 The recently ended 18th Woodstock Station (Przystanek Woodstock) music festival, held in Poland just across the German border, is an extraordinary event. Organized on over 120 hectares under the banner of peace, love and rock & roll by the country’s possibly most popular charity activist, Jurek Owsiak, the free, open-air festival is a draw for over 500 000 people who come from all over Poland and increasingly from Germany to enjoy the unique event.
In terms of music, there are better festivals to be found. Woodstock Station showcases mostly rock, folk and industrial music bands, which are either still before or already after their prime; but this is only part of what makes the event special. The other is Owsiak himself and his charisma, which constantly attracts different types of people unhappy with “the system,” the political order, social norms and conventional careers. Woodstock Station provides them with a space without checkpoints or metal barriers, but instead offers one where they feel at ease and where they can do whatever they want. And indeed, the place has the feel of youth, punk rock and anarchy.
Yet, what you do find in the chaos is a quite surprising sense of mutual responsibility and a sympathetic awareness of others. During a concert you might need to elbow your way to get close to the stage, but if you feel gloomy, someone will ask if you are OK. The crime rate is ridiculously low: about thirty thefts in three days for half a million people.
Apart from two main stages and tent fields, which make the huge space look something of a favela, you can also find the so-called villages, spaces with big tents organized according to a particular theme. Apart from those organized by the sponsors—a mobile phone service provider, an international beer company and an on-line auction service—where you can buy drinks, exchange plastic bottles for water and charge your phone, there are others such as the religious Hare Krishna, and Catholic Church’s Jesus Station, another one created by the Polish National Bank, and the “Academy of Beautiful Arts,” a space for . . .
Read more: Woodstock in Poland, 2012
By Aron Hsiao, August 30th, 2012 
Those of us in the U.S. find ourselves embroiled in that recurring cabaret often euphemistically called “election season.” It is a time for those of us that prefer to be informed to prepare to read the political platforms that are to be revealed in coming conventions and to evaluate the candidates to which they have been matched.
As it happens, I’ve read an already released party platform a few days ago that offers a fresh look at many of the problems that we face as a nation and that ought to have a place in U.S. national political dialogue.
Though I certainly don’t agree with the entirety of the platform, I found much of it to be sensible or at the very least no more objectionable than what is expected from either of the major parties in the coming election.
Some Platform Highlights –
Because not everyone has the time (or wants) to read these things, I’ve taken the liberty of surveying and summarizing what I found to be some of the more interesting points of the platform in question. It calls, in part, for—
In the “Taxation and Fiscal Policy” section:
Reduction of government size only while safeguarding essential government services to the public. Reductions in taxes “with particular consideration for low and middle income families.” Tax policy with an eye toward the unequal effect of taxes on those being taxed. Strong support for the Federal Reserve and the tools available to it.
In the “Business and Economic Policy” and “Small Business” sections:
Massive highway, air, and maritime programs to support economic expansion. Federal loans to small businesses and strong support for the Small Business Administration. Closer federal scrutiny of mergers and enhancement of anti-trust enforcement. Vigorous SEC regulation to protect investors and small businesses.
In the “Labor” section:
Raising the minimum wage. Applauding collective bargaining and labor unions and suggesting that the government ought not interfere with these, save to protect their rights. Providing federal assistance to struggling workers. Guaranteeing the integrity of private pensions with the force of law. Equal pay for equal . . .
Read more: Back to the Future: A Party Platform
By Hana Cervinkova, August 29th, 2012 
Milan Petrusek, a pillar of integrity and a major figure in Czech social science, died last week. In this post, Hana Cervinkova pays tribute to him and to Alena Miltová, his wife. Together, they have been quiet heroes of Czech social science, culture and public life. I have long appreciated their work and benefited from it. It has been a privilege to know them personally. I publish this remembrance with sadness and appreciation. -Jeff
The world of Czech social science is a rather small community concentrated in several academic and research institutions in this country of ten million people. Today’s quality institutions in Prague and Brno are results of the complex process of the post-1989 (re)construction of various disciplines (including sociology, political science, anthropology, philosophy and economics), following their almost total destruction during the Communist rule. While in Poland, for example, a distinct tradition of critical social thought developed despite official restrictions prior to 1989, Czechoslovak social science was subject to all-encompassing censorship that concerned not only indigenous production, but also the prohibition on translations of Western theoretical texts. Leading Czech and Slovak scholars who dared to express critical and independent views were quickly removed from academic and research positions. As a result, the struggle for the (re)construction of the Czech and Slovak social science that began in 1989 was a difficult and somewhat solitary task wrought with many predicaments that characterized academic and scholarly work in this small post-traumatic professional community. Once the borders opened, some (including me) decided to temporarily or permanently emigrate to countries with larger and better established professional milieus. The task of shaping the local tradition was taken up by a few exceptional personalities who dedicated their professional lives to the building of institutions that allowed for the Czech social sciences to grow.
