Suchergebnisse

Exciting new scholarship has been emerging as performance studies scholars begin to turn their attention to the performance of politics, nationhood and jurisprudence. Branislav Jakovljevic's project on the history and eventual demise of the former Yugoslavia demonstrates how fruitful this approach can be. Jakovljevic considers the concept of theatricality as central to understanding the events that took place in Yugoslavia. He examines the country's trials, state ceremonies and festivals, army maneuvers, propaganda and pop culture as "rehearsals and temporary enactments of an ideologically formulated future." His first chapter reveals the surrealist, avant-garde origins of key members of the Yugoslav bureaucracy after WWII, suggesting that those connections helped the culture of socialist Yugoslavia become a performance-centered culture. Continuing to explore the relationship between the political avant-garde and the artistic avant-garde, he looks at the spectacle of student demonstrations in Belgrade in 1968, and, in their aftermath, the rise of performance art in the country. The third chapter (included here) zeros in on the various political performances of Slobodan Milosevic, including his courtroom testimony at the ICTY, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The fourth chapter discusses the "Peter Handke Affair," when the Austrian playwright had a major prize revoked after he attended Milosevic's funeral and recited a poem he had written in Milosevic's honor.

The reduction of citizen alienation has stood as a goal for the decentralization of public services among researchers & policymakers. It has been hypothesized that decentralization can bring government closer to the public being served, & therefore improve public attitudes toward government. No existing research completely tests this hypothesis. Several national surveys do provide sufficient data to examine the relationships between various types of citizen activity linked with decentralization & the 2 dimensions of political alienation; powerlessness/efficacy & distrust/trust. Sidney Verba & Norman Nie analyzed responses to a national survey conducted in 1967 in PARTICIPATION IN AMERICA: POLITICAL DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL EQUALITY (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1972). They characterized all R's according to their degree of participation. The sense of political efficacy/powerlessness was examined with a 4-question index, & the results showed that the sense of efficacy was higher for all types of participants who did more than vote. A review of these national surveys shows that decentralized activity, whether taking the form of citizen participation, citizen awareness of decentralized facilities, or service improvements, is consistently associated with people's sense of efficacy, but not their sense of trust. Decentralization may affect alienation in terms of reducing sense of powerlessness, but it has no impact on people's trust in government. Decentralization of public services may be one of the steps taken to reduce citizen alienation toward government, but not alienation by itself. 2 Tables. Modified HA.

Racism is explored as a form of ideology in the Marxist sense, focusing on the connections between it & concepts of alienation & false consciousness. Four major criteria of "genuine" racism are examined: (1) unwarranted extrapolation from conceptions of the individual to the group; (2) positing certain groups as biologically superior to others; (3) inferring special rights from the postulate of biological superiority; & (4) degradation of rationality. All four criteria, but particularly the fourth, are seen as necessary to distinguish racial from interethnic conflict; the writings of Max Weber, Georg Lukacs, & Theodor W. Adorno are examined to clarify this conception of racist false consciousness. A structural analogy between racism & clinical alienation, particularly schizophrenia, is then developed, noting autistic aspects of racist perceptions & their projective character, which appears to correspond to the clinical "mirror syndrome" of schizophrenia. Dialectical/historical education of the public is concluded to be central to any antiracist praxis. Modified HA.

I see the fundamental nature of the question before us -- for the African continent at least -- as being how to effect an internal harmonization of seeming irreconcilable elements within national entities, how to reconcile peoples of distinct histories with the consequences of colonial arbitrariness, & the timidity, the lack of will, the failure of the first-generation leaders to boldly tackle the fault-lines of a continent that often run along the boundaries that have been inherited. Adapted from the source document.

Considers how to effect an internal harmonisation of seeming irreconcilable elements within national entities, how to reconcile peoples of distinct histories with the consequences of colonial arbitrariness and the timidity, the lack of will, the failure of the first-generation leaders to boldly tackle the fault-lines of a continent that often run along the boundaries that have been inherited. (Original abstract - amended)