Journal articles on the topic 'Utopian socialism – Philosophy'

Marx believed that what most clearly distinguished him and Engels from the nineteenth-century French socialists was that their version (or vision) of socialism was “scientific” while the latters' was Utopian. What he intended by this contrast is roughly the following: French socialists such as Proudhon and Fourier constructed elaborate visions of a future socialist society without an adequate understanding of existing capitalist society. For Marx, on the other hand, socialism was not an idea or an ideal to be realized, but a natural outgrowth of the existing capitalist order. Marx's historical materialism is a systematic attempt to discover the laws governing the inner dynamics of capitalism and class societies generally. Although this theory issues in a prediction of the ultimate triumph of socialism, it is a commonplace that Marx had little to say about the details of post-capitalist society. Nevertheless, some of its features can be discerned from his critical analysis of capitalism and what its replacement entails.

How is one to set about the task of comparing capitalism and socialism in a systematic fashion? The contest between capitalism and socialism has many facets. It is both an intellectual debate about the relative merits of models of hypothetical social systems and a real and substantive historical struggle between two groups of states seen as representing capitalism and socialism. Perhaps the intellectual challenge to capitalism thrown down by Marxist thinkers and the “cold war” contest between the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. are such diverse phenomena that it is pointless and even misleading to try to treat them as part of a single problem. However, I believe that the dieoretical and historical aspects of the capitalism/socialism issue are directly related. I would argue that a full understanding of, say, the cold war is not possible without understanding the socialist critique of capitalism – and that a purely abstract comparison of capitalist and socialist models would fail to do justice to the historical and empirical essence of these two grand conceptual schemas.In Section I, I expand upon these arguments, seeking to convince Utopian socialists that they should not continue to rely upon invocations of a hypothetical future, but must come up with some empirical examples of what socialism is and how it works. After all, it is more than a hundred years since Marx and Engels railed against Utopian socialists in favor of socialist arguments based on empirical reality. This is not to say that Marx and Engels were crude empiricists, accepting “facts” at face value.

The present paper reconstructs the peculiarities of Marx’s critique of classical political economy. The first section recalls three main intellectual sources of Marxism: Classical German Philosophy, French Utopian Socialism, and English Classical Political Economy. The second section focuses on reasons why the Marxian thought has often been considered as passé. The third part shows that many examples of downgrading or even rejecting Marx’s propositions resulted from misunderstanding of the peculiarities of his method of investigation. Finally, the paper analyses possibilities of bringing back the Marx’s critique of political economy into scientific interests, for instance, in the form of modern crisis theory.

Domesticating Socialism and the Senses in Jane Hume Clapperton's Margaret Dunmore: Or, A Socialist Home Clapperton's utopian novel, Margaret Dunmore: Or, A Socialist Home (1888), provides a good example of the way in which matters of everyday life – food, childcare, the home – were increasingly implicated in agendas for social transformation in the fin-de-siècle period, and seen as problems that could be solved by modernity. The varying programmes for change offered by socialists and feminists in this period, however, could reflect sharply divergent views of the pleasures and politics of everyday life, and Clapperton's novel assumes a disparity between ‘social happiness’ and the sensory experience of the individual that warrants examination. Beginning with an overview of Clapperton's theory of ‘conscious’ evolution which takes the home as the locus of social transformation, this essay will focus on the place of the senses and emotions in Margaret Dunmore, written to exemplify Clapperton's political philosophy of ‘Scientific Meliorism’ which combined socialism and feminism with evolutionary and eugenic theory. In this novel, the individual's sensory experience poses a threat to the well-being of the ideal community. Unlike emotions, which Clapperton depicts as amenable to conscious adaptation through a combination of social correction and self-scrutiny, sensory experience is inherently anti-social, immune to the claims of service to others which was crucial to Clapperton's understanding of socialism. From childcare to cooking, forms of sensory deprivation are heralded as the key to efficiently resolving the disorder or conflict caused by over-stimulation or self-indulgence. As a result, despite Clapperton's emphasis on the ‘evolution of happiness’, the value placed on rationality, technology, and self-control over convivial pleasures means that the constrictions and inequities of bourgeois domesticity are merely reconfigured rather than abolished.

The article proposes the analysis of the development of the philosophy of education in the Third Reich, including its theoretical origin with corresponding social, cultural and political contexts. The leading role of the political romantics is showed in this process with its educational implications. This research has a wide-spread empirical background including narrative interviews with the former participants of the educational processes which are described both on the factual and interpretative level. The semantics and linguistic preferences of national-socialism used in its philosophy of education show the pedagogical intentions grounded on the race theory. The “folk view of world” in the period of the national-social movement was later changed into the philosophy of political education and folk-political anthropology (E. Krieck), where the concept folk community with its leader (Führer) is a constitutive one and the functional education has become a priority before the intentional strategies. The deformation of bourgeois human ideal through returning to the myth of origin and Nietzsche’s concept of the superman is remarkable in the new contrary ideals of “the Soldier” (A. Baeumler) and the “Worker”(E. Jünger) used in the educational practices of the national-socialism with the priority of the functional education. The identification of the “soldier way of life” as the representation of Nordic race with the pedagogical reality had consequences in the curriculum philosophy of schools and universities, where the physical education and the race theory have displaced the traditional subjects studies and their research fields, especially after their synchronic switching on the totalitarian state, which must understand itself as the educational one created for the German race. The national-socialist political pedagogic has the features of the “total mobilization” for the total war as the free decision of young men ready to die for Hitler’s Germany. Emphasizing of the self-activities, self-control, self-aid and self-education in the national-pedagogical directives is connected with the utopian dream of automatically fulfillment of all educational plans with the intention to create a new human for the new society. The new schools organized under national-socialism have showed the regress in comparison with educational institutions of the Weimar republic, where the educational system has showed more variety and flexibility as the chaotic improvisations of the educational reformers of the Third Reich with their fiction of the educational philosophy, which was only the well-known maid of the new political theology.

Utopia is one of the most stable archetypical cultural concepts because it reflects the mankind’s desire to improve their world, find a better way of social organization and return to the paradise lost. The idea of the “general welfare domain” had been present in myths and religions of different peoples long before the term “Utopia” appeared as such. Utopian ideals were extremely typical of the European culture due to its extroversion and the aspiration for a more rational existence. Utopia demonstrates a number of very typical features including commonality, special isolation, timelessness (absence of historical times), autarchy (self-sufficiency, independence from the outer world, etc. including the separation from people), urbanism, regimentation and globality. Since XVI-XVII centuries the image of an ideal society has shaped as a city on an island. As a city quite often looks like an ideally transformable space, architectural Utopia plays a very specific role: it personifies the social Utopia. City-planning interpretation of Thomas Moor’s ideas presented a big interest for his contemporaries. Later there were many projects of “ideal” cities that were developed by Italian Renaissance architects. The XVIII century was marked by the appearance of Utopian socialist philosophy. A part of its supporters used to think that metropolitan cities could make a sound foundation for the development of industrial civilization, others advocated the networks of small independent communities. In Russia the first belletristic Utopias appeared in the XVIII century. They continued West-European traditions and preserved all traits of a classical Utopia, however, they acquired national color. All of them pictured an ideal future society that was embodied in new city types. Russian architectural Utopias are closely connected with social processes that predetermined the development of European culture in general. National Utopian architecture had its prime time after the revolution when architects got opportunities to implement their bold ideas

The author first briefly outlines what he considers to be the defining features of transmodernism and its relationship both to postmodernism and to Marxism. He then suggests that transmodern interpretations of the legacy of the European invasions of the Americas are illuminating, as is Marxism, in providing an understanding of how the imperialism in which contemporary US foreign policy is currently engaged has a specific and long-standing genealogy. However, he argues that the Marxist concept of racialisation is more convincing in explaining the source of violence against the Other than the transmodern positing of ‘basic narcissism’ as the source. Next, he contrasts the transmodern perception of liberal democracy with Marxist analyses of democratic socialism. After this, he challenges transmodernism's conception of Marxism as an imposed and utopian philosophy locked within modernism. He concludes with a consideration of the political and economic choices open to us, and, with respect to these choices, the implications of both transmodernism and Marxism for sustaining resistance to neo-liberal capitalism and US imperialism within teacher education.

H. G. Wells was one of the most celebrated writers in the world during the first half of the twentieth century. Famed for his innovative fiction, he was also an influential advocate of socialism and the world-state. What is much less well known is that he was a significant contributor to debates about the nature of social science. This article argues that Wells's account of social science in general, and sociology in particular, was shaped by an idiosyncratic philosophical pragmatism. In order to demonstrate how his philosophical arguments inflected his social thought, it explores his attack on prevailing theories of race, while also highlighting the limits of his analysis. The article concludes by tracing the reception of Wells's ideas among social scientists and political thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic. Although his program for utopian sociology attracted few disciples, his arguments about the dynamics of modern societies found a large audience.

Despite the widespread disenchantment with utopias, contemporary philosopher Axel Honneth argues that socialism still has a future. Honneth’s argument brings to mind late sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, who celebrated socialism as the active utopia of the modern epoch and the counter-culture to capitalism. However, while Bauman was disenchanted by the fall of the Soviet Union and almost gave up the very idea of a collective alternative, Honneth proposes a revision of socialism and a revival of its spirit, calling for a post-Marxist logic of historical experimentalism or a post-Marxist spirit of experimental socialism.

The term or concept of realism seems to be recurring in recent theoretical inquiries, from debates in philosophy and aesthetics to those in theory and practice of architecture. Since 2000, the architectural discourse has been concerned with a wide range of related issues coming from its own post-critical debates on utopianism and realism and the possibility of an 'utopian realism', as suggested by Reinhold Martin (2005). The debates on realism resonate in the architectural theory anew as a reflection on the Manifesto of New Realism by the philosopher Maurizio Ferraris from 2011. The questions of realism vs. postmodernism, "new realism" on the ashes of post-modernism, critical and operative notions of realism and the like, have been asked both through practices of contemporary architecture and through reconsideration of the socialist realism in history and theory of architecture. The thematic issue of SAJ: Architecture Utopia Realism aims to further the ongoing discussion on the relations of architecture with realism and utopia

Yakov V. Abramov, a theorist and practitioner of the culturalist trend, held a special position in the camp of the reformist populism of the 1880s–1890s. He argued the idea of developing “small deeds” into “great deeds” and justified the need to enlighten people’s consciousness and to change the principle of modern society’s existence peacefully yet fundamentally. Defining his own self-actualisation strategy in socially beneficial activities, he purposefully formed his own circle of reading which reflects the breadth of his interests and represents his integrated approach to the development of scientific knowledge. The materials of archival research show that Abramov actualised the social and educational functions of literature, relating the progressive development of Russia to people’s exposure to education and culture, back in the period of the formation of his ideology and democratic positions. Abramov developed his worldview learning the ideas of European Enlightenment and the theories of utopian socialism. Extracts from the writings of Montesquieu, Charles Fourier, Ferdinand Lassalle, and Louis Blanc testify to the social orientation of the spiritual and moral quests of the future populist ideologist and his critical attitude to the existing social system. While appreciating Montesquieu’s On the Spirit of the Laws as a product of intellectual activity, Abramov emphasised that not all Montesquieu’s ideas responded to the challenges of the new time and gave a clear preference to the works of modern European socialists. In the writings of Fourier, Lassalle, and Blanc, he found thoughts and ideas consonant with his thoughts about the domination of one class over the others established in the world, about the plight of the working masses not only in Russia, but also in other countries of the world. The problem of the “advantages of capital over labour”, the anti-human essence of the “open economy” and the laws of capitalist exploitation became objects of Abramov’s social analysis. In the writings of the utopian socialists, who argued for peaceful revolutions, one can see the genesis of Abramov’s philosophy of social evolutionism that proved the historical productivity of the peaceful “people’s movement forward” by means of developing education, culture, and economy in the name of a radical transformation of society and bringing humans to a higher level. Abramov’s surviving notebooks and diaries of the second half of the 1870s record a high level of sociophilosophical reflection, which largely determined the interpretation of the dialectic of “small and great deeds”, the practice of his real “work among the people”.

