Revolutionary Action Research Articles

Количественный анализ политических факторов революционной дестабилизации (Опыт систематического обзора)

The article presents a systematic review of the results of testing political factors of revolutionary destabilization in the works that the authors classify as the fifth generation of research on revolutions. The article demonstrates that according to the existing quantitative cross-national studies, the same political factors can have a different effect on the probability of armed uprisings, on the one hand, and unarmed revolutionary actions, on the other hand. The studies reviewed by the authors show that holding elections increases the risks of unarmed revolutionary destabilization. The diffusion effect in the modern world is more typical for unarmed than armed revolutions. Similarly, the long-serving leader acts as a trigger for unarmed rather than armed uprisings. In turn, armed revolutionary clashes occur especially often in countries characterized by ethnic and religious heterogeneity, where a significant part of the population is excluded from politics on ethno-religious grounds. The same applies to the countries that pursue a policy of discrimination directed against minorities. At the same time, there are factors that impact all types of revolutionary destabilization. The likelihood of both armed and unarmed revolutions is highest in countries with a political regime that lies in between full autocracy and full democracy, that is, in partial autocracies and partial democracies. Both armed and unarmed revolutions are more likely to occur if preceded by the similar events in the recent past (armed revolutionary uprisings increase the likelihood of new armed uprisings, while unarmed — new unarmed protests).

Indexical (re)ordering and commodification of linguistic resources during the December Revolution in Sudan

In this essay, we analyze the processes through which the actors of the December Revolution in Sudan—being themselves revolutionary activists or counterrevolutionary promoters—use language for political and economic purposes. Based on an ethnographic analysis of both oral and written language practices, the study describes the metasemiotic changes that occurred during the last Sudanese uprising, against the background of the language-related ideological struggles, and it analyzes them through their embeddedness within local sociocultural patterns. By focusing on the processes of indexical (re)ordering and language commodification, the study eventually shows how a phase of political crisis can generate metasemiotic reconfigurations of the revolutionary linguistic resources in order to render them more suitable for the market economy and/or to produce political consensus.

Struggle against Disinformation in the Czech Republic: Treading the Water

Abstract In the last decade, the Czech Republic’s foreign and security policy were destabilised with the activities of external actors, with Russia in the leading role, and also internal actors who followed the Russian and pro-Kremlin propaganda and disinformation campaigns and/or actively participated in such subversive activities. After 2015, within the set of crises and their securitisation, the disinformation network in Czechia was developed using the social media and the so-called alternative online media for the dissemination of disinformation, misinformation, fake news and chain mails including and disseminating these campaigns. As far as the leading persons in the executive belonged to the disinformers, the government did not develop working strategies against the disinformation campaigns as the new hybrid threat until 2021. At the end of 2021, the new government of Prime Minister Petr Fiala commenced in the Czech Republic with a new strategy regarding the hybrid threats, including disinformation. The one-year plan to establish the systemic platform for the struggle against such threats was challenged with the Russian aggression against Ukraine. The surprisingly strong response to disinformation campaigns after February 24, 2022, suggested a more systematic approach by the government against fake news and incitement to hatred. A year and a half on, however, we are seeing a stalling in place.

Адольфо Джилли и гватемальская эпо-пея. В поисках революции.

The article outlines a brief review of the life and work of Adolfo Gilly, especially focused on his revolutionary actions as a distinguished mili-tant of the Latin American Bureau of the Fourth Posadist International. His conception of the permanent revolution led him not only to critically delve into the processes of social change in Latin America, but also to become a revolutionary intellectual, whose pen was at the same time the insurgent rifle in the convergence of the Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers Party and the November 13 Revolutionary Movement.

OVERCOMING THE INFLUENCE OF RUSSIAN INFORMATION AND PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS ON THE FORMATION OF A NEGATIVE PERCEPTION OF NATO AMONG THE POPULATION OF UKRAINE

