Crisis Of Representation Research Articles

Material Girls: Silk and Self-Fashioning in Tang China (618–907)

Tang dynasty China was a fashionable place. Low-cut necklines, kaftans sewn from sumptuously brocaded silks, diaphanous shawls cut from resist-dyed silk gauze, and striped skirts elaborately patterned with rosettes abound in the visual and material archive. This article takes a closer look at the Tang woman’s wardrobe to show how changes in dress and shifts in the perceptions of dress signified the emergence of a fashion system. It argues that what manifested in the second half of the dynasty as hallmarks of a fashion system were produced by ruptures within the social, economic, and political fabric of society. Such rifts included a crisis in representation that stemmed from a loss of faith in clothing’s ability to accurately represent the status of the wearer, and spurred on by the expanding commercial society of the eighth and ninth centuries. But it was the silk industry that was the driving force of the Tang fashion system, as innovations in silk weaving and design supplied all the trappings for elite self-fashioning. The article narrates these shifts in Tang China, and the material processes that underpinned fashion’s fabrication, through an integrated analysis that brings visual and archaeological materials into conversation with the textual archive.

“Bonfire in summer camp”: Defamiliarization and the Holocaust

While scholars have offered independent readings of Philip Roth’s and Saul Bellow’s provocative representations of the Holocaust camp, I put Roth’s and other writers’ (Anthony Hecht’s, Carl Friedman’s, and Nathan Englander’s) handling of this topos in tension with Bellow in their search of ways to approach traumatic history. Without taking sides, I contend that the crisis in representation brought on by the age of genocide comes into focus more vividly through the defamiliarizing trope of the Holocaust camp as seen in more recent fiction than in Bellow’s more poetic, alienating novel.

Presencia de partidos políticos y diputados en Internet en Argentina, Paraguay y Uruguay

Según Latinobarómetro, los partidos políticos son las instituciones en las que menos confían los latinoamericanos. Esto no es particular de América Latina, sino una tendencia en las democracias occidentales. En este contexto, en Europa y Estados Unidos, entre otros, los medios digitales han pasado a ser un instrumento para superar la crisis de la representación, por su potencial para renovar la política, y porque permiten una mayor transparencia y la apertura de nuevos canales de contacto y comunicación entre ciudadanos y representantes. ¿En qué medida y con qué particularidades dicha adopción sucede en América Latina? A partir del estudio de la presencia en línea de los partidos políticos y los diputados de Argentina, Paraguay y Uruguay (webs, blogs, Facebook y Twitter), este artículo explora los niveles de adopción de medios digitales y la influencia de variables como la difusión de Internet en el país, la crisis de representación y las características de los partidos políticos (institucionalización, ideología, tamaño, papel promotor de figuras destacadas) como condicionante del alcance y los rasgos de esta adopción.

Latin America’s Problems of Success

This concluding essay proposes a reassessment of Guillermo O’Donnell’s treatment of horizontal and vertical accountability in his conceptualization of “delegative democracy.” In a situation that parallels that of the 1990s, today several Latin American democracies are characterized by the erosion of horizontal accountability under powerful presidents. In contrast to O’Donnell’s notion of delegative democracy, however, other democracies in the region seem to display a strengthening of horizontal accountability and the subsequent erosion of vertical accountability. In such cases, crises of representation have crystallized. We conclude that deficits of vertical accountability should be stressed in future assessments of the region, and argue in favor of expanding the “minimal” conceptualization of this dimension of delegative democracy to make sense of current developments.

Temsil Krizinin Aşılması ve Demokrasinin Pekişmesi Bağlamında [Bağımsız] Aday Odaklı Bir Politik Sistem Önerisi

Temsil Krizinin Aşılması ve Demokrasinin Pekişmesi Bağlamında [Bağımsız] Aday Odaklı Bir Politik Sistem Önerisi

