Academic literature on the topic 'Instrumentalization of others'

This article develops critical feminist engagement with human security by interrogating the taken-for-granted category of the ‘human’ therein. Failure to reflectively deconstruct this category has contributed to human security’s reproduction of dominant norms and the emptiness of its apparent radical promise. The article shows how the ‘human’ has historically been constructed as an exclusionary – and fundamentally gendered – category, and examines its construction in human security discourse and the capabilities approach in which the latter is rooted, as well as its discursive effects. The article troubles the model of the autonomous, rational human subject who is the bearer of capabilities, which human security inherits from the liberal humanist tradition of thought, and which obscures the matrices of power through which individuals become socially differentiated. It then considers the implication of human security in demarcating differences as ‘morally relevant’, including its instrumentalization in the ‘war on terror’.

This paper departs from the thesis that the notion of democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been damaged dramatically during the 17 years after the war. The paper explores major factors that contribute to the crisis of democratic rule in Bosnia and thus focuses on a) structural problems of the constitution agreed to at Dayton and the resulting dysfunctional government, b) a permanent political crisis based on the instrumentalization of ethno-nationalism paired with c) prolonged socio-economic problems. As the paper shows the combination of all these factors results in a hybrid form of governance best described as electoral democracy or electoral ethnocracy. Such a system has a specific kind of its own logic and functionality; it is able to satisfy certain needs of constituencies while neglecting others, thus creating a permanent crisis in the country and leaving it in limbo.

Abstract The question of why bad things happen (to good people) has puzzled individuals over generations and across different cultures. The most popular approach is to turn the issue into a question about God: Why does he allow bad things that lead to the suffering of often innocent bystanders? Some have drawn conclusions that there can be no God. These attempts that seek to find meaning in suffering are called theodicies. Thus, theodicies promise that the torment of the innocent is not in vain. In this article, I argue that theodicy as a viewpoint, independent of its intention, does injustice to the experience of the sufferer. Furthermore, an Adornian approach to suffering avoids the instrumentalization of others’ suffering and that instead of relating to another person’s suffering through theodicy, Adorno’s notion of non-identity opens up an alternative, non-coercive avenue.

This paper explores violence against women in the context of partner relationships, through testimonies of professionals from Social Services in five towns in the province of Alicante (Spain), and also of the psychologists who participate in the coordination and implementation of two intervention programs for inmate aggressors in Valencia and Alicante (Spain). Our analysis focuses on the linkages between gender and certain emotional deficits in men who mistreat women in intimacy. Among these deficits, we have stressed: lack of sense of responsibility for one’s own actions, lack of empathy, cognitive distortions related to a sexist system of values, convergence of violence as a strategy and lack of personal abilities, troubled view of the world and of the relationships with others, and emotional constriction. We suggest that the non-development of basic emotional abilities by these men, while connected with their gender socialization, requires particular attention for the purpose of treatment and prevention of this type of violence. Regarding relationships with gender-based violence, other relevant issues are raised, such as instrumentalization of women and dependence.

The instrumentalization of nineteenth-century literary historiography in the project of literary and cultural nation building has become a critical commonplace, as Claudio Guillén (6) and David Perkins (4), among many others, have outlined. Beginning with John Neal's American Writers (1824–25), nineteenth-century histories of North American literature emphatically embraced this nationalist paradigm, striving to identify and defend the “American” qualities in America's newly emergent national literature. But when called on, at the beginning of the twentieth century, to justify the establishment of American literature departments in universities across the country, literary histories were, especially during the 1920s and 1930s, under even greater pressure to prove the extent to which American literature is indeed American (Vanderbilt 186–91). Although the rise of New Criticism and the influence of Russian formalism after World War II saw a temporary setback to American historiographical nationalism (Spengemann, Mirror 154), the subsequent institutionalization of American studies took place in the context of the cold war, and the 1960s, in particular, brought a renewed emphasis on the (for the most part nationally oriented) sociopolitical and historical contextualization of American literature. And even the shift to intra-American cultural pluralism in the wake of trans- and subnational challenges to traditional notions of the nation-state throughout the past few decades has all too frequently been accompanied by renewed attempts to establish a revised version of historiographical nationalism.

