Language identity,linguistic diversity and political cleavages: evidence from Ukraine

ABSTRACT. This article revisits the notion of linguistic diversity and its function as a political cleavage. It argues that people's linguistic and cultural attitudes are influenced not only by their communicative practice but also by their identification with particular language(s) – even though they may not always communicate in that language. In Ukraine, from which my empirical data is drawn, language identity is embodied in the concept of native language that was imposed by the Soviet institutionalisation of ethnicity and came to mean ethnic belonging as much as linguistic practice. My analysis of survey data demonstrates that native language is a powerful predictor of people's attitudes and policy preferences with regard to both language use and other socially divisive issues, such as foreign policy and historical memory. This finding should also be applicable to other societies with a large‐scale discrepancy between language practice and identity.     

Defending the Concept of Time in the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

Due to the scarcity of reflection on time as an independent subject in the Hebrew Bible, there has been a scholarly tendency to consider biblical time conception more limited than our own_perhaps even nonexistent. This article confronts the scholarly skepticism regarding the ability of the biblical authors to think about time, defending the presence of time conceptualization in the Hebrew Bible. In the article I discuss central research contributions to the subject of biblical time, in particular Sacha Stern’s thesis that the concept of time is entirely absent from the Hebrew Bible and from ancient Judaism more widely. I explore linguistic and anthropological assumptions which underpin large parts of the discussion on time within biblical studies, arguing that one cannot assume on the basis of either that the biblical authors lacked a concept of time. Finally, I suggest that the ability of the biblical writers to coordinate unrelated processes according to a temporal axis is a strong argument in favour of their awareness of time.     

Derrida’s Paralogism of Writing: A Critique of Deconstructive Reasoning

This article is a critique of the flawed logic Derrida employed in articulating his program of a Grammatology for “deconstructing” Western philosophy. I argue that Derrida in several instances built his arguments around what Kant called the “paralogism.” I look at an often cited case in order to substantiate my claim: Derrida’s reading of Saussure, where his argument is based on a paralogism. Derrida misinterprets Saussure by seeing his alleged rejection of graphical writing as a rejection of his own idiosyncratic notion of “writing” (alias différance, trace, generalized writing, etc.), which only corresponds to Saussure’s own notion of “linguistic value,” produced in a system of differences without positive terms.     

Embodiment,linguistics, space: American Sign Language meets geography

ABSTRACT

The relational turn in geography has led to an understanding of space and place as actively produced agents in people’s everyday lives. Geographers have also long recognized the importance of language in understanding the social and relational nature of space. The study of American Sign Language (ASL) presents a unique opportunity to examine how language use and language creation influence the production of linguistic space. For users of ASL, space is incredibly significant. Because of the visual and spatial nature of ASL, the space surrounding a signer’s body is important not only for the signer to communicate, but also for others involved in the conversation to participate. Environments created during conversations in ASL reflect the cultural and linguistic perception of the American Deaf community. By taking a critical perspective on the production of space, it will be shown that those who use ASL, through the medium of bodily performance, create linguistic, and communication spaces that are dynamic and visual. The embodied language of ASL and the Deaf community is a perspective geographers have yet to address.     

For the Good of The Nation: ‘Strategic Egalitarianism’ in the Singapore Context

In this article, I introduce the concept of ‘strategic egalitarianism’ in relation to women's co‐optation into nationalist projects in Singapore. By strategic egalitarianism, I mean the granting of equality to women that is contingent upon meeting particular pragmatic nationalist objectives. For example, the granting of equal educational and employment opportunities by the government in the 1960s was necessitated by Singapore's economic survival as a newly emerging nation. By the 1980s, another pragmatic national concern dealing with rapid decline in population growth emerged, requiring that women prioritise the role of motherhood. A complicating factor in the procreationist discourse is the government's eugenic policy that favours the ‘right’ kind of women, in particular, to bear the ‘right’ kind of babies for the continued vitality of the nation. In the course of this article, I examine the problem with strategic egalitarianism, which shifts its ground depending on the nationalist goals of the day, and the implications this has for Singapore women.     