Chile’s Crisis of Representation

Chile’s Crisis of Representation

Thomas Hardy'nin şiirlerindeki temsil krizi

Thomas Hardy is a poet who produced most of his poetry in the Victorian age but published it largely in the twentieth century when the literary sensibility was predominantly modern. Although Hardy is not conventionally considered a Modernist poet, he shares with Modernists an element that can be referred to as the linguistic crisis by which they try to get over the sense of anxiety against the backdrop of a chaotic world and problematized language. The forerunner of Deconstructionism, Derrida, exposes a long established history of logocentric thinking, which has continually been moving between binary oppositions and Platonic dualities. Derrida simply puts forward the idea that there is no logos, no origin, and no centre of truth. The centre is always somewhere else; he identies this as a “free play of signiers.” Consequently, the anxiety of the poet with modern sensibility to nd a point of reference inevitably results in a “crisis of representation,” or, in a problematic relation between language and truth, signier and signied. This crisis can be observed in Hardy's poetry, too.

Representación política en los países andinos: Crisis y recuperaciones

The analysis of the political situation of the Andean countries and their current democracies usually makes mention of the difficulties and deficiencies around the political representation of their citizens. In many ways, it would even give the impression that the present andean countries suffer from a chronic crisis of political representation. The analysis of the empirical evidence that is generally used to account for the state of political representation within the andean countries reveals, however, that there are both moments of deterioration and a certain recovery in the perceptions and evaluations of citizens in relation to the functioning of democracy, representative institutions, mechanisms and channels of representation, governments and elected officials, and so on. Realizing the nature and dynamics of these changes is the main objective of this article. Along the way, it is not surprising that some of these processes, which may well be defined as the recovery of political representation, happen mainly in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.

Writing In The Oral Tradition The Crisis Of Self Representation In The American Native Literature: A Postmodern Reading Of Gerald's Vizenor's Bearheart The Heirship Chronicles

Writing In The Oral Tradition The Crisis Of Self Representation In The American Native Literature: A Postmodern Reading Of Gerald's Vizenor's Bearheart The Heirship Chronicles

Brazil’s Accountability Paradox

Brazil today faces an impeachment crisis. While the political ambitions of the president’s opponents have undeniably fueled the crisis, the electorate has also grown impatient and emboldened the opposition. This article contends that as stronger state accountability institutions uncovered endemic corruption, social and political inclusion paradoxically left the electorate less dependent on parties for the selective distributive of benefits, and more demanding of government effectiveness and probity. The equilibrium of valence voting without strong partisanship worked well during good times, but ultimately left parties vulnerable to public impatience with corruption, poor service provision, and the economic crisis—as well as to a crisis of political representation.

Beyond biopolitics: reading Bolaño's human fragments

The bodies of murdered Mexican women in Roberto Bolano's novel 2666 have been taken by critics to signify the biopolitical power of the neoliberal order. This article will contend that such readings overlook a broader crisis of bodily representation, which is apparent both in 2666 and in Bolano's earlier novels. The extent to which the body might be ‘read’ as part of a signifying system is insistently challenged in Bolano’s work, where images of the human are frequently fragmented or unstable. Drawing on ideas from Levinas and Deleuze, I suggest that the difficulty of representing the human, and the political implications of that act, are particularly clear when Bolano approaches the face. I then argue, following Jean-Luc Nancy, that the theological imagery which accrues around the body of the artist in Bolano’s work stages the deconstruction of Christian humanist aesthetics. Ultimately, Bolano’s fragmented bodies invite a mode of reading which is not uniquely concerned with representation.

A Participação Popular Na Última Eleição Presidencial e a Democracia Brasileira: Falácia do Engajamento Político e Crise da Representatividade

Seja por ausência de participação do povo brasileiro na consolidação da República ou, ainda, pela experimentação tardia do fenômeno democrático, a experiência democrática brasileira não se comportou, na prática, com a mesma efusividade que nascera. Os movimentos populares antecessores à eleição presidencial de 2014 pareceram uma retomada do papel ativo na política pelos cidadãos, significando uma aparente mudança na nossa democracia. Os índices de comparecimento às urnas, contudo, diminuíram substancialmente em comparação com as duas últimas eleições presidenciais. O descompasso entre o suposto engajamento político, altamente noticiado pela mídia, e a diminuição do exercício efetivo do poder de escolha pelos cidadãos, evidencia a importância do olhar jurídico e sociológico para a atual situação da democracia no Brasil, assolada por uma possível crise na representatividade e legitimidade do povo brasileiro. Há, portanto, a necessidade de reformar o processo de interação iterativa entre representantes e representados, de forma a estimular a participação política e a cultura cívica da população.

