Social Revolt Research Articles

Ethnicity, Violence and Binary oppositions: Frames of the Wadi Salib Events in the Israeli Press from a Postcolonial Perspective

AbstractThis article analyzes the frames of the Wadi Salib events in the postcolonial perspective. The aim of this article is to show how to take historic events and analyze them according to a new perspective in media research. The events of Wadi Salib were a series of street demonstrations and riots that took place in 1959 in the Wadi Salib neighborhood of Haifa at Israel. The events were a social revolt against ethnic and socio‐economic discrimination. This article uses the grounded theory method and the framing method in order to examine the coverage techniques used by three major newspapers—Yedioth Aharonoth, Haaretz, and Maariv.The findings show three main frames. The first was the assignment of blame. The second was the frame of ethnicity. The third framing pointed to binary oppositions. The conclusion is that these frames pointed that the demonstrators are dangerous felons with criminal records who will use any means to subvert the foundations of society, while the police and the government are the defenders of the public against those insurgents.

A Timeline of Journalistic Influence of Writing on the Gilded Age in American Literature

The themes found in the writings by authors during the Gilded Age are still prevalent in writings of the twenty-first century. The Gilded Age, a term used to describe a period of economic boom after the American Civil War at the turn of the century, influenced communication to readers by using the ethos unearthed by writers who were opposed to a particular politician and their policies. The Gilded Age was a time of rapid economic growth through the invention of the railroad and business. What looked like a golden time was an era of great growing pains in America between the industrial worker and the wealthy business owner. What the Gilded Age symbolized in both life and writing has become a model of writing that extended to current literature. American writers contributed to a great body of literature that flourished during the Gilded Age. The Gilded Age was a time of rapid economic growth through the invention of the railroad and business. Literature was used as a social revolt that violated the growing power of business and growing government corruption that outlined the utopias of the inefficiency of a capitalistic system. Within genres of writing such as Poetry, the later nineteenth century, and early years of the twentieth century were a poor period for American poetry providing themes of distress, doubts, and fears about American life. Within the genres of writing, newspaper writing played a crucial role in exposing scandals, the pathos of the American Dream, and the logos or persuasion by using the trials of society. Writing was a powerful communication tool during the Gilded Age that allowed writers to target events during this era. Newspaper writing was important to communicating prominent issues to the public, as it upheld ideals to question government and keep it accountable. However, the Gilded Age writings helped to permanently etch in the minds of readers the importance of themes that were prevalent post-Civil War that impacted the writing and writers of American Literature.

Capacious and Territorial: The Left and the Course of the Social Revolt in Chile

Capacious and Territorial: The Left and the Course of the Social Revolt in Chile

The Women’s and Feminist Movements’ Role in National Protest: a Comparative Case Study of Colombia, Ecuador, and Chile

Abstract Colombia, Ecuador and Chile went through a wave of social protest during 2019 and then during 2021 and 2022. Evident in the revolt was the construction of a new feminist political subject that made visible new repertoires of action, both in the street and in the spaces of reproduction of the protest. The article explores the strategies deployed by women’s and feminist movements in these three countries. It first contextualizes the development of the movement in each country in order to understand its complexities, disputes and traditions. Then, from a comparative perspective, it takes stock of the contribution of women and feminisms in scenarios of social revolt and how these strategies were key to subsequent electoral scenarios. The article gathers the voices of feminist activists, politicians and women who played key roles during the protest interviewed in Santiago, Bogota and Quito.

Narrating Marginality: Gender Crisis in Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terror

Feminine sensibilities and gender issues are based on different cultures and diasporic essence. The desire and aspirations of women of different countries are not similar. Their demands are influenced by a number of variables, including familial, societal/racial, marital, economic, cultural, and personal ones. It is considered incorrect to compare Indian feminism to western feminism, which is characterised by radical rules, in such a varied culture. In its early stages, Indian feminism was wholly liberal and addressed every facet of mankind. There hasn't been a significant political or social uprising in India against the male-dominated culture. In beginning, they seek to address the inequality and dissimilarity that existed between males and females. They desired to bridge the gaps between men and women through their social revolt and provide the psychological reason for the male violence against women. Some feminist intellectuals extended the gender issues focusing the intention on rape and other forms of sexual violence. To them, such gender issues of exploitation are because of the male dominant society. They agree with Liberal feminists that material change and patriarchy is the sole reason for women's discrimination. They argue against the existing tradition of love, marriage, and gender inequality and demand equal social rights. The women writers like Shashi Deshpande have used fiction to explore and share their experiences. The myriad conflicts, which they face in everyday lives, are woven into the fictional world of their creation. To Shashi Deshpande, traditional beliefs also play a major role in female discrimination.

