Radical Rejection Research Articles

West and East – Europe's Dual Experience

West and East – Europe’s Dual Experience1 Tomáš Halík The spirit of the West When we speak of East and West in relation to Europe the terms usually have a cultural and political, rather than a geographical sense. The cultural differences between Christianity in the two areas stem from the difference between Greek and Latin thinking. The mutual alienation of the two branches of European Christianity resulted from the schism between the Byzantine and Latin patriarchates. It was particularly after that schism that the initial cultural diversity of western Christianity gave way to ‘Romanisation’and the dominance of papal Rome. The western cultural mentality was then formed fundamentally by a series of historical events and spiritual currents: conflicts between the papacy and the empire, the mediaeval ‘papal revolution’, the separation of secular and spiritual spheres, the emergence and gradual emancipation of secular culture, the humanism of the Renaissance, the Reformation, Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the ideals of democracy, human rights and civil liberties. Those major cultural transformations had a minimal effect on Eastern Europe (particularly after the centre of orthodox Christianity moved to Russia after the fall of Constantinople). Nationalism and the nation states came into existence on the ruins of mediaeval Christianitas. Europe’s West is also the cradle of scientific and technical progress, capitalism and the industrial revolution. Marxism and the socialist movement were a reaction to the social consequences of the industrial revolution. As a reaction to the major crisis of capitalism in the 1930s there was an upsurge of three revolutionary counter-cultural movements, which represented three forms of radical rejection of the western culture of Christianity, humanism and liberal democracy: German Nazism, Italian Fascism and Russian Communism. All three drew sustenance from mythological sources: Nazism from Germanic cults of land and blood, Fascism from Ancient Rome, and Bolshevism from Russian Messianism. The two world wars that started in western Europe weakened Europe’s standing in the world. In the subsequent Cold War, Europe was divided politically into the East (which now denoted the countries under the Soviet Studies • volume 109 • number 433 11 Studies_layout_SPRING-2020.indd 11 Studies_layout_SPRING-2020.indd 11 27/02/2020 13:59 27/02/2020 13:59 diktat) and the West, under the influence of the United States. Thus the terms West and East acquired a new meaning. Does this division into West and East still hold good today? The integration of Europe after the fall of Communism After the fall of Communism and the end of the Cold War, marked by the entry of several post-Communist countries into the EU and NATO, the process of European integration accelerated. Politicians spoke about ‘a common European home’and John Paul II about ‘Europe breathing with both its lungs’. It would now seem that those visions were a reflection of overoptimism . After 1989 the process of European integration relied excessively on economic and administrative aspects and neglected the cultural, moral and spiritual component: nurturing European awareness. The difficulty of defining a European identity became evident particularly during the attempts to frame a basic constitutional document for the EU. It is very difficult to find a compromise between two concepts: a conservative one based on nostalgia for ‘a Christian Europe’, and a secular liberal one that avoids linking the European idea with Christianity. Clearly on both sides there are prejudices, ‘enemy images’ and fears of the possible destructive consequences if the other side were to totally dominate public space. The continuation of the European integration process is encountering major difficulties. The West underestimates the dangers from Putin’s Russia, which is waging intensive hybrid warfare helped by a propaganda campaign of disinformation, aimed chiefly at the post-Communist countries.The European Union is weakened by the departure of Great Britain. The integration process is torpedoed by nationalists and populists – often financed by Russia– who are enjoying success on both side of the former ‘Iron Curtain’, particularly in the post-Communist countries such as Hungary and Poland, where they are gradually destroying liberal democracy, which did not manage to put down deep roots in the previous decades. The crisis of European integration is related, of course, to the crisis of a broader process...

