Browsing by Author "Szczurek, Anthony"

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  • Artist's Statement
    Khraish, Alessandra (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2016-04-14)
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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.
  • Beastly Politics: Derrida, Animals, and the Political Economy of Meat
    Young, Katherine E. (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2015-09-01)
    In this essay, I employ Derridas analysis of carnophallogocentrism in Eating Well, or the Calculation of the Subject_x0094_ and beastly politics in The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume 1 to bring to view the carnivorism that drives contemporary politics and capitalist society. Via careful explication of Derridas ideas and elaboration of his canonical analyses, especially Plato, Hobbes, and Machiavelli, I hope to show how Derridas discussions of animals and politics offer an intriguing perspective with which to augment a Marxian analysis of the political economy of meat. Overall, I contend that when viewed in relation to the political economy of meat, Derridas analyses reveal the irrational, ideological, and fetishized functions of the carnivorous center of politics and point to the potential shortcomings of theoretical strategies that do not directly confront the capitalist framework that sustains the beastly politics of contemporary liberalism and neoliberalism.
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  • Bitcoin and The Philosophy of Money: Evaluating the Commodity Status of Digital Currencies
    Barber, Andrew (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2015-09-01)
    The rhetoric in Satoshi Nakamoto's "White Paper" on the origins of Bitcoin suggests that the digital currency was envisioned as an entirely autonomous money. Due to the increase in popularity and circulation of Bitcoin and other digital currencies, an intense regulatory debate has been sparked at the global level. These debates reveal a fundamental tension regarding the role of the state in establishing money. While the digital currency community insists that Bitcoin is money, states and monetary authorities have declared Bitcoin a commodity, a declaration that can be traced back to Georg Friedrich Knapp's foundational text The State Theory of Money and reinforced by A. Mitchell Innes' The Credit Theory of Money. Circulating alongside state monies, Bitcoin is then neaccessory money,' unable to satisfy tax obligations and behaving as a commodity. This chartalist account of Bitcoin is refuted by what I identify as a libertarian/von Misean understanding of money motivating the circulation of digital currencies. I argue that the circulation of digital currencies is better explained by the chartalist narrative. I then prescribe Georg Simmel's Philosophy of Money, a broader understanding of money in which more abstract monies might create a supranational economic society, as an ideological alternative to digital currency advocates -- one that better conforms to the nature of money gestured to in Nakamoto's "White Paper". However, even through the lens of Simmel, the limitations imposed by domestic authorities and taxation prevent digital currencies from reaching the envisioned state of autonomy. Synthesizing these understandings of money, Bitcoin may exist as a compromise, a means of international money transfer that weakens the abstract, international economic borders created by state monies.
  • Black Cultural Heritage and the Subversion of the Stereotypical Images of the Black Woman in Toni Morrison's Sula
    Sahyoun, Mona Faysal (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2016-04-14)
    One consequence of American slavery was the de-gendering of female slaves, divesting them of a traditional feminine gender identity that their White mistresses were encouraged to assume, thus rendering female slaves sexed yet genderless females. The female slaves are constructed as "breeder" rather than "mother" and promiscuous rather than chaste. While Angela Davis states in Women, Race & Class that, from the perspective of slaveholders, female slaves were no more than "breeders", Eugene D. Genovese records in Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made that Europeans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were appalled by the sexual traditions of West Africans and were persuaded that West Africans lacked morals and sexual restraints. The slavery system also fostered the later constructions of Black women as "mammies", "matriarchs", and the most recent stereotypes of "welfare mothers", and "hoochies". Such constructions revealed the dominant group's concern that Black women maintain a subordinate position. In this paper, I argue that Morrison in Sula draws on the tradition of other-mothering and community other-mothering, notions adapted from West African societies, as well as the practice of biological mothering in ways that successfully disrupt negative stereotypes about Black womanhood originating from slavery.
  • Building New Platforms for Civil Society: the Right to Image in Syrian Abounaddara Collective’s Cinema of Emergency
    Popan, Elena R. (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2016-12-03)
    In the past five years, the Syrian conflict became “the most socially mediated civil conflict in history” i, bringing into spotlight controversial debates that involve freedom of expression, freedom of information, and the urgency to create a balance between them. In this context, Syrian Abounaddara Collective, a group of self-taught filmmakers based in Damascus, launched the concept of emergency cinema. Starting with April 2011, Abounaddara uploaded every week a film on Facebook, Twitter, and on Vimeo, aiming to represent Syrians in a just and dignified way and offering an alternate narrative to those of Assad’s regime and (inter)national media. The project is very accessible since the Collective is a promoter of the power of “smaller screens” like computers and smartphones, with all films being subtitled from the original Arabic to French and English. Their works combines visual culture and film with philosophy, history, science, sociology etc. inviting critics to provide in-depth analyses of cultural phenomena linked to visuality. The films are supposed to make the viewer look at reality differently, to empathize, and demand for justice; however, the message is intended to be open to interpretation, not merely reduced to the clash between good and evil. The article explores the interdisciplinary features of emergency cinema, especially its juridical dimension and the emphasis on one person’s right to image, that recommend it as an updated version of social cinema. By concisely analyzing several films created by Abounaddara Collective and by relying on information made available by interviews, I aim to offer a fresh perspective on the role of cinema in today’s geopolitical context and open a dialogue on how innovative artistic and media forms can challenge the dominant representations of politics and events.
