Crisis Of Representation Research Articles

Disjointed Polarization in Chile’s Enduring Crisis of Representation – ERRATUM

Disjointed Polarization in Chile’s Enduring Crisis of Representation – ERRATUM

Truthfulness, pluralism and the ethics of democratic representation

It is sometimes suggested that even democratic politicians need to dirty their hands in ways that render hypocrisy, lying and deception unavoidable and even justified. By contrast, we draw on John Rawls’ Political Liberalism to argue that the ‘reasonable disagreements’ occasioned by the ‘fact of pluralism’ that make democratic politics necessary can only be resolved in ways congruent with democratic norms if politicians are truthful in Bernard Williams’ sense, and adhere to the related virtues of ‘sincerity’ and ‘accuracy’. Supplementing Eric Beerbohm’s ‘relational model’ of campaign ethics with Suzanne Dovi’s account of the ‘good representative’, we argue that these both entail the virtues of truthfulness. We contend the contemporary crisis of representation associated with the rise of technocracy and populism can be linked to the ways both undermine these virtues through their common rejection of pluralism and the related need for truthfulness. Consequently, both involve deformations of ‘good’ democratic representation.

Performing What Is Absent: The Making of Representative Claims in the 2020 Chilean Constitutional Convention

Amid a crisis of political representation, Chile ran an institutional experiment. After a month of riots, lootings and human rights violations, in November 2019, the Chilean Parliament proposed the creation of a fully elected convention with the one objective of writing a new Constitution. The 155 members were elected in October 2020 and 62% of them were non-professional politicians but environmental activists, members of indigenous communities or feminist leaders. Inspired by the ideas of representative claim proposed by Saward and performativity coined by Butler, we analysed their inauguration speeches to observe how they attempted to constitute themselves as political representatives. We found that they relied upon four types of speech appeal in their political claims-making. We refer to these as the Agonistic (whereby the claim-maker purported to speak for “us” as opposed to “them”); the Climactic (whereby the claim-maker offered themselves as an embodiment of a historical coming of age for a particular group); the Biographical (the claim-maker focuses upon their personal qualities of identity with empathy towards a group); and the Trustee (whereby, adhering to more conventional rhetoric of representation, a claim-maker sets out their qualification to acknowledge and look after the interests and values of a particular group).

Before and after. Italian MPs and political communication

ABSTRACT The crisis of political representation has several explanations, including the collapse of trust in political institutions and the weakening of the role of the party as an intermediary between voters and elected representatives. This is counterbalanced by a strategy of individual representation pursued by politicians. This article aims to examine representation in Italy through a highly innovative approach, that of the strategic communication of the elected during the electoral campaign and in office: not only the parliamentary work of the elected, but also the overall analysis of the electoral campaign and constituency communication. The study identifies changes in representation, including functional and thematic autonomy from the party, personalization of activities, promotion of independent communication tools, and party-independent agendas. It also highlights the backstage structuring of a new relationship between voters and elected representatives in politics. A study conducted on 150 Italian parliamentarians in Chamber of Deputies (17th Legislature, 2013–18) revealed varying logics of representation based on their political affiliation, career paths, and individual characteristics.

The dialectical relationship between the authorial and the collaborative in contemporary documentary: Perspectives from three case studies

This article discusses the intersections between authorial and collaborative work in the scope of ethnographic documentary departing from three case studies: two research projects and one citizen collective of participatory media. All case studies were developed in Porto, Portugal, between 2013 and 2020, focusing on the city’s invisibilities and everyday experiences, searching for alternative narratives to the mainstream media when portraying its people and places. This article aims to reflect on how authorial documentary work, followed by self-criticism and self-reflection, can be incorporated into participatory media frameworks in productive ways. The challenges faced by the three cases are intrinsically related and have influenced each other throughout this period, addressing issues related to the representational crisis; the legitimation of subjectivity and the exploration of different styles within documentary; as well as the relationships between the filmmaker, the camera, the subject/character portrayed and the audience. These themes are explored through a series of first-person field reports and the study of authors and directors in the field of documentary filmmaking.