AbstractThe role of the ‘ideal’ in political philosophy is currently much discussed. These debates cast useful light on Mill's self-designation as ‘under the general designation of Socialist’. Considering Mill's assessment of potential property-relations on the grounds of their desirability, feasibility and ‘accessibility’ (disambiguated as ‘immediate-availability’, ‘eventual-availability’ and ‘conceivable-availability’) shows us not only how desirable and feasible he thought ‘utopian’ socialist schemes were, but which options we should implement. This, coupled with Mill's belief that a socialist ideal should guide social reforms (as the North Star guides mariners), reveals much more clearly the extent of his socialist commitments (even if he thought political economists would be concerned with forms of individual property for some time to come). Moreover, this framework for assessments of ‘ideal’ institutions makes a useful contribution to an ongoing contemporary debate.

Skiriama Tarptautiniams kooperatyvų metamsStraipsnyje nagrinėjamas kooperacijos sąjūdžio vaidmuo kapitalizmo raidoje. Nors šis procesas gali baigtis tobulo kapitalizmo sukūrimu, – jo vaizdą pateikia išsamios tobulai konkurencingų rinkų sistemos visuotinės pusiausvyros modelis neoklasikinėje ekonomikoje, kuris yra neoliberalios globalistinės politikos teorinio įkvėpimo šaltinis, – tikrajam kapitalizmui būdingos įvairios ydos, vadinamosios rinkos nesėkmės. Jų priežastys yra ne visų rinkų egzistavimas ir nepakankamas esamų rinkų išsivystymas, taip pat galios ir informacijos asimetrija realiose rinkose. Šių nesėkmių stebėjimas yra vienas iš geresnės alternatyvios ekonominės sistemos – socializmo – paieškų šaltinių. Du pagrindiniai socializmo modeliai yra dėl valdžios nesėkmių žlugęs valstybinis socializmas ir kooperatinis socializmas, kurį tik iš dalies (bet taip pat nesėkmingai) įgyvendino komunistinė Jugoslavija. Nors alternatyvios ekonomiškai pranašesnės už kapitalizmą ūkinės sistemos vizija yra utopinė, vartotojų, kredito ir vertikali gamybinė smulkiųjų gamintojų kooperacija gali geriau už valstybinį kapitalizmą neutralizuoti daugelį rinkos nesėkmių besivystančiose šalyse, kokia buvo ir tarpukario Lietuva. Pirmame straipsnio skirsnyje apžvelgiamos skirtingų ekonominės kooperacijos sričių institucijos, antrame analizuojamos kooperacijos sąjūdžio ideologinės doktrinos, trečiame lyginamos rinkos, valstybinės valdžios ir kooperacijos nesėkmės. Teigiama, kad stipri, nors ir klaidinga ideologija gali padėti sušvelninti kooperacijos nesėkmes – ištaisyti rinkos nesėkmes pasitelkiant valstybės remiamą kooperaciją. Ketvirtame skirsnyje šis teiginys iliustruojamas aptariant kooperacijos ekonominį vaidmenį tarpukario Lietuvoje, kur susiformavo savita periferinio kapitalizmo atmaina – valstybinis kooperatinis kapitalizmas.Pagrindiniai žodžiai: konkurencija, kooperacija, rinkos nesėkmės, valdžios nesėkmės, kooperacijos nesėkmės, kooperatinis socializmas, valstybinis kooperatinis kapitalizmas.Cooperation Against Market and Government Failures, or How to Build Good Capitalism Ahead of TimeZenonas NorkusSummaryThe paper discusses the role of the cooperation movement in the long-term development of capitalism. This process may end with the perfect capitalism as a complete system of perfectly competitive markets represented in the neoclassical general equilibrium model which is the theoretical source of inspiration for the neoliberal globalist policies. However, real capitalism is imperfect because of numerous market failures. Main causes of these failures are incompleteness and underdevelopment of markets, as well as power and informational asymmetries on the really existing markets. The observation of these imperfections is an inspiration source searching for an alternative and allegedly better socialist economic system. The two main models of socialism are state socialism, which has collapsed because of the massive government failures, and cooperative socialism, which was only partially realized in Communist Yugoslavia and also broke down. However, although the dream about the superior economic alternative to capitalism is an utopia, the consumer, credit and vertical production cooperation between small producers is superior to state capitalism in coping with market failures in the developing countries, interwar Lithuania (1918–1940) being an exemplary case for this statement. The first section of the paper provides the survey of the economic institutions of cooperation in various areas, the second one discusses the ideologies of cooperation movement. Then the comparison of the failures of market, government, and cooperation follows in the third section. Main conclusion is that strong (even if false) ideology can mitigate the failures of cooperation, empowering the cooperation movement helped by the state to correct market failures. In the concluding fourth section this statement is exemplified by the case study of the economic role of the cooperation movement in the interwar Lithuania, where this movement contributed to the building of a distinctive version of the peripheric capitalism – a state cooperative capitalism.Keywords: competition, cooperation, market failures, government failures, cooperation failures, cooperative socialism, state cooperative capitalism.

Exploring Nazism and its relationship with science and scientists is undoubtedly one of the most interesting research lines for historians studying Germany, scientists, and the elites. Indeed, for a long time «Nazi science» was considered the work of a minority of sages on the edge of madness and perversion, committed to political atrocities, without it affecting the rest of the German scientific landscape. But these assertions were brought down by numerous studies. On the one hand, only a negligible part of scientists refused to work for Nazi Germany: less than 1 % of university graduates resigned after the Machtergreifung, meaning that 99 % of university professors continued working in Nazified institutions. Anthropologists, physicians, historians, sociologists, linguists, and geographers benefited from research programmes that turned their disciplines into «legitimising sciences», i.e., «combatant sciences». The more or less certified commitment of many prominent scientific figures, such as the psychiatrist Johann Asperger or the physicist Werner Heisenberg, is not that surprising when we contextualise it with the broader history of elites. The scientific field was no exception in 1930s Germany: 1990s social history proved that the elites’ adherence to the National Socialist party and the Nazi racial determinism was connected to the great appeal of Nazi ideology’s appeasing belief system, but also to the existence of elitist organisations that allowed these specific circles to find a place for entre-soi socialisation and self-preservation. This is one of the great paradoxes of 1990s historiography. After mercilessly but fairly responding to the problems in Hannah Arendt’s work regarding Nazi «totalitarianism», social historiography tended to quietly confirm that National Socialism came to power by following the electoral strategy of a popular party, but with the support of extremely well-educated militant elites. That is how the party adapted to the most significant characteristic of totalitarian regimes. In the eyes of German philosophy, this structure was considered an unprecedented alliance between the masses and the elite. Deep down, how else can we define institutions such as the SS, the Ahnenerbe, or the Sicherheitsdienst? Or the Volkswissenschaftliche Arbeitskreis (“Population Ethnoscience Work Circle”), which grouped university specialists and SS officers to study the populations of some Eastern European territories with the aim to legitimise their conquest? Nazi science is not just a collection of skulls from exterminated Jewish citizens, nor is it a group of experts condemning entire populations like the Krymchak – a Jewish ethnic group from the Caucasus –, or indulgent speeches at university ceremonies, or inhumane medical experiments like submerging Soviet officers into freezing water in concentration camps. Nazi science is equivalent to daily acceptance, to the slow and thorough penetration of resignation and the commitment to an ideology that permeates everything adorned as a hopeful utopia, a great addictive toxin to which the cultural elites are particularly sensitive.

Статья предлагает анализ идеологических нарративов в культовом фильме Пола Верховена «Звездный десант» (1997). Нидерландско-американский автор известен своим особенным и провокационным подходом к режиссуре, который объединяет низкое и высокое. Помимо прочего, Пол Верховен предлагает в своих фильмах высказывания о таких философских категориях, как власть, насилие, утопия, сексуальность и др. «Звездный десант» является одним из самых противоречивых произведений режиссера, представляя собой экзотерическую критику фашистской утопии. Автор статьи указывает, что разночтения в интерпретациях, которые можно обнаружить в исследовательской литературе, заслуживают отдельного анализа. Прибегая к методологической рамке визуальной семиотики, а также обращаясь к литературному прототипу фильма, одноименному роману Роберта Хайнлайна, статья показывает, что в плане критического высказывания фильм вышел за границы замысла режиссера. В конечном итоге прямая интерпретация фильма как апологетики насилия и шовинизма имеет свою реальную основу, что порождает ряд вопросов о нейтральности роли первоисточника, сценаристов и самой избранной Верховеном визуальности. Ключевые слова: утопия, социальная философия, анализ фильма, философия кино, фашизм, национал-социализм, Пол Верховен, «Звездный десант» The article offers an analysis of ideological narratives in Paul Verhoeven’s cult film «Starship troopers» (1997). The Dutch-American author is known for his special and provocative approach to directing, which combines the low-brow with the high-brow. Among other things, in his films Paul Verhoeven offers statements about such philosophical categories as power, violence, utopia, sexuality, etc. «Starship troopers» is one of his most controversial works, representing an exoteric criticism of the fascist utopia. The author of the article points out that discrepancies in interpretations of the film, which can be found in the research literature, are worth analyzing. Using the methodological framework of visual semiotics and referring to the literary prototype of the film, Robert Heinlein’s novel of the same name, the article shows that in terms of critical expression the film went beyond the boundaries of the director’s plan. In the end, the direct interpretation of the film as apologetics for violence and chauvinism has its own real basis, which raises a number of questions about the neutrality of the role of the original source, the screenwriters’ work, and the visual style chosen by Verhoeven. Keywords: utopia, social philosophy, film analyses, philosophy of cinema, fascism, national socialism, Paul Verhoeven, «Starship troopers»