Institutional Historical Memory and History in Post-Soviet Belarus

Abstract Belarusian institutional historical memory (as defined by Richard Ned Lebow) and the interpretation of Belarusian national history have experienced radical shifts in the past several decades. The first shift (1990–1994) was characterized by radical rejection of the interpretational and methodological patterns of the Soviet period, resulting in the creation of a new concept of Belarusian national history and historical narrative. The second shift in the existing historical narrative and institutional memory followed rapidly. It came with the transformation from a parliamentary republic into a parliamentary-presidential (1994) and then presidential republic (1996). The second wave demonstrated a clear shift towards a methodological, theoretical approach and terminological framework typical of the historiography of the Soviet period. These changes were in response to the growing demands for ideological control of institutionalized historical research supported by the government in the same decade. One of the characteristic features of recent Belarusian state-sponsored historiography (Lyč, Chigrinov, Marcuĺ, Novik and others) is the linking of post-Soviet national initiatives to Nazi occupation and collaboration in World War II. Another typical feature is simplifying historical explanations and often using undisguised pejorative terminology. The last shift in institutional historical memory also resulted in further re-interpretations of many symbolic centres and milestones of Belarusian history (for example, the period of the first years of post-Soviet independence, the introduction of new national symbols (Pahonia coat of arms and white-red-white flag) and the interwar nationality policy of Belarusization of the 1920s.)

Issues of determining the original of electronic evidence in the civil procedure of Ukraine

The article is devoted to the research of the concept of originals of electronic evidence, in particular the possibility to recognize an electronic information item as original on the basis of certain criteria. The issue is relevant, given the numerous cases of courts refusing to recognize electronic evidence as originals, as well as the uncertainty of this concept in the civil procedure legislation of Ukraine.At the beginning of the article the author gives a series of definitions, which are enshrined in national and international standards, academic dictionaries and legal acts that govern similar legal relations. Based on the analysis, several characteristics are identified to serve as criteria for assessing the originality of electronic information. It allows outlining three approaches to understanding of the originals of electronic evidence: materialistic, structural and interpersonal.It is proved that in accordance with the philosophy of dialectical materialism, on which the Ukrainian theory of proof is based, the use of the term “original” with respect to information is incorrect, and the concept of the original of electronic evidence is meaningless. According to the structural approach, the originals of electronic evidence are inherent in the unity of all internal components, which is absent in their copies. This is manifested in the presence in the originals of electronic evidence of certain details, among which metadata occupies a prominent place. The subjective attitude of the participants in a case to a specific form of expression of electronic information can also affect its recognition as an original, including the voluntary recognition by all participants of a case of the authenticity of a certain copy of an electronic document.Based on the results of the study, the author suggests some ways how to improve the situation that has developed around the concept of the originals of electronic evidence in the civil procedure of Ukraine. Among the possible scenarios there are a change in the definition of the concept of electronic evidence, fixing a separate definition of the original of electronic evidence and a radical rejection of the use of the term “original” to electronic evidence.

Gramsci's Civil Society and the Implicit Dimension of Politics. A case Study

Civil society actors' reduced ability to take political action and adopt critical positions towards public institutions is often ascribed to the marketisation of the local welfare systems in which non-profit and third-sector organizations operate. This reading of the depoliticisation of civil society is correct, but it has a number of shortcomings, including the assumption that civil society actors are passive agents that are overwhelmed by the depoliticisation mechanisms to which they are subjected. Instead, this paper ex-plores how civic organizations – albeit unintentionally – engender depoliticisation dynamics that shrink their critical strength. To do so, it draws on Gramscian arguments regarding civil society and politics and uses them to illuminate a case study of a local governance strategy (V'Arco Villoresi Green System), involv-ing both experts and civic groups. The main finding of the research is that civil society sustains what Gram-sci called economism, i.e. a radical rejection of politics, which may be enacted by civil society both when non-critically adhering to governance arenas and when contesting them. The analysis undertaken contrib-utes to our understanding of the depoliticisation of civil society, shedding light, on the one hand, on how this process is not solely due to factors external to civil society and, on the other hand, on what the author calls the implicit dimension of politics.

