Making the Desert Bloom: Hannah Arendt and Zionist Discourse

This article discusses an aspect of Hannah Arendt’s treatment of the conflict between the Zionists and the Palestinians that has thus far been overlooked in scholarship: her justification of Zionism through the achievements of the Jewish pioneers in cultivating the land, in contrast to the Palestinians’ failure to do so. The inability of natives to cultivate their land was a familiar argument in the history of colonialism, used to legitimize the colonialists’ right to settle a land and often to displace the natives. How should we understand Arendt’s use of this argument? I show that Arendt’s argument should be understood in the context of, first, the recurrence of this argument in Western political thought and practices. Second, the Zionists’—Arendt included—need of legitimizing Jewish settlements in Palestine. And third, the influence of Arendt’s own political philosophy on her understanding of culture in general, and Palestinian culture in particular.     

Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt: criticisms on the development of a German messianic

A discussion of the influence of Martin Buber is not easily limited to the philosophical anthropology he espoused. Nor is the political thinking of Hannah Arendt easily removed from criticism of the philosophies (and -phers) that informed her. Both Buber and Arendt attacked the beastly shoulders of a misapplied messianism as it emerged in modern Germany. Hegel, Heidegger, Marx and to some degree Nietzsche would affect this misplacement, and Arendt and Buber for their part would enter into a shared critique that is often neglected, despite promising attempts in a comparative direction made by Ellis, Engel and Riker. In this essay, I make the case that the contributions of Buber and Arendt – their shared assessments of the viability of the public realm, the need for common responsibility and the recurrent decision to engage with otherness in practical terms – point to an innovative critique of the forcible abstraction of a more traditional messianic made by German views of history. In the midst of the crises identified as correlates of a misapplied messianic, the hope as Buber and Arendt see it lies in the capacity for reflective and courageous identification and education between human individuals as they live towards one another.     

From Barbarism to Religion: Church History and the Enlightened Narrative in Germany

The subject of this essay is the historical vision of the GermanCatholic Enlightenment as seen in the work of Michael IgnazSchmidt, a Catholic priest and author of the eleven-volume Historyof the Germans (1778–1793). A proper acknowledgement ofSchmidt's career helps us revise the standard account of Germanhistoricism and historical practice in the eighteenth century,and also sheds light on the place of religion in the GermanEnlightenment. Schmidt wrote a thoroughly modern ‘historyof manners’ that was indebted both to Voltaire and toRobertson. Yet his work passed into obscurity largely becausehe focused on the Holy Roman Empire and the Imperial Church—thetwo great casualties of the Napoleonic passage. Schmidt's viewof the Reformation, and, more importantly, of the history ofthe pre-Reformation German national Church, stands out in theprominence it assigns the Church as part of the history of thedevelopment of German manners. Schmidt's account throws intoquestion the common view in the history of the German ‘nation’that Germany could not be accorded the normal attributes ofa state and existed only as a ‘cultural nation’.The essay addresses the German problem of bi-confessionalism,and Schmidt's awareness of developments in Protestant theologyin the eighteenth century. While this paper does not try todeal comprehensively with all these issues, the essay showshow the agenda of reformist religion, national history, andthe Enlightened vision of Europe's Christian past coalescedin this unjustly forgotten work.     

Between Athens and Jerusalem: Western otherness in the thought of Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt

In understanding the meaning of the West, twentieth‐century political philosophers Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss called for a return to “Athens” (classical political philosophy) in order to address the “crisis of the West,” a loss of a sense of legitimate and stable political authority which, in their view, constitutes a nihilistic threat to Western democracy. The only way for the West to escape this nihilistic crisis is to return to Plato and Aristotle. Implicit in this critique is the belief that the other tradition of the West, “Jerusalem” (the Bible) has contributed to this nihilism, by undermining the authority of the Greeks. Is Jerusalem, then, the fatal “Other” for the West? Which tradition—Athens or Jerusalem—is best prepared to alleviate the crisis of the West, especially the survival of democracy? As I address these questions, I shall contend that it is Jerusalem, not Athens, which is the true source of Western democracy.     

Luxemburg on Tahrir Square: Reading the Arab Revolutions with Rosa Luxemburg's The Mass Strike

The protests on Tahrir Square in Cairo have come to symbolize the Arab uprisings of 2011. They have proven that Arab political life is more complex than the false choice between authoritarian rule or Islamist oppositions. The popular uprisings witnessed the emergence of “the Arab peoples” as political actors, able to topple entrenched authoritarian leaders, challenging repressive regimes and their brutal security apparatuses. In our contribution we want to analyze the political dynamics of these uprisings beyond the salient immediacy of the revolutionary events, by taking, as our guide, Rosa Luxemburg's pamphlet The Mass Strike (2005 [1906], London: Bookmarks). An interesting theoretical contribution to the study of revolution, Luxemburg's book provides us with tools to introduce a historical and political reading of the Arab Spring. Based on fieldwork and thorough knowledge of the region, we draw from evidence from the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions and the more gradual forms of political change in Morocco. Re‐reading the revolutionary events in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco through the lens of The Mass Strike offers activists on the ground insights into the dialectic between local and national struggles, economic and political demands, strike actions and revolution. The workers protests in Tunisia and Egypt during the last decade can be grasped as anticipations of the mass strike during the revolution; the specific mode in which workers participate as a class in the revolutionary process. This perspective enables an understanding of the current economic conflicts as logical forms of continuity of the revolution. The economic and the political, the local and the national (and one may add the global), are indissoluble yet separate elements of the same process, and the challenge for revolutionary actors in Tunisia and Egypt lies in the connection, organization and fusion of these dispersed moments and spaces of struggle into a politicized whole. Conversely, an understanding of the reciprocity between revolutionary change and the mass strike allows activists in Morocco to recognize the workers' movement as a potentially powerful actor of change, and trade unionists to incorporate the political in their economic mobilizations.     

