Portugueses no vale do café – indícios de formação de uma rede de sociabilidades

RESUMO Aos portugueses que aportavam no Brasil desde o século XVI foram impostas novas condições de vida às quais tiveram que se adaptar destacando-se, aqui, o período imediatamente seguinte à emancipação política e o da formação da boa sociedade do Vale do Paraíba Fluminense a partir da exploração cafeeira, formando redes de sociabilidades e estratégias de poder. Nesta região, durante o oitocentos, podem ser identificados alguns indícios dessas redes, mediante a análise de jornais, documentos privados e outros. É o que propõe o estudo realizado por esse artigo. ABSTRACT New life conditions were imposed to the Portuguese who landed in Brazil since the 16thcentury, conditions to which they had to adapt themselves, particularly, here, during the period that followed the political emancipation and the formation of the good society of the Paraiba Valley in Rio de Janeiro State based on thecoffee plantations, establishing webs of sociability and strategies of power. In this region, during the 1800s, some signs of these webs can be identified, through the analysis of newspapers, private documents and others. That is what is intended in the study carried on for this article.

An Analysis of the Critical Essence of Marx’s Dialectics

Through continuous inquiry and reflection on the roots of religion, Marx was able to understand the limits of political emancipation when the relationship between political emancipation and religion was correctly revealed. People were not only restricted by the metaphysics of ideas but in reality, they were also restricted by capital. Hegel used concepts while Feuerbach used sensibility as ways to rescue them, yet they were all still trapped in metaphysics. Marx proposed a way on the basis of sublating the two, not only in terms of metaphysics but also the capital by thoroughly criticizing reality. It is through the path of dialectics that Marx was able to introduce a higher-level communist society in the internal criticism and denial of capitalist society by profoundly revealing the theoretical dilemma and internal contradictions of the fusion of metaphysics and capital in the pursuit and realization of human freedom and liberation.

New Materialism, Technophilia and Emancipation

The aim of this paper is to reflect on psychological, ethical and political implications of new materialisms (Barad, Bennett, Coole, Frost) in the context of expanded and accelerated regimes of measurement as part of a technological governance of the human. As new materialists are committed to both epistemic and political emancipation, I first analyse theoretical, in particular epistemological, foundations of new materialism. The new materialism has achieved liberating epistemic effects in criticizing self-referential discursive and socio-constructionist agendas. It argued instead for a return to material and somatic realities. However, I examine whether its flat ontology, its epistemology of de-differentiation of the human and non-human, even non-living agencies and commitments into a principle of immanence, provide appropriate means to critically assess ethical and political implications of entanglements of humans with the historically- produced technologies and social worlds in general. The next question to be discussed is whether a return (nevertheless a discursive one) to material and somatic realities can in itself protect those very vulnerable realities. As horizontal ontology invokes a horizontal normativity which cannot serve as a foundation for emancipatory projects, it follows that normativity needs other sources beyond the new materialism paradigm. Thus, I argue that such a weak or insecure position of normativity within the new materialisms affects any concept of human subject, regardless of its entanglements, and any project of emancipation. I conclude these critical analyses by claiming that the new materialism’s epistemological and political emancipatory promises cannot be fulfilled by means provided by the new materialism itself.

Klaus Mollenhauer: Emancipation, Bildung and six questions for education

Klaus Mollenhauer (1928–1998) is one of the most important German theorists of education in the postwar era. Mollenhauer is often remembered in Germany today for his first book titled Education and Emancipation: Polemical Sketches, but he received international renown for his final monograph, Forgotten Connections: On Culture and Upbringing. Although Mollenhauer characterized Forgotten Connections as actually working to move towards a more “substantial conception of emancipation,” many of his followers and colleagues such as Kaufmann et al. saw it as nothing less than an act of “infidelity to those who had taken on his emancipatory pedagogy” ( Kaufmann et al., 1991 : 86). In the light of these differences in emphasis and interpretation, this paper provides an overview of Forgotten Connections that (following Wivestad and Saevi) sees it as presenting six main questions and themes—ranging from “Why do we have children” to “How can we respect and draw out a child’s inherent character?” However, in doing so, this paper simultaneously traces Mollenhauer’s own efforts to develop a more substantial concept of personal and political emancipation in this text.