Controversies in Tolcott Parsons' Justification of Functionalist Style of Sociological Thinking

The article focuses on identifying contradictions of functionalist oriented sociological thought, which accumulates various tendencies that determine the ways and styles of sociological theorizing. In particular, an analysis of the link between the life and creative biography of Tolcott Parsons as one of the founders of structural functionalism, their influence on the way and style of his sociological thinking. From the point of view of the authors of the article, T. Parsons' autobiography suggests that the liberal way of thinking was natural to the American scientist. It is this method that has found its adequate reflection in his scientific work and determined the thinking style of one of the most prominent representatives of structural functionalism. It is emphasized that, in response to the accusations of violating the "balance between succession and opportunism" in his "intellectual history", T. Parsons raised questions that did not resolve this contradiction but significantly exacerbated it. Similar situations are classified by a number of intellectuals as schizophrenic in the culture of late capitalism. But they have their logic, based on the rules of which theorists offer different ways of getting out of contradictory social situations that provide temporary success, while creating the effect of their delayed exacerbation. It is emphasized that in the works of T. Parsons the contradiction between “social” and “societal” is realized but not resolved, where “societal” requires development and “social” requires order. It is proved that the functionalist style of sociological thinking creates the illusion of the possibility of its solution by the method of undeclared refusal to develop in the name of order, which, in turn, leads to a radical rejection of the principle of rationalism.

ВЛАДА І АВТОРИТЕТ: ЗМІНИ В ПУБЛІЧНОМУ УПРАВЛІННІ ТА АДМІНІСТРУВАННІ З ПОГЛЯДУ ПОЛІТИЧНОЇ ФІЛОСОФІЇ ХАННИ АРЕНДТ

The article aims at revealing theoretical and practical perspectives on public administration by exploring/studying the key notions of Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy and by juxtaposing these notions with the ones that describe current practices of public administration. Furthermore, the article estimates/offers the possibilities to converge their meanings for strengthening power as communication, to preserve the public realm as a place for reality, limiting the role of coercion and violence in the societal organization by increasing the influence of the authority in the public realm. The study used a range of logical methods (synthesis, analysis, inductive method, etc.) and such general scholarly approaches as systematic, structural-functional and bibliographic ones. The article examines Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy as a motivation for changes of the existing social orders, as they were defined by Max Weber and constitute the grounding for the common understanding of public administration as a public sphere’s phenomenon. It demonstrates that such changes do not implicate a radical rejection of the common meanings of the notions like power, violence, and authority as they were defined in the “sociology of understanding”. But they open the way to a new development of the public realm/space and public administration respectively by demonstrating the opportunities in situations when freedom border on necessity. A scholarly novelty of the article is an outline (definition) for the new developments in public administration under the influence of changes in democratic political systems as they were foreseen by Hannah Arendt. This research demonstrates the importance of implementing the notion of authority as a special phenomenon of the public realm/space into a theory and practice of public administration and argues for developing new methods and instruments to support it. A practical significance of the article is bound to recent changes in democracy and nation state and the proposed findings of the study can be used in course readings, research, and (political) practice.

