Regime Of Truth Research Articles

Piety, fashion and festivity in a modest fashion shopping mall in Istanbul

This article studies a new shopping and entertainment centre in Istanbul, Zeruj Port, founded and run by young Muslim female entrepreneurs who specialize in Islamic modest fashion. Based on an ethnographic enquiry, the article analyses how female Muslim entrepreneurs in this unique women-themed mall develop new forms of Islamic fashion and leisure, thereby giving a new meaning to female piety in contemporary Turkey. Female Muslim entrepreneurs have emerged as the new tastemakers in the market, seeking to accommodate western trends in fashion and leisure without making major concessions to the consumer market, but also without completely conforming to the dominant Islamic discourses on fashion and leisure. These pious female entrepreneurs achieve this using reconciliation strategies based on notions of individualism. However, the article discusses cases where these young female actors do not so easily challenge Islamic rules of propriety regarding fashion and leisure. Thus, the article concludes that the fashion and leisure performances of female Muslim entrepreneurs subversively accommodate existing regimes of truth about female piety.

Ensino de História na Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC): sentidos de diversidade nos anos iniciais

The article aims to understand the meanings that the Brazilian document National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) tries to fix for the significant diversity in the curricular component of History. The text analyzes the document as a discursive mechanism that operates within a regime of truth at the service of the search for hegemony in the educational and social fields. The qualitative study, of documentary and bibliographic character, approached the fundamentals of the concepts that consolidate the BNCC. The considerations point out that the hybridization of significant diversity hides meanings linked to a project based on the perspective of a functional interculturality, which advocates the depoliticization of the educational process through the subordination of knowledge itself (the contents of History and the theme of diversity) to knowledge in order to do something (the discourse of competence).

China and the battle to win the scientific narrative about the origin of COVID-19

The emergence of COVID-19 represented a critical problem for the legitimacy and prestige of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese authorities had to fight not only to contain the spread of the virus but also to create a favorable public opinion about how they managed the crisis. Based on Foucault's approach to the “Regime of Truth”, this article analyzes the narrative surrounding the origin of the virus and how science was employed to lend it legitimacy. The article concludes by reviewing how the idea of science as a truth knowledge is used to construct a particular viewpoint, one focused on legitimizing the outbreak containment measures taken by the Chinese government.

MECHANISTIC DEHUMANIZATION IN ALDOUS HUXLEY’S BRAVE NEW WORLD

ABSTRACT 
 Knowledge advancement in the field of technology is often considered an advantage. Humans are living alongside the disadvantages. Dependency ontechnological inventions has brought humans to a threshold where technology goes beyond humanity. This occurrence thus possibly leads todehumanization. Two problems are proposed in this research: forms of mechanistic dehumanization and bad impacts of mechanistic dehumanization. The forms of mechanistic dehumanization focus on acts of human degradation while the bad impacts of mechanistic dehumanization focus on the human that represents machine and robot. Michel Foucault’s sociological theory is applied to reveal the problems proposed in this research. Two of Foucault’s concepts are considered appropriate to be utilized: Power and Knowledge and the Regime of Truth. Both concepts emphasize the practice of power imposed on the powerless and theacceptance by the powerless. The finding discloses that one who poses power and knowledge can produce laws that are imposed toward thepowerless and shape them as the powerful wish to obtain the benefit. The powerless ought to be submissive, obedient even accept the truth of lawsunconsciously. People in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World show their unconscious acceptance of the Controller’s laws therefore they are treated and degraded as low as commodities to be made use of by the Controller. They become cold and rigid thus they show no distinction between humans and machines.

