation of television concessions. The primary sources in this article is the newspapers Folha de São Paulo and Jornal do Brasil, with news reports that dealt with these issues. Establishing dialogues with Renato Ortiz and Marcos Napolitano, in order to understand the Brazilian process of cultural modernization and the political paths in the 1980s, and, also, with Reinhart Koselleck to analyze the Futures Past that involved MTV.

Corpi, saperi e sessualità. Intervista a Luciana Percovich

In an interview with Luciana Percovich addressing certain key figures of the movement for health/medicine women of the seventies: the question of knowledge on the body, the concept of women's medicine, the implications of the incarnate political practices such as the self-help or self-management of abortion, the relationship with the institutions and with mainstream medicine. Percovich also addresses the heritage theme of this movement, which formed the background of numerous political paths and research that have deployed the following decades

Same context, different political paths: Two Islamic movements in Turkey

Two Islamic actors in Turkey have transformed the state’s strict control of the religious field (laicism). While the National Outlook Movement, the “mother-movement” of the governing Justice and Development Party, did so through its “participation” in party politics, the Gülen Movement, Turkey’s most powerful Islamic movement that operates hundreds of schools and a major media network, contributed to this transformation through its “non-participation” in party politics as a social movement, providing an alternative to laicist establishments outside of institutional channels. These two movements, by following different political paths, have embodied different opportunities for and challenges to Turkish democratization. To understand their influence in Turkish politics today, this article will adapt a “method of difference” and ask what explains these two Islamic movements’ variation in regards to party politics and what the consequences of this variation are for Turkish politics. Based on qualitative fieldwork in Turkey, this article will argue that both movements have made their decisions about party politics by strategically and differently evaluating the political opportunities/threats of party politics in light of their varying ideological priorities and organizational needs, and that these strategic decisions have transformed the movements themselves and the Turkish regime altering the laicist status quo between them.

The resilient, the remobilized and the removed: party mobilization among former M19 combatants

Armed groups often transform into political parties, which involves a profound transformation of the organizational culture. How these parties condition the continued political mobilization of their members is unclear. Using life history interviews with former combatants of the armed group M19 in Colombia, this article demonstrates what aspects of the party mobilize and stymie their political mobilization. Through exploring three typical political life paths – the Resilient, the Remobilized and the Removed – this article demonstrates the long-term challenges of post-war politics, the role of the party, as well as the personal journey from (war and) peace to democracy.

Conjuntura, gênese e formação profissional: notas relacionais entre o Serviço Social brasileiro e o espanhol

Resumo: O artigo objetiva contextualizar conjunturalmente Brasil e Espanha e, a partir disso, analisar (1) a gênese do Serviço Social nos referidos países e as trajetórias teórico-políticas particulares que assumem no decorrer do seu processo sócio-histórico, as quais constituem solo histórico das características da (2) formação profissional contemporânea. Para isso, tem como ponto de partida as investigações e experiências com a realização do estágio doutoral na Universidade Complutense de Madrid, no primeiro semestre de 2015.

Las voces de una juventud silenciosa: memoria y política entre los otros jóvenes durante los años 60 (Mar del Plata - Argentina)

Este trabajo busca observar las imágenes y representaciones de la política que tenía la juventud argentina en la década de los años sesenta del siglo XX, a través de entrevistas orales y publicaciones de la época. El universo analizado contempla a aquellos jóvenes que no militaron en partidos políticos ni participaron en grupos armados. Estos “otros jóvenes” se insertaron en el mercado laboral al finalizar la escuela y no realizaron estudios universitarios, recorriendo caminos culturales y políticos distintos. De esta forma, se intentará analizar las actitudes sociales y comportamientos políticos de estos, en función de una realidad marcada por los procesos políticos e institucionales que se daban en la Argentina de los años sesenta.

