Browsing by Author "Jordan, Holly"

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    Antebellum Fantasies and Southern Legacies: Memory and Sex in Turn of the Century New Orleans
    Edmondson, Taulby (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2013-09-01)
    At the turn of the twentieth century, “there was at least one red-light district in virtually every American city with a population over 100,000”—and New Orleans was no different. However, neither New Orleans, nor its vice, was a typical American establishment, as Emily Landau’s study on New Orleans’ mixed-race prostitution in Storyville, the emergent red-light district that encompassed it, argues. Like the city itself—with a long history of colonialism and racial intermixing that “made New Orleans resemble a Caribbean enclave more than a Deep South city”—Storyville was a melting pot. The district was an interracial sexual laboratory that bred whiteness as Southern white men satisfied sexual fantasies of racial domination and exoticism, while Jim Crow segregationists and Progressive moral reformers fought to restrict the “racially inferior” and rid the United States of moral depravity outside of its confines. But Storyville was not an exception from larger social processes, and it was certainly not a throwback to an era of ethical laxity in New Orleans. Instead, the district was representative of the historical processes that constituted, and altered, American racial, gendered, and sexual identities at the cusp of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries...
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    The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Nazi: One Possible Meaning Behind the Mischievous Banality of the Banality of Evil
    Curtis, Richard (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2014-09-01)
    This article examines the painting “The Banality of the Banality of Evil” by graffiti artist, Banksy. I argue that his painting represents a current cultural phenomenon, the banality of the banality of evil, which takes Hannah Arendt’s notion of the banality of evil to a different meaning. I argue that the painting represents not only the Nazi’s, in this case Eichmann, unwillingness to confront his crimes, but people’s unwillingness to engage in political debate without confronting the significance and exclusivity of Nazism. Furthermore, I argue that instead of the banality of the Nazi as an ordinary man committing horrendous act, the increasing use of the accusation of ‘being a Nazi’ presents Nazism as the cliché and banal subject.
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    The Banality of Ideology
    Struwe, Alex (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2014-09-01)
    For many thinkers, Hannah Arendt seems to exemplify the ultimate horizon for a contemporary leftist critique. Nonetheless, the recent film depiction of her is subject to an ideological incorporation with the function of reinforcing the (neo-)liberal ideologeme of the ultimate subject (the individual) by presenting its empty universalization as the immunization against any substantial evil. This fundamentally contradicts even Arendt’s own achievements and the implicit radicality of her analysis on the banality of evil. The systemic origin of evil that Arendt indicated in her work on Eichmann can be revealed with Horkheimer and Adorno’s analysis on anti-Semitism. Combined with an Althusserian position of a critique of ideology one can identify the systemic production of empty subjectivity that is at the heart of capitalism’s ideological reproduction and simultaneously the condition for a fascist (and totalized) system to emerge. In order not to fall back behind this essential insight, one must confront today’s ideological constellation with its own contradictions and, in respect to Hannah Arendt, unmask the ideological reduction of her to a similar empty subject that she was criticizing in her own analysis.
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    Barriers against Democracy: Rethinking the Nations Founding: An Interview with Dana Nelson
    Petkova, Yanka; Reed, Taylor; Butera, Mike (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2012-04-01)
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    Between Schmitt and Foucault: Interview with Michael Hardt
    Morris, Edwin Kent; Georgakis, Stefanie; Hill, Jordan; Kirsch, Robert (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2012-04-01)
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    Can the Global Transmit the Local for Diaspora?
    Dhillon, Komal K. (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2013-09-01)
    In Modernity at Large, flows of global culture are examined through the neologisms of five various “scapes”: ethnoscapes, mediascapes, ideoscapes, financescapes and technoscapes. According to Appadurai, the cross-cultural nature of these strands informs the imagination of social life among both individuals and the collective. Unlike other area studies scholars, anthropologists, historians, economists, sociologists and the like, Appadurai’s project is to investigate the advent of mass media communication as it relates to cultural aspects of globalization. Specifically, he seeks to demonstrate the ways in which the effects of mass migration and media combine to create a force that ruptures our current understanding of the nation-state. To Appadurai, the inevitable break from the nation-state is made possible through the societal sphere of the imaginary that has been formed through images disseminated by mass media. It is precisely the interpretation and conceptualization of these imaginaries by diaspora communities that produce agency and allow for the construction of imagined and material worlds that cannot be understood through the current spatial center-periphery binary. Early on in his volume, Appadurai provides readers with ample methodological and explanatory framework for his theories and the existing models in which he situates himself. The groundwork for his volume is laid out in an organized and comprehensive manner and directs us towards anticipation of the explicatory cultural intersections of globalization...
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    The Communal Machinery of Evil: Reflections on Hannah Arendt
    Nelson, Scott G. (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2014-09-01)
    The fifty-year anniversary of the trial and execution of Adolph Eichmann saw the release of the Margarethe von Trotta film Hannah Arendt. This article considers the film’s achievements in the context of Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, and especially her “lesson” that political evil consists not only in some demonic instinct or motive, but in a monstrous lack of imagination, a condition of radical philosophical thoughtlessness. The film is principally a character study of a political philosopher with strong convictions and an abiding concern for what Arendt saw as the unfortunate truth about Eichmann. Largely occluded are the enduring political themes with which Arendt’s many books in political theory dealt – themes including power, conformity, and community. Yet, the film anticipates important moral and political questions of lasting relevance. There remains much to be learned about thoughtlessness in nations where power is broadly shared by the people. Concerns over evil’s precise nature aside, the question of conformity in democracies remains important to consider as nationalist, ethnic, and sectarian sentiments arise anew in Russia, the Middle East, as well as the United States.