A “Sodomized” Postcolony? Narrating Algeria’s Cultural Impasse in Belkacem Meghzouchene’s The overcoat of Virginia

ABSTRACT Drawing on an unorthodox approach to desire, Belkacem Meghzouchene’s second novel, The overcoat of Virginia (2013), finds that opposition activists are probably more frustrating than the regime they contest. Specifying “a lack-based” desire, the trope of sodomy in the novel articulates the ways in which the Algerian postcolonial ruling elites allegedly embezzle the country’s resources without any sensible logic except “pure grab”, a predatory habit. This article argues that, while building on desire for understanding a postcolony such as Algeria can be insightful, reducing it to sexual assault is indicative of an impoverished intellectuality marked by a paucity of abstraction. Expressions of desire, once inhibited through disciplining the body via a recourse to an alienating temporality such as Islamism (even when not explicit), cannot be counted as insurrectional. Measured against the task of “revamping history”, the one outlined by the opposition activists in the novel, the “perverted-desire-as-sodomy argument” leads to a submissive regime of truth. Still, Meghzouchene’s characters’ conservative outlook encourages readers not to overlook the biopolitical dimension of the postcolonial state, but warns against populist discourse that confuses scandalizing with activism.

Stand with #StandingRock: Envisioning an Epistemological Shift in Understanding Geospatial Big Data in the “Post-truth” Era

This article examines an online protest to develop a contextual interpretation of geospatial big data and to challenge the debates on post-truth. In 2016, in support of the local protests against a crude oil pipeline passing through the region, social media users around the world remotely checked in to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota using a technique that we call location spoofing. This collective action thus generated a massive volume of inconsistent locational data that could easily be treated as fake information. Our contextual approach, integrating anthropological methodology, interprets user-generated big data as digital traces of human activities in the broader social–technological network of the involved human and nonhuman actors. This study reveals that the online protesters’ use of location-based features and content recommendation algorithm challenged not only the political and technological authorities but also, at a more profound level, the established ways for determining what is true and who gets to decide what is true for what purpose. We argue that this case of decentralized data generation and dissemination demonstrates an ongoing reconfiguration of the previously established regime of truth that has been monopolized by scientists or politicians. Our unique contextual approach to data interpretation is a pioneering effort to update epistemological assumptions about truth in today’s data-intensive environments. We call on scholars from geography, GIScience, and other disciplines to collectively envision an epistemological shift in our continuous pursuit of knowledge and truth in the so-called post-truth era.

Por uma educação não transfóbica: reconhecimento e produção de verdades trans na educação

Os relatos de pessoas trans sobre educação têm exposto insuficiências da formação docente que precisam ser problematizadas. No presente artigo analisamos como o discurso transfóbico impede ou dificulta extremamente a produção de inteligibilidade de formas de existência para além da cisheteronormatividade. Nossos diálogos teóricos foram realizados a partir de Judith Butler e Michel Foucault, bem como autoras trans que analisam o contexto escolar. Estas, com suas experiências, mobilizam e desenham transformações de regimes de verdade bem como podem contribuir no combate do discurso transfóbico. Por fim, destacamos um desafio posto à formação docente: aprender a deixar em aberto nossas definições sobre as sexualidades, abrindo-se às autodefinições de pessoas trans. Desse modo, nos propomos ao exercício de aprender com autoras trans sobre uma educação não transfóbica, de aprender como suas experiências podem produzir posições críticas no contexto da formação docente.

“That’s the whole idea of college readiness”: A critical examination of universal Pre-K teachers’ understandings around kindergarten readiness

This study examines universal Pre-Kindergarten teachers’ understanding of kindergarten readiness through critical lens towards neoliberal narratives of “quality and high return” (Moss, 2014; 2018) and power and knowledge that produce “regime of truth” (Foucault, 1984). In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 teachers, transcribed, and analyzed by utilizing thematic analysis. The implications include recognizing where the dominant narratives lie in early childhood education and valuing teachers, especially those of color, is critical to develop a clear definition of readiness with culturally relevant and sustainable approaches. (85)

Menggugat Hegemoni Demokrasi: Disciplinary Power Demokrasi di Negara Dunia Ketiga