"The Human Condition" as social ontology: Hannah Arendt on society, action and knowledge

Hannah Arendt is widely regarded as a political theorist who sought to rescue politics from "society," and political theory from the social sciences. This conventional view has had the effect of distracting attention from many of Arendt's most important insights concerning the constitution of "society" and the significance of the social sciences. In this article, I argue that Hannah Arendt's distinctions between labor, work, and action, as these are discussed in "The Human Condition" and elsewhere, are best understood as a set of claims about the fundamental structures of human societies. Understanding Arendt in this way introduces interesting parallels between Arendt's work and both classical and contemporary sociology. From this I draw a number of conclusions concerning Arendt's conception of "society," and extend these insights into two contemporary debates within contemporary theoretical sociology: the need for a differentiated ontology of the social world, and the changing role that novel forms of knowledge play in contemporary society as major sources of social change and order.     

From Propaganda to Modernization: Media Policy and Media Audiences under National Socialism

To date, historians have worked on the assumption that NationalSocialism used the media to powerful propaganda effect. Yetat an early stage a few voices, especially within Anglo-Saxonscholarship, questioned whether the process was so direct. Increasinglythe individual media have been examined, both technically andin terms of their public the reactions they provoked. This essayexamines how the media can be said to have modernized underNational Socialism, and how newspaper readers, radio listenersand cinema audiences reacted to the development of the media.There were major differences. Radio was conceived as a mediumfor music and entertainment; new formats were developed in responseto listeners turning to programmes from abroad, so that Germanradio could no longer keep a monopoly on information. The majorityof feature films were melodramas and light entertainment, andalthough many carried a ‘message’, the cinema wasfundamentally a commercial, non-political sphere. Newspapersremained relatively conservative in presentation. The presswas largely concentrated in the hands of the party, so informationwas highly controlled, and due to difficulties of productionin wartime they became increasingly unattractive, and by 1942were trusted by few readers. The corpus of the media generallybecame technically more efficient, and sought to please itsgrowing audience. Total control of the media by the politicalleaders was not achieved. Particular elements, such as war films,or the ‘Wehrmacht Request Show’, had memorable success.Agenda setting by the media planners put certain key politicalideas into the forefront, and they were able to disseminatekey symbols and rituals of National Socialism. The media werebut one of many agents used, though, to foster political loyalty.The régime also, and more importantly, achieved thisby using existing attitudes, and through its permanent threatof violence towards the population, whom they also seduced withmaterial ‘treats’. It emerges that it is both possibleand helpful in studying the development of the media to examineit as a process of modernization in the media, in their organizationaland technical structures. This process was however underminedwherever in German society anti-modernist ideology and practicespersisted or fought back.     

The Idea of Socialism: From 1968 to the Present‐day Crisis

Abstract: In 2008 the 40th anniversary of that iconic year, 1968, was celebrated in the media in relation to student uprisings and cultural revolts, largely neglecting the very significant movements of workers and peasants who were challenging power structures around the world at that time. This omission reflects the failures of socialism in the twentieth century, which are explored in this essay. Beginning from a more complete picture of 1968, the essay examines the history of socialism, identifying the main sources of failure in its theory and practice, in particular that of the revolutionary left. If the failure lies in the elite character of socialist politics and its focus on distribution rather than production, it is to be remedied by a firm focus on the politics of the workplace and the goal of substantive equality. The concluding section reviews the prospects for such an alternative in the current circumstances of global crisis.     

Between Memory and Materiality: An Archaeological Approach to Studying the Nazi Concentration Camps

Abstract

By its very nature, historical narrative that is rooted exclusively in textual sources is destined to be more linear, more univocal, and less equipped to deal with the problematic. On the other hand, due to its unique abilities and approaches, historical archaeology thrives on the tensions inherent to any attempt to understand past and present experience. In this article I negotiate between two approaches to studying the concentration camps of the Third Reich—one canonical the other experimental. It is suggested that when studying the camps, we are faced with a series of tensions: between past and present, between remembering and forgetting, and between live human actors and the material record. This article explores two research paradigms: first, the traditional text-centric historical approach, and second, an approach that might be called 'historical archaeological'. I embrace the inherent tensions between the two approaches, and put forward some innovative ways for coming to terms with these places of internment.     

Reasons of the Heart: Weber and Arendt on Emotion in Politics

In many fields of contemporary thought and scholarship, the classical construct of a clean division between “emotion” and “reason” has been revised. As a result, politics is no longer seen as a sphere in need of protection against the dark forces of emotion that might creep in where they do not belong. Against the backdrop of this conceptual shift the article examines the theme of emotion in the political thought of Max Weber and Hannah Arendt. The aim is to gauge the extent to which these thinkers can be read as having prepared the ground for a reassessment of the role of emotion in public life that moves beyond the classical European dichotomy of reason vs. passion. Two claims are being made. Both thinkers were still immersed in a conceptual world in which emotions were irrational, disruptive of appropriate ways of reasoning and as such closely linked to the dark powers of the masses. Yet both also held subtler positions on the relationship between reason, emotion, and democracy, and these positions are less well understood.