Public spheres, political crisis and the Internet: the rise of the Podemos party

The rise of the political party Podemos, within the context of a crisis in political representation, can be explained from a perspective of transformative interactions between public spheres, social movements and new technologies. The emergence of the 15M movement allowed Podemos to offer a new diagnosis of politics that has been actively promoted on social media, which represent a true campaign platform for low-budget parties. An analysis of Twitter and Facebook reveals the rapid growth of Podemos, its prominence on social networks, the profile of its followers and its most influential publications in these new discourses. Lastly, we analyze the challenges for this type of party in terms of incorporating into the political panorama in Spain and in Europe.

Sposoby ukazywania obozów nazistowskich w sztuce zwanej naiwną

The paper presents the realizations of the theme of concentration camps in folk art, i.e. the sculptures made by Wladyslaw Chajec, Zygmunt Skretowicz, Franciszek Skocz, and Jan Staszak. Chajec and Staszak tried to present the most drastic moments in the history of the Nazi death factories. These sculptors drew inspiration from the popular iconography of the Holocaust, i.e. pictures showing the liberation of the camps. Skocz carved a cycle of figures that represent members of the SS and prisoners who are doing labor and who are being subjected to punishment, whereas Staszak decided to create his works by using wood from the trees growing on the borders of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, thus treating these plants as witnesses of suffering. This article presents the aforementioned works against the background of the crisis of representation, which permeates culture after the Holocaust.

Marikana: Analysing Miners’ Subjectivity and the Crisis of Representation

This article analyses some of the reasons for the violent repression of the miners’ strike in Marikana, South Africa, in which 34 people died on 16 August 2012. It explores the economic and productive context which led the Rock Drill Operators to demand a wage increase outside the usual wage-bargaining structures. It goes on to examine the strikers’ subjectivity and the principles of their strike. Because the strike was organised independently of the main union, the National Union of Mineworkers, by miners demanding direct talks with their employer, as a sign of recognition, it illustrated a crisis of representation and embodied an alternative politics. The author argues that the African National Congress government was faced with a challenge to its instituted forms of political representation and, as a result, ordered the police to fire on the demonstrators.

DataRemix: Designing the Datamade

ArtScience is emerging as one approach for creating novel ways of seeing and new ways of knowing. The authors propose a role for ArtScience research and creative work in contributing to the necessary shifts to go beyond the current crisis of representation. DataRemix, a recombination and reappropriation practice intended to trigger novel subjective experiences and associations, is described.

Peace education research in the twenty-first century: three concepts facing crisis or opportunity?

This article focuses on the concepts of peace, education and research, and the ways in which they combine to form the field of peace education and peace education research. It discusses the ways in which each can be said to be facing a crisis of legitimation, representation and praxis, and the structural and cultural violence that inhibit efforts towards a more inclusive global conception of peace. It will review some ways in which it may be possible to rise to Gur-Ze’ev’s challenge to respond to post-structural critiques of the field. Drawing on participatory, auto ethnographic and arts-based research methodologies, it suggests ways of creating synergies between research and aspirations towards positive (rather than negative) peace.

How to Have Style in an Emergency: Huckleberry Finn and the Ethics of Fictionality

Cutting against the grain of historicist and identitarian readings of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , this essay focuses on the novel’s preoccupation with seeing and not seeing—its dramatizations of how subjects perceive, or fail to perceive, objects and bodies. Instead of reading the novel as a study of moral development that traces Huck’s growing appreciation for Jim’s humanity, I argue that Huckleberry Finn stages crises of representation, calling attention to the novel’s own inability to fully render objects, in particular, Jim’s body. I consider the strategies Twain provides the reader for animating or vivifying Jim as a character—and, more importantly, what Twain withholds from the reader in this respect—showing how the novel disrupts the smooth functioning of characterization, frustrating the reader’s longing to know Jim, to fully saturate his imaginary body and imbue him with the fullness of interiority. In this way, Twain draws attention to the ethical challenge of regarding persons out of perceptual reach and denaturalizes the notion that a literary character is a mimesis of a person. Ultimately, I reassess Huckleberry Finn’s representation of enslavement, showing how the novel calls into question the category of normative personhood and its centrality to ethical thought.

