Archive for ‘discourse theory’

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5 April 2011

Education articles for free

Routledge tells me to tell you that its education journals are freely available throughout the month of April. All articles are available for free download including (ahem) this one:

Macgilchrist, Felicitas, & Christophe, Barbara. (2011). Translating globalization theories into educational research: Thoughts on recent shifts in Holocaust education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32(1), 145-158.

Abstract: Much educational research on globalization aims to prepare students to be successful citizens in a global society. We propose a set of three concepts, drawing on systems theory (Nassehi, Stichweh) and theories of the subject (Butler, Foucault), to think the global which enables educational research to step back from hegemonic discourses and reflect on current practices. Globalization is understood in this approach as referring to: (1) a cognitive shift; (2) expanding relevancy spaces; and (3) new forms of subjectivation. The framework is illustrated with examples from educational policy and learning materials, with an extended look at how globalization is articulated in recent shifts in Holocaust education.

And other articles in

…and many more education journals.

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4 April 2011

“Arab Spring”

Oliver Kearns on pambazuka.org has drawn my attention to a powerfully multimodal critique of the narrative of the “Arab spring” that the mainstream news has been following. Swamppost‘s dynamic map highlights the truly global range of protest. North Africa and the Middle East are there. And so is – by mid-February – South Korea, the USA, the UK, and a long stretch along the eastern coast of Africa.

Kearns:

My point in highlighting this is not necessarily to argue that all protests happening across the world should be understood as developing as part of a homogeneous protest wave – each protest movement has its own particular dynamics and reasons for evolving the way it has. What I am arguing is that the public narrative of an Arab Spring excludes much of the world’s population both from public attention and concern and from discussion of what meaningful political change might look like and how it can be supported by people in other places.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=ogUYigqwKYY

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31 March 2011

Cyborg Subjects

Cyborg Subjects, an open source online journal on digital culture, leads with:

On May 26, 2010 The Telegraph reported that a British scientist had been infected by a computer virus. Mark Gasson, of the University of Reading, claimed to be the first human to have come in contact with a technological virus. A chip that is inserted into his hand, which he apparently uses to unlock his mobile phone with, had been “programmed” with a virus that could spread to other technological devices.

Volume #0 considers what the cyborg subject is. Volume #1 should be appearing soon.

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2 March 2011

Mediations

Mediations, Journal of the Marxist Literary Group, Vol 25 (1): Marx, Politics… and Punk

Available online, also as pdf.

Editors’ Note
Contributors

Fredric Jameson: A New Reading of Capital

Is Capital about labor, or unemployment? Does Marxism have a theory of the political, or is it better off without one? Fredric Jameson previews the argument of his forthcoming book, Representing Capital.

Anna Kornbluh: On Marx’s Victorian Novel

As out of place as Marx himself might have been in Victorian England, Capital is less out of place than one might have thought among Victorian novels. But this does not have to mean that its mode of truth is literary. Anna Kornbluh explores the tropes that propel Capital in order to establish the novel relationship Marx produces between world and text.

Roland Boer: Marxism and Eschatology Reconsidered

The variations on the thesis of Marxism’s messianism are too many to count. But is it plausible to imagine that Marx or Engels took up Jewish or Christian eschatology, in any substantial form, into their thought? Roland Boer weighs the evidence.

Reiichi Miura: What Kind of Revolution Do You Want? Punk, the Contemporary Left, and Singularity

What does punk have to do with Empire? What does singularity have to do with identity? What does the logic of rock ‘n’ roll aesthetics have to do with a politics of representation? What does the concept of the multitude have to do with neoliberalism? The answer to all these questions, argues Reiichi Miura, is a lot more than you might think.

Alexei Penzin: The Soviets of the Multitude: On Collectivity and Collective Work: An Interview with Paolo Virno

One of the principle conundrums that confronts the theorization of the multitude is the relationship it entails between individual and collective. Alexei Penzin, of the collective Chto Delat / What Is To Be Done?, interviews Paolo Virno.

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24 February 2011

Presuppositions and the GDR

A discourse analytical moment: Reading about a survey of perceptions of the GDR. Very critical study of how the “east Germans” are oh so nostalgic about the GDR and simply won’t accept the view of these west German scholars that the free, democratic FRG was the much superior state. The study led to a good deal of controversy in its time (2007).