Torture, that recurring nightmare. Social crisis and pandemic

This article addresses the summative effects of the social crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic on the health-disease-care process at the level of Chilean society in the neoliberal context. The economy-health relationship is deepened, a phenomenon that is interpreted from the conceptual framework of necropolitics. The retraumatizing effect of the human rights violations recorded during the popular mobilizations of the social revolt of October 2019 in Chile, including the practice of torture, is reviewed.

Social-Environmental Conflicts in Chile: Is There Any Potential for an Ecological Constitution?

Social unrest is on the rise worldwide amid deepening inequalities, environmental degradation, and job crises worsened by increasing social-environmental conflicts. In Chile, a social revolt in 2019 resulted in a national referendum in 2020. An ample majority (78.3% vs. 21.7%) voted to draft a new constitution to replace the current constitution drawn up under dictatorship. The result led to the emergence and empowerment of several organizations demanding an “ecological constitution”. In this context, we aim to analyze: (1) the main social-environmental conflicts in Chile and how they are related to the country’s current constitution, and (2) the potential drafting of an ecological constitution that addresses these conflicts. Across different industries in Chile, we observed common problems that are intrinsically related to the current constitution. This relationship seems to be perceived by Chilean citizens since a survey carried out in May 2021 found 79% support for an ecological constitution. Moreover, 105 of the 155 delegates to the constitutional convention proposed three or more environmental principles to be included in the new constitution. A potential ecological constitution entails principles that would improve the current situation of social-environmental conflicts in Chile. Based on our analysis, we recommend the establishment of watershed-based “territorial rights” in the new Chilean constitution to improve sustainability and environmental justice.

“A Rapist in Your Path”: Feminist Artivism in the Chilean Social Revolt

594 Feminist Studies 47, no. 3. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Débora de Fina Gonzalez “A Rapist in Your Path”: Feminist Artivism in the Chilean Social Revolt It was November 20, 2019, and the streets of Chile were (literally) on fire in a generalized social revolt against the country’s neoliberal economic model, the biggest uprising since the end of dictatorship in 1990.1 On that day, a couple of women and gender dissidents took to the streets of Valparaíso, dancing to an electronic drum, with masked eyes, chanting loudly, “the rapist is you!” Pointing at the police, at the church, at the president’s house, at the judges, they collectively denounced the institutional violence against women and sexual and gender dissidents that is endorsed and practiced by the state, with a simple choreography and a potent set of lyrics.2 These performers were responding to a call by the interdisciplinary collective Las Tesis, formed by four young artists—Sibila Sotomayor, Lea Cáceres, Daffne Valdés, and Paula Cometa—all of them recent graduates of the University of Valparaíso. Because of the growing unrest and violence in many cities, the country was under “constitutional emergency status,” and Las Tesis was not able to present their play in a theater , as initially planned. So, they decided to adapt the performance to 1. A documentary titled “Chile in Flammen” (Chile in flames), about the street protests in Chile, can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5im9 2x9yK3w. 2. A video of the first performance of “A Rapist in Your Path” in Valparaíso can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sbcU0pmViM&t=20s. News and Views 595 a form that could be presented collectively in a public space, joining the ongoing social upheaval. To do so, they put the word out on social networks , calling women and gender dissidents to perform “Un violador en tu camino” (A rapist in your path), which was inspired by the feminist theorizing of authors Rita Segato and Silvia Frederici. In a clear synergy between feminist theory, art, and activism, the performance offers the possibility of critique and denunciation in women’s own voices, based on their shared experiences. Through the performance, the broader outraged chorus of the Chilean social revolt also becomes feminist. Five days later, on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the performance was replicated in a massive event in the capital, Santiago, attended by more than 2000 people.3 A week later, it was staged again by Las Tesis Senior in front of the National Stadium , which brought together older women who had experienced the violence perpetrated in the dictatorial period.4 In a few days, the performance traveled rapidly through social networks and turned into a contemporary feminist anthem chanted in chorus all over the country and translated, appropriated, and adapted to different contexts and languages by women in diverse circumstances around the world.5 Background and context of the emergence of Las Tesis Chile has experienced important processes of social and political transformation throughout the last two decades. Since the student mobilizations in 2006 and 2011, which marked the renewed prominence of a “generation without fear,” there has been a resurgence of popular 3. Performance of “A Rapist in Your Path,” in Santiago, Chile, November 25, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB7r6hdo3W4 4. A group of women over 40 years of age join to perform “A Rapist in Your Path” in front of the former detention and torture center of the military dictatorship, on December 4, 2019. See video at https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=Tk10XBMJkdU. 5. “A Rapist in Your Path” has been performed in more than 52 countries on 5 continents and translated into more than 20 languages, including sign language and languages of native peoples. This map shows all the cities where the performances have been carried out: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/es/map /un-violador-en-tu-camino-20192021-actualizado -al-2_394247#3/-13.84/-119.09. Las Tesis were recognized among the 100 most influential personalities of 2020 by Time magazine, https://time.com /collection/100-most-influential-people-2020/5888485...