Microdramas: Crucibles for Theater and Time by John H. Muse

Reviewed by: Microdramas: Crucibles for Theater and Time by John H. Muse Jill Stevenson Microdramas: Crucibles for Theater and Time. By John H. Muse. University of Michigan Press, 2017. Cloth $75.00, Paper $29.95, eBook $29.95. ix + 231 pages. In Microdramas, John H. Muse examines very short plays written between 1880 and the early twenty-first century to consider how playwrights have used brevity to experiment with theatre’s potential and, ultimately, to expose “temporal conventions that inform any theatrical performance” (2). Although Muse analyzes texts, with their length enabling him to reproduce several complete plays, he is primarily interested in what their performance reveals about the “temporal rhetoric of theater” (8). Consequently, “microdrama” is a historically contingent term defined as a play that is shorter than its audience anticipates based upon its “likely horizon of temporal expectation” (2). Shortness is always linked to how we measure time and, from the late nineteenth to early twenty-first centuries, rapid technological innovation has repeatedly reshaped experiences and understandings of time; microdramas are both responses to and manifestations of those transformations. But, as Muse demonstrates, the short play also functions as “a laboratory, a controlled space where time and action could be isolated and subjected to manipulation,” thereby exposing assumptions about dramatic form and spectatorship (5). Accordingly, this exceedingly readable book is valuable to theatre historians and makes a compelling contribution to the expanding body of scholarship on performance and temporality. In the introductory first chapter, Muse outlines his methodology, subjects, and—drawing upon recent theories of temporality and theatrical time—four concepts that will run throughout the book: “theatre’s spatialization of time, the heterogeneity of brief time, the riddle of uneventfulness, and the pace of absorption” (8). The rest of the book is organized chronologically, with each chapter focused on a specific movement or group of playwrights. Chapter 2 examines the birth of the modernist microdrama by analyzing theatrical faits-divers, a subset of the naturalist quart d’heure genre, alongside the symbolist one-act. While often situated as contrasting movements, this analysis of naturalism and symbolism’s use of brevity reveals paradoxes within these movements that expose their similarities. Muse argues that, when expressed in short form, naturalism’s concentrated verisimilitude does not foreground material specificity as much as encourage “spectators to imagine the stage as a space apart charged with symbolic meaning” (35). Likewise, a symbolist play like Maurice Maeterlinck’s Interior reveals how characters are subject to external material forces. In this respect, both genres “tend to create hollow characters overshadowed by their allegorical significance” (43). Moreover, by employing brevity the fait-divers and symbolist one-act both question what kind of experience qualifies as an event and, thus, as a play. This chapter effectively illustrates Muse’s larger project—to use microdramas as a lens to explore theatre’s core values and elements, and to show how temporal experimentation has been key to defining and challenging these. [End Page 130] Futurist short plays—sintesi, or syntheses—are the focus of chapter 3. Acknowledging the wide range of work that falls under this umbrella term, Muse sees them all sharing the characteristic of brevity. Rather than take at face value the impact of this theatrical tactic, Muse interrogates three futurist assumptions about brevity: “that it reflects modern speed and simultaneity, that it intensifies experience, and that it dismantles convention” (57). He argues that instead of a radical rejection of tradition, syntheses reveal “a set of practices far more entangled with tradition than their authors claimed” (57). This engaging, deeply researched account combines script analysis with evidence from treatises and art works to illuminate contradictions within futurist dramaturgy and “expose the movement’s conflicted relationship with theater” (89). Muse next turns to the dramaticules, or tiny dramas, by Samuel Beckett. Exploring Beckett’s “epistemology of limitation” (107), Muse shows how the playwright used extreme brevity to explore questions of narrative, language, memory, and representation, and, ultimately, to expose structures of time as mere fictions. In this way, Beckett uses theatrical reduction to ask how much time is necessary to create an event, a life, or a play. Muse ends this chapter with a discussion of duration...

Not Just Nelson’s Wife: Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Violence and Radicalism in South Africa

The late Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was a political figure who excited strong views; these continue in the immediate aftermath of her death. Most analyses of her utilise the binary trope of good/bad mother and wife, and seek either to excoriate or to sanctify her. In this article, I re-examine the key incidents in her ‘fall’ from political grace, when the Mandela United Football Club (MUFC) embarked on a series of violent actions in the mid 1980s. Using a feminist lens, the article argues that Madikizela-Mandela deployed gender as a political resource, but that she went beyond the boundaries set for women in South African liberation politics to become a populist leader in her own right. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela exemplified the radical rejection of political negotiations in South Africa and supported an accelerated and, if necessary, violent confrontation with the apartheid government. The article revisits the 1997 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearing into the activities of the MUFC, exploring Madikizela-Mandela’s testimony as a performance of the refusal of the terms of the democratic transition. Rather than accepting the contingent, messy and sometime compromised arrangements that accompanied the end of apartheid, Madikizela-Mandela articulated a set of radical positions that were in tension with the position of the African National Congress (ANC), a movement of which she was a leading member. Against the dominant position that a political compromise was necessary, she held on to the fundamental argument that only a thoroughgoing overturning of apartheid (not just legal forms but economic and social dimensions) would be acceptable, and that, if necessary, this should be achieved by violence. This radical position remains attractive to important sections of the left, but leaves key questions of politics – in particular the place of revolutionary violence, and the terms on which friends and enemies are identified, unanswered.

