Time and the spectral other: Demonstrating against ‘Unite the Right 2’

Recent public protests against right-wing politics in the United States have often demonstrated a sense of surprise at the recurrence of racist, anti-Semitic and fascist ideologies and movements which ought to belong to the past. Using insights from Walter Benjamin, Johannes Fabian and Jacques Derrida, the authors analyze the recent gathering of thousands of counter-demonstrators at the ‘Unite the Right 2’ rally in Washington, DC and discuss how political and moral enemies are rhetorically consigned to another time. The temporality on display at this demonstration was more complex than linear, progressive time. Instead, it consolidated events from the past, present and future into a sense of eternal and recurrent victory. They argue that this temporality is an expression both of Derrida’s ideas about spectrality and Tanya Luhrmann’s analysis of the moral psychology of faith.     

From the Right to Mobility to the Right to the Mobile City: Playfulness and Mobilities in Bogotá’s Cycling Activism

This paper takes cycling activism in Bogotá (Colombia) as a point of departure to conceptualise the right to the mobile city. Mobility is a key site of intervention for claiming the right to the city, but has so far only been considered in terms of access to the city. Such a reading obscures the ways in which mobile practices themselves can be exercises in participation, appropriation, and management of urban space. In examining biketivists’ playful mobilities, I emphasise the centrality of mobility in the production of the city. Foregrounding play as a means to assert use value over exchange value in the city allows for a non-utilitarian understanding of mobility and a reconceptualisation of the right to mobility along Lefebvrian lines. However, playful practices can also produce spaces of exclusion, and nuance is necessary to avoid totalising accounts of cycling politics.     

‘I'd Feel Ashamed’: Girls' Bodies and Sports Participation

This article is concerned with the links between space, gender and adolescents' bodies. Drawing on data from both qualitative and quantitative research carried out with adolescents aged 13–16 in Liverpool, UK in 2001 the article examines girls' low participation rates in physical education (PE). Framed within theoretical work relating to the performance of corporeal femininities and ‘inhibited intentionality’ in reference to sporting confidence, girls' experiences of single-sex PE are compared with their perceptions of mixed PE in order to explore how the presence of boys may impact on girls' perceptions of their bodies and willingness to participate in sport. The results suggest that while girls still feel pressure from a male gaze to present their bodies to boys as passively beautiful, they also feel pressure to be competent at sport and thus present their bodies as active. However, single-sex PE does not provide a space where the male gaze is absent, suggesting this gaze has been internalized. This article explores the nature of school space in explaining differential participation rates, highlighting how sports within the space of the school, with an emphasis on competition and under the evaluative gaze of teachers, intensify some girls' fears of inadequacy in sports. The findings illustrate the complexities and contradictions present within and between girls' experiences of their bodies and sports and the relationship between school space and adolescents' bodies.

‘Siento Verguüenza’: Cuerpos de jovenas Y participación endeportes

Este artículo se ocupa de los enlaces entre espacio, género, y los cuerpos de adolescentes. Utilizando datos de una investigación cualitativo y cuantitativo que se llevó a caber con adolescentes de 13 hasta 16 años en Liverpool en 2001, examino el nivel bajo de la participación de jovenas en educación física. Las experiencias de jovenas de la educación física sólo para niñas se comparan con sus percepciones de la educación física mixta para explorar como la presencia de jóvenes (niños) influye la percepción de jovenas de sus cuerpos y sus buenas disposiciones para participar en deportes. Los resultados sugieren que mientras las jovenas sienten presión de las miradas masculinas para presentar sus cuerpos a ellos como pasivamente hermosos, sienten también la presión para estar capaz en los deportes y así presentar sus cuerpos como activos. Sin embargo, la educación física sólo para niñas no provee un espacio donde no hay una mirada masculina por que ésta mirada se ha sido interiorizado. Deportes en el espacio de la escuela tienen un énfasis en la competición y una mirada evaluativa de maestros y como consecuencia se intensifica el miedo de jovenas de ser inadecuado en deportes. Las conclusiones ilustran las complejidades y contradicciones en y entre las experiencias de jovenas de sus cuerpos y deportes, y la relación entre el espacio de la escuela y los cuerpos de adolescentes.     

