Political cartoons as carnivalesque: a multimodal discourse analysis of Argentina’s Humor Registrado magazine

Political cartoons, although generally neglected by academic criticism, are often one of the only forms of socio-political critique permitted during authoritarian rule (Barajas, Rafael. 2000. “The Transformative Power of art: Mexico’s Combat Cartoonists.” NACLA Report on the Americas, 3: 6–41). This paper explores the reasons behind this, reading the genre as a form of Bakhtin’s carnivalesque, a participatory space of oppositional discourse outside the official version with which it has an “ambivalent” relationship (Bakhtin, Mikhael. 1984. Rabelais and His World (Trans Iswolsky H). Bloomington: Indiana University Press) and can be allowed to circulate as a “safety valve” (Holquist, Michael. 1984. “Prologue.” In Rabelais and his World, edited by M. Bakhtin, xiii–xxiii. Bloomington: Indiana University Press) of controlled protest. Drawing on tools of Multimodal Discourse Analysis, Social Semiotics (Kress, Gunther, and Theo Van Leeuwen. 1996. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. New York: Routledge) and Semiology (Barthes, Roland. 1968. Elements of Semiology. New York: Hill and Wang) for methodological purposes, this study investigates this hypothesis through the political cartoons of the covers of satirical fortnightly publication Humor Registrado during the final year of Argentina’s last dictatorship, 1982–1983. The magazine’s role in challenging the dictatorship is explored through an analysis of its representations of key social actors and events during Argentina’s difficult period of transition from dictatorship to democracy following defeat in the 1982 Malvinas/Falklands War.     

From la guerra sucia to ‘A Gentleman’s Fight’: War,Disappearance and Nation in the 1976–1983 Argentine Dictatorship

Analysing the last Argentine dictatorship in the light of contemporary re‐examinations of war, this article argues that the 1976–1983 dictatorship can be understood as a shift in war(s), from la guerra sucia to the Falklands/Malvinas conflict, from a limitless and unsustainable internal war to a bracketed external war. That external war is shown to be an attempt to re‐found a nation imploding through disappearance. Drawing on the history of disappearance in Argentina reveals that, despite obvious differences, there are many continuities between the dictatorship and other regimes, emphasising the dangers of a politics that encourages a nation ‘re‐malvinizada’.     

City of Fear: Reimagining Buenos Aires in Contemporary Argentine Cinema

Argentine cinema has experienced a rebirth since the late 1990s, despite the country’s economic crisis. Buenos Aires, long a key setting for the nation’s films, has not escaped the negative impact of the crisis, yet filmmaking in the capital has thrived. This article explores the radically different presentation of the city since the first explosion of film in Argentina after the end of the military dictatorship of 1976–1983. It takes Luis Puenzo’s controversial La historia oficial as a starting point for a reflection on the current presentation of Buenos Aires as a city plagued by fear in productions from the late 1990s to the early twenty‐first century.     

Classical Marxism and Maoism: A comparative study

The issue of the Marxist character of “Mao Zedong Thought” has never really been resolved. The present work is a comparative analysis of the classical Marxism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and the ideology of Mao Zedong. The argument is made that whatever Marxism there was in Maoism was the “creatively developed Marxism” of V. I. Lenin—which allowed for socialist revolution in retrograde economic circumstances—something that had been specifically rejected by Marx and Engels. That led to the theoretical idiosyncrasies that characterized Maoism throughout its history, and ultimately resulted in the form rejected by Deng Xiaoping and post-Maoist China.     

Pathways to democratization in personalist dictatorships

Personalist dictatorships make up an increasingly large proportion of the world's dictatorships. Moreover, they tend to be particularly resistant to democratization. Understanding the conditions that increase the likelihood of democratic transitions in personalist contexts, therefore, is critical for the study and practice of democratization in the contemporary era. This study argues that political party creation is a key factor. Though personalist dictators typically create parties to offset immediate threats to their power posed by the elite – and particularly the military – doing so encourages peaceful mass mobilization and a realignment of elite networks. These dynamics, in turn, enhance prospects of democratization. Using cross-national empirical tests that address the potential endogeneity of this relationship, we find support for the argument that personalist dictators who create their own political party are more likely to democratize than those who ally with a pre-existing party or rule without one.     