One of the questions in the survey (Agree/Disagree as possible answers):

Sich in einer Gemeinschaft oder Gruppe unterzuordnen wie in der DDR, ist für mich grundsäzlich wichtiger, als meine eigene Persönlichkeit zu entwickeln.

To subordinate oneself to a community or group, as in the GDR, is more important to me than developing my own personality.

And here, once again, analysing presuppositions comes into its own. The explicit statement, to be supported or negated, is “X is more important to me than Y”.

It takes a lot more work to negate the presuppositions. Indeed, within the frame of the survey it is not possible to question the presuppositions.

Presupposition 1: In the GDR one subordinated oneself to the community/group.

Presupposition 2: This subordination hindered the development of one’s own personality.

Well, as long as we know what our “common knowledge” is.

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20 February 2011

What if Derrida was wrong about Saussure?

This new book wins title of the year for me:

Russell Daylight (2011). What if Derrida was wrong about Saussure? Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Daylight’s fine book on Derrida and Saussure is the first critique to seek to understand Derrida’s philosophical project while testing his reading of Saussure and exploring how the argument of the Course may, despite Derrida’s influential critique, contain resources for resisting his project and thinking differently about language and meaning.” (Jonathan Culler, Cornell University)

Between 1907 and 1911, Ferdinand de Saussure gave three series of lectures on the topic of general linguistics. After his death, these lecture notes were gathered together by his students and published as the Course in General Linguistics. And in the past one hundred years, there has been no more influential and divisive reading of Saussure than that of Jacques Derrida.

This book is an examination of Derrida’s philosophical reconstruction of Saussurean linguistics, of the paradigm shift from structuralism to post-structuralism, and of the consequences that continue to resonate in every field of the humanities today.

Despite the importance of Derrida’s critique of Saussure for cultural studies, philosophy, linguistics and literary theory, no comprehensive analysis has before been written. The magnitude of the task undertaken here makes this book an invaluable resource for those wishing to interrogate the encounter beyond appearances or received wisdom. In this process of a close reading, the following themes become sites of debate between Derrida and Saussure:

  • the originality of Saussure within the history of Western metaphysics
  • the relationship between speech and writing
  • the relationship between difference and difference
  • the intervention of time in structuralism
  • linguistic relativism and the role of the language user.

This long-overdue commentary also poses new questions to structuralism and post-structuralism, and opens up exciting new terrain in linguistic and political thought.

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19 February 2011

“hier bei uns”

Connection of the day: Reading a lot of good work about memory and remembering at the moment. Harald Welzer, Sabine Moller and Karoline Tschuggnall, for instance, on the dynamics and contradictions of remembering in families (“Opa war kein Nazi”). Very interesting study on how memories are passed on – including, for instance, how a gran’s vague ambiguous memory of certain events becomes ever more concrete and definite as it passes down through the generations.

One of the things Welzer and colleagues critique is that in remembering WWII, very often a distinction is drawn between “the Germans” and “the Jews”. An us/them dinstinction is made, even when nothing malicious or discriminatory seems to be intended.

Is that so very surprising, given today’s constellations of group identies? Today I am reading a valiant attempt in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit to point out how the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt etc. could “improve the world – from Kreuzberg to Peking and Ramallah”.

And what do they say – bearing in mind this is an entirely well-intentioned article, and bearing in mind that Muslims living in Germany are often of the third generation born here. Writing about the dramatic contradiction between the imagined Muslim of “the Sarrazin year” (Muslims in this hugely problematic view are uneducated, violent, dole scrounging machos who mass produce babies to get more dole money) and the Muslims of the recent revolutions(democratically engaged, equality promoting, intelligent), Die Zeit writes:

Immerhin könnte es sein, dass man sich getäuscht hat. Die Vermutung war, dass die meisten Schwierigkeiten, die es in Deutschland und Europa mit Muslimen gibt, aus deren Kultur, aus Rückständigkeit und Religion entspringen. Nun legen die arabischen Ereignisse nahe, dass es eher an den Umständen liegt, unter denen die Muslime dort unten und hier bei uns leben.

“Hier bei uns” (“Muslims living down there and here with us”)? So, despite generations of living together, Muslims in Germany are still not the “us” of …what? White/Christian/atheist Germans? And, once again, as with Welzer and co’s study: An us/them dinstinction is made, even when nothing malicious or discriminatory seems to be intended.