The professional wisdom, patience and resoluteness involved . . .
Read more: Miloslav (Milan) Petrusek (1936 – 2012)
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 28th, 2012 
There was an interesting exchange on my Facebook page following my last post. I am re-posting it this afternoon because I think it opens some important points and may serve as a guide to understand more deliberately this week’s Republican National Convention. The dialogue reveals alternative positions on conservative politics and the way progressives engage with conservative thought and practice. I think it is an interesting beginning of a discussion beyond partisan intellectual gated communities, as Gary Alan Fine has called for in these pages. I welcome the continuation of the discussion here, hope it illuminates theoretical and pressing practical questions . -Jeff
I opened on Facebook by quoting a central summary of the post. The irony: “Ryan’s nomination, I believe, assures the re-election of President Obama. The basis of my belief is a judgment that Americans generally are guided by a conservative insight, an American suspicion of ideological thought. Conservative insight defeats the conservative ticket.” And then a debate followed.
Harrison Tesoura Schultz: Would you say that the conservatives have become too extreme for most people to believe that they’re still actually ‘conservatives?’
Alvino-Mario Fantini @Harrison: What I always want to know is: “too extreme” in reference to what? Public opinion? (It seems to shift.) In comparison to conventional wisdom? (It, too, seems to change over the centuries.) The problem, I would suggest, is not that conservatives have become too extreme for people but that basic conservative ideas and principles are no longer known or understood, and increasingly considered irrelevant.
Jeffrey Goldfarb: Extremism in defense of liberty is a vice and it is not conservative. So, I think you are both right. People who call themselves conservatives are often not, rather they are right wing ideologues. Too much for the general public, I think, hope. On the other hand, . . .
Read more: Conservative Principles vs. Conservative Practices: A Continuing Discussion
By Piki Ish-Shalom, August 27th, 2012 
Carl Schmitt (11 July 1888 – 7 April 1985) is alive and well. Thank you for asking. As a matter of fact, he is walking the streets of Jerusalem nowadays, taking notes that confirm his understanding of politics as the realm in which the friend-foe distinction rules. If he were really alive today, he would notice that his distinction permeates everyday life as a series of racial confrontations. Last week, this culminated in an attempted lynching by a mob of Jewish Israeli teenagers of a few Palestinian youth.
On the Friday night of August the 17th, four Palestinian young people from East Jerusalem strolled the city center, trying to enjoy its night life, relaxing after a day of Ramadan fasting. They were attacked by the mob shouting racial slogans, beating them, and leaving one of the Palestinians unconscious and seriously wounded. The attack took place in the open public, viewed passively by hundreds of people. Only a few intervened, saving the lives of the Palestinians. The rest of the crowd feared for their own life, or worse, supported the mob.
The attack is the latest example of escalating racial violence conducted by both sides. In April this year, another mob, fans of the Jerusalem football club Beitar Jerusalem, violently confronted Palestinian workers in a Jerusalem shopping mall. And on November 2010, a group of Jewish students who mistakenly entered the streets of Al-Issawiya, a Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood, were stoned almost to death, narrowly escaping with the help of the police.
The latest attack aroused a public uproar in Israel. Chief of the Israel Police, Yohanan Danino, acted decisively, denouncing the attack, establishing a special investigating team that soon arrested the suspects, who confessed participating, justifying themselves with a racist agenda. Many of them were seen as teenage drop-outs. Also politicians joined in the denunciations, first among them: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres, and the Speaker of Parliament Rubi Rivlinwho visited the wounded Palestinian teenager in the hospital.
It seems that the alarming lessons of what happened in Tel Aviv on May 22th, which I analyzed in my last . . .
Read more: Carl Schmitt in Jerusalem: Reflecting on the Mob Violence of August 17th
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 24th, 2012 
In the past week, I have published in Deliberately Considered and posted on my Facebook page a series of reflections on the implications of the nomination of Paul Ryan as Vice Presidential candidate of the Republican Party. And I have explained that the basis of my understanding of the present situation is a conservative insight concerning the dangers of ideological thought. The replies have been quite illuminating. The discussion starts with an interesting American irony: amusing, perhaps more.
