Subversive Role Research Articles

Constructing Peaceful Coexistence: Nehru’s Approach to Regional Security and India’s Rapprochement with Communist China in the Mid-1950s

ABSTRACT In the mid-1950s, Jawaharlal Nehru advanced an alternative approach to regional security, pursuing it enthusiastically. He held that employing diplomacy in accord with the ‘Five Principles’ of peaceful coexistence, regional governments could establish ‘areas of peace’ and achieve ‘collective peace’. China played an essential role in this process, becoming the lynchpin of Nehru’s regional strategy. Although mindful of China’s potentially subversive role in Asia, Nehru downplayed such misgivings, urging Beijing’s commitment to the Principles. By doing so, he endeavoured to ‘create an environment’ where China would find it increasingly difficult ‘to break away from the pledges given’. Furthermore, by supporting China’s participation to the 1955 Bandung Conference, he wished to end Beijing’s isolation and transform India’s giant neighbour into a stabilising regional force. This analysis revisits Nehru’s policy of peaceful coexistence, making a fresh contribution to the study of Cold War India’s external relations. In addition, it explains how such a policy, crucially centred on Sino-Indian rapprochement, took shape and appeared, at least briefly, to make progress and deliver on Nehru’s expectations.

Shakespeare’in Antonius ve Kleopatrasında Antonius’un Trajik Çöküşü

Although there have been lots of debates about the reason of downfall of the great Roman general Antony, there is exactly one forefront reason in his destruction, it is Cleopatra herself. Her subversive power over Antony together with her manipulative and seductive power leads to the gradual breakdown of the male protagonist Antony and his destruction at the end. Thus, to understand the full aspect of his downfall as one of the triumvirs of the great Roman Empire, we have to know exactly, who Cleopatra is and what role her characteristics played in Antony’s downfall as a woman. Shakespeare’s Cleopatra even today regarded by some as the source of beauty and by some as the source of manipulation but the common point for most people; it would not be possible to describe her within the limited definitions of woman in patriarchal society and one would need more than these, at least, for Cleopatra. Regarding the different approaches and criticisms about the downfall of the protagonist Antony, my aim in this article is to show how Cleopatra as an outstanding female model in ancient ages led to the downfall of the male protagonist of Shakespeare’s play the great Roman general Antony by using her special feminine characteristics such as her beauty, her tempting words and speeches and also her seductive wiles against patriarchal assumptions that leads her to being condemned as a femme fatale. In this perspective, in the play of Shakespeare Cleopatra’s character is worth being analyzed whether she plays a submissive or a subversive role in the collapse of Antony.

South Korean cyberfeminism and trolling: the limitation of online feminist community Womad as counterpublic

ABSTRACT This study examines the South Korean cyberfeminist community Womad, a community currently under fire in South Korea due to its exclusionary politics, i.e., its antagonism towards anyone biologically male and ethnically Korean. In an attempt to go beyond scholarship which focuses mostly on the subversive role played by South Korean cyberfeminism, this paper situates Womad in research on trolling. It also engages in a two-tiered analysis that examines how Womad’s origin in trolling was influenced by (a) the South Korean national context and (b) the specific layout of Womad’s platform, resulting in a community that endorses identity politics. The analysis reveals how Womad’s trolling tactics, its platform, and the specificity of South Korea’s national context all interact in ways that results in the counterpublic that is Womad.