Introduction to the Special Issue: A Comparative Perspective of Union-CSO Coalitions in the East Asian Countries

This special issue of Development and Society examines the historical development and current state of coalitions between labor unions and civil society organizations (CSOs) in South Korea (hereafter Korea), Taiwan, and Japan. It focuses on the possibilities and limits of union-CSO coalitions as ways to (re-)establish the labor movements as a counterweight to state, business, and market domination of civil society. Although the three East Asian countries have different trajectories of political and economic development in the postwar period (for example, Korea and Taiwan experienced authoritarian state rule; Japan did not), their labor movements and civil societies share characteristics. They each have decentralized union organizations and civil societies whose spheres of activity tend to be constrained by the state, political parties, and business corporations.The special issue consists of five articles on union-CSO coalitions in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Three articles are about historical evolution of such coalitions in each country, while two articles are on notable contemporary cases of the coalition observed in Korea and Taiwan. It is a meaningful attempt to examine union-CSO coalitions among these nonWestern countries, particularly from the comparative and historical perspective, in that the existing English literature has given little attention to the relationship between labor unions and civil society organizations outside countries in the West.The Challenges Facing Labor Movements in East Asian CountriesLabor movements in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan are organizationally decentralized, and enterprise unions are the dominant form of union organization. Industrial unions, a typical form in advanced democracies in the West, were formed only under exceptional circumstances. Unlike labor movements in advanced Western democracies, the labor movements in these three countries, either directly through mobilization or indirectly through political parties representing workers' interests, lacked political power sufficient to promote the development of welfare states that granted universal social rights to workers and their families. In Korea and Taiwan, labor unions under authoritarian rule were repressed by the state (Korea) or tightly controlled by enterprise-level organs of the Kuomintang (the KMT). In Japan, even under formally democratic rule, labor unions came under the hegemonic control of management at the enterprise level after the defeat of class-oriented unions in labor disputes in the 1950s and early 1960s. We should note, though, that, despite their organizational and political weakness, Korean and Taiwanese unions were leading civil society actors in the democratization process in their respective countries in the late 1980s and early 1990s.As the economies of the three countries came under the influence of neo-liberal globalization in the 1990s, their labor movements experienced similar structural changes in labor markets: disparities in wages, working conditions, and employment security between (mostly male) regular workers in large firms, on one hand, and (mainly female and migrant) non-regular workers and workers in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), on the other. The enterprise unions of large private-sector firms and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the core sector are mainly concerned with protecting the economic interests of union members and are unwilling to represent class-wide interests of workers including those precariously employed in the peripheral sector. Deindustrialization and privatization have meant a decline in union ranks. In Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, there has been a corresponding loss in union political influence and social presence. Their labor movements face the challenge of overcoming the representation crisis. Can they reframe their goals and embrace the interests of workers in the peripheral sector, and what strategies should they take to increase union membership and to reassert their role as important actors in civil society? …

En busca del poder local. Surgimiento del liderazgo comunal en relación con la instalación de un proyecto energético: el caso de la comunidad campesina de Andaymarca, Huancavelica

The aim of the present study is to show in an ethnographic way the reconfiguration process of communal political leadership in two simultaneous situations: the insertion of a megaproject of energetic nature and the crisis of politic representation of traditional authorities. Nowadays in Peru, the presence of megaprojects promoted through private inversions have caused changes in the internal political dynamics of the localities where they are inscribed. In our case, the effect that has provoked the entry of energetic project “Cerro del Aguila’s Hydroelectric Central” in the rural community of Andaymarca, Huancavelica, will be treated. This enterprise seems to be the second with more energetic production in a national level. The main result has been in the political area, through the incursion of a leadership kind that mobilizes its own resources (social capital, cultural and symbolic) and specifies it through a charismatic domination, with the objective of creating local bonds and using it in an strategic way in two directions: towards the negotiations with the energetic project and towards the collective mobilization to capture State, as the district local government. In this way, the objective resides in showing how the communal leadership is activated and redefined and its importance in the actual role of the local leaderships.