Identification,the exercise of democracy and the fear of the Other – the June EU referendum in the UK

ABSTRACT

The focus is the oscillation among leave voters in the EU referendum from the exercise of rights - an act of dis-identification – towards the assertion of identity as members of a British community. This was mediated by voters acting in an association of citizens calling on the equalising agency of the British people whilst claiming membership of a locally circumscribed community, perceived as injured, through entanglement with the Other prominent among them Europeans. Hence the recovery of the injured community as the object of the denunciators’ desire for identity coupled with the fear of the Other. Predicated on this was the resumption of class, gender and ethnic roles reflected in division among voters. The denunciation of togetherness with Europeans served leave voters to substitute the exercise of rights with a longing for identity. Instrumental in this was the lack of deliberation in the plebiscite to articulate the will of individual voters through a general will. The ‘direct power’ exercised enabled many to cast away their role as citizen in an attempt to claim their privileges as members of a racially and culturally demarcated British community. Paradoxically, the voters’ unashamed disavowal of their agency as citizens by seeking to restore a divided social world as the source of their identity was represented as an exercise in democracy. To some playing on words was supplemented by the use of force removing the gap between the discursive exclusion of the Other and the continued physical presence of bearers of different races and culture.     

Abstracts about the Treatises of the Seminer

In the Tibetan calendar, the years are mentioned by a system known as Sexagenary Cycle. Inessence, it consists of the cycle of 60 years----each cycle called a Rab--byung. One of the prob-lems concerning the Chronological Tables is thus decoding this system for our understanding of theyear referred to in terms of the European calendar. But it seems important to mention here thatthere is some risk of inaccuracy in the standard practice of mechanically converting the Tibetan     

‘Settling’ the multicultural nation-state: Little Mosque on the Prairie,and the figure of the ‘moderate Muslim’

This paper analyzes Little Mosque on the Prairie, its characters and themes within the context of post-9/11 discourses of nationalism and citizenship. Against the backdrop of the Canadian national narrative, I argue that the sitcom foregrounds a ‘moderate Muslim’ that demarcates the boundaries of the multicultural nation-state, especially when juxtaposed against the racially and sexually coded Muslim ‘other’ on the global landscape. The moderate Muslim is represented as ‘liberal’ and ‘modern’, one who seeks to integrate her faith into the multicultural fabric of society. Such a figure, represented both as a ‘good’ Muslim/immigrant and a ‘good’ Canadian citizen-subject, illuminates the boundaries of ‘acceptability’ within the Canadian national imaginary. The figure of the moderate Muslim reinforces the racial coding embedded in this imaginary, while enabling the state to proclaim its ‘multicultural tolerance’ and benevolence. Building on previous scholarship on race, citizenship, and nation-building, I argue that the moderate Muslim – as exemplified in Little Mosque on the Prairie – serves important ideological functions in (re)defining the internal (and racially coded) borders of the nation. While Little Mosque on the Prairie makes an important contribution to the representation of Muslims, challenging some stereotypes, I argue that it does not deliver on its considerable potential to articulate nuanced representations of Muslims. Through its foregrounding of the figure of the moderate Muslim, the sitcom reaffirms key norms, engages in a politics of authenticity, and reinforces hegemonic messages, both within Muslim communities and in Canadian society. Thus, the moderate Muslim becomes a key player in enabling the state to render invisible its exclusion of the ‘Muslim Other,' while maintaining its non-racist credentials.     

In the name of Ossian: Celtic Galicia and the ‘brothers from the north’

ABSTRACT

The modern Celtic myth is a complex framework because of its variety of constituent elements. In essence, it consists of an empathetic celebration of otherness, based on a timeless narrative and restorative nostalgia, but including nationalist and capitalist-market interests. Since the first edition of the Ossianic poems by James Macpherson in 1760, Celticness has firmly settled within a collective imagination in search of alternative aesthetic, political, and even spiritual values. It has been exploited in different geocultural spaces and articulated in propaganda strategies, to found ethnic consciousness and fill the gaps of history. In addition to other Celtic areas of Europe, Galicia (NW Spain) has a long Celtophile tradition, with relevant intellectual support, ritual symbologies, and media productions. This article focuses on Galician Celtic-based history, icons, events, phenomena like the Real Banda of bagpipes, the Interceltic Festival of Ortigueira, and the renewed archaeological attempt to locate Galician ancestry within Iron Age Celts. Celticness has been the main identity locus in the construction of Galicia as a nation, shaping a specific social awareness and even invoking racial arguments. Comparison is established with Scotland, Brittany and Ireland (the ‘brothers from the north’) in their respective perception and treatment of modern Celticness.     

Lévy-Bruhl among the Phenomenologists: Exoticisation and the Logic of ‘the Primitive’

Lucien Lévy-Bruhl's impact on continental philosophers from Edmund Hersserl, Max Scheler, and Martin Heidegger, to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida is documented with specific reference to the question of understanding other cultures. However, the fact that Lévy-Bruhl focused on understanding ‘the primitive’ infected the philosophical discussions of this topic with a certain racism and even, on occasion, a certain exoticism, still visible even in Julia Kristeva's efforts to overcome it.     