On the Use of the Term ‘Non-Anglo Archaeologists’

Many universities in India teach in both English and Hindi to separate classes—the students have an option to choose their language of instruction. Thus the claim of non-Anglo archaeologists as being co-opted raises the double question of being co-opted by whom and for what purpose? If it is the case that there are co-opted third and fourth world archaeologists, then who is to blame and how may this situation be rectified. I feel every-one has the answer to this question and nothing more needs be said about it. My sympathies rest with the co-opted.     

Reinforcing Diversity: From the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’

This paper focuses on Jan Monk's contribution to reinforcing diversity and collaboration in the field of human geography. It illustrates how gendered diversity and feminism is promoted in her academic work both inside the Anglo-American academic world and outside, by exposing the feminist voices from around the world and mainstreaming them in her collaborative work. Fostering and reinforcing diversity has become a body of knowledge in her extensive publications in which she assesses the varying extent and nature of feminist geography in the Anglophone world and across countries, attempting to interpret differences in terms of geographical and cultural contexts and disciplinary trends. The paper emphasizes how fostering diversity and collaboration in Jan's academic work is not only about writing articles, editing books and producing a film, but also engages the formulation of organizational structures such as the Routledge book series and the initiation and establishment of the Commission of Gender and Geography of the International Geographical Union which have contributed to the production of collaborative feminist geographical knowledge across spaces and places.     

‘Wel gelun a gud?’: Thomas Sheridan's Brave Irishman and the failure of English

Scholarship on Thomas Sheridan's popular farce The Brave Irishman has to date focused on its engagement with the figure of the ‘stage Irishman’, testing the title character's thick accent and Irish idiom against a standard English that rarely appears in the play itself. This essay considers the farce on broader terms, addressing both regional variations in the play's performance and the other idioms of the play, in order to argue that the farce overturns the devaluing of the Irish idiom and instead dramatises the shortcomings of English on terms consistent with Sheridan's large body of writing on the English language as spoken in the British Isles.     

New regionalism in Turkey: questioning the ‘new’ and the ‘regional’

Turkey’s regional policies are inspired by the new regionalism theory. During past two decades, key concepts of new regionalism, including knowledge economies, specialization, networked cities and innovation, have been incorporated in policy documents. At the same time, Turkey comes from a strong central state tradition that controls local and regional development. At first insight, new regionalism and strong central state control do not fit in the same frame. This research analyses the trajectory of regional policies in Turkey with the aim of explaining how these seemingly incompatible policies can coexist. It argues that regional policies developed at the central state level utilized new regionalism as a part of the strategy to maintain power in the course of transformation of the nation state.     

Undermining Obligation to God: Hobbes’s Religious Rhetoric and False Forms of Obligation

ABSTRACT

This paper examines Hobbes’s use of religious rhetoric, specifically his definitions of the terms grace, faith, and future words in his explanation of the nature and origins of obligation. Through categorization and analysis of Hobbes’s different forms of obligation, paying special attention to the religious rhetoric of the false forms, it becomes evident that Hobbes’s view of obligation is designed not only to establish a political order, but to undermine man’s obligation to God, and as such, remove the possibility of competing obligation in the life of the citizen, and thereby reduce the cause of civil wars.     

The ‘Populist’ Right Challenge to Neoliberalism: Social Policy between a Rock and a Hard Place

This article looks at the rise of right populist politics in both developed and developing countries, and its implications for social policy. The author locates the cause for the right populist surge in the legacies of neoliberalism, paying particular attention to the way neoliberal reforms have affected popular attitudes towards politics. The commodification of politics and social services has stoked mass cynicism towards reigning neoliberal elites, creating receptive audiences for populist slogans to ‘drain the swamp’ at the heart of governments. More controversially, the author argues that popular resentments toward neoliberal social policies based on the recognition of the rights of women, minorities, migrants and the poor have made communities susceptible to the racist and misogynist messages of the right populists. Through case studies looking at the United States, Brazil and the Philippines the author argues that the biggest impact of right populists on social policies can be found in their discourses and authoritarian practices of social exclusion.     