WITH OR AGAINST HAYDEN WHITE? REFLECTIONS ON THEORY OF HISTORY AND SUBJECT FORMATION

This article reflects on Hayden White's understanding of the subject and explores how best to move forward discussions in theory of history after his arguments about narrativity. To do so, I reconsider his arguments in light of more recent feminist and queer theorizations. Through a reconstruction of the current international new wave of feminism and LGBTQ+ activism as a rich and complex social movement that involves a narration of its own (practical) past, I will recontextualize and revaluate White's insight from the perspective of Judith Butler's theory of subject formation. The argument will unfold in four parts. First, I will recall White's ironic and existential stance on language and narrativity in the representation of reality and in relation to social beliefs. Second, I will again raise the question of the value of narrativity, as framed by White, in the context of the publication of a recent feminist manifesto. It is here that another issue will emerge as crucial: the relationship between the limits of linguistic self-consciousness and the question of the subject. In the third part, my argument will take a partial turn “against White” and toward Butler's subject formation theory. My claim will be that there is a residue of the belief in the sovereign individual in White's insistence on self-consciousness. However, I will also show that his suspicion regarding the psychological impulse toward narrative closure can be re-elaborated as the challenge Butler is facing with their theory of subject formation: that of critically resisting the belief in our being coherent and self-sufficient individuals. In the fourth part, I will present Butler's refiguration of the thesis of the subject's opacity in terms of the primary relationality that binds human beings to one another, and I will offer a new understanding of the individual, norms, agency, infancy, and ethics. Finally, I will conclude that we are bodies in history and that theory of history can find a promising line of research through this conception of the subject, a conception that reframes how we understand the intimate links between political consciousness, historicity, and embodiment. I also claim that this line of research constitutes an ethics for our historical undoing.     

Warped by the field: the gravity of the margins on West Forty-Sixth Street

Reflecting on a recently completed ethnographic research project, I try to understand how things that may seem marginal to my central question nonetheless remain active within my arguments in unanticipated ways. I begin with an overview of my original research aims and activities before presenting eight marginal examples from fieldwork. I conclude with a meditation on the epistemic force that the marginal must be understood to exert on projects of knowledge production.     

‘Prevention of evil,production of good’: Jeremy Bentham’s indirect legislation and its contribution to a new theory of prevention

ABSTRACT

This paper critically analyses current depictions of prevention and tries to offer a new theoretical reflection on the concept by reconstructing it on the basis of Jeremy Bentham’s writings on indirect legislation. It is my aim not only to explore Bentham’s concept of indirect legislation as an outstanding example of enlightened social/public policy, but also to show to what extent his thoughts might be a fruitful contribution to a necessary reconceptualization of current conceptions of prevention, which are heavily criticized by many scholars.     

The Single Individual in Kierkegaard: Religious or Secular? Part 2

In Part 2 of my study I focus on Works of Love of Kierkegaard in analyzing his concept of the single individual in light of what I call the hermeneutics of the relationship of the religious and the secular. I continue to emphasize that the hermeneutical distinction that Kierkegaard critically makes between Christianity and Christendom is the distinction, not between the religious and the secular but between, rather, a true understanding of the relationship of the religious and the secular, on the one hand, and an idolatrous conception of that relationship, on the other.     

The ‘R-Word’ and ‘E-Word’ Definitional Controversies: A Dialogue with My Five Interlocutors

In this piece, I reply to the principal criticisms made by my five interlocutors regarding my conception of Eurocentrism. This entails two key aspects with the first section discussing the ‘E-Word definitional controversy’, where I argue, in the light of the forum, that there are various competing definitions of Eurocentrism in postcolonialism which yield commensurable competing non-Eurocentric antidotes. While I defend my own position, I am interested in revealing this complex picture because it has not been brought to light before and I urge postcolonialists to debate these different conceptions. The second section considers the ‘R-Word controversy’ wherein my interlocutors want me to row back on my claim that post-1945 social science theory is founded on subliminal Eurocentric institutionalism rather than scientific racism or neo-racism. There I consider some of the issues that are stake while concluding that modern Eurocentrism is indeed embedded in racialised thought.     

Shared places,unshared identities: vernacular discourses and spatialised constructions of identity in the linguistic landscape of Trieste

Language as it appears in the public space is at the centre of investigations into linguistic landscapes. Language agents immersed in a given geo-historical context contribute to the construction of spatialised meaning and to the transformation of space into place. The visibility of a language in a linguistic landscape does not just index a reality, i.e. the use of one or more languages within a community, but contributes to the symbolic construction of a given space. The current study aims to investigate the peculiarities of place-making and -marking of the Slovenian-speaking community in the area of Trieste via an analysis of written signs displaying the minority language. The paper will show that the tension resulting from achieved equality in the legal status of Slovenian and the perception of unequal power relations between different ethnic groups is reproduced in the construction of the local linguistic landscape. The final part of the discussion will suggest that public use of the Slovenian language is central to the performance of a material border.     

Trans/national knowledge production through difference: dilemmas of doing research on veiling in Amman,Jordan

Abstract

This article examines some dilemmas I experienced while doing research on fashionable veiling in Amman, Jordan. My fieldwork experience and the knowledge I co-produced with the participants were shaped by each layer of my identity as a Jordanian, Muslim, non-veiled woman, with a particular classed, spatialized Ammani heritage and affiliation with western feminist academia. The article engages with the implications my positionality had on my insider-outsider status and the knowledge the participants and I co-produced. I argue that the research setting, while fraught with difference, constituted a site for transnational solidarity and knowledge production. The participants and I had divergent understandings of, and aspirations for, Jordanian Muslim femininity shaped by our varying positions within the Global North-Global South. I argue that we practiced solidarity by collaborating and co-constructing a transnational site to unpack and defend their viability. I found that our collaboration was not fuelled by a shared sense of injustice and did not produce a shared outlook on Islam, Jordanianness or femininity. Rather, it created a site where we were able to emphasize our divergent sense of these paradigms as women positioned differently within the trans/national, cultural, and religious spaces we shared.     

