The aesthetics of political resistance: On silent politics

This article analyses the aesthetics of silent political resistance by focusing on refugees’ silent political action. The starting point for the analysis is Jacques Rancière’s philosophy and his theorisation of the aesthetics of politics. The article enquires into the aesthetic meaning of silent refugee activism and interprets how refugees’ silent acts of resistance can constitute aesthetically effective resistance to what can be called the ‘speech system’ of statist, representative democracy. The article analyses silence as a political tactic and interprets the emancipatory meaning of silent politics for refugees. It argues that refugees’ silent acts of political resistance can powerfully affect aesthetic, political subversion in prevailing legal-political contexts.

Refusing the king’s portion: A reexamination of Daniel’s dietary reaction in Daniel 1

In Dan. 1, scholarship has proposed a range of plausible answers to the question, why did Daniel and his friends refuse the king’s provision of food and drink? Given that such a refusal was not absolutely necessary for a faithful Israelite living in exile (e.g. Jehoiachin, Esther, and Nehemiah), uncertainty remains regarding Daniel’s exact motivation. The suggested answers range from a concern for Pentateuchal dietary regulations to political subversion. This article surveys the relevant textual data points and several of the major proposed interpretations, and proposes that an underappreciated allusion to Exod. 15-16 points to the multi-layered significance of Daniel’s abstention from the king’s portion, namely, both a ritual concern attending the exiles and a statement from Daniel that Yahweh is his only provider, contrary to Nebuchadnezzar’s claims.

Dance as the Art of Survival

This chapter demonstrates how contemporary dance moved otherwise as a strategy of survival during the last military dictatorship (1976–83), a period synonymous with the forced disappearance of an estimated 30,000 people (desaparecidos) accused of political “subversion.” During this period, contemporary dance offered protected spaces in studios, schools, and professional companies for negotiating bodily autonomy as dictatorial terror restricted quotidian movement. The chapter also examines expresión corporal (corporeal expression), a movement practice that expanded during the dictatorship. Outside of the studio, it considers how the Danza Abierta festival staged community, cohesion, and endurance during the waning years of the dictatorship. Lastly, the chapter examines Renate Schottelius’s Paisaje de gritos (Landscape of Screams, 1981) and Alejandro Cervera’s Dirección obligatoria (One Way, 1983), works that premiered at the San Martín Theater in the later years of the dictatorship and addressed the experience and violence of the military dictatorship.

Verkehr, or Subversive Mobility: Recovering Radical Transportation Geographies from Language

This article theorizes subversive mobility by looking at the layers of meaning connoted by a set of etymologically complex words in several languages. I examine at how the semantics of words like Verkehr (German), “filibuster” (English), Yangjingbang (Shanghainese vernacular), and others, convey human experiences of physical mobility and political subversion as interconnected. This discussion is both philological and historical-geographic in orientation, using etymological inquiry to recover transportation geographies and worlds of social meaning which have become marginalized or hidden. The discussion also provides context for an analysis of the importance of not only subversive mobility but also enduring, “archaic” forms of social energy in Karl Marx's dialectical conception of history, especially towards the end of his life.

On Politics and Performativity in Atlanta Hip Hop Party Culture, Or How to Get Crunk with (Body and) Words

This chapter offers a historical contextualization of crunk, an Atlanta-based subgenre of hip hop, in order to access its political underpinnings. By situating the development of crunk within the context of nonparticipant panic surrounding the 1990s Black spring break event Freaknik, this chapter argues that crunk represents an aestheticization of resistance to concurrent heightened policing of Black youth leisure. While discussions of politics in hip hop music generally centralize lyrical content, crunk, with its emphasis on loud interjectional vocalizations, and extended sections of repetitious chant, necessitates an alternate analytical approach in addressing its political subtext. Accordingly, this chapter offers J. L. Austin’s concept of performative utterances and Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s theory of Signifyin’ as frames for addressing how crunk uses vocality, and by extension language, to manifest political subversion, not through lyrical content or poetic virtuosity but by facilitating the reproduction of a stylized performance that actively resists the silencing/repression of Black youth pleasure.

Crispi and the “Exceptional Laws”

In Italy anarchist bombings along with the attentats of Lega and Caserio provided the pretext for an intensification of repression. Chapter 4 details the measures adopted under Francesco Crispi’s draconian rule directed against the country’s progressive forces—republicans, socialists, and anarchists. The chapter describes the legislation approved in 1894 that allowed the government to escalate the clampdown of political subversion and public unrest. These “exceptional laws” further curtailed freedom of the press and made it possible to subject thousands of subversives and malfattori to ammonizione, trial by military courts and domicilio coatto in penal colonies. Finally, these repressive measures forced anarchist leaders who were not in detention to flee into exile.

Close-Up

This two-volume set presents detailed interpretations of singular performances by several of the most compelling actors in cinema history, asking in many different and complementary ways what makes performance meaningful, how it reflects a director's style, as well as how it contributes to the development of national cinemas and cultures. Whether noting the precise ways actors shape film narrative, achieve emotional effect, or move toward political subversion, the essays in these books innovate new approaches to studying screen performance as an art form and cultural force. This second volume focuses on international cinema, and includes case studies of key performances from actors like Ingrid Bergman, Gael Garcia Bernal, Nikolai Cherkassov, Alec Guinness, Setsuko Hara, Isabelle Huppert, Peter Lorre, Madhubala, Anna Magnani, Toshirô Mifune, and Choi Min Sik, amongst many others.

“Only Matched in Times of Famine and Plague”

This chapter examines inmate life inside the Anglo-Boer War concentration camps. Native African refugees were segregated into a system of labor camps while British officials developed a form of governmentality that sought to educate, anglicize and rehabilitate Boer refugees by inculcating British cultural ideals and industrial habits, thereby transforming them into imperial citizens and willing partners of a British South Africa. The medical techniques of quarantine and segregation were adapted to inmates suspected of political subversion, who were detained in undesirable camps. Ultimately, both African and Boer camps suffered from the spread of epidemic diseases like measles, which resulted in staggering mortality rates in the camps and created a damaging political scandal in Britain. The humanitarian reformer Emily Hobhouse noted that scenes of suffering and death in the concentration camps could only be matched by similar sights during plague and famine in India.