Backlash Against Globalisation and the Shadow of Phobos

This article addresses challenges to the established international order. Its critique becomes particularly discernible at the domestic level, where political and economic frameworks are contested by electorates and anti-establishment movements in Western countries, engulfed by anti-globalisation sentiments and disillusioned with the asymmetric formula of globalisation. Populism implies that the ‘social revolt’ facing the West today, regardless of whether it takes place in France, Greece, Hungary, Poland, the UK or the USA, is not a legitimate response to deep-seated problems but rather is the problem itself. The main aims of this article are to investigate what has caused this surge of support for populism in the West; what the role of the default system of economic governance is in inspiring populist resentment; and, finally, what the identity crisis, stemming from ‘hyperglobalisation’, and wrecking the social order in Western societies has to do with fear, (un)fairness and the redistributive effects of economic globalisation.

The pirates of the Defensor de Pedro (1828–30) and the sanitisation of a pirate legend

In late 1827, the crew of a Brazilian slaver, the Defensor de Pedro, mutinied and became pirates. The article follows the narrative of their attacks on ships, including the British Morning Star off Ascension Island in February 1828 and the American merchant Topaz. The Spanish authorities in Cádiz captured most of the crew and tried and executed them. Their captain, Benito de Soto, was tried and hanged in Gibraltar. Using trial papers the article reconstructs the events. It then examines how reworkings of the narrative have changed mass murderers and rapists into popular heroes, both in the general literature on piracy (e.g. Phillip Gosse and Basil Lubbock) and in more recent academic literature and in public celebrations. It argues that this has resulted from misunderstanding and misusing the theories of social banditry and working-class revolt put forward by Eric Hobsbawm and Marcus Rediker, and from commercialisation.

First as Creon, then as Chorus: Slavoj Žižek’s Antigone

The article critically evaluates The Three Lives of Antigone, Slavoj Žižek’s first dramatic work. Žižek’s polemical rewriting of Sophocles’ tragedy is examined in the broader perspective of Žižek’s philosophy and other Antigones: those of Sophocles, Jean Anouilh, Bertolt Brecht and Dominik Smole. Slavoj Žižek has interpreted Sophocles’ Antigone in numerous philosophical works. In his earlier treatises, he mainly gave a cautious summary of Hegel’s, Heidegger’s and Lacan’s theses on Antigone; lately, however, Žižek’s attitude to Sophocles’ Antigone has grown decidedly negative. The main point in Žižek’s critique of Sophocles’ tragedy is that his Antigone is not an appropriate symbol of genuine social revolt. Based on this conviction, Žižek contrived his own version of Antigone with an alternative ending in which the choir carries out a revolution and condemns Antigone to death. It is argued in the article that Žižek’s dramatic project fails to convince. It is essentially a superficial apology for political violence, which can ultimately only be understood as a veiled defence of the political status quo.

Women in the Qur’an: An Emancipatory Reading

Women in the Qur’an: An Emancipatory Reading

Women in the Qur’an: An Emancipatory Reading

Women in the Qur’an: An Emancipatory Reading

‘Aspects of Social Revolt in the Second Republic of Poland in the Great Crisis Years, 1930–5: Determinants, Scale, and Consequences’. A Research Project

‘Aspects of Social Revolt in the Second Republic of Poland in the Great Crisis Years, 1930–5: Determinants, Scale, and Consequences’. A Research Project

Creative Practices/Resistant Acts

In the opening of this special issue, we invite readers to consider, through the articles presented, how various modes of artistic expression and creative acts of resistance can lead to a better understanding of the nature and implications of political and social revolt, and how a focus on creative practices can be part of the wider debate in a time of uncertainty and unrest. The issue examines the important intersection between creative practices and acts of resistance from an interdisciplinary perspective with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Mediterranean regions. The introduction aims to frame the problems presented by the sphere of creative practices of resistance and clarify what is at stake with a view to providing impetus for further research into this critical aspect of contentious politics. It concludes by tracing how the general framing of the problems operates within and through the different articles.

