The legacy of subalternity and Gramsci’s national–popular: populist discourse in the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Drawing on Laclau’s concept of populist discourse and Gramsci’s ‘national–popular collective will’, and using the case of Iran, this article puts forward the idea of the legacy of subalternity in the context of post-revolution governments. The concept of ‘national–popular collective will’ facilitates an understanding of how the popular subject is constructed and the meanings embedded in that process. It is argued that Islamic Republic elites articulate a populist discourse that constructs the ‘self’ (the Islamic Republic) as synonymous with ‘the people’. Embedded in this discursive construction is a legacy of subalternity that goes back to the 1979 Revolution’s populist discourse.     

THE SEXUAL SUBALTERN IN CONVERSATIONS “SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN”: LAW AND THE OLD POLITICS OF COLONIALISM

Ratna Kapur’s recent book entitled Erotic Justice proposes a new politics of postcolonialism whereby the sexual subaltern disrupts the normative principles of the universal, liberal, legal domain. Kapur traces legal strategies regarding censorship, sex-work, homosexuality, sexual harassment, trafficking and migration which travel a treacherous path, countering allegations of ‘unIndian’ and Western practice with cultural histories of ‘authentic’ sexual legitimacies, towards a new politics of desire. Kapur frames her analysis through postcolonial feminist theory as providing a tool for feminist struggle, yet distinct from and disruptive of a liberal project of global sisterhood. This review deeply values the role of the sexual subaltern which disrupts the tenets of a linear, progressive liberalism. Drawing upon Indian feminist and Western feminist perspectives, the review considers how the distinct position of the postcolonial sexual subaltern subject informs the generic role of law as a tool constructing relations of domination regarding gender, sexuality, caste, property and religion. Kapur observes that both the West and the Hindu Right have engaged with liberal legal principles. This engagement, I argue, exposes and informs law as a historical and contemporary tool of gendered legal colonialism, for sisters to disrupt across the Western and Eastern terrains.Review of Ratna Kapur’s Erotic Justice, Law and the New Politics of Postcolonialism, London: Glasshouse Press, 2005, 219 pp., ￡26, ISBN 1-90438-524-9     

Rethinking Subaltern Resistance

Abstract

This special issue seeks to rethink “resistance” as a critical social science concept in the light of a range of critiques since the 1980s. The five articles in this issue draw their empirical materials from contemporary India, but their arguments have significant implications for those working on other parts of Asia and the world. The articles acknowledge the inherent ambiguities and ambivalences of subaltern resistance in the face of hegemonic social formations, yet, shorn of exoticising and homogenising tendencies, resistance can be reconceptualised as the negotiation rather than negation of social power. Such a reconceptualisation is useful to study a wide range of contentious politics from foot-dragging through protests to social revolutions under a single analytic umbrella. Resistance, in this sense, ought to be recognised as a vital part of a critical realist ontology of society, which helps us understand and critique existing structures of social domination in order to pursue emancipatory possibilities via the generation of social scientific knowledge.     

A cultural political economy of crisis recovery: (trans-)national imaginaries of ‘BRIC’ and subaltern groups in China

Abstract

This paper explores crisis recovery from a cultural political economy (CPE) perspective. It examines the role of (trans-)national forces in constructing BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) as drivers for recovery. First, it comments on some ‘cultural economy’ studies and indicates the value of a CPE approach. Second, it examines the ‘BRIC’ as a symbolic condensation of ‘hope’ knowledge and shows how this signifier evolved in three overlapping moments referring to its role as investor, consumer and lender. Third, it considers the material basis of the appeal of BRIC discourses, especially the credibility acquired through BRIC stimulus packages in the global financial crisis. Fourth, it indicates how China's ‘gold standard’ stimulus package has intensified some deep-rooted political tensions and harmed subaltern groups. Finally, it reflects on how CPE can contribute to studies of crisis and recovery.     

A game-theoretic perspective on Diego Gambetta's Codes of the Underworld

ABSTRACT

The term ‘neomelodic’ defines a pop-folk music genre featuring the mediascape of Naples, Southern Italy, since the late 1980s. Neomelodic songs depict the experiences of lower-class Neapolitan subjects with a preference for those engaging with the Camorra, a powerful criminal organisation that is also a major investor in the local media industries. This article constitutes an exploration of the Camorra-mediated neomelodic milieu of cultural production vis-à-vis the political landscape of the current Neapolitan social peripheries. In so doing, it ethnographically shows how the neomelodic modalities of cultural production mediate and reify local forms of organised crime hegemony vis-à-vis the discursive power of the state. Accordingly, it also demonstrates how such modalities turn the neomelodic industry into a relational infrastructure of subaltern publicity, which engenders political dynamics of personal mobility and social identity construction amid its sponsors, performers, and publics.     

