The context of correctness: A comment on rushton

According to Philippe Rushton, the equalitarian fiction, a scientific hoax that races are genetically equal in cognitive ability, underlies the politically correct objections to his research on racial differences. He maintains that there is a taboo against race unequaled by the Inquisition. I show that while Rushton has been publicly harassed, he has had continuous opportunities to present his findings in diverse, widely available, respectable journals, and no general suppression within academic psychology is evident. Similarly, Henry Garrett and his associates in the LAAEE, dedicated to preserving segregation and preventing race suicide, disseminated their ideas widely, although Garrett complained of the equalitarian fiction in 1961. Examination of the intertwined history ofMankind Quarterly, German Rassenhygiene, far right politics, and the work of Roger Pearson suggests that some cries of political correctness must be viewed with great caution.Preparation of this paper was not supported by any grant, foundation, political, or religious organization.specializing in the history of psychology and psychological aesthetics.     

Houellebecq,or, the Carnival of Spite

Despite their significance in social reality and in fiction, ressentiment and especially spite are surprisingly under‐researched topics. As the repressed other of the contemporary post‐political society, they often combine political impotence and enjoyment in passivity, two experiences that are closely related to the increasing transformation of the “city” into the state of nature, of politics to bio‐politics (or post‐politics) and of the “social” into the simulacra (the society of spectacle). The article discusses ressentiment and spite in Houellebecq's fiction, by taking point of departure in the way he depicts the contemporary society, combining this with a discussion of his artistic position and the affective economy of ressentiment and spite in his work. Finally it asks whether it is possible to imagine a sociality, a “city,” without spite.     

The First (and Only) Year of the May 3 Constitution

Isaak Babel’ is the author of two stories, “Iisusov grekh” [The Sin of Jesus], 1921, and “Pan Apolek,” 1923, that are written in the tradition of menippean satire. These stories are filled with the kind of blasphemy, profanation, and desacrilization Mikhail Bakhtin describes as salient characteristics of menippean satire. “Sin” is a graphic example of the menippean sub-genre of “fantasticheskii rasskaz” [the fantastic tale], and “Apolek” has clear affinities with the ancient genre of “Cyprian’s Supper.”

“Sin” and “Apolek” highlight prominent menippean features that pervade Babel’’s fiction. His Odessa stories are filled with carnivalistic, scandalous, and grotesque motifs that are very much in the menippean spirit. Babel’’s contribution to the menippea is his creation of a multiplicity of different, even conflicting plausible texts within the body of a single story. For Babel’, heretic and blasphemer, menippean satire is the perfect vehicle for expressing his contradictory relationship with the culture he lived in.     

Racism without Races: Reflections on Racialization and Racial Projects

‘The metaphor of race is a dangerous weapon whether it is used for asserting white supremacy or for making demands on behalf of the disadvantaged groups...Treating caste as a form of race is politically mischievous; what is worse, it is scientifically nonsensical’. Andre Beteille (2004: 52) ‘…what is in fact “scientifically nonsensical” is Professor Beteille’s misunderstanding of “race”. What is mischievous is his insistence that India’s system of ascribed system of social inequality should be exempted from the provisions of a UN Convention whose sole purpose is the extension of human rights to include freedom from all forms of discrimination and intolerance – and to which India, along with most other nations, has committed itself” Gerald Berreman (cited in Thorat and Umakant 2004: xxv ) ‘The possibility that the current Indian Hindu-Muslim or upper versus lower-caste conflict may be, in a significant sense, a variant of a modern problem of “ethnicity” or “race” is seldom entertained…”racism” is thought of as something the white people do to us. What Indians do to one another are variously described as “communalism”, “regionalism” and “casteism” but never “racism”’. Dipesh Chakrabarty (1994: 145)     

Making a “Real” Family

Abstract

This paper discusses the policy of matching as it has influenced American adoption practice. The word “matching” is shorthand for a set of assumptions built around the principle that when a child is “like” her or his adoptive parents, the adoption will be successful. The policy involves establishing criteria for likeness; traits upon which likeness has been based include, explicitly, race, ethnicity, and religion, and, implicity, class. My article shows how, as race became the primary criterion of likeness, matching linked adoption with broader issues in American culture and politics. Resting on a biological model, racial matching reflects changing views of racial equality and of “multiculturalism.” My paper also asks how the increasingly articulated experiences of adoptive parents, birth parents, and adoptees in the 1980s and 1990s impinge on the implementation of matching by social workers, lawyers, and other experts involved in adoption. In conclusion, I speculate on the future interconnections between racial matching, genetic engineering, and ideologies of “biological destiny” reappearing in American culture.     

