Beyond the literary veil – Women writing Africa: The northern region (2009)

Abstract

Whenever African literature is discussed there is an articulated incorrect assumption that this relates to all the regions of Africa, except North Africa. A related further assumption is that only men in North Africa write. Female writers from the North barely receive critical attention, although they have been writing creative works. The aim of this article is to dispel the notion of literary drought when describing North Africa. Using the text, Women writing Africa: The northern region, the article demonstrates the different sensibilities that female authors in North Africa have created and manifest, when writing against patriarchy as well as against ideological philistinism within their communities. It is argued that female authors from North Africa – African-Arab women – are versatile in their imaginations as they engage with social reality from the perspective of creative art as well as political discourse. The article concludes that this assertion removes the literary veil so that North African female authors can begin to be appreciated artistically, more than has been the situation up to now.     

Listening and moving in the urban environment

This article discusses The Language of the Listening Body, a collaborative creative project between choreographer Hope Mohr and composer Michelle Nagai exploring an active listening and moving practice in the urban environment of New York City. Mohr discusses listening and moving practices in the studio and in ‘soundwalks’—walking meditations where participants are encouraged to maintain a high level of sonic awareness. The article discusses discoveries and questions that arose during a creative process with a focus on: (1) the relationship between listening-based movement research and public soundwalks, and (2) the unique issues involved in environmentally based creative process and performance.     

系统与结构：刑事社会抗拒的动力机制研究

刑事社会抗拒是个人借刑事犯罪为手段实施的对社会制度安排的抗拒。打压、合法性、相对剥夺感、被剥夺境遇的难以改变以及行为者的边缘化人格构成了刑事社会抗拒动力系统的基本因子。作为外部动力的打压与行为者心理动因（合法性、相对剥夺感、被剥夺境遇的难以改变认知）交互影响、共同“型塑”了抗争者的边缘化人格．抗争者的边缘化人格又反作用于行为者的心理动因进而改变着抗争方式、强度及其与打压对立互动的形态。动力因子间内在的能量交互的结果是建立了动力的静态过程结构和动态交互结构。     

论构建我国无效行政行为制度

目前,由于我国行政活动的多样性、人的认识能力的有限性等方面的原因,导致行政权力行使者超越权力、滥用权力等违法行政行为时有发生。因此,为保障行政相对人的合法权益,构建无效行政行为制度已成为当务之急。     

中国船舶抵押权登记之对抗效力

中国船舶抵押权登记对抗效力问题除应适用《中华人民共和国海商法》外,还应当在《中华人民共和国海商法》没有特别规定的情况下适用《中华人民共和国物权法》《中华人民共和国担保法》《中华人民共和国民法通则》及其司法解释中关于动产抵押权的相关规定。对《中华人民共和国物权法》《中华人民共和国担保法》及司法解释中关于抵押权和抵押登记的规定适用于船舶抵押权时存在的问题加以探讨,并提出如何在《中华人民共和国海商法》进行修订或制定相关司法解释时对船舶抵押权与其他物权冲突时何种权利优先等问题加以规定和完善的相关立法建议。     

The social factory of democracy in underdeveloped Spain

This article aims to analyse the contribution made by Christian movements towards constructing a democratic citizenship in an authoritarian context in the backward province of Albacete. Our study attempts to analyse the efforts made by grassroots Catholic sectors to foster democratic enclaves free from the interference of the Francoist state in 1960s and 1970s Spain. These alternative social spaces enabled new habits of civil resistance that confronted the socio-cultural hegemony of authoritarian values. As a result, throughout these years, various social groups started to challenge the sense of the regime's impregnable unity. This grassroots experience with the “power of the powerless” laid the foundations for negotiations among the political elites during the transition to democracy in Spain.     

FORGETTING DOES (NOT) HURT. Historical Revisionism in Post-Socialist Slovenia

After the fall of socialism, besides the attempts to reach national reconciliation, radical reconfigurations and reinterpretations of the past were used to negotiate local, national and transnational identities and strengthen national agendas. In most of the formerly socialist countries, the historical interpretation significantly resembles the struggle over the legitimacy and authenticity of this representation. The author argues that in post-socialist Slovenia instead of the anticipated democratization and break with ideologically predestined historical work after 1989, at least three competing politically contaminated ways of interpreting the past gained momentum: the so-called liberal-conformist position, which insists that we have to look at the future and forget the traumas of the past; the revisionist standpoint which, at least in Slovenia, is the most aggressive one; and the objectivistic approach practiced by most Slovenian historians after 1991. To do that the author investigates how collective memories are mobilized in general, formal and in particular more personalized and/or emotional narratives and traces the changes in Slovenian memorial landscape divided into categories: the authoritarian type, defined by a desire for direct colonization of the interpretation of the past related to the Second World War; the conciliatory type that tries to achieve “reconciliation”; the conflicting type that clashes with the iconography of an existing partisan monument as an alternative interpretation.     

Economic Liberalisation,Changes in Governance Structure and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka

The last four decades have seen considerable economic, political and cultural changes in Sri Lanka. Among the dominant themes and discourses of the period are economic liberalisation, changes in governance and the conflict between the government and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (portrayed as an ethnic conflict). The economic liberalisation policies of the centre-right government that came to power in 1977 opened up the country to foreign capital and relaxed emigration rules and import restrictions. This government also introduced changes to the Westminster-style democratic system by instituting a centralised governance structure headed by a directly elected executive president. These changes and their implementation imposed significant restrictions on human liberties and rights. These changes are considered as a context for the emergence of conflicts between various central governments and Tamil militants in the early 1980s. This topic has been relatively under-researched. The article attempts to grasp the complexities surrounding this topic on the basis of a review of relevant literature and the underlying meanings of the war, particularly in relation to the maintenance of patron-client relations and a globalising economy. In concluding, the article reiterates the importance of a peace process and political reforms related to national identity and allegiance to an inclusive nation.     

Islam and resistance: Hamas,ideology and Islamic values in Palestine

This article investigates the historical evolution, values and Islamic reference points of Hamas. A product of fieldwork in the Middle East in 2009–2010, it allows Palestinian Islamists and their supporters to explain their views on Islam, whilst analysing the implications of these in regards to Hamas’ wider programme of resistance. Interviews and surveys, as well as Hamas’ ongoing use of Islamic terminology and the Islamisation of the Gaza Strip, reveal that religion remains intertwined with the movement’s political and social activities. Secular analyses clearly demarcating political and religious spheres in such cases are inadequate. The interpretation of Islamic values is not immutable, however, but rather part of a dynamic process subject to evolution and change.     

Book reviews

This paper analyzes practices of counter-surveillance—particularly against closed-circuit television systems in urban areas—and theorizes their political implications. Counter-surveillance is defined as intentional, tactical uses, or disruptions of surveillance technologies to challenge institutional power asymmetries. Such activities can include disabling or destroying surveillance cameras, mapping paths of least surveillance and disseminating that information over the Internet, employing video cameras to monitor sanctioned surveillance systems and their personnel, or staging public plays to draw attention to the prevalence of surveillance in society. The main argument is that current modes of activism tend to individualize surveillance problems and methods of resistance, leaving the institutions, policies, and cultural assumptions that support public surveillance relatively insulated from attack.