Bondjo Ethnicity and Colonial Imagination

Cet article, qui porte sur le film Heremakono du Malien-Mauritanien Abderrahmane Sissako, examine les intertextualités cinématographiques, poétiques et picturales. Il démontre comment l'ouvrage se réfère au désert et aux divers modes qu'il engendre: importance de la trace, question du déplacement et de l'exil, tradition poétique mystique. Il analyse également l'importance de l'art abstrait et montre comment le cinéaste construit ses images selon une peinture, traçant en même temps un parallèle à l'art moderne (Kandinski, Mondrian) et à la calligraphie en Islam, où l'usage du figuratif n'est guère sollicité afin de ne pas limiter la représentation de l'Absent à une interprétation.     

The Dialogical Imagination

NPQ has never been a traditional journal. Rather we have engaged in a continuing conversation over the last two decades with the most interesting minds and authoritative voices anywhere that can shed light on the frictions and fusions of our globalizing civilization. Instead of reporting the dots, we have sought to connect them with perspective and draw correspondences between ideas. As one reviewer put it, "with its editor traveling from country to country around the world, NPQ cross-pollinates at a dizzying pace."     

Intellectuals and the Politics of Style

This article addresses the characteristic styles and modes of self-presentation used by such Victorian public moralists and intellectuals as William Morris, John Ruskin and Matthew Arnold in both their writing and in their appearances as public lecturers: these were all interventions that were aimed at provoking an audience into intellectual consideration and self-reflection. The article examines how questions about the style of these figures have shaped the response to their work both at the time and in the years since their deaths; thinking about why, in Raymond Williams’s words, they have produced ‘mixed feelings of respect and suspicion’. It considers how their versions of the combination of intellectual and public life could be thought about in our post-financial crisis present, at a moment when late nineteenth century debates about ‘the elites and the masses’ are re-emerging, but where also the figure of the intellectual is taking on a renewed interest as one possible point of encounter between these forces.     

1989 and the Politics of Democratic Performativity

In light of the fact—despite a widespread impression to the contrary—that the collapse of Communism in the fall of 1989 did not happen overnight, the paper explores the kind of gradual societal work that had led to the emergence of democratic polities in Central Europe but that had generally escaped the notice not only of policy makers and the leaders of the “free world” but also of theorists. The concept and practices of performative democracy as it manifested itself in the period of late Communism (1970s–1989), but also in South Africa at the dusk of apartheid, and the conditions for political performativity, as well as its main features, are then discussed.     

Politics and propaganda of the provisional IRA

Abstract

So long as the declared objective of the Provisional IRA's violent campaign was the abolition of the Protestant‐dominated Northern Ireland Government, many Northern Catholics gave political or moral support. Propaganda mobilized this audience and was also directed outwards, mainly towards America and Britain, utilizing ancient myths, current allegations or revolutionary fervor according to the taste of each audience. But once Stormont had fallen, the Provi‐sionals were unable to convince their supporters that the IRA had been wise to reject negotiations offered by the UK Government and instead to adhere to a strategy of uniting Ireland by force. Violence became an end in itself, appealing only to minority audiences held under propaganda's spell, and diminishing rather than enhancing the prospects of a united Ireland.     

Development Effectiveness and the Politics of Commitment

International aid agencies have experienced a ‘political turn’ over the past decade, with political economy analyses becoming increasingly numerous as a means to drive development effectiveness. Yet aid agencies have so far failed to shift their aid modalities in response. The problem lies in an inadequate conceptualisation of ‘politics’. Most donors continue to see development as a public good, rather than as the focus of contestation in a context of societal struggle, and consequently fail to take oppositional forces sufficiently seriously. This facilitates the misapplication of terms such as ‘partnership’ and ‘ownership’, contributing to failures in efforts to promote reform. A more truly political analysis of aid intervention entails two innovations: the use of structural analysis to distinguish between interests in reform; and the use of this distinction, in turn, to inform the practice of taking sides in political struggles. Case studies of international aid programmes in Cambodia and the Philippines illustrate how the failure of donors to take sides with particular reformers has resulted in lost opportunities to achieve concrete outcomes from development projects.     

论政治学的“科学性”问题——对亚里士多德政治学的一个研究

亚里士多德虽然把政治学列为"科学"之一,但其"实践科学"的特性,使之对个别性、偶然性保留了更为开放的态度,并且把超越理性的慎思明断作为政治教育的终极目标。在亚里士多德的意义上说,近代以来政治学的"科学化"实际上是一种使其"形而上学"化的历程,它在追求普遍性和确定性的同时,极大地限制了政治学的视野;在使政治学技术化的同时,忽略了政治智慧的意义。要克服当下政治学研究中的缺欠,就有必要在某种意义上回归到亚里士多德。     

热话题与冷思考(三十六)--关于新保守主义与美国政治的对话

[编者按]自乔治·W.布什当选美国总统以来,新保守主义日益成为美国政治思潮的主流,对美国的内政外交产生了重要的影响.而第二届布什政府的成立,更进一步说明了新保守主义已成为美国的主流政治文化.那么,何谓新保守主义?它承袭了保守主义的哪些东西?列奥·施特劳斯对新保守主义这一理论体系的形成起了何种作用?新保守主义的发展前景如何?为此,本刊记者专访了英国伦敦大学政治学博士、北京大学政府管理学院博士生导师李强教授.     

Politics and the Roma in state-socialist Eastern Europe

This article is a comparative analysis of state-socialist policies towards the East European Gypsies (Roma). I make two related arguments. First, the Gypsy policies of East European states evolved differently and resulted in considerable variation. Second, notwithstanding the state-socialist social control policies, a measure of independent Romani activism did emerge laying the groundwork for post-socialist Gypsy mobilization.     

Politics,justice and the new Russian strike

After almost a decade of passivity, Russian workers are once again striking. For the first time since the 1990s, labor unrest has spread across the country, affecting foreign and domestic investors, well-to-do industrial and natural-resource enterprises and infrastructural installations. But unlike in the 1990s, these strikes have accompanied an economic boom, suggesting that patterns of Russian labor unrest are beginning to resemble those in other countries. Analysis of several recent strikes, meanwhile, suggests the early emergence of a new labor proto-movement, characterized by feelings of entitlement and injustice that stem in part from government rhetoric, while pushed into opposition by the state's refusal to accommodate genuine labor mobilization.