马克思社会公仆思想的出场逻辑

马克思恩格斯通过对巴黎公社革命经验的系统总结,将无产阶级专政的政权定位为社会公仆,提出了防止国家机关由社会公仆蜕变为社会主人的重要思想,催生了社会公仆思想的原初出场。出场之后,是波澜壮阔的行程。公社建立无产阶级政权后,为了防止国家机关由社会公仆蜕变为社会主人,始终坚持人民立场,出台了接受人民监督、实现和维护人民利益、建设“廉价政府”等一系列措施,有效避免了这一后果的出现,实现了社会公仆思想的在场。中国革命、建设和改革历程中的政权建设是巴黎公社原则在一个东方大国的再现,实现了马克思社会公仆思想的永恒在场。     

现代民主宪政国家应对危机之道——评罗斯特的《宪政独裁——现代民主国家的危机政府》

罗斯特的宪政独裁理论是为了解决现代民主宪政国家所具有的如何在维护宪政和民主原则的同时,又能成功应对危机这一可怕的悖论。他提出合宪的政府也可以是独裁的政府的理论,是对以美国为代表的西方国家解决危机的传统理论的反动,也与法西斯的独裁理论迥然不同。他的理论是对罗马共和时代以及世界上四个主要民主宪政国家———美、英、法、德应对危机的制度经验的总结,具有深刻的历史基础。为防止独裁权力滥用问题,他设计了宪政独裁的11项标准。罗斯特的理论适应了现代社会发展的需要,对世界许多国家的危机立法产生了重大影响,对我国紧急权力法制化也有启示意义。     

Where to draw the line? From degree to dichotomy in measures of democracy

While there is much debate about the merits of dichotomous versus continuous measures of democracy, surprisingly little attention is paid to the question as to how to go from degree to dichotomy. This study identifies no less than 38 different ways in which Freedom House and Polity scores have been used to distinguish between democracies and non-democracies. The analysis shows that it is difficult to draw the line in measures of democracy, even for Freedom House and Polity themselves. These problems are illustrated with the help of a recent study on democratization in Africa. The conclusion formulates some guidelines for good practice and points at the potential of disaggregated scores to distinguish between democracy and dictatorship.     

From Sarmiento to Borges: The Construction of an Intellectual Lineage in the Magazine Punto de vista under the Argentine Dictatorship

This article analyses the revision of the Argentine intellectual tradition demonstrated in the magazine Punto de vista throughout its first nineteen issues, published during the last Argentine dictatorship (1976–1983). From Sarmiento and the generation of 1837 to Borges and the Sur generation, the reassessment of Argentine intellectuals' legacies set out by editors of Punto de vista was an explicit attempt to insert the magazine into a recognised intellectual lineage. At the same time, it responded to a search for identity prompted by the critical and repressive context in which the magazine was first published.     

Paul Hirst’s encounters with Economy and Society

Abstract

This article examines the construction of the homo economicus in Argentina in the context of the last military dictatorship (1976–83). While the worldviews of the military and neo-liberal economists of the time were very different, their common concern for distortions in economic and political life made them translatable. These economists provided a new economic identity that would be in tune with monetarist theory, replace ‘distorting’ collective identities and allow individuals to be governed from a distance. I argue that the homo economicus was performed through two sets of tools: consumer campaigns and the financial press. However, individuals did not always behave as expected. The contradictions of neo-liberalism, between its liberalism and its quest to create self-regulating spheres through active government intervention, led to the financial crisis of 1980. Economists later blamed the crash on the irresponsibility of market actors and expressed doubt regarding the self-regulating model they had promoted. In the conclusion, the legacy of the attempt to perform the homo economicus is assessed.