In this study, the Russian information and subversive activity for many years in Ukraine was analyzed, the purpose of which was and is the formation of a negative perception among the population of the opinion regarding Ukraine's membership in NATO. The main process of implementation of these information campaigns, as well as psychological methods of influence on different segments of the population, were followed. Analyzing the facts of the Russian information war against Ukraine, after gaining independence in 1991, it can be observed that all subversive tasks, such as informational, economic, energy, and since 2014, the military, had the ultimate goal of preventing Ukraine from joining NATO. The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has opened up new challenges for us in detecting Russian IPSO. The ongoing war for the free future of Ukraine, which cannot be realized in the established geopolitical realities without joining NATO, presents us with the task of quickly reacting and countering information attacks, which, as observations show, have moved to a more sophisticated level, which in the conditions of a full-scale war are the same as dangerous as massive rocket fire. Taking into account all the factors that affect the issue of this topic, we will try to consider in detail each period of information attacks starting with Ukraine's independence, and we will also pay special attention to the work of the Russian IPSO from February 24, 2022. The main goals of this study are to comprehensively disclose the facts of the activities of the Russian units of information and psychological special operations with the aim of comprehensively distorting reality, and forming a false opinion among the population regarding relations between Ukraine and NATO. The main topic of Russian propaganda before a full-scale invasion was the thesis about the so-called «NATO on the doorstep», that the allegedly aggressive bloc has approached the borders of the Russian, and from day to day it must attack, using Ukraine, which is not yet a member of the alliance, as a springboard for subsequent «aggression». After the direct attack, the Russian IPSO began to develop a narrative about «cowardly NATO», that the alliance was afraid and would never openly enter the war on the side of Ukraine, and also forming a false opinion among the population of Ukraine that it did not need such an alliance, but that it was «better» to accept non-aligned status and illusory security guarantees, which, as reality shows, are largely worthless. The ultimate goal of this study is to prove that there is no alternative for Ukraine to join NATO, as the only guarantee of existence as an independent state.

Subversion of Patriarchal Discourse in Meridian

Walker in her novel Meridian, criticizes patriarchal society’s expectations of woman's roles and advocates about women's individuality and independence. The novel examines its title character Meridian’s emergence as a liberated strong woman. It observes Meridian's attempts to break the patriarchal tradition and how she brings an end to the racism and segregation. It also studies the lives and revolutionary activities of black women who played crucial roles to bring subversion in patriarchal discourse. Initially suspended black woman of patriarchal society, Meridian, the protagonist of the novel, becomes a liberated woman as she knows what she should borrow from the past for the present to create a new future. She breaks most of the generally accepted patriarchal norms and values that govern her society. Though she grows up in the racist, sexist and patriarchal society, she rebels against oppressive systems to attain her self-identity and selfhood. She considers marriage a false institution and deserts it as a challenge to the patriarchal ideology. She challenges the patriarchal image of womanhood and motherhood and presents herself as a liberated woman rather than a submissive wife and loving mother. She disobeys the patriarchal rules made for women and rejects any of the life-narratives of her patriarchal society. She starts her journey in search of meaningful personal and political life. She subverts all sorts of patriarchal discourses dominant in racist and sexist society. She finally paves a path of liberty with self identity and selfhood for herself and for the whole women. The paper tracks Meridian’s experiences from her college life to her self-determining liberated woman of present. She is free to love men without the burdens of marriage, sexual restriction and motherhood. It also explores black women's hidden strength, their beauty and feelings of sisterhood and wifehood. The study reveals how Meridian, revolts against the patriarchal ideologies to regain her lost identity and wholeness.

Weaponizing Democratization: Street Battles and Transformation in Post-Revolutionary Egypt

: Scholarship on the connection between democratization and political violence typically views democracy through a liberal prism prioritizing elections and elite dynamics and qualifies violence through the lens of civil war or organized armed conflict, which leaves the political salience and effects of alternative modes of violent contentious mobilization underexamined. This study analyzes the connection between the weaponization of Egypt’s post-revolutionary democratizing roadmap and politically transformative street battles that divided and reconfigured social and political alliances through bloodshed, grievance and betrayal. Weaponization describes a process in which Egypt’s transitional democratizing roadmap championed free and fair elections while revolutionary activists were systematically repressed and stigmatized. The resultant polarization from street battles, particularly between the Muslim Brotherhood and their opponents, significantly contributed to support for the Tamarrod (rebellion) campaign, leading to mass mobilization and the ousting of President Mohamed Morsi of the Brotherhood. This ushered in an authoritarian restoration structured through heightened political polarization and repression. The analysis largely draws from the accounts of informal political actors, not least in order to address the underrepresentation of such experiences within orthodox democratization scholarship. The Battle of Mohamed Mahmoud Street and the Ittehadiyya presidential palace clashes are developed as two exemplar empirical cases (re)directing Egypt’s transitional trajectory, which enrich wider debates on democratization, authoritarian entrenchment, political violence and the fluidity of transitional politics.