The emergence of the terms Third World, Developing Countries, and North-South seemed to be a concept to separate the good country and the bad country. The term is consumed by the Third World community and awakens to the body that we live in a country where conditions are not supposed to be this way. Disclosure of information and communication through globalization makes the Third World begin to recognize democracy. The poor Third World state economic conditions, the end of the Cold War, and the collapse of the Berlin Wall became a series of events that made democracy legitimate as a truth. So as to create a pro-democracy group in the Third World that forces the state to implement democracy. Coupled with the presence of democratic indicators to assess democratic and undemocratic countries, making Third World countries vying to take the indicator to become the most democratic country. This shows that democracy is already believed to be a truth regime. Democracy in the Third World is followed by capitalism which ultimately exacerbates conditions in Third World countries, so that Third World coutries are caught in global capitalism. Using the concept of Michel Foucault, the hegemony of democracy will be described as a discourse that creates disciplinary power for Third World societies to be able to accept democracy and believe in democracy as a truth.

Entangled histories in Eastern Europe: complementary occlusions and interlocking extremes in Baltic-Russian memory conflicts

ABSTRACT Eastern Europe is the scene of multiple memory conflicts, especially between the Russian Federation and other regional states. Typically, analyses of these conflicts examine contradictions between opposed accounts, critique distortions of the historical record, and attempt to establish corrected narratives. Instead, the present article examines how seemingly incommensurate accounts may be elements of larger structures of entangled mutual reinforcement. Analysis is directed toward Latvian and Russian documentary film accounts of World War II, and reveals how alternate regimes of truth may operate not to destabilize one another, but rather to reinforce opposition and to support symmetrical occlusions in memory discourse.

The Acoustics of Nonsense in Lewis Carroll's Alice Tales

This article explores how Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's fantasies about Alice's adventures in Wonderland and through the looking-glass (1865, 1871), published under the pen-name Lewis Carroll, renewed the genre of children's literature by turning the vocal play of literary nonsense into the organising principle of child-centric, non-didactic, ludic narratives.1It shows how his language games strategically undermine tyrannical ideological structures, whether in the form of discursive ‘regimes of truth’ (Foucault 80), the institution of monarchy, the adult–child hierarchy maintained by a pedagogy of fear, or speciesist supremacy of human over animal.

5·18, ‘진실’의 레짐과 계보학

본 연구는 오늘날 5•18에 대한 왜곡과 무관심이 병존하게 된 이유가 지금껏 5•18을 바라보고 말해왔던 한국 사회의 인식지평과 시각 자체에 있음을 논한다. 특히 5•18의 ‘진실’을 둘러싼 논쟁의 틀이 (무)의식적으로 파생시킨 결과라고 주장한다. 항쟁 이후 다기한 5•18 담론과 연구를 촉발하고 가로질렀던 키워드는 ‘진실 규명’이었다. 문제는 이 진실을 축으로 한 논쟁이 일정하게 구조화되었다는 점이다. 그동안 5•18에 대한 조사와 연구의 근간을 이룬 한 축은 항쟁 당시부터 신군부 세력이 강제한 ‘왜곡의 체제’에 맞서 새로운 ‘진실의 체제(regime of truth)’를 구축하는 싸움이었다. 이 투쟁에서 연구자들은 지배 권력이 덧씌운 반공주의와 지역주의를 비판하기 위해 그 안티테제하에서 항쟁을 바라보고 말해왔다. 이로 인해 지배 권력의 공식기억과는 다른 대항기억을 구축하고자 했던 진실의 체제 역시 반공주의와 지역주의의 틀에 정박한 채 5월의 진실을 진술해 왔다. 다시 말해 지배 권력이 선점한 틀과 인식지평 위에서 그 지배의 말과 논리를 반복해 5월의 사람과 실천과 죽음과 감성을 진술했다. 이 과정에서 5월의 몸짓과 경험은 일정하게 순화되었고 ‘민주주의’라는 깃발 아래 국가가 허용하고 안내한 길 위에서만 재현되고 말았다. 그 결과 ‘왜곡’에 긴박된 5월의 진실은 그토록 소통하기를 원했던 지역과 세대의 벽을 넘지 못하고 있다. 국가로 정향된 5월의 진실 역시 제도화된 과거 청산에 안주한 채, 남겨진 자들의 상처에 대한 치유를 방기하고 있다. 40주년 이후 ‘왜곡’과 국가적 ‘인정’이라는 이중의 심급이 거세한 5월의 또 다른 ‘진실들’을 찾고 재구성해 가야 한다. 이젠 5월을 역사화할 때가 되었다.