Ryan’s nomination, I believe, assures the re-election of President Obama. The basis of my belief is a judgment that Americans generally are guided by a conservative insight, an American suspicion of ideological thought. Conservative insight defeats the conservative ticket.
Yet, on the intellectual front, there are few conservative thinkers who would illuminate this. Exceptions? Andrew Sullivan, perhaps also David Frum. (Anyone else?) But because these two are so guided, few, if any, conservatives recognize them as comrades in thought.
Aron Hsiao in a reply to one of my posts on conservative intellectuals explains the factors involved:
“The essence of the moment is that the mainstream demographic blocs of the Right have, as an ideological move, adopted anti-intellectualism as a central tenet of conservatism. Any marriage of democratic practice and political epistemology at the moment therefore precludes the conservative intellectual; if someone is intellectual in the slightest, the Right will disown him/her. They are the oft-maligned “RINOs” (Republicans in Name Only). To make matters worse, any intellectual at the moment of any value is loathe to be associated with the totality of the present (i.e. recent form of the) conservative project in America and thus tends to gravitate toward the (D) party. My suspicion is that rationally informed self-selection (they have careers and statuses, after all) results in a state of affairs in which few serious intellectuals can be found in the (R) party…”
Aside from the way he uses the term ideology, I agree completely with Hsiao. The implications are indeed scary. I explained my understanding in my last . . .
Read more: Reflections on an Irony of American Conservatism: More on the Ryan Nomination
By Andrea Hajek, August 23rd, 2012 
Ever since former PM Silvio Berlusconi was forced to make way for Mario Monti’s politics of rigor and sacrifice, Italy has been confronted with major cuts, radical changes in legislation, and a complete reversal of mind-set with regards to life-styles and consumption habits. Whether “Rigor Montis” (from the Latin expression “rigor mortis,” i.e. stiffening caused by death) – as Monti is mockingly called on occasions – will manage to turn Italy into a real European country is still a big question. What I fear will not change easily is the disgraceful condition of women in Italian society. My anxiety was confirmed on a daily basis throughout the summer of 2012, as I followed a contest to elect two new showgirls for a popular show on Channel 5, one of Berlusconi’s TV channels. But what is the big deal with women, boobs and bums in Italy anyway?
Since classical antiquity, female beauty occupies a central place in Italian culture. Not by chance, the nation has often been represented through allegorical female figures. The connection of the “fatherland” with female mother figures or erotic ideals was to encourage men to a “passionate attachment to the nation,” as Stephen Gundle puts it in his Bellissima: Feminine Beauty and the Idea of Italy. In other words, beauty was used as a form of (political) persuasion. This is also because Italians have never really had a commonly held, national sense of identity. Therefore, special importance was given to factors relating to the informal culture that Italians did share, i.e. the sexual fixation of men on women, the physical element apparently being more important for Latin males.
Berlusconi’s application of the stereotypical image of women as erotic objects of desire for men is part of both his success at home and his negative image abroad. His sexist and degrading jokes – most notably his vulgar remark about Angela Merkel’s bottom – are sadly famous across the world. Homosexuals weren’t spared either, like when he publicly justified his erotic escapades with . . .
Read more: Sexism Italian Style: Why Sacking Berlusconi Isn’t Enough
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 21st, 2012 
I am having second thoughts about my last post in which I assert that the nomination of Paul Ryan, because he is a right-wing ideologist, assures the re-election of Barack Obama. I don’t wish to revise my observations or judgment, but think I need to explain a bit more. I realize that I should be clearer about what I mean by ideology and why I think, and hope, that it spells defeat for the Republicans. My thoughts in two parts: today, I will clarify what I mean by ideology and my general political prediction; in my next post, I will consider further implications of ideological developments in American politics, addressing some doubts and criticism raised by Deliberately Considered readers.
I also want to point out that my thoughts on Ryan and ideology are related to my search for conservative intellectuals worthy of respect. In that what I have to say is motivated bya conservative suspicion of the role of a certain kind of idea and reason in politics, I wonder what Paul Gottfried and Alvino-Mario Fantini (two conservative intellectuals who have contributed to Deliberately Considered) would think. As I understand it, my last post was a conservative critique of right-wing ideology, pointing to its progressive consequences. As a centrist who wants to move the center left, I am hopeful about this, but I imagine committed conservatives would be deeply concerned. I am still having trouble finding a deliberate dialogue with them.
