Occupation as refrain: territory and beyond in Occupy London

Emerging with the wider ‘movements of the squares’ of 2011, Occupy London was defined by occupation, and by participants’ negotiation of what occupation meant. Its forms and meanings changed as London’s Occupiers moved between occupied sites, through uprootings by eviction, and into post-eviction attempts to extend Occupy’s territorial politics without the camps. This paper builds on three years of ethnography to consider occupation as an unfolding process, using Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the ‘refrain’. This describes territory in three ‘moments’: the marking of a fragile centre; the stabilization of a bounded ‘home’; and the breaching of boundaries, extending in progressive directions. This rubric is used to analyze London’s occupations, and their defining tension, between an expansive desire to ‘Occupy Everywhere’ – connecting to the wider ‘99 percent’ – and the tendency to become embedded in the protest camp ‘home’. The features of ‘home’ are analyzed using Foucault’s concept of ‘heterotopia’, highlighting an alterity with ambivalent consequences for Occupy’s project. The paper argues that despite a desire to ‘deterritorialize’ occupation, Occupy London stalled in the moment of ‘home’, a consequence of the camp’s status as the ‘common ground’ of an often disparate movement, and the reduction of productive capacities characterizing Occupy’s terminal downswing.     

The desire for space: stains in Zoltan Kluger’s institutional photography

The article studies the construction of Zionist space in Kluger’s institutional photographs in an attempt to understand the ideological desire for space in Zionist imagistic propaganda. The analysis employs Lacanian ‘stains’ as well as strategies of art interpretation to suggest that behind the image of Sisyphean work of men toiling the land stands the Zionist ‘law’ (in contrast to the female jouissance) which comes to signify the Jewish return to history after the fall from divine grace. This paper demonstrates by what means Kluger’s photographs echoed and propagated the Zionist unconscious based on western and Christian desire for eternity and redemption of the land, even if it meant sacrificing the sons in exchange for eternal life and the return to grace.     

THE MICRO-ETHICS OF EVERYDAY LIFE

In this article I offer an unfashionably ideological critique. I argue that, in the USA, ideology now appears in the form of the narratives that capitalism tells itself about itself, in particular at sites of commodity consumption. I examine three everyday sites in which capitalism constructs an Imaginary version of itself as it exhorts contemporary consumers to consume ethically: during a visit to a Target Superstore; on an overnight stay in a hotel room; and while purchasing a bag of fair trade coffee. In these moments and at these sites, corporations instruct us in the ‘ethical’ use of their commodities, and obeying those instructions promotes us to the rank of ‘consumer activist’. This article attempts to explain how this ‘ethical consumption’ – a form of what I call ‘micro-ethics’ – has displaced more social, or ‘macro’, forms of ethical action. To make my case, I argue that globalized capitalism denies many of us the social coordinates, or handholds, that are necessary if we are to feel that we can act meaningfully within the Symbolic Order, or social reality itself. This ‘deworlding’ effect, as Alain Badiou calls it, encourages us to reject social forms of ethical and political life and to retreat to a careful policing of the Imaginary boundaries of our ‘inner selves’ instead. In other words, global capitalism logically produces, as its own ideological support and supplement, a micro-ethics that attends only to what the single person can do, and only within the realm of consumption. We participate in this fantasy version of ‘eco-capitalism’ that advertising, publicity and other discourses establish to the extent that we accept consumption as the ultimate horizon of our ability to intervene in problems of ecological depredation and the exploitation of labour in the First and Third Worlds.     

