Acts of collusion: myth,media, and the populist imagination in the 2016 United States presidential election

ABSTRACT

This article considers the hypothesis that the 2016 nomination of Hillary Clinton appeared rigged because the Democratic Party persuaded itself that the next step in guaranteeing Obama’s legacy and advancing democratic progress would be the election of the first woman president. Democracy finds logical steps in politics suspicious (even dangerous); consequently, the constructed stability and order begin to falter or appear compromised. In this context, populist figures like Trump may gain political legitimacy by claiming to be outsiders speaking with the voice of the people. Populism, founded on a mythical notion of sovereignty, promises direct access to the democratic experience through four interconnected mythologies (unity, conspiracy, the golden age, and the savior), as evident in the 2016 election. The democratic struggle accordingly extended to Trump’s attacks on the media (as “fake news”) and to the Mueller investigation of collusion between the Trump campaign and foreign actors representing the Russian government.     

神话英雄巴克狗——解读《野性的呼唤》(英文)

This thesis is intended to interpret Jack London's The Call of the Wild from the per-spective of four western classical myths:the loss of happiness,initiation,the descent into hell and resurrection.This article is aimed at providing fans of The Call of the Wild with a new perspective in exploring the novel.     

怀特《沃斯》与净化心灵的探索

帕特里克·怀特的《沃斯》名为探险小说，实为一部追求超越、追求净化的人类灵魂探索史，一部再现寻求这一古老母题的现代神话。从神话原型批评的角度来看，里面众多的原型意象构筑了小说深厚的文化底蕴和意义隽永的独特魅力     

东西方火的文明比较研究

中国华夏民族广泛流传的“钻木取火”神话传说,一直被人们以为是一种钻捣木头的人工取火法。本文经过研究世界各民族原始取火方法,研究火的文明发展的历程,深入细致地研究“钻木取火”神话传说。解读其神话语境中所体现的“引火之术”的深层语义,揭示钻木取火神话传说千古之谜,并通过比较研究彰显东方“智取”与西方“豪夺”传统文化差异。     

On Myth,Considered as a Method for Legal Thought

The textual form of law relates to language and not to narration but to myth. Law's text does not develop in the temporal sequence of past-present-future, but spreads by analogy of concentric circles. If ‘normal’ myth is a folklore of people then the law is a myth retold by lawyers. For the sake of separation of legal myth from mythology as a whole, law creates its own rituals. In post-modern societies the mythologization of law becomes even more important as the boundaries between legal and lay communities are challenged. Classical legal theories cannot deal with this change and Kafka's The Trial is as good a jurisprudence as any other legal theory. This revised version was published online in November 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

美国西部"世界花园"神话与美国文学中的西部意识

美国开发西部,最初是为了开辟亚洲市场和南美洲市场。随着人们的不断开拓,西部渐渐成了"世界花园"和远离东部现代文明的宁静的田园乐土,这一观念深入到了美国人的意识深处。尽管开发西部的结果是把西部变成了与东部一样的现代化地区,"世界花园"神话被现实击破,但人们的西部意识并未消失。一旦他们对现代文明有所不适,便想到要回归"西部",在下意识中寻找自由的"乐土"。     

In Hoc Signo Vinces: Religious Symbolism in the Balkan Wars 1991–1995

Symbols—as important and very persuasive elements of contemporary national and political mythologies and their iconography—are particulary exposed during critical periods of certain nations' history. Although the role and influences of religious organizations and hierarchies before and during the last wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were quite different, all belligerent sides also employed religious symbols in their nationalistic/political mobilizations and military efforts. The ambition of this paper is to show the spectrum of (mis)uses of religious symbolism in these wars: Orthodox on Serbian side, Roman Catholic on Croatian, and Muslim on Bosniak' side. Comparative and sociohistorical analytical approaches can to some degree elucidate how traditional religious symbols were renewed and the new traditionalized during that time; how they were nationalized and politicized which elements of the religious heritage were most often applied; and how these symbols were exploited in military actions and politics of ethnic/religious cleansing.     

Freedom and Sovereignty a Fatal Relationship Outlined with Jean-Luc Nancy and Marquis De Sade

Sovereignty and freedom are interlinked in a manner of both ambivalence and interdependence. Neither can sovereignty confirm itself without presupposing for itself a pure state of freedom; nor can freedom conceive and realise itself without interweaving with sovereignty. Both concepts collide with each other as sovereignty usually signifies a certain social or cultural power or order; and freedom regularly is related to a sovereign subjectivity. Therefore, the question is: how far might sovereignty serve as a source of freedom that, at the same time, has to be limited by this freedom itself. When the sovereign (subject) defines where the limits of freedom are, he will mostly define the limits of experiencing such freedom for all those who have to follow his decision on the limit. Further, if the free (sovereign) subject itself defines its own limits, it will supposedly end up rejecting its interweaving with any other subjectivity beyond its own. The problem remains: both sovereignty and freedom cannot be realised if they are already limited.     

The scent of a green carnation: A review of the queer year

The “Blitz spirit” is a popular story about the British public during the Second World War, uniting together with defiance and resilience to overcome the threat of invasion from Nazi Germany. Previous work has revised this wartime story as a propagandistic construction of national identity and popular memory. Therefore, this paper reviews the Blitz spirit as a myth. A critical discourse analysis (CDA) then examines how this myth was retold in British newspapers after the July 7th bombings in London. I examine how this myth was constructed and the ideological role it played after the attacks. Similar to previous revisions of the Blitz myth from 1940, I argue that social and political complexities after July 7th were often suppressed by messages that sought to evoke a sense of “Britishness” defined by a previous generation. Whilst the July 7th bombings were not a case of traditional warfare or attacks carried out by a foreign force, I argue that wartime analogies often supported military responses in the war on terror and evoked a foreign threat.     

The Learning Orientation of Primary Health Care Teams in the English National Health Service: Is This a Myth That Should Be Perpetuated?

A qualitative study of primary health care teams in the UK provides insight into their co-ordination or learning-orientation and how this affects member commitment, conceptions of ‘core’ and periphery, group identification and willingness to integrate roles. Even if the ideal of a learning-oriented primary health care team is viewed as a myth, it can still perform useful functions despite an apparent withdrawal of its official authorization by the Cameron-led government. The perpetuation of this myth maintains a tension between reality and potentiality in the hopes that inspire its pursuit as an ideal of team formation.