Editors' Note

Editors' Note

Nuclear structure and the nucleon effective mass: explorations with the versatile KIDS functional

The connection from the structure and dynamics of atomic nuclei (finite nuclear system) to the nuclear equation of state (thermodynamic limit) is primarily made through nuclear energy-density functional (EDF) theory. Failure to describe both entities simultaneously within existing EDF frameworks means that we have either seriously misjudged the scope of EDF or not fully taken advantage of it. Enter the versatile KIDS Ansatz, which is based on controlled, order-by-order extensions of the nuclear EDF with respect to the Fermi momentum and allows a direct mapping from a given, immutable equation of state to a convenient Skyrme pseudopotential for applications in finite nuclei. A recent proof-of-principle study of nuclear ground-states revealed the subversive role of the effective mass. Here we summarize the formalism and previous results and present further explorations related to giant resonances. As examples we consider the electric dipole polarizability of 68Ni and the giant monopole resonance (GMR) of heavy nuclei, particularly the fluffiness of 120Sn. We find that the choice of the effective mass parameters and that of the compression modulus affect the centroid energy of the GMR to comparable degrees.

Reason, Action, and the Creative Imagination

The exemplary value of individual moral and political acts provides a unique vantage point for inquiring into the role of the creative imagination in social life. Drawing on Kant’s concept of productive imagination, I argue that an act’s exemplification of a fitting response to a moral or political problem or crisis is comparable to the way that a work of art expresses the ‘thought’ or ‘idea’ to which it gives voice. The exercise of practical reason, or phronesis, is akin to the way that a work augments the practical field of our experiences in this respect. For, like a work of art, the act produces the rule to be followed by means of the example that it sets. Accordingly, I explain how the injunction issuing from the act can be credited to the way that the singular case summons its rule. The singular character of the injunction issuing from the act thus brings to the fore the relation between reflective judgment and this injunction’s normative value. The conjunction of reason, action, and the creative power of imagination offers a critical point of access for interrogating the normative force of claims rooted in individual acts. By setting reason, action, and imagination in the same conceptual framework, I therefore highlight the creative imagination’s subversive role in countering hegemonic systems and habits of thought through promoting the causes of social and political struggles.

O diálogo entre culto e cultura: possibilidades para um culto com rosto brasileiro

Este artigo surgiu de uma necessidade de refletir sobre um tema antigo, mas ainda pouco levado a efeito na prática litúrgica no contexto brasileiro. Pretende-se, portanto, refletir aqui sobre a inculturação litúrgica no contexto brasileiro, em especial a partir de uma igreja protestante histórica, com o objetivo de propor pistas para um culto que reflita a cultura e o contexto brasileiro, permitindo que o culto cristão seja não só um evento de celebração da vida, mas também de transformação e dignificação da vida, em especial daquelas pessoas que se encontram em situação de vulnerabilidade. O artigo é resultado de um processo de revisão bibliográfica sobre inculturação litúrgica no âmbito evangélico-luterano, mas também católico, da década de 90 (séc. XX), bem como da reflexão sobre o contexto cultural e sócio-político, a reflexão litúrgica em torno à Teologia da Libertação, como base para apontar pistas para uma prática litúrgica inculturada. O artigo está assim organizado: 1) Aporte teórico para pensar a inculturação; 2) Aspectos da cultura brasileira; 3) Realidade do culto no contexto investigado; e 4) Pistas para um culto inculturado, um culto com um rosto brasileiro. Os principais resultados desse estudo é mostrar a relação da incuturação com o contexto social, a relação com os espaços e lugares da vida concreta, com o tempo e a memória e o papel subversivo da festa. A partir desses eixos, parece ser possível não só celebrar o culto, mas em diálogo crítico com a cultura, transformar contextos.

A Subversive Role for Collaborative Inquiry in Academia Today

The purpose of this article is to speculate about the application of John Heron’s concept of Co-operative Inquiry in the context of present day western academic institutions. While this article was written in two institutional locations - one in Canada and the second in Australia, academic contexts in the rest of North America, the UK, and Australia are striking in their similarities. Given the current context of neoliberal policy enacting algorithmic governmentality in education, an application of Co-operative Inquiry as an institutional organizing framework for the work of academics in the humanities, while desirable and possible, would be highly improbable. Since protests and criticisms of the currently ubiquitous policy tend to be muted in view of the risks involved for the protesters, it is suggested that Co-operative Inquiry could be used as a subversive strategy for saving human creative capacity. Keywords: Algorithmic governmentality; corporate university; Co-operative Inquiry; Integral Model; research planning in education