The green leaves of love: Japanese romantic heroines,authentic femininity,and dialect1

How is ‘authentic’ linguistic femininity in Japan manifested in popular texts? We analyze the dialogue of female characters in Wakaba, a 2005 Japanese drama set in two very different parts of ‘regional’ Japan – Miyazaki and Kobe. Through this analysis, we examine two contradictory discourses circulated through popular media. The first is that linguistic femininity is based in Standard Japanese – a surprisingly persistent ideology despite a current trend to examine cases in which language ideology and practice do not match. Other studies reflect another dominant discourse, that of the ‘authentic’ dialect speaker, who expresses local alignment by using dialect forms outside the bounds of ideologically modern linguistic forms. The tension between acting linguistically feminine and ‘authentically’ local raises some interesting questions for Japanese language and gender studies, including studies of gendered representations: are women who are speakers of regional dialects authentically ‘feminine’? Can they be? Do some dialects express femininity better than others?     

Critical proximity

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between critical distance and the idea of proximity. In times that are often described as ‘global’, ‘24/7’, ‘connected’, ‘networked’ and ‘immersive’, distance seems ever reduced and proximity omnipresent. The contemporary impression of ubiquitous proximity might constitute a threat to the survival of critical distance understood either as a cornerstone of enlightened and humanist critical practice or as a key metaphysical ‘technology’. The resulting ‘crisis of critical distance’ produces the question of how to position oneself with regard to the ‘other’ in a time that lacks distance and privileges proximity? In tracking the ambiguity (or the ‘aporia’) that surrounds proximity – the desire to be near and the need to maintain a distance – this article rereads some key Heideggerian and Derridean texts in order to attempt a deconstruction of the opposition of distance and proximity at work in the ‘metaphysics of presence’.     

THE STIGMA OF WHITE PRIVILEGE

Beginning in the 1970s, the efforts of the Australian settler state to help its Indigenous minority shifted away from ‘assimilation’ and embraced the principles of ‘self-determination’. According to the rhetoric of the self-determination era – explored in this article as the ‘liberal fantasy space’ – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians should be in control of efforts to improve their lives, ultimately making state intervention redundant. A by-product of this shift was to radically change the role of non-Indigenous people who sought to participate in Indigenous development. No longer in charge of Indigenous advancement, they were now cast as partners and supporters.

This article explores some of the complexities of White anti-racist subjectivities in the self-determination era. It draws on ethnographic research with a group of progressive Whites who work in Indigenous health in northern Australia. A striking feature of contemporary White anti-racist discourse is a reluctance to claim any agency in the process of Indigenous improvement. I argue that applying the concept of stigma to White privilege is a novel and productive approach to understanding this desire for self-effacement. White stigma works in a parallel fashion to the case of liberal Germans who believe the German collective identity is irrevocably tainted by the Holocaust. In the Australian case, the negative characteristics associated with Whiteness act as a barrier to the broader goal of constructing ethical White subjectivities fit for the ‘liberal fantasy space’ of post-colonial justice. In their attempts to overcome this barrier and transcend White stigma, White anti-racists mobilise the identity tropes of missionary, mother, and child. Ultimately, these efforts at self-fashioning point to the ultimate fantasy of decolonisation: the desire of White anti-racists to disappear.     

The ‘gong beat’ against the ‘uncultured’: contested notions of culture and civilization in Mongolia

This article explores the Mongolian concept of ‘culture’ (soyol) and its transformation in the state socialist and post-socialist eras. The notion of culture and those without it – the soyolgui or ‘uncultured’ – played enormously important parts in the construction of the new society of the Mongolian People’s Republic. The history of the twentieth century shows a transformation of this highly normative concept from a category associated with teachings, doctrine, ethics and nurturing to one linked to modernist notions of hygiene, secular education, urbanism and cosmopolitanism. In addition, however, it became a category that included a set of historical styles and works thought of as national ‘cultural heritage’ (soyolyn öv). This was the result of a movement that in the late socialist period led to the critical re-evaluation of earlier Eurocentric uses of the ‘culture’ concept, and that sought new applications of the notion of ‘civilization’ – in particular by popularizing the metaphorical term ‘nomadic civilization’ (nüüdliin soyol irgenshil). I argue that these strands of thought have become central to the new nationalist politics of post-socialist Mongolia and form the basis of what remains by way of political orthodoxy, following the collapse of Soviet ideology.     