Статья предлагает анализ идеологических нарративов в культовом фильме Пола Верховена «Звездный десант» (1997). Нидерландско-американский автор известен своим особенным и провокационным подходом к режиссуре, который объединяет низкое и высокое. Помимо прочего, Пол Верховен предлагает в своих фильмах высказывания о таких философских категориях, как власть, насилие, утопия, сексуальность и др. «Звездный десант» является одним из самых противоречивых произведений режиссера, представляя собой экзотерическую критику фашистской утопии. Автор статьи указывает, что разночтения в интерпретациях, которые можно обнаружить в исследовательской литературе, заслуживают отдельного анализа. Прибегая к методологической рамке визуальной семиотики, а также обращаясь к литературному прототипу фильма, одноименному роману Роберта Хайнлайна, статья показывает, что в плане критического высказывания фильм вышел за границы замысла режиссера. В конечном итоге прямая интерпретация фильма как апологетики насилия и шовинизма имеет свою реальную основу, что порождает ряд вопросов о нейтральности роли первоисточника, сценаристов и самой избранной Верховеном визуальности. Ключевые слова: утопия, социальная философия, анализ фильма, философия кино, фашизм, национал-социализм, Пол Верховен, «Звездный десант» The article offers an analysis of ideological narratives in Paul Verhoeven’s cult film «Starship troopers» (1997). The Dutch-American author is known for his special and provocative approach to directing, which combines the low-brow with the high-brow. Among other things, in his films Paul Verhoeven offers statements about such philosophical categories as power, violence, utopia, sexuality, etc. «Starship troopers» is one of his most controversial works, representing an exoteric criticism of the fascist utopia. The author of the article points out that discrepancies in interpretations of the film, which can be found in the research literature, are worth analyzing. Using the methodological framework of visual semiotics and referring to the literary prototype of the film, Robert Heinlein’s novel of the same name, the article shows that in terms of critical expression the film went beyond the boundaries of the director’s plan. In the end, the direct interpretation of the film as apologetics for violence and chauvinism has its own real basis, which raises a number of questions about the neutrality of the role of the original source, the screenwriters’ work, and the visual style chosen by Verhoeven. Keywords: utopia, social philosophy, film analyses, philosophy of cinema, fascism, national socialism, Paul Verhoeven, «Starship troopers»

This article follows the personal trajectory of Mikhail Lavrentiev from his early integration into the European mathematical community to his role in the construction of the Siberian science-city, Akademgorodok. Using biography as a privileged vantage point, it offers a revision of the conception of Akademgorodok as a remote utopia ultimately corrupted by political interference. It argues that, although built on a site geographically distant from the center, the project reflects Moscow’s aspirations and testifies to a close and evolving relationship between scientists and the party-state. Lavrentiev nurtured a community rooted in his personal networks and supervised the construction of an urban environment emblematic of the Khrushchev era. The success and the future of the new science-city were predicated on its visibility. Akademgorodok was a model and a showcase of post-Stalinist science, of a Soviet way of living and a universal way of knowing. Focusing on the city’s role as a showcase opens possibilities to take the investigation of late socialist science and society in new directions: from the unavoidable conflict between experts and the party state to the analysis of local, national, and transnational interactions shaping socialist knowledge-making. Ultimately, Lavrentiev’s ability to make Akademgorodok into the scene of major international encounters highlights the important role of Soviet science in the Cold War circulation of knowledge.

In the article is considered the ideas of ukrainian philosophy of soviet period V. Antonenko, and so the influence of the ideology of that time on the formation of the scientific worldview of the scientist is analyzed. Theoretical reconstruction of V. Antonenko's views on socialist humanism is carried out, principles of which he shows as the highest form of humanism, contrasting the anti-humanist essence of Christian preaching "love of neighbor" and depicts socialist reality as a practical embodiment of true humanistic ideas. Analyzed of views V. Antonenko on art the socialistic realism, which is presented as the highest stage in the development of progressive world art. The scientist traces the origin of art, explains how it was brought to life, what contribution religion has made to its best achievements. V. Antonenko explores the anti-religious and anti-church orientation of the works of many representatives of fine arts. He is analyzing the views of idealist aesthetics and theologians on art. V. Antonenko thoroughly researches the stages of development of humanism, traces its social and cultural movement, which arose in the XIV century. in Italy; studies the humanistic ideas of the leading figures of the Renaissance, who found their further development in the works of the ideological predecessors of the French Revolution of the XVIII century; explores the humanistic ideas of the utopian socialists of the nineteenth century; studies the period of development of Ukrainian and Russian art in the period of radical destruction of old traditions and the influence of religious ideology on their formation; considers a whole galaxy of outstanding artists of the second half of the nineteenth century, who glorified culture and began to speak a new about art as a higher product of human genius, about the principles of realism in art. V. Antonenko's research on the relationship between art and other forms of social consciousness, which are related to the problems of forming norms and principles of communist morality, is analyzed.

AbstrakPendidikan menjadi arena politis dan tidak netral. Karena dari rahim pendidikan akan lahir manusia-manusia idealis atau pragmatis, humanis atau dehumanis, toleran atau intoleran, berintegritas atau krisis integritas, individualis atau sosialis. Pendidikan memiliki peran yang sangat signifikan dalam melahirkan dan membentuk pribadi-pribadi tertentu. Semuanya tergantung pada dasar filosofi dan nilai di atas mana institusi pendidikan dibangun serta praksis pendidikan apa yang dikembangkan. Iklim sosial yang dibangun di kampus, merupakan bagian dari kurikulum tersembunyi (hidden curriculum) yang juga berkontribusi dalam membentuk kepribadian sivitas akademika. Saat ini yang tengah terjadi adalah pertarungan kepentingan antar ideologi dalam pendidikan tinggi, yaitu kontestasi antara pendidikan tinggi yang berbasiskan pada nilai-nilai akademik (academic values) yang cenderung etis-utopis dan yang berbasiskan pada nilai-nilai korporasi (corporate values) yang cenderung praktis-pragmatis. Tarik menarik kepentingan ideologi dalam pendidikan sesungguhnya merupakan tarik menarik kepentingan antara idealisme dan pragmatisme. Seharusnya pendidikan tinggi menjadi bagian dari institusi sosial yang ikut mendorong terbentuknya masyarakat etis-demokratis. Ketika pendidikan tinggi kehilangan nalar kritisnya maka ia tidak mampu menjadi pencerah bagi masyarakat, atau menjadi agent of social change. Tetapi sebaliknya, pendidikan tinggi semakin jauh dari realitas masyarakat.Kata kunci: kritik, perguruan tinggi, budaya akademikAbstractEducation becomes political arena and it is not neutral. Because of education womb will create idealistic or pragmatic people, humanist or dehumanis, tolerant or intolerant, integrity or the critical integrity, and individualist or socialist. Education has a very significant role in the birth and form certain individuals. All of it depends on the basic philosophy and values on which educational institutions are built and what educational praxis developed. A social climate that is built on the campus, is part of the hidden curriculum which also contribute in shaping the personality of academic society. Current phenomenon shows that there is a conflict of interests between ideology in higher education, the contestation between higher education based on academic values (academic values) that tend ethical-utopian and based on the values of the corporation (corporate values) which tends practically. Ideology of interests in education is real conflict of the interests between idealism and pragmatism. Higher education is supposed to be part of the social institutions that contributed to the formation of ethical-democratic society. When higher education loses its critical reason, it was not able to be a lightening for the community, or become agents of social change. But on the contrary, higher education is getting away from the reality in particular society.Keywords: critic, higher education, academic culture

In the history of the Dostoevsky’s and Tolstoy’s reception in modern philosophical thought, a philosophical tradition of German-Jewish origin has a prominent role. Product of a singular “spiritual synthesis”, as observed by Michael Löwy, the thought of Franz Kafka, George Lukács, Ernst Bloch, and Walter Benjamin has appeared in modern times as the sign of messianic claim for a libertarian, radical, and revolutionary socialism. Bearing in common the experience of not being reconciled with the world and history, this generation of intellectuals from Central Europe had “Jewish messianism” and “German romanticism” as privileged sources of their world-view. The religious concept of redemption and the political notion of libertarian utopia were combined in the trajectory of this German-Jewish intelligentsia that promoted an unprecedented reconfiguration of philosophical thought. It is well-known that the works of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy traverse the messianic and utopian imagery of this generation of revolutionary intellectuals and, as professor Michael Löwy assertively stated, “the utopian Bloch finds in Dostoevsky elements that legitimize The Principle of Hope: Aliocha Karamazov would be a precursor to the ‘religious kingdom of justice’…”. Such an observation is at the heart of a critical fortune accumulated in the works of Löwy and opens paths of analysis that have yet to be made in relation to the reception of Russian literature in modern Jewish philosophy. Michael Löwy is director of research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS-Paris) and is one of the most significant and creative intellectuals of today. The Marxist philosopher’s work offers a rare intertwining of socialism and surrealism, and establishes a meticulous approximation between philosophy and literature. The acuity with which Löwy interprets the German-Jewish messianism and romanticism, the tragic negativity and the ethical and human claims brought to light by such a tradition presents us with a revolutionary and libertarian state of being that only has equivalents in the utopian-messianic glimpses we find in the great Russian novels. The concept of “Romantic anti-capitalism”, which made it possible to read the romantic tradition in a revolutionary way, can be interpreted as the fil rouge that connects the world of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to the messianic utopianism of modern Judaism. The reception of Russian literature in the philosophical thought of the 20th century was complex and polyphonic, and the example of Dostoevsky, a thinker who, for Löwy, “is clearly situated on the grounds of the romantic world-view”, becomes significantly emblematic. Although a conservative romanticism has found in the author of The Brothers Karamazov elements that could legitimize the nationalist desire for roots arising from a conservative tradition (Moeller van den Bruck, Goebbels, Heidegger), the utopian-revolutionary interpretation of the Russian writer made by “Jews of German culture” is among the most creative pages of modern philosophy. The set of analyses offered by Michael Löwy on the Jewish and neo-romantic tradition represented by authors such as Kafka, Lukács, Bloch, and Benjamin is an essential material for those who seek to better understand the reception and influence of Russian literature, especially Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, in the philosophical constellation of Judaism in the first half of the 20th century. The elective approximation carried out by the Franco-Brazilian philosopher between the “spiritual culture” expressed in the works of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and the historical condition of Jewish intellectuals in Central Europe appears here as an essential element. An anecdote told by Emmanuel Levinas during an interview with François Poirié reveals that, during the visit of an Israeli from Eastern Europe to his home, the visitor noticed the complete works of Pushkin on the bookshelves and stated: “One immediately sees that we are in a Jewish house”. In the interview we present here and, above all, in the greatness of Michael Löwy’s works, we can find fundamental clues to interpret the spiritual proximity between a Central European Jewish tradition and the great Russian literature. This “attractio electiva”, coming from a neo-romantic Jewish intelligentsia in relation to the theological and utopian residues that are embodied in the works of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy (residues that may be essentially Jewish), can be interpreted as the most explosive element of modern philosophical messianism.