Paine and Jefferson in the Age of Revolutions ed. by Simon P. Newman and Peter S. Onuf (review)

Paine and Jefferson in the Age of Revolutions. Edited by Simon P. Newman and Peter S. Onuf. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013. Pp. 311. Cloth, $49.50.)Paine and Jefferson is a scholarly collection of essays on the profound role Thomas Paine played in developing the ideals of democratic revolution. While Paine is the principal focus of the essayists, a significant portion of the book also illuminates his relationship with Thomas Jefferson and their comparative, often overlapping, philosophies about human equality and the republican role of government. The editorial scheme for this pithy and enlightening book also sheds clearer light into their personal and political differences. This one-volume intellectual history is a welcome addition to scholarship that over the years has produced many disparate perspectives about Paine, portraying him as everything from progressive and liberal to conservative. Among modern authors, Jefferson, of course, has enjoyed far greater interest than his friend Paine.The book is divided into three parts. Part I deals with the radicalism of both men. It begins with Gordon Wood's deeply synthetic explication of the two men's shared sentiments and the different directions of their lives, with Paine maintaining an activist stance in response to the many convulsions in Europe during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and Jefferson's political paths requiring more cautious public statements about matters like religion and revolution abroad. Francis Cogliano identifies their different visions for the new constitutional republic, with Jefferson working toward an agrarian- and Paine an urbancentered society. Their backgrounds no doubt contributed to separate visions, as the former emerged from rural Virginia and the latter from the metropolis of Georgian England. Unlike many previous authors, however, Cogliano argues that Jefferson's agrarianism was not regressive; to the contrary, his constitutional vision was in many ways as forwardlooking as Paine's.Although Paine enjoyed much popularity across the political spectrum until the mid-1790s, as Simon Newman points out, he came to be reviled by Federalists and some Republicans for his criticisms of organized Christianity and President George Washington. Newman's study is richly illustrated by primary sources and ceremonial toasts that display Paine's star through the French Revolution as well as his sharp decline in status. Jack Fruchtman, Jr.'s chapter turns outward, providing details from Paine's lesser-known writings on the desire to support revolutions overseas. Paine's formative experience at the time of the American Revolution prompted him to advocate for upheavals throughout Europe-indeed, for broad global change-so as to vindicate the universal rights of mankind.The French Revolution not only affected the evolution of Paine's views but Jefferson's as well. Both men understood equality within a representative democracy framework. As Armin Mattes demonstrates in his chapter, both men's writings during and after the French Revolution incorporated anti-aristocratic values into the legacy of the American Revolution; they thereby played a significant role in the U.S. shift from Federalist hierarchical politics, which John Adams and Alexander Hamilton had adopted. …

W. H. Hutt (1899-1988): Free Markets and Social Justice

W.H. Hutt reaffirmed the principles of classical economics and classical liberalism and, by applying them to urgent issues he observed in the world around him, he demonstrated the contemporary relevance of freedom and competitive institutions. A wide-ranging critique of Keynes was founded upon a classical analysis of the labour market, while his trenchant opposition to apartheid advanced along economic and political paths. Hutt questioned the justice of the accumulation of wealth from the exploitation of monopoly power over generations. In all of these respects there are affinities between Hutt's thought and that of ‘Bleeding Heart Libertarians’.

Beyond Heidegger’s Differential Ontology

The Heidegger/Deleuze affiliation is a rhizomatic crisscross of ontological, aesthetic and political paths. Both restore philosophy to ontology, re-positing the inceptive question of the relation of being and thinking by conceptualizing difference at the heart of being, identify a double movement of Being, propose theories of the event, and posit a people-to-come. Though their lexical and procedural similarities are alluring, Deleuze maintains that Heidegger’s ontological difference is too fixed, his conception of Being too formally and categorically bound to the powers of representation and that Heidegger introduced a necessary shame into philosophy. In this paper, I treat theirs as an encounter of provocation and productivity, attending to this relationship where it is articulated most extensively. Through the analysis of concepts such as the fold, difference, and event, I develop the political and ethical complications of Deleuze’s thought.