Drawing on the explanation already offered for the confusion of positivism with realism in the epistemological imagination of the author and founder of postmodern anthropology, the paper analyzes the moral implications of dealing with problems characteristic of the philosophy of science by literary-theoretical means. The transdisciplinary migration of "realism" from literary theory to social science methodology has produced a whole new history of anthropology. The history of pre-postmodern anthropology constructed in this manner can be said to fit the register of some sort of comparative-cultural theory of retroactive moral judgement, complementing postmodern anthropology as a general theory of writing by political subjects, so that the theoretical-methodological dilemmas of postmodern anthropology do not constitute proof of the legitimacy of a holistic interpretation of the discipline’s founders’ intentions, but rather lead to neo-pyrrhonic, formalistic endeavours to uphold, by respecting academic trappings, the academic authority of the discipline whose subject, method and purpose, as a rule, even colleagues from adjacent departments for various reasons fail to understand. In the paper, evidence for this is derived from Clifford's writing of Malinowski, and the moral implications of the unfortunate analogy between the writing of political subjects and the writing of disciplinary founders are followed through. The paper then goes on to explain that the critique of the possibilities of misuse, particularly through political instrumentalization, of anthropological fictions as evidence of Others did not have to come at the cost of sacrificing the semblance of continuity in the establishment of anthropology as a proper academic discipline.

Conceptualizing the social and political possibilities of digital mass-mediated communication in modern societies has generated a critical debate, ranging from proponents who conceive of its promising profound potential to sceptics who dismiss it as a trivial sociopolitical vacuity. For some observers in the field, social media has been mobilized to maintain hegemonic structures through a ‘weaponization’ of popular narratives on behalf of the dominant political elite. For others, social media discourse has signalled the end of grand narratives of political ideology, and has ultimately ushered in the age of subjective digital narcissism not unlike that of consumer culture in late capitalist societies. Beyond these two broader frameworks of inquiry, this article seeks to investigate the critical agency, popular sovereignty and transformative possibilities in socio-digital discourse in the modern Arab Gulf region. Recognizing the dominant and residual ideology within social media narratives, the article deploys Raymond Williams’ critical and insightful concept of ‘structures of feeling’ in order to critically assess the alternative emergent collective expressions that diverge from, yet respond to, hegemonic and dominant discourse. One of the main goals of this article, therefore, is to go beyond the conventional analysis of ‘utopian versus dystopian’ binary instrumentalization of social media in the region, to challenge the claim that media (both as technology and as technique) determine social and political consciousness. More specifically, and in contrast to McLuhan’s famed dictum that ‘the medium is the message’, this article contends that digital and social media virtues and contributions are not confined to the instrumental communication that serves practical purposes. Rather, and more fundamentally, digital and social media involve the practices and lived experiences of individuals, culture and society, especially those that constitute the formations of collective and emergent identities.

The theory of society-community stands in the centre of the „social” life. It however also stands in the centre of Tönnies’s positive work itself. This potentiation gives this theory a vitality that is looking for its equivalent and to which little is changed if its presence is not perceived accordingly in every corresponding context. Tönnies is one of the first most important social scientists, who was primarily concerned with being able to investigate society with a strictly scientific character. So he was already therefore much more interested in the optimal way of knowledge than in the diverse concrete results or even in the theoretical possibility of generalization of these results. The society-community theory is an epochal achievement, its result one of the bases of the social existence. It is certainly there, that the rare „open relationship structure” of both these categories is playing. Like many others, we decide to campaign against the political instrumentalization of the society-community theory, there is by no means any denying the fact, that it has extremely deeply secured this dichotomy in the structure-building principles of the political discourse. We see the force of the debate on the ideal level: diabolization and idealization are alternating in symmetrical order obvious. The first social scientists were in multiple paradoxical situations. The first paradox consisted in the fact, that had a very clear idea of a „science” of the society. Because however, such a „science” was not yet existing, they were constrained to make „philosophically” the first steps, but of course not how the „right” philosophers would have done them. The other paradox and eternally opened question are why the „society” as the object remained temporally so much behind the „nature” as an object. It is also hardly less interesting, why the new social sciences did not already emerge in Marx’s environment. The historically belated social science experiences in the medium of this situation a vocation to become a pioneer. Simmel also adheres consistently to his often formulated youth insight that a „new science” will emerge in any case around the society.