O presente artigo deseja mostrar que, para os principais autores do Socialismo Utópico, o conceito de massa é o princípio de organização para a sociedade politicamente desejada. Através da análise comparativa entre as ideias de Conde de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier e Robert Owen, é possível notar que, para essa corrente de pensamento, a massa existe aqui ora como representante da forma social que os pobres devem estar para buscar sua emancipação social, ora como encarnação simbólica da cooperação, a verdadeira sabedoria social tal como é bem sintetizado pelo pensamento oweniano.

This article discusses the retro-utopian novel Temptation of Archangel Mikhail Groys by Vadim Mesyats. The novel explores an alternative scenario of overcoming the bleak present and entering the future by going back to a past represented by the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The novel is set in Belarus in 2013. Belarus is shown as the last stronghold of socialism, as the country that has managed to preserve both its recent and more distant past, as the ’paradise regained’, whose boundaries remain transparent for Russia and for the European Union. Belarus is a multi-confessional and (historically) multi-ethnic country, allowing it to uphold the ‘common cause’ of uniting brother nations and initiating their spiritual transformation. Apart from the obvious allusion to N. Fyodorov’s philosophy, the novel also contains multiple reminiscences to the works of V. Soloviev, Gorky’s The Confession, contemporary neo-paganism and discussions of contemporary historians about the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as the second centre for consolidating Russian lands. Keywords: neo-mythologism, neo-paganism, modern Russian prose, alternative history, Soviet nostalgia

This article explores the unlikely infusion of state-sponsored spiritualism into the materialist ideology of Bulgarian late communism. In the 1970s, Minister of Culture and daughter of party leader Lyudmila Zhivkova initiated grandiose state programs to inject the “occult” into Bulgaria’s national culture, art, science, and even political philosophy. Inspired by her Eastern religious beliefs, she sought to “breed” a nation of “all-round and harmoniously developed individuals,” devoted to spiritual self-perfection, who would ultimately “work, live and create according to the laws of beauty.” How are we to explain such a paradoxical lapse into state-sponsored spiritualism in a milieu dominated by materialism as a philosophy and way of life? How did Zhivkova’s occultism inform and transform Bulgarian late socialism? In pursuit of these questions, the article opens with Zhivkova’s intellectual and political trajectories, especially her spiritual formation, as I see her religiosity as the cornerstone of her cultural theory and praxis. The second part reconstructs Zhivkova’s theoretical apparatus, while the third demonstrates how it was translated into a large-scale aesthetic-spiritual utopia, which posited art, culture, aesthetics, and spirituality as a way to revamp the entire communist project. I contend that as quixotic as Zhivkova’s vision was, her policies contributed to the liberalization of art and culture in a period that has long been associated exclusively with stagnation and decay. In so doing, I demonstrate that impulses to attach “a human face” to the communist project endured even after the Prague Spring of 1968.

Straipsnyje analizuojamas prievartos ir racionalumo santykio supratimas šiuolaikinėje politinėje filosofijoje ir postmoderni „demokratijos“ koncepcija. Pirma dalis skirta neprievartinės socialinės tvarkos (sukurtos „racionalaus konsensuso“ dėka) idėjos nesėkmei („utopiškumo“) aptarti, o antroje dalyje išskleidžiama postmoderni politinės „utopijos“ samprata siekiant parodyti, kad postmodernus anti-utopizmas dažnai suprantamas pernelyg tiesiogiai ir supaprastintai, o tada, įžvelgus šio tipo tekstuose tariamas utopinio mąstymo kontraimplikacijas, prasideda nekorektiški kaltinimai prieštaringumu.