Popular Literature,the City and the Memory of Vanished Others in Poland and Ukraine: The Cases of Marek Krajewski and Iurii Vynnychuk

Abstract

A comparative analysis is made of the evocation of urban memory in the work of the Polish author of detective fiction Marek Krajewski and the leading Ukrainian writer of postmodernist fiction and popular historical publications Iurii Vynnchyuk. The cities that form the focus of the work of these writers, Wroc^/law for Krajewski and L′viv for Vynnychuk, both experienced massive population shifts after World War II, meaning that the postwar populations had little or no memory of the pre-war cities. The legacy of this disjunction can be felt to this day. This study demonstrates how both writers re-create a sense of memory through a number of similar memory strategies and concludes that the recreation of memory in these writers’ work can be understood as what Marianne Hirsch calls postmemory, yet that this is postmemory removed from the traumatic context of Hirsch’s original concept. It is also argued that these writers demonstrate that an effective ‘cultural memory’ can be produced in a situation when ‘communicative memory’ is lacking, through an imaginative and accessible representation of the ostensibly inaccessible past. This is achieved through the utilization of mass cultural forms, which some theorists of urban memory see as conducive only to forgetting.     

Samson the Non-European

This article attempts to trace the literary genealogy of a unique Zionist Israeli masculinity through a reading of the biblical story of Samson as portrayed by prominent Israeli figures. Through a close reading of the biblical text in Hebrew, this article posits that the figure of Samson represents a 2-prong individuation process of malehood: one the “everyman” and the other “a man among man.” This slight difference in the Hebrew phraseology, usually assumed to reflect a singular meaning, actually represents an enormous gap between the 2 prongs. A reading of a poem by a female Jewish poet who, in the early 20th century read Samson through the eyes of Delilah, offers a new construction of manhood that could save the Israeli Jewish male from its colonialist ideology and its denial.     

On the relation between ‘visual research methods’ and contemporary visual culture

One of the most striking developments across the social sciences in the past decade has been the growth of research methods using visual materials. It is often suggested that this growth is somehow related to the increasing importance of visual images in contemporary social and cultural practice. However, the form of the relationship between ‘visual research methods’ and ‘contemporary visual culture’ has not yet been interrogated. This paper conducts such an interrogation, exploring the relation between ‘visual research methods’ – as they are constituted in quite particular ways by a growing number of handbooks, reviews, conference and journals – and contemporary visual culture – as characterized by discussions of ‘convergence culture’. The paper adopts a performative approach to ‘visual research methods’. It suggests that when they are used, ‘visual research methods’ create neither a ‘social’ articulated through culturally mediated images, nor a ‘research participant’ competency in using such images. Instead, the paper argues that the intersection of visual culture and ‘visual research methods’ should be located in their shared way of using images, since in both, images tend to be deployed much more as communicational tools than as representational texts. The paper concludes by placing this argument in the context of recent discussions about the production of sociological knowledge in the wider social field.     

Between universal and national ‘social therapy’? Professional interventions by Jewish social workers in British Mandatory Palestine

ABSTRACT

This article explores the interrelated affinity between social work, nationality and universal humanitarianism through the case study of professional interventions by Jewish social workers in Mandatory Palestine. Given the limited literature on these professionals and the significant contribution of women in particular, it focuses on Siddy Wronsky and other German Jewish immigrants whose pre-immigration international heritage has been relegated to the margins. The article examines the therapeutic theory and practice of this unique group of social workers based on a qualitative analysis of archival texts. Several leitmotifs guiding these women emerge from the documentation of their work: the German-Jewish tradition that represented the past, the Zionist ideology that represented the future, and the encounter with a diverse immigrant population in a new geopolitical reality that represented the present. The findings indicate how, together with the transnational transfer of knowledge from the Jewish community in Germany to that in Palestine, social workers created a new profession inspired by a value system that sought to be simultaneously Zionist and universal. The article contributes to historical knowledge on social work and its ambivalent approach to a nation-building ideology as opposed to a universal commitment, as well as to an understanding of social work’s attitudes and techniques in working with immigrants and refugees.     