斯皮瓦克"属下"研究及其女性主义文学批评——基于性别和种族的双重视角

斯皮瓦克在其著名的"三位女性的文本以及对帝国主义的批判"论文中,从后殖民女性主义的立场重读文学经典,对三部西方女性小说文本进行后殖民批评和分析,并将"属下不能发言"的政治伦理运用到对文学文本的批判阅读之中。斯皮瓦克以性别和种族的双重视角,对西方白人女性文学文本进行后殖民解读和充满洞见的批评,对后殖民批评有着独特的贡献和重大意义,不仅拓展了女性主义文学批评空间,并且丰富和发展了后殖民批评理论。斯皮瓦克所倡导和践行的文学、文化批评的政治伦理观以及对帝国主义的批判,使她成为一位颇具影响和独树一帜的后殖民女性主义批评家。     

In search of ‘history's flesh itself’: Nakano Shigeharu and literary imagination

Nakano Shigeharu (1902–1979) made an intriguing remark late in his literary career concerning the role of literature. He claimed that the task of literature for him was to seek ‘history itself’ or ‘its flesh itself’. Distilled in this comment is the essence of the literary praxis Nakano pursued throughout much of his career. One fruit of this endeavor was a novella, ‘The First Chapter’ (1935), a tale that critically engages with his recent past. Through the analysis of ‘The First Chapter’ and other relevant writings by Nakano, I explore in this article what he meant by ‘history's flesh itself’ and how Nakano wielded his literary imagination to register this ‘flesh’ in his prose fiction, in ways that invites a different kind of remembrance of the past.     

‘Everybody else just living their lives’: 9/11, race and the new postglobal literature

ABSTRACT

López's essay focuses on three questions or concerns: globalization, its aftermath and how those on the bottom survive it. During globalization's rise through the 1990s even the most virulent critics treated its eventual hegemony over the planet as a fait accompli; the only relevant questions were how it would change us, and whether those changes were desirable. Today the question is how to live now that globalization has failed us. As the aftermath of each of the global cataclysms of the last decade have amply demonstrated, it is the poor, the disenfranchised and marginalized who bear the brunt of the suffering and anxiety set in motion by the economic, political and cultural changes unleashed by globalization at the level of neighbourhoods and communities. What López calls the ‘postglobal’ emerges precisely at those moments when globalization as a hegemonic discourse stumbles, when it experiences a crisis or setback. The first section of his essay consists of a detailed exposition of the term ‘postglobal’ and its efficacy for the study of contemporary literature and culture. The rest focuses on Monica Ali's novel Brick Lane as an exemplar of what he calls the new postglobal literature.     

柏拉图的治国思想对现代行政管理的启示

柏拉图思想源远流长 ,惠及今日。他推崇以德治国 ,提出了“第二好的国家”的法制观 ,对现代行政文化、现代人事行政思想、以法治国概念、国家管理理论等都有启示和影响。     

On-line public relations: towards an integrated theoretical model

Abstract

Much has been said about the so-called information superhighway. Organisations are realising that a whole new world can be created on-line: more and more organisations, and individuals, are entering this superhighway at an incredible rate. Ironically, most people do not have a clue what the information superhighway really is, which is, for example, evident in the 1993 advertisement of the telecommunication giant, Pacific Bell, which claimed that: ‘While others talk about the information superhighway, we're actually building it’, but only launched their consumer Internet access service in 1996. In spite of widespread ignorance, the exponential growth of the Internet provides public relations practitioners with constantly expanding on-line public relations resources and the opportunity to use these online systems to create or enhance the images of organisations in the market place.

Without theory, the field of on-line public relations has no framework for understanding, organising and integrating the many activities and purposes of online public relations. Therefore online public relations needs a body of knowledge grounded in theory. It is clear that the shift is away from mass communication towards dialogical or interactional communication. In order to understand the theory of on-line public relations, it is important to systemise it in terms of a theoretical aporoach. This leads to the main aim of this article, which is to propose a theoretical model, the Or,-line Public Relations (OPR) model, to provide a suitable framework for explaining the on-line public relations process, and if applied in the development of on-line public relations plans or strategies, it can maintain its utility as a framework for the analysis thereof.

Based on a qualitative approach, this article attempts to theoretically explore, describe, interpret and conceptualise the concept on-line public relations, with specific reference to the development of on-line public relations in South Africa, the shift from traditional paradigms to new on-line trends and the integration of on-line public relations with other communication processes. Particular reference is made to the theoretical foundations of on-line public relations, and it is argued that at the root of on-line public relations, as a framework for explaining it, lies the need for an integrated theoretical approach. In the last section, a new OPR model is proposed, and a brief discussion of the elements of the model, the conceptual foundation of on-line information and information overload is presented.