Challenging Liberal Principles: Understanding of Democracy among Populist Radical Right Youth Leaders in Austria and Germany

ABSTRACT Responding to the growing political success of populist radical right parties, scholars have increasingly examined those parties relationship to democracy. While some consider these parties as a democratic corrective to a crisis of political representation, others point to their ideological conflict with the principles of liberal democracy. We contribute to this debate by exploring the understanding of democracy of populist radical right youth leaders. Specifically, we conducted nine qualitative semi-structured expert interviews with leaders and executive members of the populist radical right youth wings in Austria (Ring Freiheitlicher Jugend/RFJ) and Germany (Junge Alternative/JA). To determine their understanding of democracy, we utilised a vignette technique to simulate governmental decision-making in resolving specific political scenarios. The findings indicate that although the youth leaders recognise democracy as such, their understanding of democracy contains majoritarian and anti-egalitarian aspects that might indirectly curtail liberal principles of democracy. This study thus provides an in-depth analysis of the motivations underlying the intentions of populist radical right youth leaders toward potential transformations of democratic institutions.

Disjointed Polarization in Chile’s Enduring Crisis of Representation

AbstractThis analytical essay proposes the notion of disjointed polarization to characterize the nature of polarization in contemporary Chile. In disjointed polarization, elite-level polarization does not lead to a successful electoral realignment. Disjointed polarization is thus consistent with a long-lasting crisis of representation in which a serial disconnect between politicians (pursuing different polarizing strategies) and a sizable fraction of the electorate persists, as voters remain alienated from old and emerging political elites. Because the structural changes that make disjointed polarization persist longer than expected in Chile today are widespread across Latin America, the essay speculates on the possibility that enduring disjointed polarization applies to other cases where neither a “populist realignment” nor “generative polarization” took place. Instead, disjointed polarization might reflect the onset of a new (non-partisan representation) normal.

UNDERSTANDING POSTMODERNISM THROUGH THE THEORIES OF LYOTARD AND BAUDRILLARD

This article studies the profound transformations ushered in by postmodernism in the mid-20th century, focusing on its impact on culture, truth, representation, and the traditional understanding of knowledge. Contrary to the view of postmodernism as a linear progression from modernism, we explore the perspectives of Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard, presenting it as a cyclical moment within the continuous innovation of high modernism. Lyotard redefines the role of postmodern artists and writers as akin to philosophers, liberated from pre-established norms and engaged in a perpetual quest fornew rules within their works. Baudrillard’s insights into the evolution of science fiction reflect a broader postmodern reevaluation of reality as fragmented and simulacral. Furthermore, we address the so-called crisis of representation identified by Lyotard, challenging the realistic epistemology that views knowledge and art as mirrors of an external reality. By examining fragmented narration in literature, we propose a more inclusive approach to representing the multifaceted nature of reality. This article contributes to the understanding of postmodernism, highlighting its significance in redefining cultural expressions and our approach to knowledge and representation.

Queering Alfred Gell’s Art Nexus: Conceptualising Non-normative Relations and Queer Methods in the Art and Ethnological Museum. Context

Ethnographic collections and museums displaying them are currently facing a crisis of representation which is deeply political. Negotiations mainly take place on a national and institutional level. Yet, in order to deal with conflicts and problems that arise around ethnographic collections in a way that allows for and affirms new relationships being formed outside the realm of representational power, new perspectives and methodological tools from a grassroots level are needed. Intersectional approaches and a renewed attention to relations around ethnographic objects, especially a rethinking of the categories “artwork” versus “ethnographica”, offer a promising route for engaging with heritage as a common ground. As such, they may enable relational politics outside the centres of power. A “queering” of anthropologist Alfred Gell’s art nexus model can be instrumental for the study of queer (non-normative) relations around artworks, including so-called ethnographic objects. The paper proposes an understanding of queerness as a method in the art and museum context, informed by the anthropology of art and kinship, queer studies, and museum studies. This methodology-in-the-making should be part of a toolkit with which researchers and arts practitioners will be able to understand and actively co-create queer relations around objects in ethnographic collections and beyond.

