Politics Of Paternity Research Articles

Becoming the Father of Modern India: Rammohun Roy and the Politics of Paternity

Abstract This article examines the posthumous reception of India’s most famous religious reformer, hailed as the ‘Father of Modern India’, Raja Rammohun Roy, from the 1830s to the present decade. During the late colonial period, the British administration and Bengali elites used class networks and print capitalism to establish Roy as the father to show compradorship amidst calls for independence. After independence, the INC retained Roy to counter the rise of more popular Hindu movements. In the period of INC decline, the BJP elevated Swami Vivekananda instead of Roy as a representative of majoritarian Hinduism. Economic and political coalitions in control of legitimating institutions elevate and sustain fathers as positive cultural symbols in response to competing claims. By emphasising party competition and issue ownership within multi-national federalism, this article complements decolonisation, cult-of-personality, and regime change as explanations for the rise and fall of public fathers.

FAKE NEWS & HATE SPEECH: A Colloquium Report

Nigeria, the proverbial giant of Africa, has in recent times, been beset with the politics of paternalism which has translated into heightened consciousness in ethnic nationalism and extremist immoderation, all too manifest in the now very dominant paradigm of fake news and hate speech. Amidst this threatening state of confusion, the nation-state witnesses its highest level of polarization among the citizenry and records a harvest of kidnappings, abductions, raping and ritual killings, all of which the government blames on fake news and hate speech. 
 As part of its contribution in the attempt to mitigate and possibly proffer a solution to the twin monsters of fake news and hate speech, the Olusegun Obasanjo Centre for African Studies (OOCAS) at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) Abuja organized a one-day Colloquium on Fake News and Hate Speech. This report, therefore, is a descriptive analysis that highlights the culture of impunity with which political elites incite and polarize the citizenry, especially on the contentious issues of religion and ethnicity.
 The paper applies the critical discourse analysis approach to evaluate the colloquium proceedings - the views, positions and propositions of discussants/participants and the ensuing communiqué that fake news and hate speech are largely products of mainstream and social media; with governments and political elites as the main culprits who exploit the volatile issues of religion, politics and ethnicity to polarize and incite.
 The paper concludes with nine communiqué recommendations including, that the mass media, especially the mainstream media, should invest more in the practice of investigative journalism and Nigeria’s governments, in general, should provide good governance, equity and justice to the citizenry; that, participants and discussants believe will curb the menace of fake news and hate speech.

The Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and the Politics of Paternity in the West

The Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and the Politics of Paternity in the West

The Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and the Politics of Paternity in the West. By Silke-Maria Weineck. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014. x + 208 pages. $29.95.

The Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and the Politics of Paternity in the West. By Silke-Maria Weineck. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014. x + 208 pages. $29.95.

The Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and the Politics of Paternity in the West

The Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and the Politics of Paternity in the West

Silke-Maria Weineck. The Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and the Politics of Paternity in the West

Silke-Maria Weineck. <i>The Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and the Politics of Paternity in the West</i>

The Politics of Paternalism: Adult and Youth Perspectives on Youth Voice in Public Policy

Background/Context Over the last two decades, youth involvement in policy advocacy has increased sharply, through youth councils, organizing coalitions, and new media forums. Currently 12 states and 140 American cities have youth councils or commissions established to advise policymakers on the impact of their legislation on youth. Despite their growing presence, we know little about what these councils do, how they are viewed, or how, if at all, they influence policy-making processes. Purpose This study explores manifestations of adultism during the first 4 years of the Ballou City Youth Commission (BCYC) from the perspectives of 22 youth members and adult allies. Research Design Though primarily interview-based, this study also draws on field notes collected during a BCYC meeting and a BCYC community forum and organizational artifacts to explore the nature and dynamics of adultism as they played out in BCYC. Data Collection and Analysis In-depth, individual interviews were conducted with 11 current and former youth commissioners and 11 adults who represented the target audience for BCYC's work or who partnered with the commission on various initiatives. The theoretical framework of adultism guided the analysis, which included open and axial coding, memo writing, and the construction of matrices and charts to track emergent patterns. Findings/Results Using a critical theory lens, we find that adultism has played a prominent role in limiting BCYC from achieving the goals laid out in its charter. We identify a “roller coaster of adultism” that illustrates how weak initial structures coupled with deeply entrenched views of youths’ limited capacity adversely impacted the functioning of BCYC and propelled a cycle of externalized and internalized adultism. Conclusions The study adds to the scant literature on youth voice in public policy, raises six clear implications for policy and practice, and extends theory by illustrating the complex ways in which external and internalized forms of adultism interact with and reinforce each other.

The Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and the Politics of Paternity in the West by Silke-Maria Weineck

The Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and the Politics of Paternity in the West by Silke-Maria Weineck

The Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and the Politics of Paternity in the West by Silke-Maria Weineck

Silke-Maria Weineck. Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and Politics of Paternity in West. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. Pp. 208+ x. $29.95. That trope of has played an overwhelmingly dominant role in political, legal, and religious development of Western civilization is per se no monumental insight. visible disjunction between that tropic organization and existing family structures out of which it arose, however, might signal exhaustion of a certain of understanding what that civilization has been and what it might yet become. To understand vicissitudes and functioning of this trope is motivating force behind Silke Weineck's illuminating Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and Politics of Paternity in West. In her words: the father may still function as of law, but his traditional double function--to protect and prohibit--ha[s] long been absorbed by a state that ceased to resemble family and had become a disembodied system (4). father-trope is nothing more than an empty ideal, it fails to do justice both to (a) intellectual possibilities inherent in institutions of law, politics, and religion and to (b) actualities inherent in fatherhood (as well as in motherhood). Weineck's book is, therefore, not so much a critique of (although it is that as well) as it is a genealogical diagnosis of a crucial philosophical, artistic, political, and theological self-understanding of West. readers of this journal wonder why this book is being reviewed by a journal specializing in Romanticism, it perhaps suffices to mention category of figure. While of figure is as old as Homer and Hebrew Bible, concept of is given prominence in 19th century when thinkers both German and English begin to view literary categories--e.g., tragedy--as philosophical problems. Thus, to paraphrase Peter Szondi's famous remark, Aristotle may have given us a poetics of tragedy, but only with Schelling do we have a philosophy of tragedy. Thus, while Weineck's perfervid study spans works of Sophocles, Bible, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Lessing, Kleist, and Freud, optic she uses is (I believe) clearly one that emerges in Romantic period. Differently stated, if content of Weineck's study traverses multiple historical periods, its form finds its decisive measure in 19th century. One of [the] aspirations [of Tragedy] is to hear fathers speak, in however mediated a way (7). While paternity has dominated Western discourse, it does not speak in first person (this despite fact that Oedipus, qua literary character, speaks). Rather, one initially hears it through voice of sons: The absence of father's voice as anything but a distorted echo in writings of sons ... has led to a pervasive failure to articulate place of father as a subject position (7). paternity rules through traces or traumatic marks left on children, then it cannot be other than repressive and defensive. legal, political, and religious institutions that operate according to its logic amount, therefore, to a hollow standard that either bestows or robs legitimacy from concrete actors. This situation not only causes repression of these actors, but it also assures (in strict Athenian fashion) that of father will bestow a murderous destiny on his family: If fatherhood, as I argue, is at core always-tenuous incorporation of potentially conflicting ... claims to legitimacy, then its form is itself tragic (10). This is true no less for Freud, despite fact that he changed terrain on which father exacts his discipline and/or protection from politics, religion, and family to psychological fantasy (or, inner object [15]). …

Power, Knowledge and the Politics of Public Pasts

This article examines the ways in which the disciplines of history and archaeology in South Africa relate and how they have negotiated the public as part of their disciplinary practices of producing knowledge about the past that is accessible. It presents an analysis of questions of knowledge and power, and the different ways that scholars working broadly as ‘historians’ or ‘archaeologists’ have viewed the relationship between expertise and ‘community’. It is also about how relations of expertise have been negotiated within and across these fields, and particularly how those relations of expertise have been contested. This is done through an analysis of the varied social history research and efforts at popularisation of the History Workshop at the University of the Witwatersrand, as well as the forms of public engagement on the part of public archaeologists in the District Six Museum and in Khoisan rock art research. The article also analyses the District Six Museum in Cape Town as a space of emerging expertise in the field of public history, whose practice and experience demonstrates the possibilities and limits of transcending relations of knowledge characterised by a politics of paternalism and atonement, in which public scholarship is limited to relations of outreach. The article is concerned to understand the possibilities of decentring and relocating expertise outside the academy.

The Politics of Paternity and Patrimony

This article reassesses the characterization of Hebrew literature as a literature of fathers and sons. It argues that not only is the image of the father more complicated in the "classic" texts than is typically noted, but that the father continues to be significant in more recent works. In these works the character of the father is often problematic—he is unnamed, unknown, or absent—and the question of paternity becomes ever more significant. The quest for a father propels many of the narratives under discussion, and can be seen as a search for roots, for identity, and for legitimacy. Connections between paternity, patrimony, lineage, and land are read against the context of politics. Ultimately the characterization of the literature is reaffirmed, although there is no attempt to claim it as all-inclusive.