Michael Gallope’s book Deep Refrains is an in-depth study of the ineffable core of musical experience.4 But it engages ineffability without eliminating the pragmatic material of music’s economic, technological and even ethical mediations; and it posits a synergistic relationship between these realms. Gallope casts equal doubt on the determinism that construes music’s ineffability as wholly absorbed in mediation and on the vitalism that construes it as radically open. Framed by and theoretically grounded in the thinking of four twentieth-century philosophers (Ernst Bloch, Theodor W. Adorno, Vladimir Jankélévitch and Gilles Deleuze), the book deftly steers between the Scylla of music’s irreducible sensuous materiality (and its attendant invitation to decipherment) and the Charybdis of its elusive ineffability (and its attendant vanishing act in the face of decipherment). The book begins by reflecting on the fascinations and prohibitions of the harmoniaia in ancient Greek philosophy. Already here, Gallope revises the standard interpretation of these founding texts, demonstrating the ways in which Socrates, Glaucon, Aristotle and others in fact consider music as at once deeply mysterious and also strictly rule-governed. This conception of music’sperplexing precision is shown to be shared in ‘global’ contexts less available to music history, including (for example) the Ikhwan Al-Safa, an eleventh-century priesthood of Islamic scholars. At the same time, Gallope draws attention to the continuity between simplified taxonomies of the ancients and the instrumentalization of their axioms for contemporary engagements with affect, so rampant in the era of emerging neuromedia. Instead of recoiling from music’s indeterminacy (retreating to silence, say, or insisting on music’s unspeakable mystery), Gallope attempts to unpack the critical potential at the heart of auditory experience. On the other hand, he argues, such potential is not harnessed by marking the movements of music’s conceptual nomenclatures alone. Noting that music ‘never speaks like a language, nor is it entirely nonlinguistic’, Gallope seeks to account for the specificity of its ‘vague impact’.5 In other words, while there is a residue of conceptual mediation at work in all sonic encounter, music’s ‘sensory impact’ cannot be subsumed by that residue.

Mohammad Arkoun’s eight essays appearing in The Unthought in ContemporaryIslamic Thought are gates leading into a city. In this case, thecity is the deeply multifarious metropolis called Islam – a source of identityand pride for its adherents and, equally, a source of concern andcuriosity for those outside of its periphery. Throughout his life, Arkounhas placed himself on the ramparts and straddled the walls, leading someto call him an enemy spy and others to think of him as a brave pioneerinto the unknown. The past few years have seen an unheralded evaluationof Islam’s role in this globalized world. Arkoun’s eight essays, reflectinga lifetime in the field of Islamic studies, concern themselves with a hostof issues enveloping the world of Islam: Qur’anic studies, revelation,belief, authority, power, law, and civil society.The idea of unthought is a creative encapsulation of those diseases thathe believes are plaguing Islam. He defines unthought as the power employedby the traditional ulama and ideological Islamic states in order to guaranteethat a deeply dogmatic and unapproachable version of Islam is protectedfrom all intellectual and scientific analysis. Arkoun uses unthought to referto “an Islam that is isolated from the most elementary historical reasoning,linguistic analysis or anthropological decoding” (p. 308).The first essay, “A Critical Introduction to Qur’anic Studies,” is a sort ofoutline of his ideas. It expresses Arkoun’s suggestion that “we need to artic -ulate the cognitive, critical strategies used by social sciences of the ‘metamodern’sort to analyze, in thorough fashion, the structure and form of theQur’an, the ‘differentiated corpora of Meccan and Medinan revelation, the‘psychology of knowledge,’ the notions of sin, virtue, and interpersonal rela -tions, and finally everything from society, law, culture to warfare, commerceand children” (p. 44). The scope is indeed overwhelmingly broad. Arkounwants the preferred current mode of analytic evaluation in the social sciences– deconstruction, hermeneutics, and their various poststructuralist relatives– to be applied to Islamic studies. The Qu’ran, he argues, has becomeheavily loaded by “legalistic instrumentalization, and the ideological manipulationsof contemporary political movements” (p. 45).On the one hand, he is concerned about the loss of critical Qur’anicreading; however, he is equally wary of carte-blanche dismissals of Islam ...

