Suchergebnisse

AbstractBased primarily on declassified U. S. government documents, this study analyzes the U. S. effort to build a "showcase for democracy" in Guatemala following the U. S.-engineered regime change of 1954. The effort was doomed, for the U.S. government lacked both unity of purpose and the necessary continuous commitment at the top. The documents also demonstrate limited consideration of the sociopolitical constraints that U. S. policy objectives would face. This is clear from examining three key U. S. objectives: to eliminate the "communist threat"; to create a stable, legitimate, democratic government; and to develop a free, independent labor movement. Domination and the limits of power are equally central to understanding the relationship between the Eisenhower administration and Guatemala, a case study that also has more general utility.

With a foreword by Slavoj Zizek. The Psychopolitics of the Oriental Father problematizes the East/West dimorphism, especially focusing on the so-called 'Modernisation' or 'Westernisation' processes in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. Its main hypothesis is that 'Modernisation' and 'Westernisation' are only euphemisms for the advent of capitalism in Asiatic and African societies, which lead to fatal transformations of the cultural and political incarnatations of the Oriental Father. The end result is a transitory rebirth of Freud's Primordial Father during the construction of the nation-state, which rises again and again anytime there are grounds for a 'state of exception'.

The relationships between politics and religion have always been the focus of Hobbesian literature, which generally privileges the theme of the Christian State, i.e. the union of temporal and spiritual power in a sovereign-representative person. This essay presents other perspectives of interpretation, which analyze the relationships between politics and religion in Hobbes' works by using specifically metaphysical and theological categories – liberty/necessity, causality, kingdom of God, divine prescience, potentia Dei etc. – which allow us to reconsider the nature of political power (and the relevance of modern technology for the contemporary politics). The core of Hobbes' argumentation concerns the theoretical status of determinism (i.e. the relationships between liberty and necessity) with regard to the reduction of «potentia» to «potestas» not only in political philosophy, but also in metaphysics and theology. In many passages of Hobbes' works, then, it is possible to understand the role of God's idea in the natural and political philosophy: God's idea as first cause or as omnipotence is only a reassuring word useful to describe the necessary, mechanical and eternal movement of the bodies and useful to justify the materialistic determinism in anthropology and politics. Body and movement are the necessary fundaments of the universe which find in itself - without reference to the category of «possibility» in politics and in physics - the motives and the reasons of his own structure and function (from causes to effects).

Abstract: The interview focuses on Hartmut Rosa's interpretation of the modern nation state. According to his theory, the territorial state, which unifies and standardizes time, language, law and currency, is understood in close dependence with modern processes of social acceleration. A dialectical relationship would take place: while the Westphalian state explains social acceleration, it is also recognized that the nation state became such a successful institution precisely due to the fact that it could accelerate. In the long run, the centrifugal forces of acceleration, which help to bring about contemporary globalization, tend to leave the sovereign state in a fragile condition. On the other hand, the nation, as a separable phenomenon irreducible to the state, seems to be a much less discussed category in Rosa's work. In this interview, Rosa introduces the nation as a cultural engine that provides the motivational force for the state to function properly. His sociological distinction between "cultural" and "institutional" levels is applied to the nation state, necessarily a hybrid. Looking at today's world, Rosa discusses the current rise of national populism and what he calls the "promise of omnipotence" (the idea that the people is all powerful), as a way of explaining the return of nationalism; but he also grapples with the phenomenon of cosmopolitanism (as distinct from globalization) and the hegemony of China.