scholarly journals James Bond’s Biopolitics

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 62
Author(s):  
Wieland Schwanebeck

This chapter traces Foucauldian technologies of power in the James Bond universe and characterises the Bond franchise’s biopolitics in the cultural environment of the 1960s and 1970s, when 007 became a mass phenomenon. The majority of the chapter is dedicated to a case study of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Ian Fleming’s tenth Bond novel (1963) and the sixth film in the EON series (1969). The chapter highlights the intersection between reproduction and fertility on the one hand and the infliction of death and mass genocide on the other, and it examines how James Bond juxtaposes the disciplinary means that are directed against the body (as an organism) on the one hand, and the state-powered regulation of biological processes that control the population on the other. The two versions of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service amount to the franchise’s most straightforward foray into the realm of biopolitics and would pave the way for the franchise’s subsequent biopolitical and eugenic moments, like when the figure of the genocidal villain gets to articulate the franchise’s own subliminal agenda regarding population control and the future of the (British) species.

2021 ◽  
pp. 073527512110548
Author(s):  
Thomas Olesen

Democracy has been characterized from its outset by an autonomy dilemma. On the one hand, we think it vital that organizations work according to their own codes and logics. On the other hand, we insist that autonomy must never be complete, that citizens have a right to transgress boundaries to expose wrongdoing. With their insider position in the organizations where wrongdoing occurs, whistleblowers hold a unique place within this democratic politics of disclosure, which has so far not been sociologically theorized. This article takes four steps to address this lacuna: First, I situate whistleblowing within the democratic landslides that took place during the 1960s and 1970s; second, I disentangle it from practices such as journalism and activism; third, I argue that whistleblowers are particularly well positioned to detect normalized wrongdoing within organizations; and fourth, I discuss how whistleblowers’ most pronounced effect is the disclosure of gray areas that have gone under the democratic radar.


2016 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 79-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew McCormack

ABSTRACTHeight is rarely taken seriously by historians. Demographic and archaeological studies tend to explore height as a symptom of health and nutrition, rather than in its own right, and cultural studies of the human body barely study it at all. Its absence from the history of gender is surprising, given that it has historically been discussed within a highly gendered moral language. This paper therefore explores height through the lens of masculinity and focuses on the eighteenth century, when height took on a peculiar cultural significance in Britain. On the one hand, height could be associated with social status, political power and ‘polite’ refinement. On the other, it could connote ambition, militarism, despotism, foreignness and even castration. The article explores these themes through a case-study of John Montagu, earl of Sandwich, who was famously tall and was frequently caricatured as such. As well as exploring representations of the body, the paper also considers corporeal experiences and biometric realities of male height. It argues that histories of masculinity should study both representations of gender and their physical manifestations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-60
Author(s):  
Philipp Schwab

Abstract The paper discusses the question as to whether, and in which way, Nietzsche is present in Derrida’s readings of Heidegger in the Geschlecht texts, and in the newly edited Geschlecht III specifically. In order to unfold the background of this question, the first part turns to earlier texts from the 1960s and 1970s and shows that Nietzsche is a key figure in Derrida’s takes on Heidegger, especially as regards the issue of Heidegger’s “belonging” to metaphysics. The second part then addresses the Geschlecht texts and makes the case that, despite their brevity and seeming marginality, the remarks on Nietzsche, most of all in Geschlecht III, are indeed illuminating, in mainly two regards: on the one hand, they shed some light on how Derrida reads and “dislocates” Heidegger in these texts overall, and on the other hand, they contribute to the question of a “continuity” in Derrida’s relations to Heidegger.


Slavic Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (S1) ◽  
pp. S81-S97
Author(s):  
Brian Porter-Szűcs

It seems clear that there is a common ideological foundation linking Putin, Le Pen, Orbán, Erdoğan, Trump, Kaczyński, and others, but labeling that ideology has been difficult. Many in the media have called them “populists,” but this term can be misleading and imprecise. This essay focuses on Poland in order to propose a genealogy that transcends conventional divisions between left and right. The phrase “exclusionary egalitarianism” helps us recognize the intertwined commitments to both racism and nationalism on the one hand, and an opposition to inequalities of wealth and status on the other. While the analogy to the radical right of the 1930s is helpful, there is an even closer link to the “national communists” of the 1960s and 1970s.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Ferrando

Abstract This article aims to reassemble a feminist genealogy of the posthuman in the arts, with a specific focus on the visual works conceived by female artists after the rise of what has been retrospectively defined as first-wave Feminism. Starting with the main avant-garde movements of the first half of the twentieth century—specifically, Futurism, Dadaism and Surrealism—this genealogy analyses the second-wave Feminism of the 1960s and 1970s, with its integral exploration of the body highlighted by performance art. Following this, it takes into account the third-wave Feminism of the 1990s and its radical re-elaboration of the self: from Cyberfeminism and its revisitation of technology, to the artistic insights offered, on the one side, by critical techno-orientalist readings of the futures, and on the other, by the political and social articulations of Afrofuturism and Chicanafuturism. Lastly, this genealogy accesses the ways contemporary female artists are dealing with gender, social media and the notion of embodiment, touching upon elements that will become of key importance in fourth-wave Feminism. This article is published as part of a collection dedicated to multi- and interdisciplinary perspectives on gender studies.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirin Rai ◽  
Anand Prakash