El fake en el arte latinoamericano

En este artículo se analizan algunas prácticas artísticas latinoamericanas que hace uso del fake a modo de formato para explorar y cuestionar el régimen de autoridad y verdad en la nueva esfera pública surgida con los medios de comunicación de masas. El análisis de las técnicas de ficcionalidad, infiltración, camuflaje e impostura en las que pivota el fake permite comprender las pulsiones de una parte relevante del arte y del activismo latinoamericanos (a la estela de un fenómeno de carácter global) tendentes a subvertir los sistemas de adhesión y consenso, a menudo sostenidos por los severos códigos aplicados sobre las disciplinas culturales.

The Theological Squabble of Duterte Against the Catholic Church: Discourse Analysis of Duterte’s God-Talk Based on the Verses Found in Online News

This paper is an attempt to provide a discourse analysis of President Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial statements and public pronouncements about God, the Catholic Church and its clergy, and Christian teachings based on online news and similar websites. Using critical discourse analysis grounded in Michel Foucault’s (1980) theory of knowledge/power nexus, the present paper is a modest attempt to come up with a systematic account of Duterte’s “theological” musings based on his random extemporized diatribes against God and Christian religion. Reconstructing Duterte’s “theology” does not mean assessing it from the mainstream religious point of view but rather bringing into light the theological tenets of Duterte’s concept of God and foregrounding them in the context of our predominantly Christian culture. This study wants primarily to understand what are the objectives that these performative pronouncements seek to achieve politically, and what interests they serve based on Foucault’s (1980) analysis of “regime of truth.”

The reemergence of the disappeared, the role of remains and the forensic gaze

This essay examines what happens when the disappeared, reappear. Using examples from various Latin American contexts, Northern Ireland and Spain, the text contrasts the divergent truth regimes, truth claims and sources of knowing that arise. Following Gatti, it discusses the various catastrophes – of language and of meaning – that may persist even when a forcibly disappeared person is discovered alive. The piece considers, in turn, how disappearances are administered, how they end, and the failure of restitution of remains or identity to fully dissipate radical uncertainty. Controversies arising from the paradoxical bestowing of enhanced visibility on the absent disappeared, and the victim hierarchies this creates, are discussed. So too is the question of the positionality of the forensic expert, and the credence given to forensic expertise. I argue that any mission to turn the disappeared back into still living persons, or safely deceased bodies, is in a certain sense doomed to fail.

Making “Mini-Me’s”: Service-Learning as Governance of the Self in a South African Context

This article presents an attempt to examine my own service-learning practices through the use of the conceptual tools of Michel Foucault, in particular his notions of governmentality and power. The article views the development of service-learning in South Africa and our current practices as operating within a regime of truth, and it considers service-learning as an apparatus for constructing particular kinds of subjects. From a broad conceptual lens, the article moves to the analysis of an interaction during a critical reflection process in service-learning in an attempt to examine actual practices and how these may produce different subjectivities. The article is an attempt to encourage other practitioners to reflect on their own practices, uncover their assumptions, and ask how things could be otherwise.