From the Selimović Case to the Srebrenica Commission: The Fight to Recognize the Srebrenica Genocide

Abstract

The Srebrenica Commission was formed by the Republika Srpska government to investigate the events that occurred in and around Srebrenica in July 1995. The Commission was formed by a decision of the Human Rights Chamber (HRC) of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In its report, the Commission consisting of mainly Serb officials concluded that crimes were committed in Srebrenica, citing the Krsti? Case at International Court of the Former Yugoslavia. It also provided locations of mass graves where the Bosnian Serb Army hid remains of victims from Srebrenica. The paper aims to research the Selimovi? et al. case at the HRC and its implications, including clarifying how truthful and correct was the Commission on locations of mass graves.     

Icons vs satirical inversions: Islamic rule and the ‘death of the author’ – the murder of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in Paris

The satirical inversions of the images of the Prophet Muhammad by the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists that brought the wrath of two gunmen to their authors, projected a world in which the reader is recognised as an autonomous subject. Consequent on this autonomy is the restricted power of the author who used to derive it from the re-enactment of sacred Truth. Multiple and diverse readers, on the other hand, owe their authority from the right of the individual to reason and judge independently, which places them at arm's length from the author. The inverted images drawn by the cartoonists represented a departure from the Prophet's traditional iconic images whose resemblance to the referent left little room for variation among their faithful viewers driven to identify with the Messenger of Allah either by desire to imitate or for fear of punishment. The fixed iconic ‘reading’ by the faithful was mediated by the homogeneous Muslim Community (Umma) whose members were unable to use words to objectify among an association of citizens their internal sense of injury as an excess. As a consequence, this injury caused by the readers operating outside the Community called for the use of force by its members in retaliation (qisas) for the infidels’ reading as sanctioned in the sacred text. The more entrenched the membership of the Umma, largely the product of reading the sacred text – where the author retains his traditional power – the more inclined were the members to resort to brutal force to restore the traditional power of the author.     

An Exploration on the Realization of the Approach for Harmonious Ethnic Relations from the Perspective of“the Pattern of Diversity in Unity” Theory

1 .The “Pattern of Diversity in U-nity ” is a true reflection of the Chinese Nation ’ s ethnic relations     

Contained mobility and the racialization of poverty in Europe: the Roma at the development–security nexus

ABSTRACT

This paper starts from the observation that, since the collapse of eastern European state socialism, the Roma have become the subject and target of Europe-wide development programs and discourses, while, at the same time, they have been problematized in terms of social, public and national security. Due to the ways in which development and security have ambiguously come together in Europe’s recent history, I will argue that the living conditions of the poorest among the Roma have not only worsened, but also, and more fundamentally, the divide between Europe’s rich and poor has become seriously racialized and almost unbridgeable. I explain how the bio- and geopolitical conditions under which development and security have merged in Europe’s engagement with the Roma have led to a situation in which the official aim of Roma-related development programs – the improvement of their living conditions and life chances – tends to result in a dreadlock.     

Oiling the wheels? Flexible labour markets and the migration industry

ABSTRACT

The growing commercialisation of migration, often through a multiplicity of labour market intermediaries, is an issue of increasing academic interest. We seek to contribute to an emerging research agenda on the migration industries by exploring how one of the key actors that constitutes it, recruitment agencies, sits at the nexus between flexible labour market structures and migrant labour. Interviews with U.K. labour providers and low-wage employers form the evidence base for an analysis of the strategies developed by recruiters to derive commercial gain from connecting the so-called ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ sides of the flexible international labour market. We seek to contribute to understandings of the analytical categories within migration systems by illustrating how the migration industry interacts with other key stakeholders to structure international migration.     

永远On the road

“无论是大的痛苦还是大的快乐,都只会是生命中的一小部分。大概5%可以算作大苦痛,5%可以算作大快乐,剩下的90%应该归于平淡。”(白岩松《痛,并快乐着》)都市的民族风亦是如此,5%的时候,它作漫天之势,旅游呀,餐饮呀,服装呀,挂上某某节的名号,便是作大风吹,袭卷而来;5%的时候,它无奈地隐匿在某个角落里,不甘地坚持着最后一丝气息;剩下90%的时候,它只是“风”这种流动气体中最最普通的一种成份,甚至平凡得让大多数人视而不见,但它自己,和那些深爱它的人们却———     

What culture for the post-national subject? Understanding the nation through translation

The central question guiding this project asks: what are the possibilities of conceptualizing a political subject beyond the national cultural boundaries? In order to answer this question, I undertake, from the perspective of conceptual history, a historical reconstruction of the meaning of cultural translation, as a process that frames the integration of designed cultural minorities into the national, majoritarian community. This paper evaluates the possibility of political theory to oppose cultural racism, from neither a normative nor absolute point of view, but from the movement beyond cultural assimilation suggested by a redefinition of cultural translation.     