From Maidens to Mugs: The Motif of the Mirror in the Works of Nikolai Gogol'

From Plato’s times to our contemporary age, theorists have spoken of art as being a mirror of life and sometimes argued against the notion. In his nonfiction essays on art and literature, Gogol' was also fond of the metaphor. Due to the frequency with which mirrors appear in his work, Gogol'’s oeuvre offers a unique opportunity for study of how the idiom of art-as-mirror transforms in the move from theoretical reflections to his fictional stories. Appealing to Meyer Abrams’s claim that the mirror has become a “constitutive” metaphor, this article assumes that: a) the potential problems the metaphor introduces are fair game in general theorizing, and b) the questions introduced into the texts by Gogol'’s fictional mirrors may also point toward problematic issues in his thought on art and development as an artist. The article surveys Gogol'’s use of mirrors in his fiction and relates them to their theoretical counterparts. Clear patterns emerge that parallel the geographical and meta-literary subject matter of his work. Ultimately, the article reveals how Gogol'’s evolving treatment of the mirror metaphor may offer insight into the sources of the author’s “creative decline.”     

Falling into the existential abyss: Ivan Franko’s realist prose in experiments with Gothic and crime fiction modes

This article examines three novels by Ukrainian realist Ivan Franko (1856–1916): Dlia domashn'oho ohnyshcha (For the Home Hearth, 1892), Osnovy suspil'nosti (Pillars of Society, 1894), and Perekhresni stezhky (Fateful Crossroads, 1900). Previous scholars saw elements of crime fiction in these works, but the actual relationship between the two genres of crime fiction and realism has not been fully developed. By studying the conventions of crime fiction, along with its antecedent, the Gothic, and their influence on Franko, the author shows the make-up of the early Ukrainian crime fiction genre and points to its importance in understanding Franko’s vacillation between realist and modernist tendencies. As she argues, the scales of his vacillation are tipped toward modernism in its decadent form, an existential void that characterized fin de siècle Europe. Hence, Franko’s “ideal” or programmatic realism (defined by Franko as a literary style with a didactic tendency aimed at educating society), which he introduced under the appealing cover of crime and Gothic motifs, ultimately failed him. The author proposes that it is the creative modes (Gothic and crime fiction) that Franko chose for voicing his ideas about social reforms that led him, unsuspectingly, away from his programmatic goal and toward the decadent aspects of modernism.     

Review Article

This study focuses on the social meaning behind the use of both Ukrainian and Russian in various media texts in contemporary Ukraine. I begin by situating the language issue within the current socio-political context; specifically, I briefly summarize recent language debates relevant to this paper. Secondly, I analyze selected media texts from television programs, films and popular magazines—all instances of the simultaneous and parallel use of Ukrainian and Russian. The analysis is then extended to a discussion of the media’s stake in framing the linguistic situation in Ukraine.

The texts in question are approached on the premise that “media usage influences and represents people’s use of and attitude towards language in a speech community” (Bell and Garrett 1998: 3). I consider the media’s choice of language an institutionalized means of framing reality (Popp 2006: 6) and therefore the use of language in the media acts symbolically, creating prevalent ideas about what language can and should do in a particular society (Woolard and Schieffelin 1994, cited in Popp 2006: 5).

My analysis of communicative exchange is carried out from the perspective of codeswitching that takes place within a larger social and political context. I address the social dichotomy of “we/they” or what Gumperz (1972) calls “metaphorical code-switching.” My analysis rests also on Auer’s code-switching framework, specifically his notions of “preference-related switching” and “sustained divergence of language choices” (1998b).     

Labour is not a commodity: The content and meaning of work in the twenty‐first century

In his valedictory lecture before the Collège de France, Alain Supiot reviews his work on the transformation of labour in the twenty‐first century, highlighting the role of law and institutions in addressing the consequences of the digital revolution and environmental crisis. In his view, the moral, social and environmental bankruptcy of neoliberalism calls for us to reconsider the legal fiction of labour as a commodity and to re‐establish the truly “humane labour regime” envisaged by the preamble to the ILO Constitution, recognizing both the meaning and content of work. He uses the case of scientific research to illustrate his argument.     