The movies I live in: cartogenealogies of the present

This essay aims to present a research experience with films, at the place where they allow us to follow the policies of subjectivation of/in the present. In this (self)experimentation, I propose the concept of cartogenealogy as an ethical-political-aesthetical-epistemological disposition in order to produce pathways of problematization in the process of researching (-intervention). The objective here is to compose process-analytical maps about truth regimes around the intersection of gender and sexuality. By living in films (a central bet in this ethical-epistemological insurgency), I risk the (im)possible gesture of fictioning (fabricating) ontologies of our time and culture. As a result, I can feel-and live in-and with the movies, and in myself. These are ways of expanding the forms of our own constitution. The results of this experimentation point to post-critical routes on modes of production and fixation of difference, especially regarding their effects around norm, abjection and resistance.

Exploring links between national education and students’ militaristic national identity constructions – a case study of Pakistani state schools in Islamabad

ABSTRACT This qualitative study problematizes the interplay between Pakistan’s national curriculum textbooks and students’ militaristic national identity constructions in six state-schools. Drawing on field-data collected employing interviews with twelve teachers and focus-groups and participatory tools with four-hundred and twenty-four students, it also analyses study-participants’ interaction with these discourses and students’ reactions vis-à-vis their teacher-mediated textbook positioning. Taking insights from Synder’s and Johnston’s concept of ‘strategic culture’ and Foucault’s ‘technologies of power and self’, the findings suggest Pakistani students’ militaristic national identity constructions in schools, portraying India as an existentialist threat to Pakistan. The textbooks glorify the India/Pakistan wars, heighten the feeling of insecurity amongst schoolchildren, and through that, build a heroic image of the Pakistan Army. The teachers reinforce these images in classrooms. Constituted under the influence of these technologies of power, students exude strong hostility towards India and adoration for the Pakistan Army, hence functioning as vehicles to further the militaristic approach of Pakistan’s ‘regime of truth’. The study illustrates how Pakistan’s increasingly strengthening strategic culture has subverted Pakistan’s civil institutions and served the vested interests of the military’s high command. Similarly, it highlights the dangers/implications involved in using national education for shaping vulnerable schoolchildren’s militaristic national identities in schools.

Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music's African Origins, by David F. Garcia

Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music's African Origins , by David F. Garcia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. xii, 360 pp. Listening for Africa explores Afro-modernism between the 1930s and the 1950s, critically assessing why the African origins of black music and dance mattered during this period of rising racism and fascism in Europe and the Americas, colonialism in Africa, and the onset of the Cold War. Garcia focuses upon key individuals who investigated the African origins of New World Negro music and dance in order to refute erasure of Africa as an obsolete past within the context of a modern world. He asks, “When black music and dance sounded and embodied its African origins … exactly how, why, and for whom were those soundings and embodiments materializing?” (p. 5). He pursues answers to this question in five diffuse chapters that present an array of archival material and draw on theories and methodologies in anthropology, sociology, comparative musicology/ethnomusicology, folklore, African diasporic studies, and dance history. The book argues that for some “academics, performers, and activists, listening to, analyzing, sounding, embodying, and even resisting black music's and dance's African origins enabled their holding modernity's promises of freedom and equality to the fire[,] usually as their acts of faith in modernity but also as acts of stepping inside and outside of its regimes of truth” (p. 6). Chapter 1, “Analyzing the African Origins of Negro Music and Dance in a Time of …

Fake health news in the new regime of truth and (mis)information

The phenomenon of fake news in public health worldwide reflects significant changes in the regime of health information, particularly in the West. It reveals a transition from a scenario in which the medical community arguably dominated the flow of health information — grounded in the biomedical model — to a more crowded, competitive and chaotic scenario. The digital revolution has upended the old regime by transforming the large-scale production, distribution and consumption of health information. Consequently, misinformation and disinformation have become widespread, as the public is able to obtain information about health issues from an array of sources and platforms, and rogue actors flood the internet with factually incorrect information, hearsay and conspiracy theories.