De nos jours omniprésent sur la scène politique, le cynisme fut depuis son origine l’objet de polémiques. Le mode de vie scandaleux auquel il est associé pose la question de l’appartenance ou non de Diogène et des Cyniques à la philosophie. Par ailleurs, qu’a à voir le cynisme des sociétés actuelles avec celui que pratiquait Diogène ? Si des analystes situent au siècle des Lumières l’émergence d’une nouvelle conception du cynisme propre à la modernité, peu d’études historiques ont été menées sur la question. Il importe donc de retourner aux sources et de mesurer la validité de cette hypothèse. Par une étude de l’histoire du cynisme et de sa transmission, nous retraçons l’évolution des enjeux au cœur du mouvement cynique et de sa postérité, et présentons une synthèse des significations du cynisme ainsi que des tensions qu’elles comportent. De nombreuses références permettent de définir la place qu’occupe le cynisme au XVIIIe siècle. Les auteurs des Lumières se sont réappropriés l’antique sagesse de Diogène et ont voulu concilier son impudique franchise aux exigences de la sociabilité. Ainsi, l’étude de la réception du cynisme au siècle des Lumières doit tenir compte des débats moraux de l’époque. Visant l’élaboration d’une morale matérialiste sur un fondement naturel, les Philosophes ont tâché de contourner les problèmes de l’amoralisme révélés par le constat de La Mettrie selon lequel il y a inadéquation entre bonheur et vertu. Pour ce faire, Helvétius réduit la portée des déterminismes liés à l’organisation, en soulignant l’importance des facteurs externes dans la gestion des comportements ; Diderot et D’Holbach mettent l’accent sur la sociabilité afin d’assurer l’inhérence d’un fondement moral chez l’être humain, renforçant un désaccord déjà profond entre le cynisme et les idéaux des Lumières. Or, cette approche est-elle généralisée ? Ou le cynisme des Lumières est-il sujet à des variantes selon les auteurs ? Cette thèse se propose d’étudier, par l’analyse des occurrences du cynisme dans les textes de la France des Lumières, les différentes acceptions du cynisme, pour cerner les enjeux auxquels elles s’attachent. Des textes tels qu’Aihcrappih de Godart de Beauchamps, Le Diogène décent de Prémontval, le Socrate en délire de Wieland, Le cynique moderne de Cœtlogon, Le désapprobateur de Castilhon, Le cosmopolite de Fougeret de Monbron, Le paysan perverti de Restif de la Bretonne et Arlequin Diogène de Saint-Just seront pris en considération. Ils s’ajouteront à une étude du cynisme chez Diderot, chez qui la thématique parcourt l’ensemble de l’œuvre et atteint son expression la plus achevée dans Le neveu de Rameau. Par ses doutes, Diderot trouve également sa place dans l’étude des critiques des Lumières qu’ont formulées Rousseau et Sade, chez qui l’on évalue la pertinence de l’enjeu cynique. Il ressort de cette thèse que les acceptions moderne et contemporaine du cynisme comportent des distinctions conceptuelles qui nous interdisent de les amalgamer. Notre analyse du cynisme dans le contexte français des Lumières montre que l’on est, jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, en présence d’une conception typiquement moderne du cynisme, laquelle met l’accent sur la redécouverte de l’impudeur de Diogène. Plus précisément, le cynisme se caractérise, au XVIIIe siècle, par un repli misanthrope et solitaire, lequel s’oppose à l’optimisme humaniste des Philosophes. Il est l’expression d’un rejet de la sociabilité mise de l’avant par ces derniers, en réponse au constat de corruption de la société. S’il est possible d’y situer l’émergence d’une nouvelle conception du cynisme, c’est donc seulement dans la mesure où les débats liés à l’élaboration d’une morale matérialiste, fondée en intérêt ou en sentiment, montrent que chacun de ces fondements comportent des failles, et non parce que certains auteurs des Lumières auraient entendu par cynisme ce que nous entendons aujourd’hui. Tout se passe comme si l’homme désabusé, qui tient pour acquis l’incorrigibilité de sa nature et de la société, choisissant d’en tirer profit malgré l’immoralisme que cela comporte, avait forgé le statut de cynique postmoderne. Cela rompt avec la tradition qui, jusqu’à la fin de l’époque moderne, tient le Cynique pour une figure d’un dire vrai fondamentalement désapprobateur du genre humain. Si l’impudeur poussée dans ses derniers retranchements conduit le cynique à n’éprouver aucune honte à mentir, il poursuit en cela la devise d’altération des valeurs initiée par Diogène, mais contribue désormais au maintien d’un statu quo sur l’état de corruption de la société qu’aucun cynique, ancien ou moderne, n’aurait accepté de taire.