“A Similar Detente”: Mexico’s Central American Policy, 1978–1982

Abstract This article explores Mexico’s overlooked importance in the Central American armed conflict, the limits of its influence, and its connection to the late Cold War. Mexico’s policy toward Central America attempted to prevent an American and Cuban military intervention in the area and avoid a Cold War confrontation along its southern border. Mexico attempted to build detente in the region and prevent a global escalation of tension between the great powers. Meanwhile, it sought to propose a “third way” for the revolutionary actors shaped after Mexico’s political system and history. Studying Mexico’s efforts to create detente-like arrangements can shed light on the efforts of peripheral actors and their projects to influence the international system despite the actions of hegemonic powers.

A Self-Indulgent Narcissus: Performing Marxist Humanism as Individualism in the Work of Petr Štembera

Petr Štembera’s first performance Narcissus No. 1 (1974) was staged as a religious ritual of self-acceptance. During the performance, the artist used a combination of Greek mythology and Christian Eucharistic ritual as a basis for the action during which he consumed detritus from his body while looking at a portrait of himself. This method of arguably self-indulgent individualism was at the core of his broader practice as a pioneer of Czech Body Art. Using Czech philosophical writings on Marxist humanism, this article seeks to reframe individualism, selfishness, and self-indulgence not as pejoratives that are used to dismiss performance works but as a productive basis for a theory of performance-making strategy. Štembera used Zen-Buddhism and phenomenological approaches to contest the political aspects relating to the body in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia. His performance was purposefully selfish, self-indulgent, and individualistic and he strategically refused to share the specifics of his experience with his audience. Instead, he used his performance to offer permission to his audience to perform similar acts of self-indulgence, which in the context of the collectivist Socialist regime of the 1970s functioned, I argue, as a politically subversive act.

IRR50 and the revolutionary act: ‘We are here to recommit’

To open the IRR50 ‘New Circuits of Anti-racism Conference’ held at King’s College London in October 2022, Jenny Bourne, staff member, and Colin Prescod, IRR Chair, describe in their short speeches what the changing of the orientation of the Institute of Race Relations at its 1972 Extraordinary General Meeting had meant and how the organisation had changed its role and focused its commitment over fifty years. Their introduction includes description of the films for IRR directed by Prescod, Struggles for Black Community.

ВПЛИВ СУЧАСНОГО НОРМАТИВНО-ПРАВОВОГО ЗАБЕЗПЕЧЕННЯ ОПЕРАТИВНО-РОЗШУКОВОЇ ДІЯЛЬНОСТІ НА ЕФЕКТИВНІСТЬ ЗДІЙСНЮВАНИХ ЗАХОДІВ

У статті розкрито проблеми сучасного нормативно-правового забезпечення оперативно- розшукової діяльності в Україні та його вплив на ефективність здійснюваних заходів. Надано увагу негативному впливу сучасного правового забезпечення ОРД на ефективність протидії правопорушенням та загалом підтриманню національної безпеки і оборони в умовах війни. Вказано, що наявні правові засоби протидії правопорушенням, шляхом застосування оперативно- розшукової діяльності, не відповідають реальним потребам забезпечення безпеки суспільства. Здійснено аналіз джерел, в яких викладені архівні документи початку ХХ століття, для порівняння з чинним законодавством України. Проаналізовано закордонний досвід здійснення оперативних заходів для протидії правопорушенням та можливості запровадження його в Україні. Зауважено, що в умовах сучасного інформаційно-технічного прогресу, застосування чинних правових процедур здійснення оперативно-розшукової діяльності є не ефективним.

Beyond Diagnosis: Representing the Hotline in The Slender Thread

Abstract Revisiting the little-noted 1965 film, The Slender Thread, this article argues that its representation of the suicide hotline constellates midcentury anxieties concerning psychiatric care, race, and gender. The Slender Thread provides a story of the suicide hotline at an “early crossroads” in the history of the suicide hotline as it “turned . . . toward cure and the carceral while gloving that power within the protocol of this radical care.” This is the Poitier Effect: Black fury is and must be sublated into Black care to bypass revolutionary action and insurrection.