Creative Practices/Resistant Acts

In the opening of this special issue, we invite readers to consider, through the articles presented, how various modes of artistic expression and creative acts of resistance can lead to a better understanding of the nature and implications of political and social revolt, and how a focus on creative practices can be part of the wider debate in a time of uncertainty and unrest. The issue examines the important intersection between creative practices and acts of resistance from an interdisciplinary perspective with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Mediterranean regions. The introduction aims to frame the problems presented by the sphere of creative practices of resistance and clarify what is at stake with a view to providing impetus for further research into this critical aspect of contentious politics. It concludes by tracing how the general framing of the problems operates within and through the different articles.

Eliasz nauk. Apokaliptyka, paracelsjańska mistyka przyrody i narodziny nowoczesności

The myth of [H]Elias Artista (or ‘Elijah of the Arts’) is one of the most interesting components of the rich 16th-century Paracelsian tradition from the margins of the post-Reformation orthodoxy. It signals a surprising development within the Christian apocalyptic tradition since ‘Helias artium chymicarum’, the messianic Experimentator as a human Christ-like figure and an end-of-time counterpart of the biblical blacksmith Tubal-cain, is an original transformation of the Jewish apocalyptic Elijah in a context of the early modernity on the eve of the Thirty Years War. That figure is an example from the broader domain of the Paracelsian ‘theoalchemy’ (Telle), which may be construed as a typically modern hybrid in the Latourian sense. Furthermore, in order to understand the peculiar post-Reformation phenomenon of the mysticism of nature (Dorn, Khunrath, Gutman, Arndt, Boehme, and others), which is in stark tension with orthodox theologies, it is necessary to take into account that it was a product of the new powerful intellectual formation which can be dubbed the nature (or cosmological) apocalypticism.It is claimed that that ‘vertical’ (non-eschatological) apocalypticism of nature is an early modern form of the ancient Jewish apocalyptic tradition transformed under the new social-cultural conditions into a formula of the ‘learning the secrets of nature’ in a complex process of renegotiating the power relations, and it produced the ample resource of the cognitive motivations for experimental activity, quite independently of the gradually waning millenarian affects. Thus, that transformation is important for understanding the religious early modernity and its immanentist, activist attitudes and getting beyond the one-dimensional discourses of the secularization paradigm, which obliterates or ignores the ‘vertical’ axis of apocalypticism and fixes itself upon the horizontal (millenarian) dimension while (re)constructing the criticized unpicturesque ‘irreligion of progress’ (Löwith). Early modernity could be better understood as a diffused turn (effect) associated with the innovative material (e.g. medical or chemical) practices and their new conceptualisations of matter and knowledge, where philosophy, theology, science of matter and social revolt seem inseparable. The myth of the Elijah of the Arts, contrary to a superficial secularization interpretation, is one of the symptoms of the growing process of ‘de-eschatologization’ through the alternative direction of apocalypticism, i.e., shifting an interest to nature and matter as the religious objects available to exploration, which produced the new power conflicts typical of modernity but also the ‘laboratory’ as a space of unveiling that which is hidden in nature.

“We have our own struggle”: Up Against the Wall Motherfucker and the avant-garde of community action, the Lower East Side, 1968

This article examines the activist method and motivation of Up Against the Wall Motherfucker (UAW/MF), an art-political collective formed on the Lower East Side in the late 1960s. Exploring a series of actions, organizational alliances and community-orientated programs, it argues that the group’s project was informed by a critique of the social and political disengagement of postwar American art practice. In examining these themes within their neighborhood context, the paper makes an ancillary argument for addressing the local within histories of the radical American 1960s. While 1968 stands as a symbolic moment of political and social upheaval, the actions of UAW/MF – and its forbearer, Black Mask – illustrate the local dimensions of the so-called “protest era,” and highlight anxieties and concerns that promoted social revolt at the grassroots level.

Comic Medievalism: Laughing at the Middle Ages by Louise D’Arcens (review)