Constitution-Making in the 21st Century: Lessons from the Chilean Process

A distinctive feature of 21st-century constitution making is the role assigned to citizens through various forms of direct participation, as well as special efforts to include groups underrepresented and marginalized in ordinary politics. The legitimacy of these processes increasingly requires a role for actors and groups previously excluded from crucial institutional decisions (Elster 1998; Fishkin 2011; Reuchamps and Welp 2023; Rubio-Marín 2020; Welp and Soto 2020). However, vested interests have proven challenging to overcome amid a global crisis of representation. The failed Chilean process of 2021–2022 provides valuable lessons about the triumphs and pitfalls of embracing an open approach to constitution making.

The art of effective oversight: unravelling the success of Israel's Cabel Inquiry Committee

ABSTRACT Legislative oversight of the executive branch is a fundamental mechanism for ensuring government accountability, good governance, and enhancing democracy. However, formal oversight powers alone are insufficient, and the practical application eventually determines effectiveness. In contemporary times, a distinct set of political phenomena exists, notably the emergence of populism and polarisation, a deep-seated crisis of representation, and a systematic decline in public trust regarding diverse branches of government, coupled with the personalisation of politics and the weakening of political parties. In light of these developments, it is essential to engage in a meticulous examination of the means by which legislatures can enhance their capacity to effectively oversee governments. This article examines the parliamentary committee of inquiry led by Knesset Member Eitan Cabel in Israel from 2017 to 2019, which focused on credit arrangements for large business borrowers. This committee's rigorous investigation into financial system failures makes it an exemplary case of robust oversight in action. The article analyses the Committee establishment, composition, mandate, systematic meeting-planning and questioning process, unique physical setting, report publishing, and other details. The analysis of the Committee's work reveals important insights regarding effective oversight, and isolates the practices which made its work such an augmented performance of legislative oversight. Factors such as the committee's activeness, cooperation, independence, preparation, respectful yet critical approach, transparency, accurate use of media, and precise procedure, created an exceptional performance of legislative oversight. The article concludes that while legislative oversight relies partly on formal mechanisms, it is primarily driven by how political actors apply them, and reveals the importance and centrality of the human factor. This single case analysis, focusing on the committee's oversight practices can inform comparative learning on delivering robust oversight beyond Israel's context, and derive widely applicable insights into key practices for effective legislative supervision of the executive branch.

Journalism as War: Tracing the Predatory Culture and Economy of the Pak-Afghan Cross-border News Practices

ABSTRACT Based on in-depth interviews with ethnic Pashtun war journalists, this study explores the cross-border news practices and its underlying economy in Pakistan’s troubled tribal region that straddles the Pak-Afghan border. We argue that the structural remnants, including media, of the British colonialism of the past continue to boost the neo-imperialism of the present. Several studies have examined the war reporting in the Pak-Afghan border space, however, the intersection of the postcolonial State, militarization, and cross-border news labor practices is understudied. Backdropped in the critical examination of the news pursuits during the two wars: the Afghan “jihad” and the US-led “war on terror,” we show how war as business and news labor as commodity feed into each other and contribute to the making of a material and representational crisis which sustains what Jasbir Puar calls the “economy of injury.”

Breakdown by disengagement: Tunisia’s transition from representative democracy

ABSTRACT On 25 July 2021, Tunisian president Kais Saied suspended parliament, lifted the immunity of its members, and dismissed the prime minister and the government. Tunisia’s post-revolutionary democracy had thus succumbed to a populist president within two years from his electoral victory in the context of widespread popular disillusionment with the entire political class. This article draws on the work of Peter Mair, in particular his analysis in Ruling the Void (2013), to understand democratic breakdown in Tunisia. I argue that political dynamics in Tunisia diverge significantly from the standard model of democratic backsliding. Instead, I conceptualize the Tunisian case as breakdown by disengagement. The relative success of Tunisian democratization after the 2014 elite compromise paradoxically fuelled a crisis of representation: The main political camps lost popular support, populist challengers were strengthened, and citizens disengaged from conventional politics in ever greater numbers. Popular disengagement and elite withdrawal into a sphere of competition protected by the elite pact gave rise to a void at the heart of Tunisian democracy. While Kais Saied’s anti-party project proposed to fill this void with an alternative political system built from the bottom up, there is growing evidence of authoritarian retrenchment instead of democratic renewal.