(And, yes, more could be said about the previous sentence in thw quote: “The assumption was that most of the difficulties that Europe and Germany have with Muslims stem from their culture, from backwardness and religion”. Paul Chilton write beautifully about the packaging involved in this kind of statement. Even though the author explicitly presents “culture, backwardness and religion” as a flawed assumption, he (implicitly) reproduces the presupposition that it is Europe and Germany which have (currently) “difficulties” “with” “Muslims”, i.e. which positions Muslims as causing the difficulties, rather than any particular forms of social organisation, exclusion, discrimination, etc.)

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28 January 2011

Open access peer reviewed books

All of the IMISCOE-AUP Series’ peer-reviewed academic books are now available through the OAPEN Library, the first dedicated collection of freely available academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences from across Europe. The goals of the OAPEN Library are:

  • to promote Open Access book publishing by building a branded collection of OA peer-reviewed titles;
  • to increase the visibility and retrievability of high-quality European research;
  • to set quality standards for OA books, based on transparent procedures for peer review and recommendations for OA licences.

More information on OAPEN and the Library is available at www.oapen.org (OAPEN Library).

LIST OF AVAILABLE TITLES

1. Innovative Concepts for Alternative Migration Policies : Ten Innovative Approaches to the Challenges of Migration in the 21st Century
Jandl, Michael

2. The Dynamics of International Migration and Settlement in Europe : A State of the Art
Penninx, Rinus; Berger, Maria & Kraal, Karen

3. The Local Dimension of Migration Policymaking
Caponio, Tiziana & Borkert, Maren

4. Diaspora and Transnationalism : Concepts, Theories and Methods
Bauböck, Rainer & Faist, Thomas

5. Migrants and Markets : Perspectives from Economics and the Other Social Sciences
Kolb, Holger & Egbert, Henrik

6. ‘My Name Is Not Natasha’ : How Albanian Women in France Use Trafficking to Overcome Social Exclusion (1998-2001)
Davies, John

7. Illegal Residence and Public Safety in the Netherlands
Leerkes, Arjen

8. The Position of the Turkish and Moroccan Second Generation in Amsterdam and Rotterdam : The TIES Study in the Netherlands
Crul, Maurice & Heering, Liesbeth

9. Modes of Migration Regulation and Control in Europe
Doomernik, Jeroen & Jandl, Michael

10. Breaking Down Anonymity : Digital Surveillance of Irregular Migrants in Germany and the Netherlands
Broeders, Dennis

11. Understanding Processes of Ethnic Concentration and Dispersal : South Asian Residential Preferences in Glasgow
McGarrigle, Jennifer Leigh

12. Migration and Irregular Work in Austria : A Case Study of the Structure and Dynamics of Irregular Foreign Employment in Europe at the Beginning of the 21st Century
Jandl, Michael; Hollomey, Christina; Gendera, Sandra; Stepien, Anna & Bilger, Veronika

13. The Family in Question : Immigrant and Ethnic Minorities in Multicultural Europe
Grillo, Ralph

14. Citizenship in the Arab World : Kin, Religion and Nation-State
Parolin, Gianluca P.

15. Identity Processes and Dynamics in Multi-Ethnic Europe
Westin, Charles; Bastos, José; Dahinden, Janine & Góis, Pedro

16. Immigrant Associations, Integration and Identity : Angolan, Brazilian and Eastern European Communities in Portugal
Sardinha, João

17. Statistics and Reality : Concepts and Measurements of Migration in Europe
Fassmann, Heinz; Reeger, Ursula & Sievers, Wiebke

18. Sri Lankan Housemaids in Lebanon : A Case of ‘Symbolic Violence’ and ‘Everyday Forms of Resistance’
Moukarbel, Nayla

19. Paradoxes of Social Capital : A Multi-Generational Study of Moroccans in London
Cherti, Myriam

20. Practising Citizenship and Heterogeneous Nationhood : Naturalisations in Swiss Municipalities
Helbling, Marc

21. Migration and Citizenship : Legal Status, Rights and Political Participation
Bauböck, Rainer

22. Illegal Migration and Gender in a Global and Historical Perspective
Schrover, Marlou; Leun, Joanne van der; Lucassen, Leo & Quispel, Chris

23. Getting by in Europe’s Urban Labour Markets : Senegambian Migrants’ Strategies for Survival, Documentation and Mobility
Nieuwenhuyze, Inge Van