Now pervasive on the political scene, cynicism has been contentious from its beginnings. The scandalous way of living to which it is linked raise the issue of whether or not Diogenes and the Cynics must be considered as part of the history of philosophy. Besides, what do today’s cynical practices share with those of Diogenes? Some interprets situate the emergence of a new conception of cynicism peculiar to modernity during the Enlightenment, but few historical studies have been centered on this question. It is consequently important to return to the sources of cynicism to measure this hypothesis’ validity. Through a study of cynicism’s history and its transmission we trace the evolution of the major issues at the core of cynic movement and its posterity, and present a synthesis of its significations and their internal tensions. Many references allow us to define the place that cynicism occupies within the XVIIIth century. Philosophers have tried to reclaim Diogenes’ antique wisdom while also accommodating his shameless frankness to the requirements of sociability. The study of the reception of cynicism in the XVIIIth century french Enlightenment must therefore be seen within the scope of the moral debates of that time. Those debates aim to elaborate a materialist moral on a natural basis, trying in doing so to tackle the problem of amoralism revealed by La Mettrie’s statement of the inadequacy between happiness and virtue. To do that, Helvetius reduces the scope of natural determinisms by underlining the importance of exterior factors when managing behaviors. Diderot and D’Holbach, on their part, emphasize the notion of sociability to make sure there’s a moral sense within human nature itself; this belief reinforces an already profound disagreement between the ideals of Enlightenment and cynicism. But is this approach that widespread? Or is cynicism subject to vary according to authors? This thesis proposes, by studying the occurrences of cynicism in French Enlightenment’s texts, to give an account of its different meanings in order to identify the issues that are put forward. Therefore, texts such as Aihcrappih by Godart de Beauchamps, Le Diogène décent by Prémontval, Le Socrate en délire by Wieland, Le cynique moderne by Cœtlogon, Le désapprobateur by Castilhon, Le cosmopolite by Fougeret de Monbron, Le paysan perverti by Restif de la Bretonne, and Arlequin Diogène by Saint-Just will be taken into account, as will be cynicism in Diderot’s texts; this thematic is present in his whole work, Le neveu de Rameau being the most achieved expression of it. Exposing his doubts, Diderot also finds its place in our exposition of the Enlightenment’s critics as they have been formulated by Rousseau and Sade; we’ll also analyze the relevance of their cynical stakes. The conclusion of this thesis is that the modern and contemporary meanings of cynicism entail important conceptual distinctions that forbid us to amalgamate them. Our analysis of cynicism in French Enlightenment’s texts shows that up until the end of the XVIIIth century, we are faced with a modern conception of cynicism that rests to a considerable extent upon the rediscovery of Diogene’s immodesty. More precisely, the XVIIIth century cynicism can be characterized by a solitary and misanthropic withdrawal, which opposes the Philosophers’ humanist optimism. Cynicism is therefore a rejection of sociability, a value put forward by Philosophers in response to the general state of corruption of society. In other words, if one can locate the emergence of a new form of cynicism in the Enlightenment, it’s not that some authors understood cynicism as we do now: it is because the debates linked with the construction of a materialist conception of morality, be it be founded on interests or sentiments, show that these fundaments carry some weaknesses. It is as though the disillusioned man who takes for granted the incorrigibility of nature and society and chooses to take advantage of it despite the immorality of doing so has given birth to the postmodern cynic. This is he who breaks with a tradition which, up to the modern era, considered the cynic as the figure of a blunt truth teller, disapproving of mankind. If immodesty, driven into a corner, leads the postmodern cynic to shamelessness in lying, he in a sense pursues the motto of the alteration of values initiated by Diogenes, but now contributes to maintain the corruption of society, which no cynic, may he be ancient or modern, would have accepted to silence.