The work of art in the age of hip hop reproduction: Ice-T and the cultural capital of keeping it real again in Kings of Vice (2011) and Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap (2012)

In turning his talents to fiction in his 2011 debut novel, Kings of Vice, gangsta rapper Ice-T has faced a particularly intricate challenge in “keeping it real”. At this point in the twenty-first century, the credibility of hip hop’s harder core seems to have been undermined by the distance gangsta rap has travelled from the street realities that gave it birth in the 1980s to the millionaire enterprises that have emerged since. A “rapocracy” of incredibly successful rappers and producers, most of them associated with gangsta rap (such as Diddy, Dr Dre, Jay-Z and Russell Simmons), has taken the gangsta ill-logic of exploiting the street for maximum profit to the extreme. Ice-T’s intervention in this dynamic has been to try to remind us of hip hop’s more “auratic” origins while acknowledging that the past is indeed a different country. The turn to authorship of books and making of documentary films in the context of a post-2008 economic meltdown environment constitutes an imaginative way to revivify the creative possibilities of the gangsta. The very title of Ice-T’s 2012 documentary film, Something Out of Nothing: The Art of Rap, betrays an almost nostalgic yearning for a purer age and the form that erupted out of it. This same retrospective paradigm for thinking a better way forward for gangsta aesthetics is also at the heart of Kings of Vice. Ice-T’s inventive return to origins shows us how even at a moment of its maximum commodification, gangsta culture (precisely because of its contradictory relationship to capitalism) can provide a uniquely critical perspective on a deregulated world.     

“Time Immemorial” and Indigenous Rights: A Genealogy and Three Case Studies (Calder,Van der Peet,Tsilhqot'in) from British Columbia

“Time immemorial” has operated as a legal fiction in the discourse of colonization, performing a genealogical function in the construction of “antiquity” and “legal memory” in English law, and repurposed in Indigenous rights cases in Canada. Beginning with a genealogical outline, this paper analyzes “time immemorial” in relation to Settler and Indigenous discourses of time, memory and the land in Calder, Van der Peet, and Tsilhqot'in.     

“We are all Hizbullah now”: narrating the Party of God

This essay is the first examination of the literary output of the Lebanese political party and militia Hizbullah. It examines a series of little-known fiction and non-fiction texts including novels, memoirs and autobiographies by Hizbullah fighters, supporters and sympathisers. At the same time, it seeks to place such Hizbullah narratives within the context not only of the Party’s media strategy but of the publishing industry in Lebanon more widely. The essay also argues that Hizbullah narratives consistently explore a cluster of key themes including the Karbala tragedy, Anti-Zionism and, in particular, the “infitah” or “Lebanonisation” of the Party. In conclusion, the essay argues that narratives of Hizbullah reflect the Party’s own gradual evolution over its 30-year existence from a purely sectarian group to a broader resistance movement that attracts support from across the religious and political spectrum.     

Looking forward,looking back: animating magic,modernity and the African city-future in Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon

Lagos has recently become the focus of much scholarly interest, with a strong emphasis placed on the city as crucible of global innovation. Rem Koolhaas, in his well-known formulation of Lagos has, for example, memorably theorised the city as an African megalopolis “at the forefront of globalising modernity.” Contemporary African artists have similarly begun, in recent years, to place Africa at the vanguard of planetary discourse, producing a new wave of cultural output that signals the continent as a site from which to imagine the emergence of future worlds. Salient to this growing body of work are the writings of Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor, who writes in the register of “African science fiction.” This article takes Lagos as its focus by considering its futuristic representation in Okorafor’s novel Lagoon (2014). Drawing on John and Jean Comaroff’s theories of the city “as future lab to be learned from,” I suggest that it is from Okorafor’s account of Lagos, infused with a series of connections between magic and modern, city and sea, global and local, human and nonhuman, that the novel imagines the potential birthing of a new world order. Given the vital presence of nonhuman interlocutors in Okorafor’s text, this article concludes by arguing that Lagoon merits consideration within the growing field of Anthropocenic studies.     

Pierre Bourdieu on social transformation,with particular reference to political and symbolic revolutions

This article challenges what is now the orthodoxy concerning the heritage of Bourdieu (1930–2002): namely, the judgement that his distinctive sociological innovation has been his theory of social reproduction, and that he has failed to provide a necessary theory of social change. Yet Bourdieu consistently claimed to offer a theory of social transformation as well as accounting for continuities of power. Indeed, he provides two substantive keys for an understanding of historical transformation—first, a theory of prophets (religious or secular) as the authors of heresies or “symbolic revolutions” that dispel current doxa; second, a theory of the “corporatism of the universal”: the role of intellectuals or other educated professionals in pursuit of social justice and other universalistic goals. Moreover, Bourdieu fuses his theories of “symbolic revolutions” with a materialist analysis of their social preconditions, including a fresh account of social crises. Crises—war, famine, recession, and especially the intensified precarity of the educated—have, for him, a profound impact, both within differentiated fields and across fields. Conflicts that become effectively synchronized across fields acquire great resonance within the wider field of power, particularly due to hysteresis or “maladjusted habitus.” Indeed, the appearance of crises, together with new prophetic heresies, leads the subordinate classes to question the taken-for-granted order of things and to orchestrate their resistance. Alongside his corpus of published writings, this article draws widely on Bourdieu’s posthumously published lectures. These cast a distinctive new light on how his well-known conceptual instruments can aid us in the study of historical change. They also expand on how social science itself might be used to facilitate progressive social movements.