Experiments on puerile nations,or the impossibility of surpassing your father: the case of the Anglo‐Greek dialogue

This article is concerned with the dialogic construction of Greek national and British imperial identities. It examines the gendered language in which the Greeks and the British addressed each other in the 1860s and the 1870s. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, anthropology, studies of nationalism and post‐colonial theory, it looks at the symbolic structure of Anglo‐Greek cultural exchange. In this analysis, it is argued that the familial imageries both sides employed to describe themselves and/or each other were constitutive of the roles they had assumed in Anglo‐Greek relations, but also part of the very process of Greek nation‐building and British imperialism.     

‘Being while black’: resistance and the management of the self

‘Being while black’ is ultimately an ‘everyday revolution’, Despite the fact that people manage their selves by their own choosing, especially as their desires are being shaped (Foucault, 1977), their selves remains the basic revolutionary unit. Foucault's oeuvre on power and concept of dressage is utilized to explain racial profiling of blacks of what I call ‘racial dressage’, intended primarily to discipline the ‘black body’ (el-Khoury, 2009). In this paper, I argue that despite this false sense of presence of power and internalized social-control, blacks actively construct their day-to-day activities as a discursive object of resistance. Critical awareness to racial oppression is in itself is a form of opposition to it (Collins, 1990). I argue that social control and resistance are coproduced. Using discursive analysis of interviews I identified the following modes of resistance: disposition to steadiness (constituting an ethical self, sustaining an internal dialogue, and emotional management), rejecting criminalizing identities, discursive consciousness, refusing the spatial power, and lastly disbelief in the system. Ultimately, blacks live against ‘themselves’ and this is because the soul that has become the prison of the body, is being dismantled (Luxon, 2008).     

Israel's immigration policies: the twofold face of the ‘demographic threat’

This article deals with the discursive practices employed in various public sites of Israeli society to support and legitimise the immigration policy towards prospective immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) from 1989 to 1990. During those years Israeli society witnessed one of the country's biggest immigration waves. However, like many state policies, Israel's immigration policy towards prospective immigrants from the FSU has not been carried out uncontested. There were vibrant and often heated public disputes concerning this policy. The purpose of the article is to reveal the racist attitudes of Israeli society expressed in the discursive practices that have been employed to support immigration from the FSU in these public disputes. Assuming an inextricable combination of old and new racism, these practices — involving processes of adverse racialisation of Arabs and Mizrahi Jews — have portrayed them as a demographic threat to Israeli society, a threat that can be forestalled by the admission of prospective immigrants from the FSU. However, the fact that these processes are not directed only against Arabs but also against Mizrahi Jews discloses some of Zionism's inner tensions and ambivalence. It challenges the thesis advanced by Lustick, for instance, that the exclusive goal of Israel's immigration policies is to marginalise and to contain the Palestinian minority by allowing the entrance of non‐Jews to Israel as long as they are not Arabs. Not disputing the immensely significant role that the goal of Palestinian containment plays in Israel's immigration policies, I intend to show that this goal exists alongside a perception of Mizrahim as a ‘demographic threat’ to Israel's ‘European character’.     

Has the Basque borderland become more Basque after opening the Franco-Spanish border?

For more than a century, state and sub-state nationalisms have competed in the Basque borderland. At present, this competition implies contested imaginations of the Franco-Spanish borderland. This article explores these imaginations in terms of cross-border and intra-state integration. Nationalist rhetoric substantially differs from daily cultural experiences and political practice. Paradoxically, the opening-up of the Franco-Spanish border as a result of European integration and the concomitant rise of cross-border cooperation have confined Basque national integration to the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country. In this respect, both the old state border and internal administrative borders in Spain have acted as strong barriers against the diffusion of ethnonationalism.     

referential basis for the s

ind of mines. At the same time, it serves as the decision basis for ensuring the safety of sur roundings.deformation; superposition action; safety protection; effect of exavation movement0勘察科学技术SITE INVESTIGATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY6-10 36     

Cracks in the Façade: Whiteness and the Construction of 9/11

This article analyses whiteness and Americanness in relation to the drama and trauma of 9/11/01. It argues that drawing upon the history of whiteness, and its psychological and psychic legacy, provides fresh perspective on US national responses to the events of September 11, 2001. It examines the semiotic frames by means of which that day, and those events, are named, and the impact of a white hegemony upon those articulations. Secondly, it argues that there are circulating at present in the United States, five ‘analytical clusters’, all incomplete and to some degree overlapping, intended to explain how and why the air attacks took place. Thirdly it demonstrates that a terrain of ‘unnameability’ came into being along with the events of ‘9/11’. Yet, it argues, critical work at the boundaries of that terrain has signalled both the instability and tenacity of the hegemonic system itself.