Introduction Utopia has always been countercultural, and ever since technological progress has allowed, utopia has been using alternative media to promote and strengthen its underpinning ideals. In this article, I am seeking to clarify the connections between counterculture and alternative media in utopian contexts to demonstrate their reciprocity, then draw together these threads through reference to a well-known figure of the Rainbow Region–Rusty Miller. His trajectory from iconic surfer and Aquarian reporter to mediator for utopian politics and ideals in the Rainbow Region encompasses in a single identity the three elements underpinning this study. In concluding, I will turn to Rusty’s Byron Guide, questioning its classification as alternative or mainstream media, and whether Byron Bay is represented as countercultural and utopian in this long-running and ongoing publication. Counterculture and Alternative Media in Utopian Contexts Counterculture is an umbrella that enfolds utopia, among many other genres and practices. It has been most often situated in the 1960s and 1970s as a new form of social movement embodying youth resistance to the technocratic mainstream and its norms of gender, sexuality, politics, music, and language (Roszak). Many scholars of counterculture underscore its utopian impulses both in the projection of better societies where the social goals are achieved, and in the withdrawal from mainstream society into intentional communities (Yinger 194-6; McKay 5; Berger). Before exploring further the connections between counterculture and alternative media, I want to define the scope of countercultural utopian contexts in general, and the Rainbow Region in particular. Utopia is a neologism created by Sir Thomas More almost 500 years ago to designate the island community that demonstrates order, harmony, justice, hope and desire in the right balance so that it seems like an ideal land. This imaginary place described in Utopia (1516) as a counterpoint to the social, political and religious shortcomings of contemporary 16th century British society, has attracted accusations of heresy (Molner), and been used as a pejorative term, an insult to denigrate political projects that seem farfetched or subversive, especially during the 19th century. Almost every study of utopian theory, literature and practice points to a dissatisfaction with the status quo, which inspires writers, politicians, architects, artists, individuals and communities to rail against it (see for example Davis, Moylan, Suvin, Levitas, Jameson). Kingsley Widmer’s book Counterings: Utopian Dialectics in Contemporary Contexts reiterates what many scholars have stated when he writes that utopias should be understood in terms of what they are countering. Lyman Tower Sargent defines utopia as “a non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally located in time and space” and utopianism as “social dreaming” (9), to which I would add that both indicate an improvement on the alternatives, and may indeed be striving to represent the best place imaginable. Utopian contexts, by extension, are those situations where the “social dreaming” is enhanced through human agency, good governance, just laws, education, and work, rather than being a divinely ordained state of nature (Schaer et al). In this way, utopian contexts are explicitly countercultural through their very conception, as human agency is required and their emphasis is on social change. These modes of resistance against dominant paradigms are most evident in attempts to realise textual projections of a better society in countercultural communal experiments. Almost immediately after its publication, More’s Utopia became the model for Bishop Vasco de Quiroga’s communitarian hospital-town Santa Fe de la Laguna in Michoacan, Mexico, established in the 1530s as a counterculture to the oppressive enslavement and massacres of the Purhépecha people by Nuno Guzmán (Green). The countercultural thrust of the 1960s and 1970s provided many utopian contexts, perhaps most readily identifiable as the intentional communities that spawned and flourished, especially in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand (Metcalf, Shared Lives). They were often inspired by texts such as Charles A. Reich’s The Greening of America (1970) and Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975), and this convergence of textual practices and alternative lifestyles can be seen in the development of Australia’s own Rainbow Region. Located in northern New South Wales, the geographical area of the Northern Rivers that has come to be known as the Rainbow Region encompasses Byron Bay, Nimbin, Mullumbimby, Bangalow, Clunes, Dunoon, Federal, with Lismore as the region’s largest town. But more evocative than these place names are the “rivers and creeks, vivid green hills, fruit and nut farms […] bounded by subtropical beaches and rainforest mountains” (Wilson 1). Utopian by nature, and recognised as such by the indigenous Bundjalung people who inhabited it before the white settlers, whalers and dairy farmers moved in, the Rainbow Region became utopian through culture–or indeed counterculture–during the 1973 Aquarius Festival in Nimbin when the hippies of Mullumbimby and the surfers of Byron Bay were joined by up to 10,000 people seeking alternative ways of being in the world. When the party was over, many Aquarians stayed on to form intentional communities in the beautiful region, like Tuntable Falls, Nimbin’s first and largest such cooperative (Metcalf, From Utopian Dreaming to Communal Reality 74-83). In utopian contexts, from the Renaissance to the 1970s and beyond, counterculture has underpinned and alternative media has circulated the aims and ideals of the communities of resistance. The early utopian context of the Anabaptist movement has been dubbed as countercultural by Sigrun Haude: “During the reign of the Münster (1534-5) Anabaptists erected not only a religious but also a social and political counterculture to the existing order” (240). And it was this Protestant Reformation that John Downing calls the first real media war, with conflicting movements using pamphlets produced on the new technology of the Gutenberg press to disseminate their ideas (144). What is striking here is the confluence of ideas and practices at this time–countercultural ideals are articulated, published, and disseminated, printing presses make this possible, and utopian activists realise how mass media can be used and abused, exploited and censored. Twentieth century countercultural movements drew on the lessons learnt from historical uprising and revolutions, understanding the importance of getting the word out through their own forms of media which, given the subversive nature of the messages, were essentially alternative, according to the criteria proposed by Chris Atton: alternative media may be understood as a radical challenge to the professionalized and institutionalized practices of the mainstream media. Alternative media privileges a journalism that is closely wedded to notions of social responsibility, replacing an ideology of “objectivity” with overt advocacy and oppositional practices. Its practices emphasize first person, eyewitness accounts by participants; a reworking of the populist approaches of tabloid newspapers to recover a “radical popular” style of reporting; collective and antihierarchical forms of organization which eschew demarcation and specialization–and which importantly suggest an inclusive, radical form of civic journalism. (267) Nick Couldry goes further to point out the utopian processes required to identify agencies of change, including alternative media, which he defines as “practices of symbolic production which contest (in some way) media power itself–that is, the concentration of symbolic power in media institutions” (25). Alternative media’s orientation towards oppositional and contestatory practices demonstrates clear parallels between its ambitions and those of counterculture in utopian contexts. From the 1960s onwards, the upsurge in alternative newspaper numbers is commensurate with the blossoming of the counterculture and increased utopian contexts; Susan Forde describes it thus: “a huge resurgence in the popularity of publications throughout the ‘counter-culture’ days of the 1960s and 1970s” (“Monitoring the Establishment”, 114). The nexus of counterculture and alternative media in such utopian contexts is documented in texts like Roger Streitmatter’s Voices of Revolution and Bob Osterlag’s People’s Movements, People’s Press. Like the utopian newspapers that came out of 18th and 19th century intentional communities, many of the new alternative press served to educate, socialise, promote and represent the special interests of the founders and followers of the countercultural movements, often focusing on the philosophy and ideals underpinning these communities rather than the everyday events (see also Frobert). The radical press in Australia was also gaining ground, with OZ in Australia from 1963-1969, and then from 1967-1973 in London. Magazines launched by Philip Frazer like The Digger, Go-Set, Revolution and High Times, and university student newspapers were the main avenues for youth and alternative expression on the Vietnam war and conscription, gay and lesbian rights, racism, feminism and ecological activism (Forde, Challenging the News; Cock & Perry). Nimbin 1973: Rusty Miller and The Byron Express The 1973 Aquarius Festival of counterculture in Nimbin (12-23 May) was a utopian context that had an alternative media life of its own before it arrived in the Rainbow Region–in student publications like Tharnuka and newsletters distributed via the Aquarius Foundation. There were other voices that announced the coming of the Aquarius Festival to Nimbin and reported on its impact, like The Digger from Melbourne and the local paper, The Northern Star. During the Festival, the Nimbin Good Times first appeared as the daily bulletin and continues today with the original masthead drawn by the Festival’s co-organiser, Graeme Dunstan. Some interesting work has been done on this area, ranging from general studies of the Rainbow Region (Wilson; Munro-Clark) to articles analysing its alternative press (Ward & van Vuuren; Martin & Ellis), but to date, there has been no focus on the Rainbow Region’s first alternative newspaper, The Byron Express. Co-edited by Rusty Miller and David Guthrie, this paper presented and mediated the aims and desires of the Aquarian movement. Though short-lived, as only 7 issues were published from 15 February 1973 to September 1973, The Byron Express left a permanent printed vestige of the Aquarian counterculture movement’s activism and ideals from an independent regional perspective. Miller’s credentials for starting up the newspaper are clear–he has always been a trailblazer, mixing “smarts” with surfing and environmental politics. After graduating from a Bachelor of Arts in history from San Diego State College, he first set foot in Byron Bay during his two semesters with the inaugural Chapman College affiliated University of the Seven Seas in 1965-6. Returning to his hometown of Encinitas, he co-founded the Surf Research accessory company with legendary Californian surfer Mike Doyle, and launched Waxmate, the first specially formulated surf wax in 1967 (Davis, Witzig & James; Warshaw 217), selling his interest in the business soon after to spend a couple of years “living the counterculture life on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai” (Davis, Witzig & James), before heading back to Byron Bay via Bells Beach in 1970 (Miller & Shantz) and Sydney, where he worked as an advertising salesman and writer with Tracks surfing magazine (Martin & Ellis). In 1971, he was one of the first to ride the now famous waves of Uluwatu in Bali, and is captured with Steven Cooney in the iconic publicity image for Albe Falzon’s 1971 film, Morning Of The Earth. The champion surfer from the US knew a thing or two about counterculture, alternative media, advertising and business when he found his new utopian context in Byron Bay. Miller and Guthrie’s front-page editorial of the inaugural issue of The Byron Express, published on 15 February 1973, with the byline “for a higher shire”, expressed the countercultural (cl)aims of the publication. Land use, property development and the lack of concern that some people in Byron had for their impact on the environment and people of the region were a prime target: With this first issue of the Byron Express, we hope to explain that the area is badly in need of a focal point. The transitions of present are vast and moving fast. The land is being sold and resold. Lots of money is coming into the area in the way of developments […] caravan parts, hotels, businesses and real estate. Many of the trips incoming are not exactly “concerned” as to what long term effect such developments might have on the environment and its people. We hope to serve as a focus of concern and service, a centre for expression and reflection. We would ask your contributions in vocal and written form. We are ready for some sock it to ya criticism… and hope you would grab us upon the street to tell us how you feel…The mission of this alternative newspaper is thereby defined by the need for a “focal point” that inscribes the voices of the community in a freely accessible narrative, recorded in print for posterity. Although this first issue contains no mention of the Aquarius Festival, there were already rumours circulating about it, as organisers Graeme Dunstan and Johnny Allen had been up to Main Arm, Mullumbimby and Nimbin on reconnaissance missions beginning in September 1972. Instead, there was an article on “Mullumbimby Man–Close to the Land” by Nicholas Shand, who would go on to found the community-based weekly newspaper The Echo in 1986, then called The Brunswick Valley Echo and still going strong. Another by Bob McTavish asked whether there could be a better form of government; there was a surf story, and a soul food section with a recipe for honey meade entitled “Do you want to get out of it on 10 cents a bottle?” The second issue continues in much the same vein. It is not until the third issue comes out on 17 March 1973 that the Aquarius Festival is mentioned in a skinny half column on page four. And it’s not particularly promising: Arrived at Nimbin, sleepy hamlet… Office in disused R.S.L. rooms, met a couple of guys recently arrived, said nothing was being done. “Only women here, you know–no drive”. Met Joanne and Vi, both unable to say anything to be reported… Graham Dunstan (codenamed Superfest) and John Allen nowhere in sight. Allen off on trip overseas. Dunstan due back in a couple of weeks. 