Criticizing Kings: Gender, Classical History, and Subversive Writing in Seventeenth-Century England

AbstractThis article provides one of the first studies of two late works by George Chapman, “Pro Vere” (1622) and “A iustification of a strange action of Nero” (1629). Through a close examination of these works, and through situating Chapman’s texts alongside other neglected works of the 1620s that voiced opposition to the Stuart court and kings, the article examines the critical and subversive role that classical history and gendered language played in forging ideological conflict in England during the Stuart period. More broadly, the article seeks to demonstrate the importance of studying imaginative writings for understanding Stuart political culture.

Playing the Help, Playing the Slave: Disrupting Racial Fantasies in Lynn Nottage’sBy the Way, Meet Vera Stark

Blackness often appears contrary to an individual act or accumulation of acts, and thus theories of black identity in performance are different from theories of white identity. In the essay, I argue that normative desire plays a subversive role in the appearance of blackness because it functions to distort rather than to affirm the individual actions and histories that constitute blackness. By the Way, Meet Vera Stark shows how texts, films, and theatrical productions correlate black femaleness to racial fantasies rather than discrete acts of black individuals. The play reveals how theories of blackness in performance must account for racial fantasies, which disrupt linear time and therefore revise theories of performing racial identity in general.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as an Anti-Feminist Text: Historical, Psychoanalytical and Postcolonial Perspectives

This article is an attempt to engage with the question ‘Is Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland a feminist book?’ Arguments from historical, psychoanalytical and postcolonial perspectives are presented and discussed. By summarizing and engaging with both sides of the debate, this article detects the source of the unresolved conflicts surrounding whether Carroll’s novel is a feminist text to be the different sides’ distinctive interpretations of Alice’s social identification. The pro-Alice-as-feminist-icon camp simply identifies her as an active and potentially subversive female role model for women, and thus subsumes Alice under the general category of women by assumption, whereas the iconoclastic camp, including the author of this article, reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as an anti-feminist text, purports to differentiate the role of little girls and the role of adult women in the Victorian period. It argues that Alice’s supposedly unconventionally unfeminine characteristics do not necessarily imply Carroll’s enthusiasm for women’s liberation from marginality and domesticity, and instead they reveal his misogynistic fear of adult women and his pessimistic and nostalgic mourning for the loss of girlhood innocence and the inevitable corruption that ensues. The fictional character’s conformist ideologies are also detected in her participation in the oppressive system and mindset of British imperialism, which paradoxically further confines her in the oppressed domain of female inferiority and domesticity.

Visuals in Turkish pop: the subversive role of cultural hybrids

Globalisation brings with it fears of cultural imperialism and a global mass culture from the West. This article contends that global imagery in the promotion of Turkish popular music actually enhances difference within Turkey. Global images are employed alongside Turkish ones to create an array of cross-cultural hybrids which Turkish viewers may read as expressions of cultural, political and social difference. A social semiotic approach is used on a sample of visuals from three genres of popular music. Analysis is complemented with an historical and social contextualisation in order to enhance understanding of how images blend the global with the ‘local’ in different ways to enable a medium of protest. Here is a case where global images are an integral part of hybrids which express dissent to national social and political issues.

Paleontology and Darwin's Theory of Evolution: The Subversive Role of Statistics at the End of the 19th Century.