Between Magnanimity and Malevolence: Nigeria’s Commitment to South Africa’s Political Freedom in the Lens of Reciprocity

The history of South Africa’s long walk to political freedom is dotted with Nigeria’s undaunted commitment and involvement, propelled by Nigeria’s Afrocentric foreign policy stance. This study therefore, demonstrates Nigeria’s concern for Africa’s political liberation, and in particular, presents Nigeria’s commitment to South Africa’s struggle for political freedom during the colonial years. It adopts the secondary method of data collection, and borrows from the conceptual framework and doctrinal provisions of reciprocity to weigh South Africa’s attitude towards Nigeria’s commitment to her (South Africa’s) political emancipation. Passing Nigeria’s involvement in South Africa’s liberation struggle and South Africa’s treatments of Nigeria through the critical lens of historical and theoretical analysis, this study makes a finding that Nigeria’s magnanimity to South Africa is at variance with South Africa’s response to Nigeria. The study recommends that Nigeria’s relations with her African brothers, informed by her foreign policy of Afrocentrism, should reflect reciprocity. In sum, that in her foreign relations, Nigeria should treat as she is treated.

The Plowman and the Music as gender personifications of the Czech identity in culture

The culture of the Czech National Revival produced a symbolic autoidentification in figures of the Plowman and the Music. The drawings of J. Mánes and the sculptures of J. Myslbek perpetuated these figures as gender symbols of the Czech identity. The figures of the Plowman and the Music are presented in the Mánes’ drawing “Domov”. The semantics of the drawing is versatile, which provides an impulse for its culturological interpretation. A symbolic figure of the Plowman in historical and cultural consciousness of Czechs has been associated with Přemysl the Ploughman — the legendary founder of the Přemyslid dynasty. According to the Czech legend told by Cosmas of Prague, Přemysl was elected the prince upon the request by the Czech ruler Libuše, who then married him. The title of the drawing refers to the song of J. K. Tyl, which had become somewhat of an unofficial Czech anthem of the 19th century. In the Mánes’ drawing Libuše is substituted by a symbolic figure of the Music as a personification of the national genius of Czechs. Historical-patriotic connotations generate the image of the Czech people, which formed in the epoch of the National Revival. Moreover, the Czech identity manifested itself in gender as a harmony of the male and female principles, work, and music. The idea of organic work as the basis of art is introduced into the drawing`s composition. A series of Mánes’ drawings “The Music” came to be a vivid embodiment of the national identity, showing the life of a peasant accompanied by music from birth till death. The Myslbek’s sculpture “The Music”, which became lobby`s centerpiece of a new Czech sacred place — The National Theater in Prague, is presented as a personification of the Czech identity in culture. A female image of the Music is identified with the soul of the people in a state of sociocultural and political emancipation.

French image of the inhabitants of the Illyrian Provinces and the emergence of South Slavic nationalisms

The Illyrian Provinces, a part of the 1st French Empire which existed in the years 1809-1813, are often portrayed as a political entity which anticipated various projects of the political emancipation of the South Slavs. However, the link between later pan-South-Slavic movements and the Napoleonic political activity is a matter which still remains unclear and deserves some in-depth analysis. Most often the Napoleonic impact on the evolution of the nascent South-Slavic nationalisms is viewed in the perspective of the posterior political attitudes of the Croat, Slovene or Serbian elites towards the French, and their own interpretations of the Napoleonic impact on the pan-South-Slavic movement. The proposed paper will concentrate on the opposite approach and will investigate how French perceived the South Slavs in the perspective of the nascent nationalisms, especially that French propaganda presented Napoleon as the savior of the European nations including the „Illyrian” one. But how French defined this „Illyrian” nation? This question can be answered thanks to the French strive for description of the societies inhabiting Illyrian Provinces.

The Iraqi spectres of Marx

This reading attempts to trace the awareness and mention of Marx in Iraqi writing, focusing on some signposts that also shed light on the intellectual history of Iraq since 1914. It argues its case through an exploration of texts and recollections to present another side of this history as a controversial narrative of multiple positions and contentions. If the spectre of Marx shocked conservatives and was widely manipulated in Cold War politics, its theoretical permeation of an Iraqi discourse of social justice cannot be ignored. Almost every Iraqi narrative, poem, or essay speaks of the need for equitable balance of power, social justice, and social and political emancipation. To have these concerns materialize, there has been a need for some organized forum, a party, society, or a forum. British intelligence service began to trace the specters of Marx early on, and held all, even nationalists, suspect. The trepidations of the Empire were well conveyed in the reports of its agents in Iraq.