10 weeks to go till “they” all come… and to what… nobody is quite sure. This progress report provides a fascinating contemporary insight into the tensions–between the local surfies and hippies on one hand, and the incoming students on the other–around the organisation of the Aquarius Festival. There is an unbridled barb at the sexist comments made by the guys, implicit criticism of the absent organisers, obvious skepticism about whether anyone will actually come to the festival, and wonderment at what it will be like. Reading between the lines, we might find a feeling of resentment about not being privy to new developments in their own backyard. The final lines of the article are non-committal “Anyway, let’s see what eventuates when the Chiefs return.” It seems that all has been resolved by the fifth issue of 11 May, which is almost entirely dedicated to the Aquarius Festival with the front page headline “Welcome to the New Age”. But there is still an undertone of slight suspicion at what the newcomers to the area might mean in terms of property development: The goal is improving your fellow man’s mind and nourishment in concert with your own; competition to improve your day and the quality of the day for society. Meanwhile, what is the first thing one thinks about when he enters Byron and the area? The physical environment is so magnificent and all encompassing that it can actually hold a man’s breath back a few seconds. Then a man says, “Wow, this land is so beautiful that one could make a quid here.” And from that moment the natural aura and spells are broken and the mind lapses into speculative equations, sales projections and future interest payments. There is plenty of “love” though, in this article: “The gathering at Nimbin is the most spectacular demonstration of the faith people have in a belief that is possible (and possible just because they want it to be) to live in love, through love together.” The following article signed by Rusty Miller “A Town Together” is equally focused on love: “See what you could offer the spirit at Nimbin. It might introduce you to a style that could lead to LOVE.” The centre spread features photos: the obligatory nudes, tents, and back to nature activities, like planting and woodworking. With a text box of “random comments” including one from a Lismore executive: ‘I took my wife and kids out there last weekend and we had such a good time. Seems pretty organized and the town was loaded with love. Heard there is some hepatitis about and rumours of VD. Everyone happy.” And another from a land speculator (surely the prime target of Miller’s wrath): “Saw guys kissing girls on the street, so sweet, bought 200 acres right outside of town, it’s going to be valuable out there some day.” The interview with Johnny Allen as the centrepiece includes some pertinent commentary on the media and reveals a well-founded suspicion of the mediatisation of the Aquarius Festival: We have tried to avoid the media actually. But we haven’t succeeded in doing so. Part of the basic idea is that we don’t need to be sold. All the down town press can do is try and interpret you. And by doing that it automatically places it in the wrong sort of context. So we’ve tried to keep it to people writing about the festival to people who will be involved in it. It’s an involvement festival. Coopting The Byron Express as an “involved” party effects a fundamental shift from an external reporting newspaper to a kind of proponent or even propaganda for the Aquarius festival and its ideas, like so many utopian newspapers had done before. It is therefore perhaps inevitable that The Byron Express should disappear very soon after the Aquarius festival. Fiona Martin and Rhonda Ellis explain that Rusty Miller stopped producing the paper because he “found the production schedule exhausting and his readership too small to attract consistent advertising” (5). At any rate, there were only two more issues, one in June–with some follow up reporting of the festival–and another in September 1973, which was almost entirely devoted to environmentally focused features, including an interview with Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal). Byron Bay 2013: Thirty Years of Rusty’s Byron Guide What Rusty did next is fairly well known locally–surfing and teaching people how to surf and a bit of writing. When major local employer Walkers slaughterhouse closed in 1983, he and his wife, social geographer Tricia Shantz, were asked by the local council to help promote Byron Bay as a tourist destination, writing the first Byron guide in 1983-4. Incorporating essays by local personalities and dedicated visitors, the Byron guide perpetuates the ideal of environmental awareness, spiritual experimentation, and respect for the land and sea. Recent contributors have included philosopher Peter Singer, political journalist Kerry O’Brien, and writer John Ralston Saul, and Miller and Shantz always have an essay in there themselves. “People, Politics and Culture” is the new byline for the 2013 edition. And Miller’s opening essay mediates the same utopian desires and environmental community messages that he espoused from the beginning of The Byron Express: The name Byron Bay represents something that we constantly try to articulate. If one was to dream up a menu of situations and conditions to compose a utopia, Australia would be the model of the nation-state and Byron would have many elements of the actual place one might wish to live for the rest of their lives. But of course there is always the danger of excesses in tropical paradises especially when they become famous destinations. Australia is being held to ransom for the ideology that we should be slaves to money and growth at the cost of a degraded and polluted physical and social environment. Byron at least was/is a refuge against this profusion of the so-called real-world perception that holds profit over environment as the way we must choose for our future. Even when writing for a much more commercial medium, Miller retains the countercultural utopian spirit that was crystallised in the Aquarius festival of 1973, and which remains relevant to many of those living in and visiting the Rainbow Region. Miller’s ethos moves beyond the alternative movements and communities to infiltrate travel writing and tourism initiatives in the area today, as evidenced in the Rusty’s Byron Guide essays. By presenting more radical discourses for a mainstream public, Miller together with Shantz have built on the participatory role that he played in launching the region’s first alternative newspaper in 1973 that became albeit briefly the equivalent of a countercultural utopian gazette. Now, he and Shantz effectively play the same role, producing a kind of countercultural form of utopian media for Byron Bay that corresponds to exactly the same criteria mentioned above. Through their free publication, they aim to educate, socialise, promote and represent the special interests of the founders and followers of the Rainbow Region, focusing on the philosophy and ideals underpinning these communities rather than the everyday events. The Byron Bay that Miller and Shantz promote is resolutely utopian, and certainly countercultural if compared to other free publications like The Book, a new shopping guide, or mainstream media elsewhere. Despite this new competition, they are planning the next edition for 2015 with essays to make people think, talk, and understand the region’s issues, so perhaps the counterculture is still holding its own against the mainstream. References Atton, Chris. “What Is ‘Alternative’ Journalism?” Journalism: Theory, Practice, Criticism 4.3 (2003): 267-72. Berger, Bennett M. The Survival of a Counterculture: Ideological Work and Everyday Life among Rural Communards. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2004. Cock, Peter H., & Paul F. Perry. “Australia's Alternative Media.” Media Information Australia 6 (1977): 4-13. Couldry, Nick. “Mediation and Alternative Media, or Relocating the Centre of Media and Communication Studies.” Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy 103, (2002): 24-31. Davis, Dale, John Witzig & Don James. “Rusty Miller.” Encyclopedia of Surfing. 10 Nov. 2014 ‹http://encyclopediaofsurfing.com/entries/miller-rusty›. Downing, John. Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Davis, J.C. Utopia and the Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian Writing 1516-1700. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983. Forde, Susan. Challenging the News: The Journalism of Alternative and Independent Media. Palgrave Macmillan: London, 2011. ---. “Monitoring the Establishment: The Development of the Alternative Press in Australia” Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy 87 (May 1998): 114-133. Frobert, Lucien. “French Utopian Socialists as the First Pioneers in Development.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 35 (2011): 729-49. Green, Toby. Thomas More’s Magician: A Novel Account of Utopia in Mexico. London: Phoenix, 2004. Goffman, Ken, & Dan Joy. Counterculture through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House. New York: Villard Books. 2004. Haude, Sigrun. “Anabaptism.” The Reformation World. Ed. Andrew Pettegree. London: Routledge, 2000. 237-256. Jameson, Fredric. Archeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. New York: Verso, 2005. Levitas, Ruth. Utopia as Method. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Martin, Fiona, & Rhonda Ellis. “Dropping In, Not Out: The Evolution of the Alternative Press in Byron Shire 1970-2001.” Transformations 2 (2002). 10 Nov. 2014 ‹http://www.transformationsjournal.org/journal/issue_02/pdf/MartinEllis.pdf›. McKay, George. Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance since the Sixties. London: Verso, 1996. Metcalf, Bill. From Utopian Dreaming to Communal Reality: Cooperative Lifestyles in Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1995. ---. Shared Visions, Shared Lives: Communal Living around the Globe. Forres, UK: Findhorn Press, 1996. Miller, Rusty & Tricia Shantz. Turning Point: Surf Portraits and Stories from Bells to Byron 1970-1971. Surf Research. 2012. Molnar, Thomas. Utopia: The Perennial Heresy. London: Tom Stacey, 1972. Moylan, Tom. Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination. New York: Methuen, 1986. Munro-Clark, Margaret. Communes in Rural Australia: The Movement since 1970. Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1986. Osterlag, Bob. People’s Movements, People’s Press: The Journalism of Social Justice Movements. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. Roszak, Theodore. The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition. New York: Anchor, 1969. Sargent, Lyman Tower. “Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited.” Utopian Studies 5.1 (1994): 1-37. Schaer, Roland, Gregory Claeys, and Lyman Tower Sargent, eds. Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World. New York: New York Public Library/Oxford UP, 2000. Streitmatter, Roger. Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America. Columbia: Columbia UP, 2001. Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. Ward, Susan, & Kitty van Vuuren. “Belonging to the Rainbow Region: Place, Local Media, and the Construction of Civil and Moral Identities Strategic to Climate Change Adaptability.” Environmental Communication 7.1 (2013): 63-79. Warshaw, Matt. The History of Surfing. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2011. Wilson, Helen. (Ed.). Belonging in the Rainbow Region: Cultural Perspectives on the NSW North Coast. Lismore, NSW: Southern Cross University Press, 2003. Widmer, Kingsley. Counterings: Utopian Dialectics in Contemporary Contexts. Ann Arbor, London: UMI Research Press, 1988. Yinger, J. Milton. Countercultures: The Promise and Peril of a World Turned Upside Down. New York: The Free Press, 1982.