     

LOST AND FOUND

This article examines Dovid Bergelson’s modernist writing in relationship to the shifting geography of Yiddish culture after World War I. During the 1920s, a series of debates raged in the Yiddish press about the true centre of Yiddish literature. These discussions about Yiddish literary centres, including Bergelson’s own polemic, “Dray tsentern” (Three centres), were also aesthetic debates regarding the future direction of Yiddish literature in the absence of a national home. In “Three centres” Bergelson envisions the new Jewish writer emerging from the agricultural colonies of the Crimean steppes. Though a surprising vision from a Jewish emigrant writer in Berlin, Bergelson turns to the steppes as a way to break free from Yiddish literature’s attachment to the shtetl. However, a close reading of his interwar fiction illuminates how his modernist aesthetic derives from the irresolvable conflict between the old Jewish landscape of the shtetl and the new spaces of Jewish life in the post‐World War I period.     

Nonbiologic Objects as Actors

We generally understand interactions between human actors and nonbiologic objects (NBOs) as being indirect, with the human actor acting for the NBO and using the NBO as a “thing.” Under certain circumstances, however, human actors enter into direct interaction with NBOs and take on extra work in this process. Actors must “do mind” for the nonbiologic other to perceive “another” with whom it is possible to interact. The fiction that mind can exist where thought cannot be present is counterintuitive, making this process tenuous and heavily dependent upon the circumstances at hand. Four successive contingencies must be present to make possible the perceptual shift from object to actor. First, the actor must perceive the object in question as capable of independent action, whether or not the human actor initiates said action. Second, this separate and active status must become apparent through actions that threaten the human actor's desired goals. Third, these goals must be of sufficient urgency to warrant continuing in direct interaction with the object rather than reverting to nonanthropomorphized normal interaction. Finally, the object at hand must be necessary for completing the desired task.     

Another Kind of Rainbow Politics

Abstract

Race has been a particularly troublesome concept in the United States. It is especially problematic as it is applied to Latinos. While several perspectives are presented to examine race, race relations, and racial dynamics regarding Latinos in the U.S., this essay primarily relies on Omi and Winant's racial formation theory as a means for understanding the position of Latinos in the racial hierarchy of the United States. The authors argue that the experience of Latinos in the U.S. has taken place within a “racial” context, and as a result, have been involved in a racialization process throughout their history in this country. More specifically, the authors identify several contradictory racial projects that have shaped our current views of Latinos as a “racial group”: Latinos as a panethnic group, a rainbow race and a race towards whiteness. These Latino racial projects are discussed within a racial formation framework. Furthermore, the role that the state plays in shaping the contours of race relations regarding Latinos is examined.     

“Everyone Knows It's a Social Construct”: Contemporary Science and the Nature of Race

Abstract

Sociological literature frequently claims that scientists across the disciplinary spectrum have arrived at the common conclusion that race is socially constructed, not biologically anchored. I investigate contemporary scientific thinking about race by interviewing more than 40 biologists and anthropologists at four northeastern universities. Contrary to sociologists' expectations, racial constructionism is revealed to be a minority viewpoint. Moreover, this research shows that the usual “constructionist” versus “essentialist” dichotomy a blunt tool for characterizing the debate about race; a third platform—“antiessentialism”—must be taken into account. Recognizing antiessentialist discourse calls for a reevaluation of prior research that emphasizes socioeconomic status and professional affiliation as influences on interviewees' concepts of race; this project demonstrates that such tectors do little to distinguish essentialist from antiessentialist veiwpoints.     

Polyfidelity

Kerista Village is an equalitarian, nonmonogamous, utopian community in San Francisco whose members claim to have eliminated sexual jealousy. Responses of 15 Keristans to a specially designed “Sexual Jealousy Inventory” were compared to responses given by 87 Americans and 17 Israelis. Results indicate that Keristans indeed report significantly less sexual jealousy than the other two groups. Various interpretations of these results are offered, all within a social psychological perspective.