Die Fachgruppe „Musikethnologie und vergleichende Musikwissenschaft“ in der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung


 
 
 This article gives a brief insight into the work of the study group “Ethnomusicology and Comparative Musicology” of the “Gesellschaft für Musikforschung” (GfM). It spotlights central issues, historical moments and developments in the past, and more recent activities of the study group. The first part roughly outlines cornerstones from its founding stages in the post-WWII years, when traditional views of “Völkerkunde” prevailed, to the paradigm shifts of the 1980s and 1990s, as comparative musicology gradually shifted towards ethnomusicological approaches grounded in cultural and social anthropology. The second part highlights the study group’s self-reflexive perspective and its recent engagement with topics such as diversity, anti-racism, and (post-)coloniality in the academic field. Drawing on issues discussed in the context of the “crisis of ethnographic representation,” recent debates and activities in the group are driven by ethical and political discussions regarding the power imbalances that shape ethnomusicological methodologies, practices and discourses within and beyond academia, and are thus closely tied to larger questions of social justice, equity, and inclusion.
 
 

‘To Say What Could Not Be Said’

Abstract Though post-9/11 metapoetry effectively represents the critical reality of 9/11, there has been no concerted scholarly study of this subgenre of poetry so far. In this article, I wish to examine three post-9/11 metapoems to attain a bipartite aim. First, I want to demonstrate that, through a much more sophisticated metapoetic subjectivity than is found in many ‘belated’ post-9/11 poems, these three poems enact the crisis of language and the difficulty of representing 9/11. Second, I would like to formulate a theory of post-9/11 metapoetry based on the analysis of these poems and the consciousness of their twentieth-century counterparts to indicate a new aesthetic stage in the representation of crisis in metapoems. My article conveys the ultimate message that post-9/11 metapoetry overcomes the crisis of representation in a way that transcends the particular event of 9/11 and becomes a general aesthetic mode of speaking the unspeakable in the face of any ineffable traumatic experience.

TRAUMA RĂZBOIULUI ȘI CRIZA REPREZENTĂRII UMANULUI ÎN AVANGARDA LITERARĂ ȘI ARTISTICĂ: URMUZ ȘI MAX ERNST

The present work proposes an applied analysis, by bringing together the Romanian literary avant-garde with the European artistic one, a reunion represented by the text Emil Gayk, a text written by the precursor of the Romanian avant-garde, Urmuz, and the painting Barbarii (The Barbarians) by the German surrealist painter Max Ernst. Both works are specifically related to the First World War, a traumatic experience that leads to specific poetics of avant-garde and modernity, that of the crisis of human representation. Thus, we will pursue a comparative, but also interdisciplinary approach, the selected literary text being subjected to a hermeneutic approach, through a close reading in close connection with the real context of the beginning of the 20th century, while Max Ernst's work will be subjected to an aesthetic analysis, its component elements also reflecting the tragedy and tension of the First World War. The two works reflect, through specific techniques, predominantly surrealist (or, in any case, from the general sphere of the avant-garde), the way in which the modern and avant-garde artist feels this tension caused by the war, so that by the experience of the conflagration, lived directly or indirectly by to the two representatives of the avant-garde, an alienated and reified world is reconstructed, a world of the body crisis, of the sick mind. The irrationality and absurdity of war will be reflected in the avant-garde works of the two representatives, configuring a strong visual dimension and thus a spectacular absurdity of the human body, inspired by the front-line experiences of the European avant-garde artists. Dehumanization and the monstrous, the grotesque, the hybrid, the cadaver, the incongruity of anatomical elements, behavioral deviations and irrational acts, zoomorphism or the mechanization of the human are recurring themes of avant-garde works that highlight this cause-effect relationship between the trauma of war, with the real lived experience, and their mirroring in literary texts (by Romanian avant-garde representatives, such as Urmuz, Tristan Tzara, Ilarie Voronca, etc.) or in paintings (through representatives of modern plastic art and the avant-garde, such as George Grosz, Otto Dix, Max Ernst, etc.). Considering the common experience surrounding the First World War, a moment of amplification of the artistic crisis at the beginning of the 20th century, the two proposed works present a new vision of the alienated modern human, a crisis of the human representation generated by the anxieties and trauma of the war, through which the individual becomes a composite, deformed, sickly creature, made up of heterogeneous elements, a melting point. In this way, those elements of vision, specific to avant-gardes and modernity (as a generic term), which contribute to mirroring the experience of war, will be analyzed. Both works are based on a modern aesthetic vision, nuanced on the basis of avant-garde formulas, considering the themes and motifs they encompass, the style, the construction of the characters, the images and, thus, the predominantly visual dimension, respectively the way in which the narrative discourse is constructed in the case of the text Emil Gayk by Urmuz and the way in which the techniques and images specific to surrealism become complementary in the painting Barbarii (The Barbarians) by Max Ernst. Through an interdisciplinary approach, we can observe how, both in literature and in art, this new perspective on “the human” is proposed, in the context of the crisis of their representation.