The Political Debate on Basic Income and Welfare Reform in Spain

Two factors have boosted the debate on Basic Income (BI) in Spain in recent years: on the one hand, the combination of welfare budget cuts and growing poverty rates has spread claims for a radical reform of Spanish welfare policies; on the other hand, the emergence of Podemos as a new key actor in the Spanish political arena has generated a vivid discussion on BI and income guarantee proposals. By reviewing the political debates on these proposals, I will argue that economic feasibility concerns and implementation problems are closely related to their political feasibility. Significantly, the radical rejection of ‘means-testing’ by BI defenders fails to grasp the different types and degrees of conditions that an income guarantee system may establish. The main lesson from the Spanish experience is that BI supporters should be ready to compromise and accept generous means-tested guaranteed income programs as stepping-stones.

Lacan entre Kant e Sade: a lei paterna e a pluralização dos Nomes-do-Pai

In the text “The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire”, Lacan explains that the real function of the father is to join law with desire. Such function allows to bring the Name-of-the-Father closer to the Kantian categorical imperative. Nevertheless, we see that Sade also stopped in this sort of knotting in which law is tied to the pure desire, so that nothing prevents the Sadian apathy (radical rejection of the empirical world) be evidenced as a constitutive logic of the subject. Such issue is tackled by Lacan in “Kant with Sade” and in the Names-of-the-Father Seminar: to propose Names that, effectively, alienate desire to the phenomenic world.

Myth, perspective, and affirmation in Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy

ABSTRACTWhile the Apollonian and Dionysian in Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy are often understood as a rehashing of Schopenhauerian metaphysics, recent accounts have shown that his use of these concepts is at odds with such a metaphysics, interpreting them instead as myths. I follow this insight that Nietzsche is engaging in mythmaking in BT, but I argue that proponents of this view have missed an important dimension of that mythmaking: that Nietzsche presents multiple narratives of Apollo and Dionysus from different perspectives, each of which offers different senses of tragic affirmation. This perspectival feature of BT sheds light on the more formal ‘perspectivism’ articulated in the Third Essay of On the Genealogy of Morals, as Nietzsche uses perspective in both cases to generate an epistemic alternative to the life-denying features of modern science. Thus, the metaphysical discussions of the early Nietzsche are inseparable from the development of a stylistic practice that constitutes a radical rejection of metaphysics for the later Nietzsche, and this style is part of a project of generating a more life-affirming approach to knowledge.

True Kvlt? The Cultural Capital of “Nordicness” in Extreme Metal

In this article, we respond to the question of, "What is the cultural capital of Nordicness in heavy metal?". Through examining the popularity of Nordic symbolism in metal music, scenes and practices, we argue that the Nordic has been ascribed significant value in metal, wherein it offers a vehicle for narratives of masculinity, nationalism and ideology. Here we contend that the cultural capital given to Nordicness underpins not only the prevalence and market success of metal in Northern Europe, but also the ongoing circulation of narratives about the North in metal scenes across multiple global regions. Through analysing the repeated motifs of Nordic mythology, ecology and imagery as they emerge throughout metal's historic and contemporary manifestations, our article demonstrates the cultural capital with which the North is continually imbued in heavy metal. We call into focus how metal's aesthetic fascination with Nordicness as a site of heathenism, resistance and frontier landscapes is intertwined with a longer thematic history of masculinity, rebellion and affective community. This article therefore interrogates the cultural capital of Nordicness in metal scenes, and how this continues to shape the trajectories for the genre both in Northern Europe and throughout the world.

Some Current Trends of Christianity in Africa

AbstractThis article examines three trends in current African Christianity. Its denominational fragmentation is currently marked by the coexistence of three major groups: the “churches that emerged from the apostolic process of Christian antiquity”; the “churches born from Western missionary processes”; and the “African revivalists” (African initiated churches and African Pentecostal churches). The African revivalists are characterized by doctrinal and institutional creativity that largely draws on Africa's historical trajectory, with its challenges of a sociocultural, identity, and economic nature. This “fragmented African Christianity” inevitably has a diverse view of African cultures, ranging from a positive viewpoint on one end of the scale and radical rejection on the other, and including various patterns of taking over Christian heritage with the goal of giving new value to the formally scorned African identity. This diversity of attitudes in turn prompts overall judgments on Christianity in Africa, which range from praise to suspicion regarding the pertinence of this religion on the continent. This complex shape of current African Christianity is not an obstacle to the Ad Gentes mission, whose current dynamism is increasingly marked by the phenomenon of African emigration. All of this represents a great challenge for ecumenism, because a trend toward a “religion market” is taking the lead over collaboration and search for Christian unity. This is why it is important to recognize the quality of this African missionary Christianity, whose fragmentation is quite original.