This book traces the Indian Left’s engagement with the international communist debates of the 1960s and 1970s, shedding new light on the fault lines within the Left as well as on its international solidarities. Lajpat Rai argued for rethinking established leftist positions, seeking inspiration in experiment and developing creative approaches for the sustainability of socialist ideas and ideals. The contemporary relevance of these debates is significant as the Left remains without a sharp response to the rise of neoliberalism and right-wing populism in India, and a failure of the Left to recognize the challenges emanating from a strongly integrated and organized finance capital on the one hand and the increasingly self-aware identity politics on the other. Democratic opposition rather than a bureaucratic thinking needs to be the backbone of any meaningful Left struggle. Lajpat Rai’s passionate writing gives expression to the spirit and intensity of political debates at the time and the role of the Left intelligentsia in comprehending, from a committed socialist angle, the shifting paradigms of an unstable world to help bring about progressive change.


2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 498-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne C. Shreffler

As exemplified in writings by Carl Dahlhaus and Georg Knepler, a debate about music historiography took place in East and West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. A comparison between two books, Dahlhaus's Grundlagen der Musikgeschichte (Foundations of Music History) and Knepler's Geschichte als Weg zum Musikverstäändnis (History as a Means of Understanding Music), both published in 1977, is instructive as a measure of the two poles of the Methodenstreit: the one centered around music as autonomous work, the other around music as a human activity. The central questions raised prove uncannily current. The two scholars, who knew each other and respected each other's work, were both based in Berlin; but with Dahlhaus in the West and Knepler in the East, they represented the two different political systems that existed in the divided city between 1945 and 1989. In their work, and especially in these two books, Dahlhaus and Knepler defended their own positions and sought to point out weaknesses in the other side. While Dahlhaus's work is well known in English-speaking musicology, Knepler's is not. His contribution to music history and historiography was comparable to Dahlhaus's in importance, however, and his ideas anticipate many tenets of the "new musicology."


2004 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-103
Author(s):  
Arjan Post

The broad social changes that came about in Western countries during the 1960s and 1970s can be briefly characterised as informalisation; during the 1980s and 1990s this gave rise to something of a moral panic in public opinion. In daily life today, many examples can be found of the ongoing ‘emancipation of emotions' on the one hand, and of a rising quest for law and order on the other. Is the interpretation of informalisation still adequate? To a large extent this interpretation was founded on Brinkgreve and Korzec's study of an advice column in the Dutch popular weekly Margriet between 1938 and 1978. This article is a follow-up to that earlier study. In the new material, focusing on sexes and generations, a shift towards reformalisation can be noticed. No longer are social and psychic boundaries being explored, but once more being emphasised. An increasing unease ever since the 1980s – related to economy, criminality, but also disillusion with emancipation – is accompanied by a stronger a sense of belonging and mutual consideration. The material does not, however, indicate a restoration but rather a change in social habitus: a shift from psychologisation towards sociologisation. In terms of Norbert Elias's concept of the We–I balance of individuals, this indicates a shift towards ‘we’.


2021 ◽  
pp. 51-65
Author(s):  
Edyta Żyrek-Horodyska

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer in the Context of the Main Features of New New Journalism The aim of this article is to present Jon Krakauer’s reportage Into Thin Air in the context of the main features of New New Journalism. The author critically discusses the most important elements of this paradigm, which refers on the one hand to the legacy of muckrakers from the beginning of 20th-century, and on the other hand – to the tradition of American reporters from the 1960s and 1970s. Detailed research was devoted to the Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air, which has been described as a journalistic syncretic form, combining elements of auto-reportage, immersive reportage and paraliterature.


2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-79
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Nikorowicz-Zatorska

Abstract The present paper focuses on spatial management regulations in order to carry out investment in the field of airport facilities. The construction, upgrades, and maintenance of airports falls within the area of responsibility of local authorities. This task poses a great challenge in terms of organisation and finances. On the one hand, an active airport is a municipal landmark and drives local economic, social and cultural development, and on the other, the scale of investment often exceeds the capabilities of local authorities. The immediate environment of the airport determines its final use and prosperity. The objective of the paper is to review legislation that affects airports and the surrounding communities. The process of urban planning in Lodz and surrounding areas will be presented as a background to the problem of land use management in the vicinity of the airport. This paper seeks to address the following questions: if and how airports have affected urban planning in Lodz, does the land use around the airport prevent the development of Lodz Airport, and how has the situation changed over the time? It can be assumed that as a result of lack of experience, land resources and size of investments on one hand and legislative dissonance and peculiar practices on the other, aviation infrastructure in Lodz is designed to meet temporary needs and is characterised by achieving short-term goals. Cyclical problems are solved in an intermittent manner and involve all the municipal resources, so there’s little left to secure long-term investments.


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