This chapter develops Augustine’s view of neighbor-love and its tasks. Neighbor-love operates on the same principles of attraction to beauty and formation by love as love for Christ and love amongst Christ’s ecclesial members (described, respectively, in Chapters 3 and 4). The intimate link between love of God and love of neighbor in the context of the voyage to the homeland reflects the nature of those loves as both earthly and eschatological. This chapter shows how the reading of the pilgrimage image elaborated in the book resolves a long-standing debate on Augustine’s use–enjoyment distinction and corresponding vision of neighbor-love, in response to a prominent interpretation by Oliver O’Donovan. I argue that the pilgrimage image displays the continuity of earthly and eschatological love for both God and neighbor, and in so doing, offers a resource for resisting the disordering dangers of both idolatry and instrumentalization in loving others.

As a sovereign country, Mozambique initially relied on international solidarity and managed its donor relations well. Donor dependency entailed some loss of agency for the government as it allowed donors to challenge its capacity but never its authority. However, in the last decade, donor countries have expressed disappointment with reforms and challenged the government’s legitimacy. This is not only because of developments in Mozambique. Donor countries have become less enthusiastic about long-term, harmonized development cooperation and less concerned with aid effectiveness for poverty alleviation and inclusive growth. Aid budgets are under pressure and development finance is linked more to other donor countries’ foreign policy concerns, especially security and commerce. Mozambique should expect increasing instrumentalization of aid budgets by donors. It must be able to address its partners’ concerns other than those of poverty alleviation, human rights, and democracy and carefully weigh conflicting interests of its partners against its own long-term interests. The institutions Mozambique developed to deal with donors are not well suited to today’s challenges. They focus on less relevant areas of the relationship with foreign countries, which often serve other agendas. Reforms could start with strengthening Mozambique’s foreign service as a genuine coordinator of foreign relations and the establishment of greater discipline around national plans and strategies. Institutionalizing strong links between the foreign ministry and key economic ministries under the leadership of the prime minister could help.

Manuel II Palaiologos was not only a Byzantine emperor but also a remarkably prolific rhetorician and theologian. His oeuvre included letters, treatises, dialogues, short poems and orations. This book deals with several of his texts shaped by a didactic intention to educate the emperor’s son and successor, John VIII Palaiologos. It is argued that the emperor constructed a rhetorical persona which he used in an attempt to compete with other contemporary power-brokers. While Manuel Palaiologos adhered to many rhetorical conventions of his day, he also reasserted the civic role of rhetoric. With a special focus on the first two decades of Manuel II Palaiologos’ rule, 1391–1417, the volume offers a new understanding of the imperial ethos in Byzantium by combining rhetorical analysis with investigation of social and political phenomena. The volume examines the changes in the Byzantine imperial idea by the end of the fourteenth century with a particular focus on the instrumentalization of the intellectual dimension of the imperial rule. It also seeks to integrate late Byzantine imperial visions into the bigger picture of Byzantine imperial ideology and to introduce analytical concepts from rhetorical, literary, and discursive theories.

This chapter studies submissive and abusive ways of using our natural authority to teach and advise, all averse to the freedom of philosophizing. In submissive uses, we reinforce our own lack of control over our own free judgment. They are associated with what Spinoza describes as “preoccupied” or “prejudiced” minds. Such preoccupation and prejudice are contrasted with the integrity and self-contentment of minds in control of their own free judgment. In abusive uses, we prevent others from exercising their freedom of judgment. Spinoza discusses them as “deception with evil intent” and “flattery.” The chapter resituates these notions in a complex context of classical sources and contemporary accounts of similar vices, most importantly humanist discussions of fraudulent political counsel. The chapter finally offers an account of how submissive and abusive uses of the natural authority to teach and advise relate to violent rule and the political instrumentalization of the mob.

Around the beginning of the twentieth century, there emerged an increasingly prevalent literary trope of a sound that cannot (or should not) be heard. This trope had its correlates in contemporary science and astrophysics, where the universe’s ‘background hum’ was conceptualized to make sense of the persistent radio static that scanners had made audible for the first time. But it also had a background in the literary tradition: Keats’ ‘spirit ditties of no tone’, Kleist’s ‘St Cecelia’s Day’, even the plugging of the oarsmen’s ears in Homer’s Odyssey. This chapter considers the proliferation of this trope in light of contemporary research into sound theory and the instrumentalization of sense perception in modernity, before turning more pointedly to think through the repercussions of Lacan’s il n’y a de cause que ce qui cloche in relation to ontology and the history of listening. It then examines in some detail the two writers – Kafka and Lovecraft – who, more than any others, sought a literary aesthetic adequate to grappling with this sound that cannot or should not be heard.