Resentment has been and continues to be a component of numerous ideologies of our century, forming as much a part of the right wing (nationalism, antisemitism) as the left, as it finds its way into various expressions drawn from both socialism and feminism. Resentment relies on basic fallacies: That any superiority that is acquired in the empirical world, in the world such as we know it, is in itself and without any further discussion, a sign of moral "baseness." That the values attached to it by the dominant ones are contemptible in themselves, that is to say as values - and not merely those uneven (tangible and symbolic) benefits that the dominant ones draw from such values. And that any subordinate or inferior situation grants one the status of a victim, that any failure to take advantage in this world can be metamorphosed and justified through grievances directed at the dominant and the privileged groups - thereby permitting a total denial of responsibility. Such an attitude involves an axiological reversal, an Umsturz der Werte, which Nietzsche and Max Scheler already described in divergent ways. It is sometimes difficult to immediately distinguish within different militant ideologies and fallacies of resentment on one hand and on the other the will for justice and emancipation behind which such fallacies hide or with which they are intertwined. This essay describes the idealtype of what I have called the thought of resentment which expresses itself through a specific rhetoric of argumentation (or rather a sophistics) and through a pathos of rancour and grievance. It seems that at the end of this century in industrialized societies - societies disintegrating into suspicious lobbies, obsessed by claims of their "identity," twisting the concept of Rights to suit the bickering market of "rights to difference," societies composed of groups or "tribes" fostering endless litigations based on insurmountable disagreements and a vindictive re-invention of the past - resentment is once again becoming an all-consuming attitude. This trend may be explained by the collapse of Socialism and the utopias of Progress among other determinants. This essay studies and illustrates briefly the axiology and the rhetoric of resentment. It retraces its relationship with the relativism that prevails today in philosophy and the social sciences. It sheds light on some of the mechanics of discussion which have allowed resentment to organize itself into an impregnable sophistics resisting compromise and pluralism. Such sophistics grant resentment the self-justified advantage of indefinitely putting rational debate at bay.

Futuristic fiction almost by definition enters into a dialogue with the present as a future past. As a consequence, history haunts even the most inane visions of the future in often quite subtle ways. An excellent prompt to speculate on this issue is provided by Luc Besson's popular film The Fifth Element (1997). Like many science-fiction films, it is about a future troubled by its own promises. It almost goes without saying that while not specifically figured around Y2K, the attention to dates and time in the film combined with its late '90s release date also inscribe it within Millennial anxieties about the end of the world. History plays a series of roles in The Fifth Element. In common with many science-fiction fables, the film stages an inverted fictional genealogy, in which the viewer is actively encouraged to revel in identifying extrapolated features and concerns of the present. This heralds a basic historicity: that is, it invites us to grasp our present as history through its defamiliarisation. Moreover, like another futuristic film of the same year, Gattaca, it is aesthetically marked by the pathos of what might be called millennial "nostalgia for the future" -- that lost utopian real of Modernist aesthetic desire which seems to haunt these "post-post-apocalyptic", Space-Age futures1. This is only enhanced by quoting generously from earlier moments of the science fiction genre (such as Blade Runner). Striking, however, is that despite all of this, everyday America -- globalised and projected two hundred and fifty years hence -- is not so much dystopian or utopian as just ordinary. People still smoke, but filters makes up three-quarters of a cigarette's length; we still get stuck in chaotic traffic, even if it flies above the ground; we still eat Chinese takeaway, only now the restaurants fly to you; and cops still eat take-away at drive-through McDonald's, which are now floating fixtures in the cityscape. That individuals are so stylish (thanks to costume design, everyone is wearing Jean-Paul Gaultier) also seems significant, because this aestheticised ordinariness helps focus attention on the lived time of everyday utopian yearnings. In these ways and more, our contemporary moment is immanent in the film. However, at certain other crucial moments in the film, History is directly presented as an excess. Let me explain. Two hundred and fifty years into the future, a "Supreme Being" -- Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) -- is genetically reconstructed by scientists. Dubbed the missing "fifth element", she belongs to a highly developed extra-terrestrial species who have a protectoral relation to humanity. In the beginning, Leeloo is cut off from human language -- speaking in a tongue that combines a mixture of European dialects with baby-speak (her favourite phrase, as anyone who has seen the film will recall, is "[Big] badda-boo!"). She speaks what a priest in the film calls the "Divine language", "spoken before time was time" -- evoking the theological dream of a universal pre-symbolic language, of a pure speech that speaks the world rather than speaks of it. Her very first English word is "Help!" -- which she reads off a taxi sticker advertisement for starving black orphans. And it is perhaps no accident that she identifies with this future's expropriated. Leeloo is a body cast into marginality. Caged as an exhibit from the moment of her arrival on Earth, with her exotic appearance, wide-eyed wonderment and capacity for mimicry, she displays all the tropes of the infantilised and sexualised Other. Romanticised as a primitivist fantasy, she represents a classically vulnerable redemptive figure2. Two hundred and fifty years into the future, a "Supreme Being" -- Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) -- is genetically reconstructed by scientists. Dubbed the missing "fifth element", she belongs to a highly developed extra-terrestrial species who have a protectoral relation to humanity. In the beginning, Leeloo is cut off from human language -- speaking in a tongue that combines a mixture of European dialects with baby-speak (her favourite phrase, as anyone who has seen the film will recall, is "[Big] badda-boo!"). She speaks what a priest in the film calls the "Divine language", "spoken before time was time" -- evoking the theological dream of a universal pre-symbolic language, of a pure speech that speaks the world rather than speaks of it. Her very first English word is "Help!" -- which she reads off a taxi sticker advertisement for starving black orphans. And it is perhaps no accident that she identifies with this future's expropriated. Leeloo is a body cast into marginality. Caged as an exhibit from the moment of her arrival on Earth, with her exotic appearance, wide-eyed wonderment and capacity for mimicry, she displays all the tropes of the infantilised and sexualised Other. Romanticised as a primitivist fantasy, she represents a classically vulnerable redemptive figure2. Leaving aside for the moment the perhaps inevitably romantic resolution to this predicament, we can interpret this scene as a critique of the Enlightenment pretension to "total History". The "arbitrary" order of alphabetisation, which replaces the seemingly determined disorder of historical narratives, is akin to the Kantian dream of a cosmopolitan state of "universal history". Think, too, of the aging Hegel, writing in 1830: We witness a vast spectacle of events and actions, of infinitely varied constellations of nations, states and individuals, in restless succession. ... Everywhere we see a motley confusion ... But ... we grow weary of particulars and ask ourselves to what end they all contribute. We cannot accept that their significance is exhausted by their own particular ends; everything must be part of a single enterprise. (325-7) Leaving aside for the moment the perhaps inevitably romantic resolution to this predicament, we can interpret this scene as a critique of the Enlightenment pretension to "total History". The "arbitrary" order of alphabetisation, which replaces the seemingly determined disorder of historical narratives, is akin to the Kantian dream of a cosmopolitan state of "universal history". Think, too, of the aging Hegel, writing in 1830: We witness a vast spectacle of events and actions, of infinitely varied constellations of nations, states and individuals, in restless succession. ... Everywhere we see a motley confusion ... But ... we grow weary of particulars and ask ourselves to what end they all contribute. We cannot accept that their significance is exhausted by their own particular ends; everything must be part of a single enterprise. (325-7) If The Fifth Element critiques the universal history lesson, it also revolves around a dialectical relation between past and present. Although the opening scene in late colonial Egypt locates the film's narrative historically, these later scenes suggest a break with conventional, clean historiographical separations between the past and the present5. Leeloo's reading of History implies that embodied historical reception is in a perpetual in-between state. Not only the representation of the past as History but the experience of Time itself becomes less a matter of chronology than of a Freudian retroactivity, a "present past" with everyday variations which belong as much to future possibilities as to what we perceive as the present. The necessary absence of a determinate "past object" (referent) in historical understanding means that historicity is a traumatic process of deferral. In psychoanalytic terms, Leeloo's forced recognition of the unnatural deaths of Others is a traumatic encounter which generates a hole in the symbolic order of Leeloo's "real". Leeloo's traumatised body metaphorically becomes the singular "truth" of the symbolic world6. A global history is in fact nobody's history in particular -- belonging to everybody and nobody. This is the fate of the CD-ROM: a "memory" overwhelmingly composed of media images, and an allegory for our own situation of image saturation (whose stereotypical symbol is the isolated individual glued to a flickering screen). Yet when Leeloo enters history with a kiss, a fragile dialogical exchange in which her own life "story" begins, the fate of media images is to become socialised as part of non-synchronous particular narratives7. The grand "nightmare" of History has become comprehensible through her particular access to universal History -- and the result is an appropriated, ongoing experience with an undisclosed future. The Fifth Element thus presents a distinctly everyday solution to the problem of historical time -- and is this not how media history is experienced? No doubt in the future no less than the present, history will be less a matter of the Past itself, than of the allegorical reverberation of events documented and encountered in the everyday mediasphere. Footnotes Mark Dery recently berated the trend for retro-futurism as a Wallpaper-inspired plot, poised to generate a nostalgia for ironic dreams of fading technological utopias, while revealing the banality of design fashions that demand the ever new. See "Back to the Future", posted to Nettime (5 Sep. 1999) It is also worth noting the sublime role of the Diva in the film, whose pained operatic performance embodies what Slavoj Zizek once called the jouissance of modernity. Humanity's potential will to "creative destruction" has previously been embodied in Gary Oldman's evil business figure of Zorg, who undoubtedly represents the excesses of corporate capitalism (he illustrates his Ayn Rand-style vitalist philosophy at one point by letting a glass fall from his desk and shatter on to the ground: gleefully watching as a team of mechanical robots whiz around the floor sweeping it up, he croons: "see -- a lovely ballet ensues, adding to the great chain of life -- by creating a little destruction, I am in fact encouraging life". See Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Vol. 10, Theory and History of Literature. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984; Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf. London: Routledge, 1994. Historiographical time can be distinguished from psychoanalytic time on the basis of two different ways of organising the space of memory. While the former conceives the temporal relation as one of succession and correlation, the latter treats the relation as one of imbrication and repetition. Michel de Certeau, Heterologies: Discourse on the Other. Translated by Brian Massumi. Vol. 17, Theory and History of Literature. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986. 4. An interesting sf intertext here is Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, in which a woman who is a projection of a man's memory unsuccessfully attempts to kill herself to prove that she is made of historical reality. In this traumatic scene, she consumes liquid nitrogen and writhes on a metallic floor in a frozen state until she gradually thaws into human movement. Leeloo is finally brought into the "un-Historical" time of everyday embodied subjectivity with a single kiss. To borrow the language of psychoanalytic film studies, her "screen memories" are reconfigured by an imaginary resolution in the present. I use the term screen memories with a nod to both the computer screen and Freud's compelling if problematic account of repressed mnemic material. Freud writes: "As the indifferent memories owe their preservation not to their own content but to an associative relation between their content and another which is repressed, they have some claim to be called 'screen memories'". Sigmund Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Vol. 5, The Pelican Freud Library. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960. 83. References Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Avon Books, 1992. Hegel, G.W.F. "The Philosophical History of the World: Second Draft (1830)." German Idealist Philosophy. Ed. Rüdiger Buber. London: Penguin, 1997. 317-39. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Daniel Palmer. "Nostalgia for the Future: Everyday History and The Fifth Element." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.9 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0001/nostalgia.php>. Chicago style: Daniel Palmer, "Nostalgia for the Future: Everyday History and The Fifth Element," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 9 (2000), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0001/nostalgia.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Daniel Palmer. (2000) Nostalgia for the future: everyday history and The Fifth Element. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(9). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0001/nostalgia.php> ([your date of access]).