When is anti‐Zionism morally legitimate?

AbstractThe claim that Zionism is fundamentally or intrinsically morally compromised is unfortunately more commonly articulated and expressed than it deserves to be. While there are certainly good reasons to be critical of Israeli governmental policy (both now and in the past), those who question the very right of a Jewish state to exist on land approximating the current territory of Israel without extrapolating this principle to other cases are being philosophically disingenuous. While I concede that it is perfectly reasonable to object to the creation and maintenance of a Jewish state on the basis of either its exclusionary character or its problematic history, I suggest that such arguments should equally apply to virtually every other nation‐state. Thus, while anti‐Zionism is not necessarily a morally illegitimate claim, unless its claims are paired with a more radical rejection of the nation‐state tout court, it should be considered as such.

Muertes y resurrecciones del positivismo jurídico: una crisis de doscientos años de duración

El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar que el positivismo jurídico ha vivido en crisis desde su mismo nacimiento, a principios del siglo XIX, y no solo desde la oleada neoconstitucionalista. En primer lugar se examinarán los problemas de las aproximaciones conceptuales al problema del positivismo y se defenderá la necesidad de un acercamiento histórico para comprender la cuestión de si el iuspositivismo se encuentra verdaderamente obsoleto. En segundo lugar se pasará revista a las sucesivas crisis que ha experimentado esta corriente a lo largo de sus doscientos años de historia, y se verá cómo ha ido adaptándose a todos esos embates. Por último se argumentará que, desde ese punto de vista, el ataque post-positivista no representa una impugnación radical de sus planteamientos, sino una reorientación que corre pareja con transformaciones ideológicas profundas del orden global.

Радянський “міф заснування”: зміна віх у 1930-х роках

The author debates with the concept of the Soviet ideological turn (mid-30's) as a simple means of pre-war mobilization (David Brandenberger). The paper argues that in the 1930’s the Bolsheviks refused to «national nihilism» and mouved to the national Great position. First – within the «Soviet patriotism», then – according to the historical grand-narrative. This transition was caused by the need to involve in the process of modernization as wide population as possible, especially those who were not too inspired heroism «new era». The choice of historical figures and events of the past was dictated by the need to strengthen one-man rule of Stalin. Historians and artists, formed in the 1930's, took the leading role in science and in the creative unions in 1960-70's, which allowed the Soviet establishment to prevent the radical rejection of Stalin's legacy, to curtail the timid attempts to rethink the historical grand-narrative and to form among the so-called Russian party.

Between Government and Governance: Opening the Black Box of the Transformation Thesis

ABSTRACTThe notion of going from government to governance, known as the transformation thesis, as depicted in early Governance Theory has been subjected to substantive critique. This paper explores two different stances of such critique. The first critical stance is represented by Jonathan S. Davies’ 2011 book “Challenging Governance Theory: From networks to hegemony” and entails a radical rejection of the transformation thesis. The second stance offers a more moderate reconfiguration of the transformation thesis and is represented by the recently co-authored work of several prominent governance theorists titled “Interactive Governance: Advancing the paradigm”. While both aspire to set new agendas for governance research, this paper argues that the latter reconfiguration carries a problematic preposition towards overemphasizing the separation between government and governance practices.