A brief twenty-five year old encounter comes to mind as I think about ideology and its political toxicity, trying to explain my Ryan judgment.
We were in a taxi in Prague in 1987, Jonathan Fanton, the President of the New School for Social Research, Ira Katznelson, the Dean of The New School’s Graduate Faculty, Jan Urban, a leading dissident intellectual-journalist activist, and I: the preliminary meeting between The New School and the small but very vibrant, creative and ultimately successful Czechoslovak democratic opposition. In the end, we did some good in that part of the world, starting with a donation of a . . .
Read more: Ideology Once Again: Between Past and Future
By Hakan Topal, August 20th, 2012 
In my last post, I explored the idea of artistic research as I reflected on my visit to this year’s documenta exhibition. Today I will follow up by reviewing a case in point, “The Afghan Seminars” of dOCUMENTA (13), and then add some concluding reflections.
dOCUMENTA (13) actively stimulated the development of new artistic encounters by commissioning new projects, organizing various proceedings and publications. The organizers invited various artists and scholars for a series of events before and after the opening, for example, in Kabul, Cairo and Banff. “The Afghan Seminars: A Position of Documenta (13)” is particularly interesting because it included artists such as Michael Rakowitz, Giuseppe Penone, Mario Garcia Torres, Francis Alys, and Adrian Villar Rojas, most of whom were commissioned to produce a new work related to their experience in the war-torn country. In addition, the exhibition in Goethe Institute, Kabul presented 27 artists from 13 countries as part of the dOCUMENTA (13).
Although artists had no prior personal knowledge about the context of Afghanistan, they came up with interesting plans. For instance, in his film, “Reel/Unreel” (click link to watch), Francis Alys follows children who are playing a game with a steel circle, as well as an actual film reel given to them by the artist himself. Children continuously navigate by rolling the reels, following different paths in Kabul streets. The camera constantly shows the rotating reels in a close shot, depicting an intimate engagement with the urban context, providing a unique perspective, and a ground-up view of the city. The film operates in many layers. As we follow the kids and the reels, the film reel unfolds and refolds back, both literally and metaphorically, depicting life in Kabul. The project relates to the Kabul’s recent troubled past where films were burned down by the Taliban. However, the children’s playfulness offers the possibility for a joyful future.
Michael Rakowitz’s “What Dust Will Rise?” (2012) (click link for image), a conceptually complex project deals with the books that were destroyed during the aerial bombing in Kassel in 1941. Rakowitz’s . . .
Read more: Notes on dOCUMENTA (13): Afghanistan and Conclusions
By Hakan Topal, August 17th, 2012 
This years’ documenta—dOCUMENTA (13) titled with a small d as a subtle typographic gesture to create a distinctive branding —is sited around the city of Kassel with over 180 art projects, mostly new commissions. With a budget of thirty five million euros, it is the most expensive contemporary art exhibition in the world.
I visited dOCUMENTA (13) during the opening dates of the exhibition. Everyone spoke of the curator’s peculiar approach, choices, and her eccentric personality. The idea of the star curator is relentlessly promoted in the growing numbers of biennials and triennials all over the world, without bearing on the quality or content of the exhibitions. But nevertheless, the organizers use the lure of the curator-figure as a cheap marketing strategy. In fact three months before the opening, a press kit landed on blogs, featuring curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev in various glamor shots with different outfits. With almost no mention of the participating artists, the emphasis was on the curator as the sole mastermind.
These days, biennial openings are eerily like business events. Museum directors, gallery owners, collectors and schmoozing artists form a toxic bubble, diluting art’s effectiveness for a salient alternative future, transforming it into any other commercial activity. But one has to ignore all this to see the content and the hard work put into the exhibition by thousands of cultural producers. A biennial is best navigated by creatively selecting the sources to read, the people to speak with, the restaurants to eat at, and the events to participate in. Even so, it is exhausting to spend three days to see all the work. I have to admit that I could not watch all the films or visit all the sites.
Nevertheless, compared to many other contemporary art biennials, with its scope and careful execution, documenta is still a very exceptional experience. Since the organizers have an extensive time period to put the exhibition together, from its research to its commissioned projects, it provides a vigorous snapshot of the current state of contemporary art. Because of its scholarly yet experimental approach . . .
Read more: Notes on dOCUMENTA (13): Artistic Research
|
Blogroll
On the Left
On the Right
|