Introduction In any list of dictators and antagonists of the West the name of Libya’s Colonel Muammar Qaddafi will always rank highly as one of the most memorable, colourful and mercurial. The roles he played to his fellow Libyans, to regional groupings, to revolutionaries and to the West were complex and nuanced. These various roles developed over time but were all grounded in his self-belief as a messianic revolutionary figure. More importantly, these roles and behaviours that stemmed from them were instrumental in preserving Qaddafi’s rule and thwarting challenges to it. These facets of Qaddafi’s public self accord with the model of “persona” described by Marshall. Whilst the nature of political persona and celebrity in the Western world has been explored by several scholars (for example Street; Wilson), little work has been conducted on the use of persona by non-democratic leaders. This paper examines the aspects of persona exhibited by Colonel Qaddafi and applied during his tenure. In constructing his role as a revolutionary leader, Qaddafi was engaging in a form of public performance aimed at delivering himself to a wider audience. Whether at home or abroad, this persona served the purpose of helping the Libyan leader consolidate his power, stymie political opposition and export his revolutionary ideals. The trajectory of his persona begins in the early days of his coming to power as a charismatic leader during a “time of distress” (Weber) and culminates in his bloody end next to a roadside drainage culvert. In between these points Qaddafi’s persona underwent refinement and reinvention. Coupled with the legacy he left on the Libyan political system, the journey of Muammar Qaddafi’s personas demonstrate how political personality can be the salvation or damnation of an entire state.Qaddafi: The Brotherly RevolutionaryCaptain Muammar Qaddafi came to power in Libya in 1969 at the age of just 27. He was the leader of a group of military officers who overthrew King Idris in a popular and relatively bloodless coup founded on an ideology of post-colonial Arab nationalism and a doing away with the endemic corruption and nepotism that were the hallmarks of the monarchy. With this revolutionary cause in mind and in an early indication that he recognised the power of political image, Qaddafi showed restraint in adopting the trappings of office. His modest promotion to the rank of Colonel was an obvious example of this, and despite the fact that in practical terms he was the supreme commander of Libya’s armed forces, he resisted the temptation to formally aggrandize himself with military titles for the ensuing 42 years of his rule.High military rank was in a way irrelevant to a man moving to change his persona from army officer to messianic national leader. Switching away from a reliance on military hierarchy as a basis for his authority allowed Qaddafi to re-cast himself as a leader with a broader mission. He began to utilise titles such as “Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council” (RCC) and “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution.” The persona on display here was one of detached impartiality and almost reluctant leadership. There was the suggestion that Qaddafi was not really acting as a head of state, but merely an ordinary Libyan who, through popular acclaim, was being begged to lead his people. The attraction of this persona remained until the bitter end for Qaddafi, with his professed inability to step aside from a leadership role he insisted he did not formally occupy. This accords with the contention of Weber, who describes how an individual favoured with charisma can step forward at a time of crisis to complete a “mission.” Once in a position of authority, perpetuating that role of leadership and acclamation can become the mission itself:The holder, of charisma seizes the task that is adequate for him and demands obedience and a following by virtue of his mission. His success determines whether he finds them. His charismatic claim breaks down if his mission is not recognized by those to whom he feels he has been sent. If they recognize him, he is their master—so long as he knows how to maintain recognition through ‘proving’ himself. But he does not derive his ‘right’ from their will, in the manner of an election. Rather, the reverse holds: it is the duty of those to whom he addresses his mission to recognize him as their charismatically qualified leader. (Weber 266-7)As his rule extended across the decades, Qaddafi fostered his revolutionary credentials via a typical cult of personality approach. His image appeared on everything from postage stamps to watches, bags, posters and billboards. Quotations from the Brother Leader were set to music and broadcast as pop songs. “Spontaneous” rallies of support would occur when crowds of loyalists would congregate to hear the Brotherly Leader speak. Although Qaddafi publicly claimed he did not like this level of public adoration he accepted it because the people wanted to adore him. It was widely known however that many of these crowds were paid to attend these rallies (Blundy and Lycett 16).Qaddafi: The Philosopher In developing his persona as a guide and a man who was sharing his natural gifts with the people, Qaddafi developed a post-colonial philosophy he called “Third Universal Theory.” This was published in volumes collectively known as The Green Book. This was mandatory reading for every Libyan and contained a distillation of Qaddafi’s thoughts and opinions on everything from sports to politics to religion to the differences between men and women. Whilst it may be tempting for outsiders to dismiss these writings as the scribbling of a dictator, the legacy of Qaddafi’s persona as political philosopher is worthy of some examination. For in offering his revelations to the Libyan people, Qaddafi extended his mandate beyond leader of a revolution and into the territory of “messianic reformer of a nation.”The Green Book was a three-part series. The first instalment was written in 1975 and focuses on the “problem of democracy” where Qaddafi proposes direct democracy as the best option for a progressive nation. The second instalment, published in 1977, focuses on economics and expounds socialism as the solution to all fiscal woes. (Direct popular action here was evidenced in the RCC making rental of real estate illegal, meaning that all tenants in the country suddenly found themselves granted ownership of the property they were occupying!) The final chapter, published in 1981, proposes the Third Universal Theory where Qaddafi outlines his unique solution for implementing direct democracy and socialism. Qaddafi coined a new term for his Islamically-inspired socialist utopia: Jamahiriya. This was defined as being a “state of the masses” and formed the blueprint for Libyan society which Qaddafi subsequently imposed.This model of direct democracy was part of the charismatic conceit Qaddafi cultivated: that the Libyan people were their own leaders and his role was merely as a benevolent agent acceding to their wishes. However the implementation of the Jamahiriya was anything but benevolent and its legacy has crippled post-Qaddafi Libya. Under this system, Libyans did have some control over their affairs at a very local level. Beyond this, an increasingly complex series of committees and regional groupings, over which the RCC had the right of veto, diluted the participation of ordinary citizens and their ability to coalesce around any individual leader. The banning of standard avenues of political organisation, such as parties and unions, coupled with a ruthless police state that detained and executed anyone offering even a hint of political dissent served to snuff out any opposition before it had a chance to gather pace. The result was that there were no Libyans with enough leadership experience or public profile to take over when Qaddafi was ousted in 2011.Qaddafi: The Liberator In a further plank of his revolutionary persona Qaddafi turned to the world beyond Libya to offer his brotherly guidance. This saw him champion any cause that claimed to be a liberation or resistance movement struggling against the shackles of colonialism. He tended to favour groups that had ideologies aligned with his own, namely Arab unity and the elimination of Israel, but ultimately was not consistent in this regard. Aside from Palestinian nationalists, financial support was offered to groups such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the Moro National Liberation Front (Philippines), Umkhonto we Sizwe (South Africa), ETA (Spain), the Polisario Front (Western Sahara), and even separatist indigenous Australians. This policy of backing revolutionary groups was certainly a projection of his persona as a charismatic enabler of the revolutionary mission. However, the reception of this mission in the wider world formed the basis for the image that Qaddafi most commonly occupied in Western eyes.In 1979 the ongoing Libyan support for groups pursuing violent action against Israel and the West saw the country designated a State-Sponsor of Terror by the US Department of State. Diplomatic relations between the two nations were severed and did not resume until 2004. At this point Qaddafi seemed to adopt a persona of “opponent of the West,” ostensibly on behalf of the world’s downtrodden colonial peoples. The support for revolutionary groups was changing to a more active use of them to strike at Western interests. At the same time Qaddafi stepped up his rhetoric against America and Britain, positioning himself as a champion of the Arab world, as the one leader who had the courage of his convictions and the only one who was squarely on the side of the ordinary citizenry (in contrast to other, more compliant Arab rulers). Here again there is evidence of the charismatic revolutionary persona, reluctantly taking up the burden of leadership on behalf of his brothers.Whatever his ideals, the result was that Qaddafi and his state became the focus of increasing Western ire. A series of incidents between the US and Libya in international waters added to the friction, as did Libyan orchestrated terror attacks in Berlin, Rome and Vienna. At the height of this tension in 1986, American aircraft bombed targets in Libya, narrowly missing Qaddafi himself. This role as public enemy of America led to Qaddafi being characterised by President Ronald Reagan (no stranger to the use of persona himself) as the “mad dog of the Middle East” and a “squalid criminal.” The enmity of the West made life difficult for ordinary Libyans dealing with crippling sanctions, but for Qaddafi, it helped bolster his persona as a committed revolutionary.Qaddafi: Leader of the Arab and African Worlds Related to his early revolutionary ideologies were Qaddafi’s aspirations as a pan-national leader. Inspired by Egypt’s Gamel Abdul Nasser from a young age, the ideals of pan-Arab unity were always a cornerstone of Qaddafi’s beliefs. It is not therefore surprising that he developed ambitions of being the person to bring about and “guide” that unity. Once again the Weberian description of the charismatic leader is relevant, particularly the notion that such leadership does not respect conventional boundaries of functional jurisdictions or local bailiwicks; in this case, state boundaries.During the 1970s Qaddafi was involved in numerous attempts to broker Arab unions between Libya and states such as Egypt, Syria and Tunisia. All of these failed to materialise once the exact details of the mergers began to be discussed, in particular who would assume the mantle of leadership in these super-states. In line with his persona as the rightly-guided revolutionary, Qaddafi consistently blamed the failure of these unions on the other parties, souring his relationship with his fellow Arab leaders. His hardline stance on Israel also put him at odds with those peers more determined to find a compromise. Following the assassination of Egypt’s Anwar Sadat in 1981 Qaddafi praised the act as justified because of Sadat’s signing of the Camp David Accords with Israel.Having given up on the hope of achieving pan-Arab Unity, Qaddafi sought to position himself as a leader of the African bloc. In 2009 he became Chairperson of the African Union and took to having himself introduced as “The King of Kings of Africa.” The level of dysfunction of the African Union was no less than that of the Arab League and Qaddafi’s grandiose plans for becoming the President of the United States of Africa failed to materialise.In both his pan-Arab and pan-Africa ambitions, we see a persona of Qaddafi that aims at leadership beyond his own state. Whilst there may be delusions of grandeur apparent in the practicalities of these goals, this image was nevertheless something that Qaddafi used to leverage the next phase of his political transformation.Qaddafi: The Post-9/11 Statesman However much he might be seen as erratic, Qaddafi’s innate intelligence could result in a political astuteness lacking in many of his Arab peers. Following the events of 11 September 2001, Qaddafi was the first international leader to condemn the attacks on America and pledge support in the War on Terror and the extermination of al-Qaeda. Despite his history as a supporter of terrorism overseas, Qaddafi had a long history of repressing it at home, just as with any other form of political opposition. The pan-Islamism of al-Qaeda was anathema to his key ideologies of direct democracy (guided by himself). This meant the United States and Libya were now finally on the same team. As part of this post-9/11 sniffing of the wind, Qaddafi abandoned his fledgling Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) program and finally agreed to pay reparations to the families of the victims of the Pan Am 107 flight downed over Lockerbie in 1987.This shift in Qaddafi’s policy did not altogether dispel his persona of brotherly leadership amongst African nations. As a bloc leader and an example of the possibility of ‘coming in from the cold’, Qaddafi and Libya were reintegrated into the world community. This included giving a speech at the United Nations in 2009. This event did little to add to his reputation as a statesman in the West. Given a 15-minute slot, the Libyan leader delivered a rambling address over 90 minutes long, which included him tearing up a copy of the UN Charter and turning his back to the audience whilst continuing to speak.Qaddafi: The Clown From the Western point of view, performances like this painted Qaddafi’s behaviour as increasingly bizarre. Particularly after Libya’s rapprochement with the West, the label of threatening terrorist supporter faded and was replaced with something along the lines of a harmless clown prince. Tales of the Libyan leader’s coterie of virgin female bodyguards were the subject of ridicule, as was his ardour for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Perhaps this behaviour was indicative of a leader increasingly divorced from reality. Surrounded by sycophants dependent on his regard for their tenure or physical survival, as well as Western leaders eager to contrast his amiability with that of Saddam Hussein, nobody was prepared to draw attention to the emperor’s new clothes.Indeed, elaborate and outlandish clothing played an increasing role in Qaddafi’s persona as the decades went on. His simple revolutionary fatigues of the early years were superseded by a vast array of military uniforms heavily decorated with medals and emblems; traditional African, Arab or Bedouin robes depending on the occasion; and in later years a penchant for outfits that included images of the African continent or pictures of dead martyrs. (In 2009 Vanity Fair did a tongue-in-cheek article on the fashion of Colonel Qaddafi entitled Dictator Chic: Colonel Qaddafi—A Life in Fashion. This spawned a number of similar features including one in TIME Magazine entitled Gaddafi Fashion: The Emperor Had Some Crazy Clothes.)The Bedouin theme was an aspect of persona that Qaddafi cultivated as an ascetic “man of the people” throughout his leadership. Despite having many palaces available he habitually slept in an elaborate tent, according once again with Weber’s description of the charismatic leader as one who eschews methodical material gain. This predisposition served him well in the 1986 United States bombing, when his residence in a military barracks was demolished, but Qaddafi escaped unscathed as he was in his tent at the time. He regularly entertained foreign dignitaries in tents when they visited Libya and he took one when travelling abroad, including pitching it in the gardens of a Parisian hotel during a state visit in 2007. (A request to camp in New York’s Central Park for his UN visit in 2009 was denied; “Inside the Tents of Muammar Gaddafi”).The role of such a clown was unlikely to have been an aim for Qaddafi, but was instead the product of his own increasing isolation. It will likely be his most enduring character in the Western memory of his rule. It should be noted though that clowns and fools do not maintain an iron grip on power for over 40 years.The Legacy of Qaddafi’s Many Personas Colonel Muammar Qaddafi was a clever and complex leader who exhibited many variations of persona during his four decades of rule. These personas were generally facets of the same core self-belief of a charismatic leader, but could be conflicting, and often confusing, to observers. His eccentricities often hid a layer of deeper cunning and ambition, but ultimately led to his marginalisation and an impression by world leaders that he was untrustworthy.His erratic performance at the UN in 2009 perhaps typifies the end stages of Qaddafi’s leadership: a man increasingly disconnected from his people and the realities of what was going on around him. His insistence that the 2011 Libyan revolution was variously a colonial or terrorist inspired piece of theatre belied the deep resentment of his rule. His role as opponent of the Western and Arab worlds alike meant that he was unsupported in his attempts to deal with the uprising. Indeed, the West’s rapid willingness to use their airpower was instrumental in speeding on the rebel forces.What cannot be disputed is the chaotic legacy this charismatic figure left for his country. Since the uprising climaxed in his on-camera lynching in October 2011, Libya has been plunged in to turmoil and shows no signs of this abating. One of the central reasons for this chaos is that Qaddafi’s supremacy, his political philosophies, and his use of messianic persona left Libya completely unprepared for rule by any other party.This ensuing chaos has been a cruel, if ironic, proof of Qaddafi’s own conceit: Libya could not survive without him.References Al-Gathafi, Muammar. The Green Book: The Solution to the Problem of Democracy; The Solution to the Economic Problem; The Social Basis of the Third Universal Theory. UK: Ithaca Press, 2005.Blundy, David, and Andrew Lycett. Qaddafi and the Libyan Revolution. Boston and Toronto: Little Brown & Co, 1987.Marshall, P. David. “Persona Studies: Mapping the Proliferation of the Public Self”. Journalism 15.2 (2014): 153-170.Qaddafi, Muammar. Speech at the United Nations 2009. ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKMyY2V0J0Y›. Street, John. “Celebrity Politicians: Popular Culture and Political Representation.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 6 (2004): 435-52.Street, John. “Do Celebrity Politics and Celebrity Politicians Matter?” The British Journal of Politics & International Relations 14.3 (2012): 346-356.TIME Magazine. “Gaddafi Fashion: The Emperor Had Some Crazy Clothes.” ‹http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2055860,00.html›.TIME Magazine. “Inside the Tents of Muammar Gaddafi.” ‹http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2058074,00.html›.Totman, Sally, and Mat Hardy. “In the Green Zone: 40 years with Colonel Qaddafi.” Ed. Geoffrey Hawker. APSA 2009: Proceedings of the APSA Annual Conference 2009. Sydney: Macquarie University, 2009. 1-19.Totman, Sally, and Mat Hardy. “The Rise and Decline of Libya as a Rogue State.” OCIS 2008: Oceanic Conference on International Studies. Brisbane: University of Queensland, 2008. 1-25.Vanity Fair. “Dictator Chic: Colonel Qaddafi—A Life in Fashion.” ‹http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/qaddafi-slideshow200908›.Weber, Max, Hans Heinrich Gerth, and C. Wright Mills. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. London: Routledge, 2009.Wilson, J. “Kevin Rudd, Celebrity and Audience Democracy in Australia.” Journalism 15.2 (2013): 202-217.