The joint family and its discontents: interrogating ambivalence in intergenerational relationships

Drawing from an interview based household survey of 453 older parent(s) and adult children (sons and daughters-in-law) in the Ahmedabad district, this study utilised the solidarity-conflict-ambivalence models to understand both the perceptions and experience of joint living. Overall, findings reinforce popular imagination of the socially-sanctioned joint family as a site of reassuring continuity with high levels of congruence in reporting relational sentiments. Evidence of intergenerational stake phenomenon was observed in responses of older adults when compared with the mature child. In addition to examining normative ambivalence, I contend that joint family relations embody a concept of ‘ambiguity’ – an uncertain, somewhat conflictual emotive space that offers members a temporary escape without confronting the contradictions in the objective demands of expected roles. In conclusion, I assert the need to go beyond the western tools of measurement to capture a deeply complex emotive space with its regularities, irrationalities and incoherences in the experience of everyday life.     

‘I am going,with or without you’: autonomy in Bolivian transnational migrations

Autonomy has often been seen as a precondition for achieving gender equality, yet feminist scholarship has been rather ambivalent towards it. In this article, I explore this ambivalence by drawing on the experiences of migrant women, particularly mothers, focusing on the ways in which they negotiated their mobility with their partners. By analysing women's experiences of migration within a context of multi-sited and longitudinal, itinerant ethnography, I historicise their life accounts and place them within a broader framework of social and economic structural changes. On this basis I explore the concept of autonomy, particularly in relation to the exercise of women's agency within a context of market-oriented neoliberal reforms. I also question the potential of women's autonomy for gender equality and argue that there are at least two reasons for feminist scholars to continue being ambivalent towards autonomy.     

Boekbesprekings/Book reviews

Abstract

The departure point of this article is the postmodern critique of my book, The Dead Will Arise. The object of the article is not however to defend either the book itself or the 'constructionist’ school of historiography to which it apparently belongs. The first part of the article seeks to clarify the epistemological basis on which constructionist historians claim the right to engage with and interpret the past. In the process of doing so, it establishes a conceptual framework capable of defining relevance in the context of post-democratic South African historiography. It argues that historians have a duty to prioritise the ‘scars’ and ‘pitfalls’ of South African history failing which they become mere lapdogs, decorative but irrelevant. It is further argued that, although historians have the right to study whatever they choose, there is something intrinsically wrong with institutional mechanisms which produce nothing but lapdogs, and that university history departments need to take more of a lead.     

Deconstructive vs Pragmatic: A Critique of the Derrida–Searle Debate

ABSTRACT

This article presents a critical account of the debate between Derrida and Searle in which I defend Austin’s and Searle’s pragmatic analysis of speech against Derrida’s complex deconstructionist approach. I first formalize Derrida’s argument, reducing it to its main tenets that can be positively identified and critically reviewed. On the basis of this formalization I argue that the apparent incompatibility between Derrida’s and Searle’s approach to language becomes clear once we formalize, according to their type and content, the three concepts of “intention” that are confusedly referred to under one and the same label in the debate. This formalization reduces and clarifies the obscurity associated with the Derrida–Searle debate, and helps demonstrating the shortcomings of Derrida’s position.     

The septuagint-version of the book of Joshua

Abstract

After I published a book on the Covenant Code (A Law Book for the Diaspora, 2003), in which I challenged the early dating of CC in comparison with the Deuteronomic Code and the Holiness Code, three leading scholars of biblical law (Bernard Jackson, Bernard Levinson and Eckart Otto) wrote lengthy reviews in which they attacked my views in defense of the status quo, namely, the priority in dating of CC before D and HC. Each from his own perspective and methodology has brought forward his strongest arguments against my “revolutionary” views, so that this response to my critics should represent a fair test as to my views on the Covenant Code and provide biblical scholarship with a means by which to judge the merits of the case.     

The Voting Rights of Incarcerated Australian Citizens

Drawing on and combining political science and legal frameworks, this article explores the validity of disenfranchising Australian prisoners. The authors examine and critically assess the various arguments used in Australia by both legislators and High Court Justices to defend the practice of disenfranchisement. Such arguments are assessed against liberal democratic principles as well as jurisprudence arising from cases in settings that provide protection for electoral rights in formal charters of rights. The authors show that in settings that entrench voting rights in the Constitution, any infringement attracts strict scrutiny from the courts. Courts insist that any abridgement of voting rights should serve a legitimate government purpose and be proportionate to that purpose. The arguments made for prisoner disenfranchisement by legislators in the Australian context invariably fail both parts of this test.