An anti‐genealogical take on US anthropology and disciplinary reform

AbstractThe “decolonizing generation” is a critical new movement that has captured the imaginations of many younger scholars. While the author would like to consider herself an older member of this generation, she questions whether this moment needs periodization. Is today's moment really so different from the past, when we saw the rise of world anthropologies, postmodernism, the crisis in representation, neo‐Marxism, and anti‐racist movements? And what is meant by “decolonizing anthropology” when experiences with colonialism and decolonization differ around the world? While acknowledging the value of reforming the discipline, the author encourages her colleagues to separate the very important critique of anthropologists’ gatekeeping practices from idealized renderings of what anthropology should be. Rather than decolonization, the discipline ought to focus on establishing a continual decentering of hegemonic knowledge production.

Landscapes as Narratives: Decolonising Ceuta’s Contemporary Border through Performative Filmmaking

The inspiration for this work is based on the experimental film “Tout le monde aime le bord de la mer” [The colour of the sea] I set in the border town of Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in the north of Africa. The film depicts this territory of transit migrations as a racialised limbo. Drawing on field diaries written during the filming process, I examine here the leading role that landscape can play in the fabrication of narratives and the performative act of playing with the aesthetics of fiction to de-centre the production of white-male Western knowledge. In this paper I delve into the process of filmmaking by analysing three central aspects that can help conceptualise performative cinema as a decolonial methodology. Firstly, the crisis of representation based on a process of experimentation with fiction and visual grammar, which also facilitates the blurring of the divide between self and other; secondly, the creation of counter-spaces that facilitate processes of participation and self-fiction; and thirdly, the choice of non-representational landscapes to dislocate audiences from formal geographical references and normative imaginaries about political borders.

Fieldwork as witnessing. Anthropological knowledge-making between openness, blind spots, and personal involvement

This essay discusses poses of identities available for anthropologists in relation to increasingly salient issues of contemporary anthropological knowledge-making. Starting with a critical evaluation of the idea of the anthropologist as a witness by George Marcus (2005), we outline cornerstones in current debates on the positionality of the researcher, such as the implications of the end of meta-narratives, the call for epistemological openness, the crisis of representation, the delimitation of fields and the discussion on human rights. In a second step, we highlight how, at first glance, the concept of witnessing seems to provide a solution for these dilemmas. Yet, witnessing entails blind spots and other limits which are often overlooked. These concern relationality, memory, involvement, understanding, and the question of how to intervene in the scenarios we observe. In sum, the essay redefines the conditions of anthropological knowledge production in an age of witnessing.

Human crises and the COVID-19 pandemic: a review

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has not only claimed innumerable lives but the concomitant inflation has also frustrated many small and large enterprises, not to mention the loss of jobs that employees have suffered and sometimes succumbed to through self-harm and suicides. In this context, this paper probes how a politics of representation has deeply informed the dissemination and consumption of ‘COVID news,’ rendering a legitimate visibility largely to the loss and contributions of subjects that have access to socio-economic and political resources. Milan Kundera uses the term ‘symbolic voltage’ to refer to the role that the media plays in ‘constructing’ our everyday realities. In The Lost Dimension, Paul Virilio states that modern media technology has created a ‘crisis of representation’ or an optical illusion, where the distinctions between near and far, object and image, have imploded. In a bid to keep apace with a metanarrative of pandemic-engendered loss, the collective consciousness of different societies has not adequately focused on the marginalised subjects – the wage worker, the woman, the juvenile and the scholar from suburban/rural area. The paper argues that the ‘Covid-19-as-a-past’ is likely to be represented through the semantics of traditional history, which is a narrative of and by the powerful.