louise d'arcens, Comic Medievalism: Laughing at the Middle Ages. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2014. Pp. x, 209. isbn: 978-1-84384-380-1. $95.Not only did the Middle Ages have their own richly comic seam, but post-medieval studies of the period often treat it as a source of fresh humor. Louise D'Arcens' aim is to identify what is thought funny about the Middle Ages, and to show how this has influenced modern ideas about both the Middle Ages and modernity. The subject is vast, and D'Arcens has wisely decided to focus on only a few aspects; a comprehensive study would have had to include, for example, some evaluation of T.H. White's influential novel, The Sword in the Stone, and its later metamorphoses on stage and screen. That said, her historical range is wide-from Chaucer to now -and takes samples that include early modern chivalric satire, eighteenth century verse, Victorian burlesque, Marxist farce, medievalist cinema, contemporary comichistorical books, television documentaries and heritage tourism sites.The opening chapter ('The Cervantean Paradigm; Comedy, Madness, and Meta-Medievalism') aptly illustrates the ambivalence that informs Cervantes' use of medieval parody and farce, for, as Michael Scham argues, 'Cervantes delights in the very material he travesties' (37).A variant ambivalence is traced in chapter 2 ('Scraping the Rust from the Joking Bard: Chaucer in the Age of Wit'), which describes how the revivers of interest in Chaucer regarded him either as embodying a lost medieval comic outlook or as forming a link in a much longer, European post-Horatian tradition. In both cases the perceived shortcomings in his versification and endemic ribaldry were thought to require 'polishing' (67).Chapter 3 ('Medievalist Farce as Anti-Totalitarian Weapon: Dario Fo as Modern Giullare') provides a masterly examination of Fo's role as a modern Marxist activist who believes that he is reviving a traditional/medieval anarchic folk-humor which had the power to encourage social revolt. Yet, despite claims for his great influence in Italy, and on Pasolini's films in particular, Pasolini would dismiss Fo's work as 'bourgeois anti-bourgeois theatre' (84).Chapter 4 ('Pre-Modern Camp and Faerie Legshows: Travestying the Middle Ages on the Nineteenth-Century Stage') then reveals that the desire to present authentically costumed historical drama, especially Shakespearean, led to a fascination with medieval topics. Though these were often grossly burlesqued, the audience probably felt an affectionate complicity with the presentation, and laughed with it rather than at it. …

Profesor Seidler – anatomia antynomii

The author analyses the personage of professor Grzegorz Leopold Seidler from the angle of contradictions existing in himself, assuming the convention of spinning out the digressions and references to arts and literature which was familiar to the professor. Professor Seidler was using the term of antinomy in his lectures of philosophy of law willingly: he was talking of antinomies in law, presenting them against a background of history of philosophy and political-legal doctrines, also embracing 20th century. In fact he was full of internal contradictions himself, both in his life as well as in his academic achievements. Erudition, intellectual depth of ideas of the professor is stressed, as well as the conditions of time and place, which created the liaison with Marxism, application of methodology of dialectical and historical materialism, when his intellectual friability was exposed, involvement in ideology and affiliation with communist party. Family and intellectual roots of the Professor were presented, development in interwar period, being in the circle of right wing elites of pre-war Poland. The author discusses the studies at Jagiellonian University, first academic achievements, raised under the wings of professor M. Starzewski and professor J. Lande – student of L. Petrazycki, including the political system and history of political-legal ideology. The attention is drawn to work in the Library of the Sejm and the Senate, stressing the connection of the professor with the establishment of those times. The essay ends with considerations on spiritual transformation which took place within the last 15 days of life of G.L. Seidler, on his role in rebirth of Rotary in Poland and on his last dissertations and attitude to the reality. The far route, which Professor Seidler passed, was fascinating but also very complicated: 1. Grzegorz Leopold – during the baptism he was bestowed, for the future, with block of real estates with the name Goldenkugel at Św. Marcin street in Poznan by his paternal uncle generously, by his grandmother – relative of Romaszkan Lvov archbishop of Armenian Rite. 2. Son of popular solicitor [adwokat] – member of Supreme Bar Council, senator of the Republic of Poland and co-author of April Constitution of Poland. 3. Perfecting academic skills under the wings of the so called sanacja regime (1926–1939) professor of Jagiellonian University Maciej Starzewski and Jerzy Lande – student of Leon Petrazycki. 4. Favourite of gray eminence of sanacja regime and important figure of first ten years of People’s Republic of Poland – Henryk Kolodziejski. 5. Participant of Polish September Campaign 1939. 6. Erudite, thinker, expert in political systems at state and legal systems, philosophy, history of thought, literature and arts. 7. Marxist and comrade. 8. Cosmopolitan and polyglot – man of the world, he followed the fashion faultlessly like an English gentleman – with tailor-made suits, a Chesterfield coat, a Homburg hat, and with a cane. 9. Citizen of the world, in contact with great people of this world through his whole life. 10. Finally professor, rector and co-creator of UMCS, visiting-professor at prestigious Western universities, not free of ideological concessions and payment of tribute of conformity, using “the attractions of the court”. 11. „Surgeon”, who called for amputation of social entity, which was created from social and national revolt against totalitarianism and degradation of a man. his own harm and to no purpose. 13. Finally returning to – in modesty of his spirit – his roots, rich in imponderables, both on the spear side and distaff side. One big antinomy.