Introduction to the themed section ‘digital heritage and the public’

Abstract

This introductory essay for the themed issue “Digital Heritage and the Public” begins by alluding to the profound effect of the digital revolution in how society manages the production, administration, publication and access to information. The effect on heritage is noticeable in all fields. The process of digitalisation, traceable from the early days in the 1960s, is increasingly impinging on the relationship between the professionals and the public. Critics have debated on the advantages and challenges of the digital revolution in the heritage field. Related to that discussion, in this themed issue the first article by Taylor and Gibson questions whether the assumption often made inextricably linking the digital media with democracy is correct. This contribution is followed by two others in focusing on case studies of use of digital media in heritage. Mazel explains about three projects in which their use has facilitated access and encouraged public participation to rock art sites in Northern England. In the last article of this issue, Purkis argues that in the ‘Local People’ exhibition she organised in Derry/Londonderry, digital media allowed the creation of heritage out of people’s ordinary lives. This way of disrupting ideas of heritage also turned the museum into a contact zone, a place for cultural and social mediation.     

‘‘The Acceptable Face of the Unintelligible’: Intermediality and the Science Play’

Abstract

The limitations of the ‘science-in-theatre’ genre is explored and the concept of the intermedial science play is introduced as an alternative to conventional science plays. How the science-in-theatre play dampens the mediality of the stage in order to establish a specific contract with its audience in order to realize what Carl Djerassi calls ‘didactic realism’ is considered. By virtue of the dramatic form and the didacticism it establishes, the science-in-theatre play limits the means by which audiences may encounter and enjoy responding to science. In particular, when staging concepts from the postclassical sciences, the intermedial science play offers artists and spectators new approaches to the sciences of infinities, complexity and emergence whilst also establishing a new, interactive contract with the audience based on forms of pedagogy associated with the thinking of Jacques Rancière. Using the media theory of Peter Boenisch and others, intermediality is identified as more than the mere presence of multimedia, but in terms of the effects it produce on the sensorium of the spectator.     

‘So Much to Do’: Oxford and the Wills of Cecil Rhodes

Cecil Rhodes (1853–1902) safeguarded his imperial vision with a series of wills. Sensing that his life would be relatively short, he left to his trustees the task of carrying out his wishes after his death. He also left a substantial fortune to make it possible. This article uses those wills to follow the development of Rhodes’ ‘big idea’, the creation of a secret society to promote imperial expansion, from its birth in Oxford to the final compromise of the Rhodes Scholarships. The article questions the existence of a much-quoted teenage will, examines the influences on Rhodes at Oxford that led to the famous ‘Confession of Faith’ will and identifies a link between the 1892 will and the Mandela Rhodes scholarships founded in 2003.     

Organizing the ‘people’s community’: the NSDAP and the ‘ethnic Germans’ in Nazi-occupied territories

ABSTRACT

This article refers to recent scholarly debates on the term ‘people’s community’ (Volksgemeinschaft), which throughout the Third Reich remained rather vague and encompassed often contradictory purposes. It deals with the relations between the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) and some of the ‘ethnic German’ (volksdeutsche) organizations to exemplify how German society should be transformed into a ‘people’s community’ after 1933. Thus, it is necessary to analyse the ‘people’s community’ not by asking whether or not its different purposes were realized, but by examining its functions in the Nazi regime. This functional analysis of the ‘people’s community’ focuses on the NSDAP and its relations with ‘ethnic German’ organizations after 1933, primarily in Nazi-occupied territories during the Second World War. First, the article describes the NSDAP’s efforts to align the ‘Germans abroad’ (Auslandsdeutsche) after the seizure of power and to organize the German Front (Deutsche Front) in the Saar territories in 1934/35—an experience serving as a blueprint for the relations between the NSDAP and ‘ethnic German’ organizations during the Second World War. Second, it evaluates the creation of the Ethnic German Community (Volksdeutsche Gemeinschaft) in the General Government and its efforts to organize ‘ethnic Germans’. Third, it interprets the foundation of the German People’s Community (Deutsche Volksgemeinschaft) in Lorraine and its ongoing attempts to establish a racial hierarchy of ‘ethnic Germans’ over the autochthonous French population. Fourth, it looks at the connection between the Germanization of Lower Styria and the launch of the Styrian Homeland Union (Steirischer Heimatbund) as an ‘ethnic German’ movement. The article argues that the NSDAP’s operational routines regarding both the German population and the ‘ethnic Germans’ living in the occupied territories shaped the ‘people’s community’.