This paper examines the subversive role of statistics paleontology at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. In particular, I will focus on German paleontology and its relationship with statistics. I argue that in paleontology, the quantitative method was questioned and strongly limited by the first decade of the 20th century because, as its opponents noted, when the fossil record is treated statistically, it was found to generate results openly in conflict with the Darwinian theory of evolution. Essentially, statistics questions the gradual mode of evolution and the role of natural selection. The main objections to statistics were addressed during the meetings at the Kaiserlich-Königliche Geologische Reichsanstalt in Vienna in the 1880s. After having introduced the statistical treatment of the fossil record, I will use the works of Charles Léo Lesquereux (1806-1889), Joachim Barrande (1799-1833), and Henry Shaler Williams (1847-1918) to compare the objections raised in Vienna with how the statistical treatment of the data worked in practice. Furthermore, I will discuss the criticisms of Melchior Neumayr (1845-1890), one of the leading German opponents of statistical paleontology, to show why, and to what extent, statistics were questioned in Vienna. The final part of this paper considers what paleontologists can derive from a statistical notion of data: the necessity of opening a discussion about the completeness and nature of the paleontological data. The Vienna discussion about which method paleontologists should follow offers an interesting case study in order to understand the epistemic tensions within paleontology surrounding Darwin's theory as well as the variety of non-Darwinian alternatives that emerged from the statistical treatment of the fossil record at the end of the 19th century.

The Philippines. Women's movements and the Filipina, 1986–2008 By Mina Roces Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2012. Pp. 277. Bibliography, Index.

Women's movements and the Filipina, 1986-2008 By MINA ROCES Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2012. Pp. 211. Bibliography, Index. doi: 10.1017/S0022463414000472 Mina Roces's book Women's movements and the Filipina, 1986-2008 could be seen as a culmination of her work in the fields of Women's, Gender and Philippine studies. One of the foremost scholars of women and feminism in Asia, and particularly the Philippines, Roces's latest study of women's movements in the Philippines revisits the themes that have been central to her earlier work--Filipina women's history, Filipino and transnational feminisms, personal politics, fashion, and defining the 'Filipina' in theory and history--focusing on the 'history of the feminist project and its interrogation of the Filipino woman' (pp. 1-2). By exploring women's and feminist groups in the Philippines (mostly based in Manila), such as feminist nuns, indigenous women activists, women workers (including prostitutes and overseas contract workers), cultural workers in the media, actors, and teachers, Roces produces an engaging, compelling and well-researched study of feminism in the Philippines. According to Roces, most of these women's organisations are concerned with two major issues: challenging the dominant ideology of womanhood in the Philippines, and fashioning an alternative vision of Filipino women. To these ends, feminist leaders and activists deploy several discourses that centre on what Roces cahs a 'double narrative' of victimisation and oppression, while also forging an activist programme that produces role models and feminist practices designed to fashion an empowered Filipina. Most of the chapters are devoted to in-depth studies of various women's and feminist movements in the Philippines. She argues that these organisations advanced a particular form of Filipino feminism, which distanced itself from Western feminism and was grounded in a deep understanding of women's situation in the Philippines. Starting from the 1980s, these women's movements laid the foundation for a Filipino feminist theory that challenged the traditional representations of femininity in the Philippines such as the Virgin Mary or Maria Clara (the female protagonist in Jose Rizal's Noli Me Tangere), and instead promoted powerful female icons and heroines such as the babaylan (pre-Hispanic female shamans), Gabriela Silang (a revolutionary heroine who fought against the Spanish), and Lorena Barrios (a leader of the New People's Army who was killed in combat in the 1970s) as representatives of the ideal Filipina. Roces divides her work into three parts: 'Representing the Filipino woman'; 'Fashioning the Filipina through practices'; and 'Understanding the transnational context of the Filipina struggle'. Roces recognises the feminist nun, the prostitute and the woman worker as representatives of the new 'Filipino woman'. Although they did not totally reject the Catholic Church, feminist nuns played a key role in the evolution of Filipino feminism by deconstructing the religious roots of women's oppression. As single, unattached and successful women, they became alternative and subversive role models who 'sought to empower women by demystifying suffering, and resocialising women into rejecting the Catholic ideals that endorsed subservience to men' (p. 37). While nuns were represented as powerful women in the discourse of Filipino feminism, feminists represented prostitutes not as sex workers but as victims 'pushed towards a life of prostitution' by poverty, failures in government policy, and 'by social norms that idealised the woman as martyr and dutiful daughter' (p. 57). According to Roces, this discursive strategy was adopted by feminists in order to decriminalise prostitution and to punish male pimps, traffickers and clients, rather than prostitutes themselves. Finally, feminists have added 'workers' to 'wives and mothers' in their constructions of the 'feminine', representing peasant women, domestic and migrant workers as both victims of a male dominated local and global workforce, and as the chief breadwinners. …