BRANDING,CELEBRITIZATION AND THE LIFESTYLE EXPERT

The lifestyle expert – a figure whose knowledge is tied to the ordinary and the everyday – has emerged as a major cultural authority in recent times. This article examines the role and status of ‘ordinary experts’, such as Martha Stewart and Jamie Oliver, in relation to processes of ‘celebritization’ and branding. Linking these processes to broader shifts around the domestication and privatization of public culture and citizenship, I discuss the branding of lifestyle advice in the context of the emergence of informational capitalism and the growing role of the consumer in providing branded lifestyles with value and meaning. Arguing that the privatized modes of lifestyle consumption modelled by figures like Stewart and Oliver have emerged as a pre-eminent site of social relations, communality and lifestyle ‘activism’, the essay concludes with a discussion of what kind of civic politics might emerge out of this context.     

Showing humanity: violence and visuality in Kashmir

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the burst of visual production that emerged from and around Indian-occupied Kashmir in July 2016, when the Indian paramilitary and police began to implement for the first time a tactic of mass blinding as a way of quelling surging protests against the Indian state. I consider a selection of visual texts that intervene in the optical regime undergirding the Indian occupation, one that has arguably elicited Indian support in part via a systematic erasure of the humanity of Kashmiris who favour self-determination (or ‘azadi’). In the face of this optical regime, I examine the visual and narrative tactics through which pro-azadi Kashmiris stake claims to humanity – by putting wounded Kashmiri bodies on spectacular display, graphically foregrounding Kashmiri bodily vulnerability in acts of public grieving, and seeking to interpellate a global political community through an appeal to a shared humanity. As these urgent claims to a larger human community are voiced, this paper asks what it means for Kashmiris to take on the burden of ‘performing humanity’ in these ways, especially given the explicit cautions in visual studies and human rights scholarship around spectacular exhibitions of vulnerability. Rather than assume that showcasing vulnerability can never incite transformation, I closely examine the possibilities of particular visual forms—photojournalism and digital activism—in relaying vulnerability and attempting to claim and recraft humanity.     

Diffusion of Variegated Neoliberalization processes in Euro-Mediterranean policies: a strategic relational approach

ABSTRACT

Recent contributions to the study of neoliberalism have made considerable advances in transcending the dichotomy between understandings of the concept either as an ‘ideology’ or as a monolithic ‘structure’. In particular, the Variegated Neoliberalization (VNLT) approach has proposed an understanding of neoliberalism that relies on a path-dependent moment (i.e. the ‘uneven development of neoliberalization’) which is then followed by a path-shaping moment (i.e. the ‘neoliberalization of regulatory uneven development’). Such a perspective allows us to understand both systemic and contingent tendencies in neoliberalization processes across different geographies, transcending the socially constructed North–South divide. However, the VNLT approach has encountered a number of critiques, particularly in relation to its treatment of agency. In order to transcend these critiques and propose a more nuanced understanding of ways agents reflexively and recursively interpret and deepen – or refrain from deepening – neoliberal norms, I turn to the Strategic-Relational Approach (SRA) proposed by [Jessop, B. (2001). Institutional re(turns) and the strategic – relational approach. Environment and Planning A, 33(7), 1213–1235]. Through the SRA, it becomes possible to pinpoint both instances of ‘structured coherence’ and ‘patterned incoherence’ resulting from agential reflexivity in different contexts of neoliberalization. I will therefore turn to cases where these two patterns can be observed in the context of Euro-Mediterranean policies – that is, Morocco’s ‘structured coherence’ due to its internalized and deepening neoliberalization, and Egypt’s ‘patterned incoherence’ as a result of its still uneven development of neoliberalization.     