DJUNA BARNES'IN LYDIA STEPTOE ÖYKÜLERİ'NDE YIKICI KATEGORİLER OLARAK GÜNLÜK BİÇİMİ VE TOPLUMSAL CİNSİYET

The American-English writer Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) has been an influential figure in the English modernist fiction. Her works challenge the conventional approaches to sex/gender categories through experimentation on the level of both context and form. Barnes’s tendency to uncover the fluidity of subjectivity and disrupt the Cartesian understanding of the stable Self particularly shows itself in her problematization of genre categories. In other words, she offers a radical critique of “naturalized” gender/sex categories in her works by re-formulating a wide range of genres. Reading her three short stories, written under the pseudonym Lydia Steptoe, this study aims to explore how she plays with the diary form and why she locates it within the genre of short story. It argues that Barnes’s “The Diary of a Dangerous Child” (1922), “The Diary of a Small Boy” (1923), and “Madame Grows Older: A Journal at the Dangerous Age” (1924) shed light on the feminist/poststructuralist notion of the subject-in-the-making through the re-appropriation of the diary form within the genre of short story. Her experimentation on the genre functions to lay bare the production and destabilisation of gender boundaries, and thus, presents diary writing as part of storytelling as a subversive act witnessing and/or contributing to the ontological becoming of subjects.

The disappointment of Rosa Luxemburg: Rethinking revolutionary commitment in the face of failure

Despite the recent revival of revolutionary commitment in response to left melancholia, I suggest that the contemporary academic left has not adequately addressed the difficulty of responding to failure as an inevitable aspect of revolutionary politics. The dominant tendency has been to try to offset the risk of failure by managing revolutionary action in line with a pre-given model of revolutionary change – only to limit the range of possibilities for revolutionary engagement. To address this problem, I draw on Rosa Luxemburg, a foremost revolutionary thinker, whose experiences of disappointment led her to rethink the notion of revolutionary commitment as a practice of learning from failure. This rethinking of commitment suggests a different way of engaging with failure – one that expands our imagination of political possibilities beyond the confines of the dominant contemporary responses to left melancholia and enriches their visions of revolutionary change.

#Landback, Forced Migration, and Praxes of Hospitality: What Performance Studies Can Learn from Indigenous Revolutionary Action

Building upon emergent theorisations and praxes of decolonisation and decoloniality, in this essay Laster undertakes the critical work of suturing diverse understandings and practices of these notions from a range of fields and contexts. She begins by examining the crucial distinction between (de)colonisation and (de)coloniality, before arguing that the complementarity of the two ultimately means that both need to be mobilised in the liberation of Native lands, Nations, and peoples. Next, she turns her attention to several key discussions that focus on questions of imperialism and decolonisation in the field of performance studies, tracing their trajectories, as well as exploring some areas of potential growth for the field. In the second half of the essay, Laster discusses instances of Indigenous decolonisation—from perspectives of creative, critical, and activist praxis—that relate to the issue of forced migration, with a particular focus on Indigenous practices of hospitality and its limits.

The sex or the head? Feminine voices and academic women through the work of Hélène Cixous

Hélène Cixous is perhaps best known for her paper, ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ (1976) and her literary contributions outside academia. In this paper, we pick up a lesser known Cixous text, ‘Le Sexe ou la tête?’ that offers an interesting and provocative perspective on the traps associated with being feminine in a masculine environment. As we converse with Cixous, weaving our own words and experiences with hers, we link her work more closely with the feminine in modern-day academia. We suggest that Cixous’s remarks on decapitation and voice offer a way forward for academic women to be; to speak; to recognise the double jeopardy of decapitation in the university; and to use laughter as a strategic, powerful, political act of resistance and subversion against oppressive masculine power structures. We draw on and seek to enact Cixous’s notion of écriture feminine—a disruptive style of writing that provides a mode of being, speaking, and writing that subverts the power of masculine norms in order to be heard and to bring possibilities for change.