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    A Contextual Approach to Political Philosophy
    Daskal, Stephen (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2012-04-01)
    My aims in this paper are to describe and motivate the adoption of what I call a contextual approach to political philosophy. I will first provide a brief characterization of contextualism. I will then contrast contextualism against more common approaches to political philosophy, which I call idealist or schematic, and indicate the problems I see with those approaches and the relative advantages of contextualism. By doing this, I hope to demonstrate the need for further work exploring the possibilities of contextualism.
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    Cultural Colonialization: The Displacement of Mongolians in Inner Mongolia
    Sanchez, Jamie N. (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2013-09-01)
    In this paper I analyze the emergence of Chinese Mongolians as displaced persons within Inner Mongolia due to planned urbanization by the Chinese government throughout the region. I explore how Mongolians are displaced from their traditional cultural space, the grasslands, to new urban centers and how that displacement creates “cultural colonization.” I also analyze how Mongolians now living in urban centers where Mandarin is widely spoken further undergo “cultural colonization” through the decrease use of the Mongolian language. I address the power dynamics between the (Han) Chinese government and ethnic Mongolians with the works of Foucault, Schmitt, and Agamben. I also draw from Said and Malkki's work on refugees and subalternity and Gladney's scholarship on minorities in China as subalterns to frame the Mongolians as subaltern subjects within the Chinese state.
  • Cultural Studies and the Challenges of the Contemporary
    Grossberg, Lawrence (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2012-04-02)
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    The Danger of Following Rules: Reflections on Eichmann in Jerusalem
    Zanotti, Laura (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2014-09-01)
    In this article I build upon Hanna Arendt’s reflections on the “banality of evil” to elaborate on the dangers of unreflectively embracing abstract norms and bureaucratic reasoning as guidelines and justifications for behavior. By offering validation for our actions (or the lack thereof) regardless of their likely effects, abstract norms and rules harbor the danger of appeasing consciences and relieving us from our responsibility towards other human beings. I exemplify the effects of bureaucratic reasoning through the United Nations’ failures in Rwanda and Srebrenica. In Eichmann in Jerusalem Hannah Arendt warned against the banal evil hidden in the uncritical following of accepted norms and rules of behavior. I conclude that in order to avoid the danger of becoming Eichmanns of some sort we need to carefully and prudently assess the potential effects of our actions and embrace responsibility for the consequences they may produce in the concrete circumstances we engage with.
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    Editor's Introduction
    Szczurek, Anthony; Matheis, Christian; Engel, Sascha; Jordan, Holly (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2014-09-01)
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    Editor’s Introduction: Crisis, Context, Modernity, Myth
    Jordan, Holly; Lawrence, Jennifer; Matheis, Christian (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2012-04-01)
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    The Egyptian Peasant – The Hero of the Past, the Hope for the Future
    El-Shazli, Heba F. (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2012-04-01)
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    Eichmann’s Thoughtlessness and Language
    Boedy, Matthew (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2014-09-01)
    In her coverage of the Eichmann trial, Hannah Arendt gave the world a new understanding of evil, a concept we had come to believe we understood. In so doing, she showed us that thinking about evil must also include how we think about language. The two are intertwined in Eichmann, the “normal,” ordinary German. Arendt shows us that the “banality of evil” appears in our language. Evil is moved from ‘outside’ of humanity to a place deep within it. I argue that Arendt echoes one of her intellectual peers, Walter Benjamin, in analyzing how Eichmann’s language grounded his evil. Benjamin wrote that all naming (the central act of language) is overnaming, an action that we the namers make to set language under our control in an attempt to avoid the fragility and plurality of reality. The central characteristic of Eichmann, his thoughtlessness, is defined by Arendt as an inability to think beyond the commonplace, the overname. Eichmann spoke and thought these overnames and this was the ground for his evil. And because we are all ‘overnamers,’ this is the ground for our evil as well. This is the enduring importance of Arendt’s report.
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    Executive Privilege: The Sovereign Exception in Action
    Morris, Edwin Kent (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2012-04-01)
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    Global Configurations of Violence and the (Im)possibility of their Mitigation. An Interview with Harry Gould and Brent Steele
    De Paula, Francine Rossone; Lawrence, Jennifer; Morris, Kent; Szczurek, Anthony (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2014-04-01)
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    Global Configurations of Violence and the (Im)possibility of their Mitigation. An Interview with Harry Gould and Brent Steele
    Rossone de Paula, Francine; Lawrence, Jennifer; Morris, Kent; Szczurek, Anthony (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2014-04-01)
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    Hannah Arendt Without Politics
    Shuster, Amy (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2014-09-01)
    Margarethe von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt (2012) does not represent well the life and work of its protagonist. The focus on thinking in the film fails to reflect how Arendt connected it to judging, especially in the midst of modern mass society and in light of political catastrophes. Arendt’s reflections on statelessness are not explored in the film. Finally, the elimination of Karl Jaspers from the storyline results in an incomplete picture of Arendt’s stance toward the jurisdiction of the Jerusalem court. A politically relevant Arendt is obscured in the making of a personal Arendt.