Fighting Battles with History: The Novelist Louis Golding and the Story of the ‘Doomington Wanderer’

This article explores the writing of Louis Golding in the context of existing scholarship on the Anglo-Jewish novel. It assesses the importance of Golding's background and beliefs in shaping his fiction. Golding's views bridge the cultural gap between eastern European Jewish schtetl life and interwar British society. On one hand, he was a militant supporter of Jewish/non-Jewish intermarriage, of secular Judaism and religious freedom. At the same time his writing reveals a sustained belief in Jewish ‘race’ and Jewish spirituality. Golding's writing on ‘race’ will receive particular attention. Like so many other British Jews in the period, the author seems to have been caught between his desire to fight the racism of the Third Reich and his own confused ‘racial’ attitudes.     

Displacement,integration and identity in the postcolonial world

Defining the relationship between displaced populations and the nation state is a fraught historical process. The Partition of India in 1947 provides a compelling example, yet markedly little attention has been paid to the refugee communities produced. Using the case of the displaced ‘Urdu-speaking minority’ in Bangladesh, this article considers what contemporary discourses of identity and integration reveal about the nature and boundaries of the nation state. It reveals that the language of ‘integration’ is embedded in colonial narratives of ‘population’ versus ‘people-nation’ which structure exclusion not only through language and ethnicity, but poverty and social space. It also shows how colonial and postcolonial registers transect and overlap as colonial constructions of ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’ fold into religious discourses of ‘pollution’ and ‘purity’. The voices of minorities navigating claims to belonging through these discourses shed light on a ‘nation-in-formation’: the shifting landscape of national belonging and the complicated accommodations required.     

The Islamic Regime in Iran and Its Attitude towards the Jews: The Religious and Political Dimensions

Anti-Semitism is deeply ingrained in Shi `i Iran, both religiously and historically. Apart from being the first enemies of Prophet Muhammad, Jews have been been the subject of gross accusations, such as having a desire for world control, exaggerating the dimensions of the Holocaust, committing genocide, using blood in making unleavened bread, and distorting Holy Scriptures. The establishment of a Jewish state, Israel, added a political dimension to the already hostile religious attitude towards the Jews. This hostile religious-political attitude was contained to a large extent under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, but it burst out with vigour after Khomeini and his fellow clerics took over the reins of power in 1979. Faced with the constraints of international game rules and the pressure of a Western public opinion sensitive to expressions of anti-Semitism, the ruling clerics attempted to conceal their anti-Semitism by adopting a number of tactics, such as issuing far fewer public anti-Semitic statements, or by allowing others, through ‘freedom of speech’, to ‘freely’ express their anti-Semitic views. This is in line with taqiyyah (concealment) – one of the basic principles of Shi `i Islam. The primary purpose of this article is to show that in spite of its repeated public announcements in differentiating between ‘Jews’ and ‘Judaism’ (the religious dimension), on the one hand, and ‘Zionism’ and ‘Israel’ (the political dimension) on the other, the Islamic regime in Iran not only fails to make such a differentiation, but actually often identifies the two as one.     

Sensory siege: dromocolonisation,slow violence,and poetic realism in the twenty-first century short story from Gaza

Since the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005, the subsequent siege, and Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip, including ‘Operation Cast Lead’ in 2008/2009 and ‘Operation Protective Edge’ in 2014, it has become difficult to convey the normality of life in Gaza, a normality that is often elusive in a situation that is increasingly defined by the accelerated and technological violence of dromocolonisation, at the same time that it is marked by what Rob Nixon has termed ‘slow violence.’ To make these forms of violence visible and apprehensible, recent short fiction from Gaza has turned to poetic realism and the use of the sensory experience to represent life under siege. Contrary to visceral realism, which promotes a focus on the body as a site of victimhood and suffering, poetic realism allows the short story writers discussed in this article to reclaim agency and to define a Gazan identity that resists the subjection and subjectification of human rights discourses and of the Anglophone media by focusing both on the ordinariness and the extraordinariness of living in Gaza in the twenty-first century.