Artistic Representation of Gender Nonconforming Female Bodies in Social Media: A Study of Select Indian Graphic Artists on Instagram

Abstract The study critically examines gender nonconforming female identities via their sexualized representations through artistic imagination on Instagram. Instagram representation becomes a ‘political act’ where this visual subversion allows the queer to reclaim their non-binary identity and thus articulate their choices through their body. The digital graphic art taken under study is select images from the Instagram pages of Indian artists “artwhoring,” “aorists,” and “sayartic.” The research study examines the question of an ideal hegemonic femininity perpetuated by the rhetoric of Indian heteronormative patriarchal assertions. It analyses select images that defy hegemonic femininity and gender binary by embodying an amalgamation of masculinity and femininity and lesbian desire which forms an act of subversion. The methodology of critical discourse analysis is employed to study Instagram art and the critical frameworks of the fantasy female body, and the notion of heteropatriarchal femininity. In conclusion, the study discusses the treatment of female gender non-conforming bodies, their appearance, lesbian desire, and body image. Such transgressive depiction of bodies successfully situates the female body beyond the dichotomy of masculinity and femininity.

If ‘the medium is the message’, what do students learn to do in NLP and GBAs within physical education?

ABSTRACT Building on the original work of Bunker and Thorpe and their Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) approach to physical education, there is now a proliferation of Game Based Approaches (GBA) in the research literature (Bunker & Thorpe, 1982, A model for the teaching of games in secondary schools. Bulletin of Physical Education, 18, 5–8, 1983). Unlike other approaches to games teaching and coaching which trace their roots to TGfU, Non Linear Pedagogy (NLP) has been defined as distinct from, and even an alternative to, TGfU (Renshaw et al., 2016, Why the constraints-led approach is not teaching games for understanding: A clarification. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 21(5), 459–480. https://doi.org/10.1080/17408989.2015.1095870). Although comparisons between approaches have arisen at a theoretical level, there is no comparison of the influence that these approaches have on learners. Addressing this issue, we turn to Postman and Weingartner’s (1971, Teaching as a subversive activity) pedagogical use of the famous aphorism of Marshall McLuhan, that ‘the medium is the message’. Deploying this concept, we ask: what is the message that the use of these approaches sends? First, we identify the main features of NLP and TGfU. Second, we compare their media with reference to two empirical studies. Third, we identify and discuss questioning and decision-making as two key differences between these otherwise similar approaches. Finally, we consider the implications of these results for teaching and learning of games under Mcluhan’s aphorism.

Alexandre Kojève – Filozoficzny jakobin czy nowoczesny bonapartysta?

Kojève is considered by many to be a Marxist thinker whose interpretation of Hegelianism was said to be similar to the twentieth-century ‘totalitarian’ ideologies. Historical research on his political thought has preserved his image as a ‘philosophical Jacobin’, who had an affirmative stance toward political violence and was an apologist for revolutionary activity, the ultimate goal of which was to be ‘the end of history’. The article aims to present an alternative narrative based on new research and sources that show that his thought is much more nuanced. Firstly, it is claimed that the context of his work should be found primarily in Russian religious philosophy and relations with Russian intellectuals in exile. Secondly, the infl uence of geopolitical changes in the first half of the twentieth century on the evolution of his political concepts is emphasised. Thirdly, his critical attitude to revolutionary theories is discussed. Finally, the article concludes with a presentation of the views of ‘mature’ Kojève as one of the creators of the vision of modern European universalism based on a specific ideal of justice and the desire for a lasting peace ending the post-Enlightenment chaos full of brutal wars and revolutions.

Psychobiography of the Leader: Lenin in Stories for Children by Mikhail Zoshchenko

Zoshchenko has done a lot of analytical work, having studied many biographies of historical figures of the past. In other people’s biographies, the writer tried to find psychological complexes similar to his own. In the cycle “Stories about Lenin”, the title character appears as the embodiment of the “I am the ideal” Zoshchenko. Lenin easily coping with the phobias from which the writer suffered throughout his life. The leader has been turned into a mirror double of the author. To achieve this kind of mirroring, the writer corrects some facts from Lenin’s biography – outwardly almost imperceptibly, but in fact very significantly. Zoshchenko interprets Lenin’s revolutionary activity in a Freudian way – as a revolt against his father’s world. At the same time, Lenin in the Zoshchenko cycle appears as the antipode of the oedipal fathers. He goes from rebelling against the father’s world to the functional replacement of the father. After the victory of the revolution, Lenin, as shown in the story “About how Lenin was given a fish”, becomes a symbolic Father to all the children of the country.