24. L’Imaginaire du Complot : Discours d’extrême droite en France et aux Etats-Unis
Jamin, Jérôme

25. Citizenship Policies in the New Europe : Expanded and Updated Edition
Bauböck, Rainer; Perchinig, Bernhard & Sievers, Wiebke

26. International Migration in Europe : New Trends and New Methods of Analysis
Bonifazi, Corrado; Okólski, Marek; Schoorl, Jeannette & Simon, Patrick

27. Navigating Borders : Inside Perspectives on the Process of Human Smuggling into the Netherlands
Liempt, Ilse van

28. Globalisation, Migration and Socio-Economic Change in Contemporary Greece : Processes of Social Incorporation of Balkan Immigrants in Thessaloniki
Hatziprokopiou, Panos Arion

29. Citizenship Policies in the New Europe
Bauböck, Rainer; Perchinig, Bernhard & Sievers, Wiebke

30. Dynamic Entrepreneurship : First and Second-Generation Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Dutch Cities
Rusinovic, Katja

31. The Immigrant Organising Process : Turkish Organisations in Amsterdam and Berlin and Surinamese Organisations in Amsterdam, 1960-2000
Vermeulen, Floris

32. Narratives of Place, Culture and Identity : Second-Generation Greek-Americans Return ‘Home’
Christou, Anastasia

33. Acquisition and Loss of Nationality|Volume 1: Comparative Analyses : Policies and Trends in 15 European Countries
Bauböck, Rainer; Ersbøll, Eva; Groenendijk, Kees & Waldrauch, Harald

34. Secularism or Democracy? : Associational Governance of Religious Diversity
Bader, Veit

35. Paths of Integration : Migrants in Western Europe (1880-2004)
Lucassen, Leo; Feldman, David & Oltmer, Jochen

36. Acquisition and Loss of Nationality|Volume 2: Country Analyses : Policies and Trends in 15 European Countries
Bauböck, Rainer; Ersbøll, Eva; Groenendijk, Kees & Waldrauch, Harald

37. In debat over Nederland : Veranderingen in het discours over de multiculturele samenleving en nationale identiteit
Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid & Sleegers, Fleur

38. City in Sight : Dutch Dealings with Urban Change
Duyvendak, Jan Willem; Hendriks, Frank & Niekerk, Mies van

39. Doing Good or Doing Better : Development Policies in a Globalising World
Kremer, Monique; Lieshout, Peter van & Went, Robert

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14 December 2010

Entextualization

How’s this for a perfect example of entextualization - the decontextualization of discourse from one location and its decontextualization in another; sure to remind many of the practices of media production! (Refs for entextualization including Bauman, Briggs and Silverstein here).

In the beginning was the Plan, and then the Program; And the Plan was without form, and the Program was void;

And Darkness was upon the faces of the professors; And they spake unto the Associate Dean, saying “It is a Crock of Shit, and it stinks”;

And the Associate Dean went unto the Dean, and he spake unto him saying, “It is a Crock of Faeces, and non may abide the Odour thereof;

And the Dean went unto the Vice President, and he spake unto him saying, “It is a Container of Excrement, and it is very strong, such that none may abide before it;

And the Vice President went unto the President, and he spake unto him saying, “It is a Vessel of Fertiliser, and none may abide its strength;

And the President went unto the Vice Chancellor, and he spake unto him saying, “It containeth that which aids Plant Growth, and it is very strong;

And the Vice Chancellor went unto the Chancellor, and he spake unto him saying, “It promoteth growth, and it is very powerful;

And the Chancellor went unto the Board of Regents, and he spake unto them saying, “This potent and vigorous Plan will promote the Growth of the University;

And the Board looked upon the Plan, and saw that it was good, and ordered its Implementation forthwith.

…via the sysfunc email list…

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1 December 2010

Attac and discourse analysis

Real live discourse analysis in action. Attac Berlin has a “language group”. Another language culture is possible.

Its aim is to analyse the language used by neoliberals, to explore the extent to which those metaphors, phrases, concepts, etc. pervade even the language of those contesting neoliberal practices, and to find ways of using language differently to open new possibilities.

The group meets on the first Monday of every month at 6.30pm in the attac-treff: Grünberger Straße  24, 10243 Berlin-Friedrichshain (U1 Warschauer Straße or U5 Frankfurter Tor).

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