  • The Changing Landscape of Online Pornography: Translocal Networks and Transcultural Practices
    Martin, Jessica A. (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2016-04-14)
    Pornography's massive growth online in the last 25 years, and the emergence of technologies such as broadband, webcams and smartphones, has led to fundamental changes in the ways people encounter, consume, and relate to online porn. Pornography has undoubtedly infiltrated the Western mainstream; it is now woven into the fabric of ordinary life and everyday online multitasking. The ways porn is accessed and consumed continue to evolve, keeping pace with broader changes in Web use. While there is much work being done in contemporary porn studies which examines these changes, there is an aspect of porn's evolution online that has for the most part been neglected: the ways it is linked to globalization and the spread of ideas across nations and borders. Processes of globalization, the Internet, and developing media technologies have facilitated global access to pornography. Pornography now moves across geographic space, transcends national borders and links global communities – spreading narratives, norms, and social texts across global contexts. Despite these changes, contemporary porn studies has, for the most part, remained insulated from the theoretical work coking out of transnational studies. Conversely, transnational theory—as well as the theoretical positions developing out of transnational theory, such as translocal and transcultural theory—has all but ignored pornography as one of the flows of information that increasingly moves between and connects global spaces, and that has specific impacts on relations of intimacy, sexuality and desire. This paper explores how, when taken together, each of these approaches has the potential to broaden the scope of the other, and potentially answer some important questions around the ways globalization is impacting sexualities.
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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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    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.
  • Defining a Crisis: the Impact of Attention and Crisis Language on Diabetes in America
    McPhie, Michael (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2016-12-03)
    Public health crises are shaped by the nature of public discourse surrounding them. Attention and portrayal of disease in the media and advocacy from interest groups play a significant role in defining, labeling, and framing health threats in the United States. The frequency of coverage and the use of crisis language in the public discourse determine issue salience and creates a discursive epidemic that coincides with medical threats. Diabetes presents a growing challenge for public health in the U.S. due to its rising prevalence in the population; however, it also represents an important example of how health crisis are portrayed. This paper examines how media coverage and advocacy group portrayals of diabetes have evolved. Taking a longitudinal approach, media archives and advocacy group publications are examined, focusing on the period from 1985 to 2014. Finally, this paper seeks to use the coverage of diabetes as a reflection of public discourse and the nature of public health crises. This research falls at the intersection of several fields of study, including media effects, communication, psychology, and political behavior. The perception of a crisis and its surrounding discourse shape public perception and determine political and social response. Specifically, observing the frequency and content of language used to discuss diabetes in America can reveal the dynamics of communication in the public sphere and why some issues are salient while others are not.
  • Eco-body: A Biological Anthropology for Technological Evolution
    Hill, Bill (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2016-12-03)
    This body of work explores the transformation of the human body, both physically and mentally as increased reliance upon electronic technology forces conditions of artificial that replace the “natural”. This fundamental shift in stimuli becomes a tipping point in evolution.
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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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    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.
  • Finding a Better Society: The Work of Lauren Berlant's Cruel Optimism
    Ryan, Mary (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2016-04-14)
    This is a book critique of Lauren Berlant's 2011 book Cruel Optimism (Duke University Press). In this book, Berlant explores how people in Europe and the United States survive neoliberal postwar restructuring. This review defines the term cruel optimism which Berlant has created to describe the process of survival individuals undertake. Next, this review critiques the shortcomings of Berlant's discussion as well as highlights the important contributions that cruel optimism presents in political and performative literature. Through a detailed discussion of the good life, Berlant introduces a compelling examination of social thought on topics related to sovereignty, slow death, capitalism, and queer theory. Berlant delineates the good life as relating to four areas: promises of upward mobility, job security, political and social equality, and durable intimacy. Berlant draws from examples across disciplines and within numerous genres to make a strong societal critique of why and how people cling to false promise. This review also briefly pinpoints a few drawbacks or challenges to Berlant's book. Ultimately, this review concludes that Berlant's book is valuable call to action in the humanities and social sciences which utilizes numerous historical and cultural sources to paint a troubling critique of individual lives in post-war societies.
  • Fiscal Austerity and Innovation in Local Governance in Europe
    Panknin, Benedikt (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2016-04-14)
    In 2007, when the consequences of the financial breakdown where barely visible, no one could foresee the consequences of those economic turmoils for the European Union (EU). Even today the full effects of the crisis remain unclear and comprehensive analysis are hardly feasible. Specific empirical research on a smaller scale such as regional studies are hence extremely important. The political scientists Carlos Nunes Silva and Jan Bucek have edited the volume Fiscal Austerity and innovation in local Governance in Europe in order to provide such an empiric compilation. This article provides a review of the edited volume. After sketching the foundations of European regional politics and discussing the central aspects of Europe's regional agenda, the book's content is critically revised and discussed. The disciplinary array of the volume's articles ranges from urban studies, policy analysis and regional studies to jurisprudential articles. While a critical revision is at the core of the review, the content of each chapter is only briefly presented. The value of the reviewed volume lies in its rich, topical and informing content, but the lack of analytic sharpness of the framing chapters made a critical discussion of the volume necessary. While the editors of the volume suggest that the crisis has deeply impacted European politics and somehow transformed its core values, they are not concerned enough about the quality of this transformation. The emergence of anti-libertarian, socially regressive and politically narrowing policy agendas remain notes in the margin. While those weaknesses may create a wrong impression about the effects of the European crisis, a critical revision of the volume fosters new insights on the subject matter and elucidates new starting-points for further research. From this perspective the volume provides a rich content of diverse articles, which enable further examination of the subject. This article provides the reader with several approaches towards regional policies in the EU.
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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.