“Iconic Shade” addresses in a humorous way some of the ironies associated with writing and teaching about a literary “icon” such as Virginia Woolf in a volume dedicated to expanding our conception of literary modernism to include women writers beyond the “big three” (H.D., Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf). What happens when a previously marginalized writer becomes institutionalized in the canon? Or when previously marginalized scholars become absorbed and transformed by institutional structures that previously excluded them? Woolf herself wrote perceptively about the ambivalence of being situated both inside and outside of dominant culture. Her insights (communicated in her critical chapters) might be helpful to those of us who straddle the line between belonging and marginalization in dominant culture, and who are often tasked with what Sara Ahmed has called “diversity work” within academe. While diversity work is often painful and thankless, the public university is nevertheless still an important site to protect from neoliberal instrumentalization, as it is one of the few places where the democratizing hope of liberal education is still (if in some cases barely) alive.

This concluding chapter discusses the theoretical implications of the book's findings. The proliferation of compensatory citizenship contributes to the commodification of nationality through multiple pathways: the emergence of citizenship industries, the exchange of citizenship for cash, and the instrumentalization of national belonging. Respondents exhibit an attitude which can be called “the sovereign individual”; they understand citizenship status as a domain for individual free choice and maximization of utility, free from traditional collective dictates. In other words, citizenship is changing from an ascribed to an achieved status. Ultimately, the legal acceptance of multiple nationality has made Western citizenship into a valuable practical resource for elites in other parts of the world, allowing them to convert local advantages into a new kind of capital that elevates their position within the global system of stratification.

This chapter examines identity politics in the Middle East, focusing on Arabism and other regional ethnicities as sources of political identity in the region. It argues that the persistence of conflict in the Middle East stems from the incongruence of identity and material structures. It shows how the interaction of identity with state formation and development has contributed to numerous wars, and most recently to the evolution of regional developments following the Arab Spring. The chapter first considers the problem of nation-building where identity and territory are incongruent before explaining how irredentism generates interstate conflict. It then explores the impact of identity on perceptions of interest in foreign policymaking, along with the rise, decline, and evolution of pan-Arabism. It also describes the instrumentalization of identity in the post-Arab uprising regional power struggle, asserting that identity has motivated, but material power structures have frustrated, efforts to create a regional security community.

This paper analyzes the novel Three Journeys (Izvanbrodski dnevnik) by Slobodan Novak, in terms of its narrative structure and literary devices that are being used to disfigure the speech produced by centres of power in both everyday and official communication. As opposed to political allegory, to which the novel has been linked so far, it is argued that a complex narrative structure and stylistically carefully crafted storytelling point to self-referentiality of the novel. The story of Magistar is framed by Magistar’s writing of manipulative techniques used by other characters against him. Writing is a successful resistance practice to manipulation of perception because it exposes the unspoken assumptions of the latter, as well as it reveals mechanisms of emotional abuse. The novel is read as a place of freedom from a one-sided interpretation referencing the political state in former Yugoslavia, demonstrating by its structure that freedom in literature is in fact entitlement of literature to be free of any type of instrumentalization.

The question of animal labour has emerged as an important topic in both the academic study of human–animal relations and in public debates about the rights of animals. While the human use of animal labour has been a site of intense instrumentalization and exploitation, some people argue that (good) work can be a site of cooperation, mutual flourishing, and shared social membership between humans and animals, and that recognizing animals as ‘workers’ could have a transformative effect on our relationships with them. This introductory chapter explores some of the developments in animal ethics and animal studies that have informed this new interest in animal labour, and in particular how animal labour can be seen as overcoming the ‘welfarist–abolitionist’ dichotomy that dominates the field. It also explores some of the obvious challenges and dilemmas that animal labour raises, including questions of consent, labour rights, and the link to other social justice movements. The chapter concludes with a summary of the remaining chapters in the volume, and how each contributes to a richer understanding of the potential for animal labour to serve as a frontier of interspecies justice.