Transnationalism in Contemporary German-Language Literature ed. by Elisabeth Hermann, Carrie Smith-Prei, and Stuart Taberner

Reviewed by: Transnationalism in Contemporary German-Language Literature ed. by Elisabeth Hermann, Carrie Smith-Prei, and Stuart Taberner Beverly Weber Transnationalism in Contemporary German-Language Literature. Edited by Elisabeth Hermann, Carrie Smith-Prei, and Stuart Taberner. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015. Pp. 284. Cloth $90.00. ISBN 978-1571139252. This ambitious collection charts out the concepts that inform the "transnational turn" in German literary studies through analyses that demonstrate the relevance of transnational approaches to contemporary German-language literature "beyond a focus on diasporic formations, hybridity or notions of center and periphery" (1). In an introduction, twelve chapters, and interview with Ilija Trojanow, the authors consider the potentialities of transnationalism, whether as methodology, or as analytical focus on the "plurality of intersecting, and crosscutting flows of products, ideas, and people back and forth over borders" (1). The topics are wide-ranging engagements with contemporary literature, from transnationalism as a definitional marker of contemporary literature (Elisabeth Herrmann and Katharina Gerstenberger), to [End Page 707] discussions of contemporary home and travel (Gerstenberger and Christina Kraenzle), the complex interplay between nation and the transnational (Anke Biendarra, Lars Richter and Claudia Breger), and the ways in which the economic inflects the terms of participation in transnationalism (Maria Mayr and Breger). The risks inherent in a project that emphasizes transnational perspectives while deemphasizing "diasporic formations" are many: the potential of recentering the nation, of suggesting that minoritized groups do not in some way exist in relationship to majority or dominant cultures, of depoliticizing the transnational, or of obscuring the workings of race in contemporary German culture. However, the collection negotiates these dangers effectively via a number of essays that explicitly engage the political valences of transnationalism. They emphasize transnationalism's uneven dynamics, including ongoing racialized/colonialist representational practices, challenges to such practices, as well as new configurations of power and marginalization produced by contemporary forms of globalization. The literature in these essays in particular, then, is either explicitly or implicitly understood in relationship to a tradition of world literature—both in terms of its border crossing as well as in terms of its relationship to cosmopolitan ethics. Stuart Taberner, for example, seeks to theorize cosmopolitanism together with transnationalism as a world building project, rather than as an analysis of the unregulated flow of capital and its consequences. He calls attention to how transnationalism may gesture toward the potential of cosmopolitanism by evoking its utopian potential: "how [do] we inhabit proximate but also worldly spaces simultaneously? … How can we live with 'others,' both at home and globally?" (43–44). Diverse literary attempts to represent cosmopolitan transnationalisms function rather differently, as he shows by theorizing from a series of texts that depict transnationalisms that are moral (Terezia Mora), cultural (Christa Wolf), romantic (Feridun Zaimoglu), or kynical (Ilija Trojanow). For Taberner, Trojanow provides the most radical rejection of the polis for the cosmopolitical, and in doing so is notable for his investment in radical world building. Claudia Breger's essay deploys transnationalism not as a descriptive term, but rather as a methodological perspective "that foregrounds a critique of nationalist ideologies" (107). By juxtaposing the cosmopolitanisms of Christian Kracht and Teju Cole, Breger not only acknowledges the ways in which transnationalism affects everybody (the stated goal of the editors), but specifically conceptualizes the uneven relationships to transnational forces occupied by those who exist in a range of racialized positionings. Her approach also reveals how Kracht reinscribes certain racialized mythologies of the nation, while Cole confronts the nation—and cosmopolitanisms—with the uneven histories of racialized violence (117). Thus her "reading of Cole's novel as a critically cosmopolitanism text simultaneously acknowledges the importance of cosmopolitan-ism's ethos of connection, which supplements transnationalism's analytical work on [End Page 708] the historical contingency of the nation with an affirmative exploration of possible shared human futures" (121). Tanja Nusser brings texts by Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Wolfgang Herrendorf into dialogue with one another to consider how the figure of the terrorist functions to signal transnational threat against the backdrop of sand, suggestive of shifting, transforming, and instable identities. Nusser suggests that these texts problematize the "investment into surveillance by various countries as a new form of colonialism" (259). This deployment...

Композиция Европейской ночи В.Ф. Ходасевича: Как эмиграция определила структуру сборника?