A political ontology of seeds

This article follows the trajectory of a French farmers' movement that contests the seed production and regulation system set in place during agricultural modernization. It focuses on the creativity of the movement, which ranges from semantic innovations (such as “peasant seeds”) to the reinvention of onfarm breeding practices based on new scientific paradigms, and includes new alliances with the social movements defending the commons. The trajectory of the movement is shaped by its encounters—with scientists, other international seed contestations, and other social movements—and by the productive frictions they create. This in-depth reframing of the activities connected to seeds contributes to building a counternarrative about farmers and seeds that reopens spaces for contestation. In this counternarrative, “peasant seeds” play a central and subversive role in the sense that they question the ontological assumptions of present seed laws.

The Taiwan Dilemma in Chinese Nationalism

Chinese Taiwan Studies faces a dilemma: By treating Taiwan as an autonomous research subject, Taiwan Studies indirectly questions the rationale for China's reunification. Yet, by emphasizing the commonalities between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland, Taiwan Studies justifies the island's subversive role as an agent of democratization on the mainland.

The Subversive Role of Verbal Aggression in the Sarcastic Language of Njuz.net

[sic] – a Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation focuses on theoretical, empirical and artistic research in the fields of culture, literature and literary translation. [sic] thus welcomes the submission of works that focus on various theoretical or empirical problems within the fields listed above, as well as original translations. By publishing research papers, video essays, reviews, literary criticism, interviews and literature in translation, [sic] wishes to offer a wide, interdisciplinary approach to dominant, but also marginal and/or currently unrecognized as well as emerging literary and cultural trends and practices and in this way open a dialogue between proponents of different approaches to the said areas. As such, [sic] is seen as an international platform for scholars, practitioners and artists dealing with culture, literature and literary translation.

Desire beyond the Château d'If

Desire beyond the Château d'If

Feminist translation? No way! Spanish specialised translators' disinterest in feminist translation

Synopsis In this paper I discuss why specialised professional translation in Spain has taken no interest in incorporating feminist proposals. Firstly, feminist translatology has focused on literary translation mainly; seldom has it dealt with translation as a professional practice. Secondly, feminist translation has been considered a North-American literary activity, far from practitioners' concerns. Furthermore, Translation Studies have magnified the subversive role of feminist translation, making it difficult to incorporate feminist proposals to professional activity. As a result, feminist Translation Studies have not joined the ‘linguistic’ translatology debate of the last decade, and there is a conspicuous lack of contributions on feminist aspects of technical translation in essays and journals. Application of the notion of discursive genre does not collaborate with feminist translation either. And there is also a shortage of data bases, glossaries or software which, from a tentative, provisional and temporary nature, may offer feminist textual models to practitioners of non-literary translation.

St. Brecht and the Theatrical Stock Exchange

This is an abridged version of an article by the same title published in Review1, launched in 1965 as Monthly Review's literary supplement. Eleanor Hakim was the managing editor of Studies on the Left in its first few years. At the time she wrote this article she was teaching at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Her essay dealt with Brecht's theory of the subversive role of the artist in confronting what he conceived as the "cultural apparatus"and how this affected his theory of epic theater. Hakim was particularly concerned with demonstrating that Brecht's critical outlook was confirmed by the way that, after his death, the U.S. cultural apparatus ("the theatrical stock exchange" of her title) was manipulating and de-radicalizing his drama. In this context, she drew out the significance of Brecht's revolutionary humanism.… —Eds.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.