This paper is devoted to the influence that the experience of emigration had on the poetics of Khodasevich's book European Night (Evropeiskaia noch'). Till the spring of 1925 Khodasevich thought that he had the possibility to return to the Soviet Union. This state of mind determined the pragmatic meaning of the poems that Khodasevich wrote in the period between 1922 and 1925, i.e. the time in which he emigrated to Europe and yet did not feel himself a “real” emigrant. These poems are characterized by a satirical orientation as well as by a radical rejection of emigration. On the other hand, the texts that were written between 1925 and 1927 (when Khodasevich formed his self-identification as an emigrant) radically changed the pragmatics of European Night: In this way it becomes a book expressing a deep existential despair. This inner crisis includes the Russian space as well as the space of emigration. In our study we also analyse the way in which Khodasevich mitigates the satirical orientation of the first version of the book.

From Human Suffering to Divine Friendship: Meat out of the Eater and Devotional Reading in Early New England

Michael Wigglesworth believed he was given exceeding much help & assistance from Heaven, even to admiration as he was writing Meat out of the Eater, his about the cross (Notebook September 17, 1669). Often ill and unable to preach, the Malden pastor spent much of his career versifying devotional guidance, transferring pastoral counsel to poetry. Following eight years after the Day of Doom, his better-known work, Meat out of the Eater (1670) proved nearly as popular. Like its predecessor, Meat out of the Eater was easily accessible in language and form. Wigglesworth openly guided his readers' use, deliberately constructing the work to engage the affections and inner life. Departing from the conversionary impulse of Day of Doom, Meat out of the Eater was intended to console Christians in the midst of colonial life's inevitable hardships. In the poems Wigglesworth addressed one form of that deep paradox of reversal well known to Puritans, the mysterious claim that a person has to lose something in order to gain it, that death is the necessary way to life, or, in this case, that human suffering, willingly accepted as sent by God's hand, could lead to the greatest of all goods, divine friendship. In developing these ideas Wigglesworth hardly acted in literary isolation. Rather, he gave his own expression to a mode of spiritual practice crafted by Elizabethan Puritans and steeped in centuries of Christian tradition. His own development of these themes would guide the devotional lives of New Englanders for almost a century. This study first considers evidence from extant volumes, including marginalia, in order to ask how colonial readers might have engaged with the work. It then addresses the biblical and historical resonances of the title before situating the poems within the genre of Puritan devotional manuals and writings on affliction. Next it turns to the first half of the work, the Meditations, which offer a personal invitation to see the world providentially and aim for a broad readership. Here the focus is especially on the ninth meditation, which initiates the transition from head knowledge to heart knowledge, or devotional performance. A consideration of the second half of the work, Riddles Unriddled, further uncovers the ways Wigglesworth asked his readers to participate in dialogues and exercises that move from specific kinds of pain to spiritual comfort. This reading of the poems leads to a discussion of their afterlife in later works that drew on Meat out of the Eater and its themes of affective transformation and divine friendship. Ultimately this reading suggests a way of resolving a conundrum at the heart of Puritan experience. From one perspective, Puritans' radical rejection of intermediaries such as priests, ceremonies, and sacred objects meant they were thrown back on themselves without any stable religious ritual, resulting in persistent anxiety. However, Meat out of the Eater and other popular devotional manuals offer a way of seeing how an antiformalistic religious culture was able to produce enduring resources aimed primarily at consolation. Meat out of the Eater was a colonial steady seller, with five Boston editions between 1670 and 1717. As with Day of Doom, extant volumes are rare, often very worn, and sometimes repaired with hand-sewn stitches--signs of extensive use. Owners' marks give some indication of readership. One 1717 copy is simply inscribed, Moses Stickney Hath Read this Book and highly he astemeth it. Anna Roper wrote name three times in various sections of a 1689 volume--whether for devotional use or handwriting practice it is impossible to know. (1) On another 1689 copy Mary Plimpton added the conventional rhyme that signified a deliberate kind of ownership: Mary Plimpton Her Book God give Her grace there in to loock that She may Run that Blessed Rase that Heaven may bee Her Dwelling plase. (2) Elisabeth Bennet wrote name and then her book and hand / my book and heart / shall never part--somehow the third person of the traditional rhyme was inadequate to convey relationship to the volume. …