From Byron's death at Missolonghi in 1824 to D'Annunzio's capture of Fiume for Italy in 1919, the nationalism of universal liberalism and independence struggles changed, in literature as in politics, ...to cruel dictatorial fascism. Byron was followed by a series of idealistic fighter‐poets and poet‐martyrs for national freedom, but international tensions culminating in World War I exposed fully the intolerant, brutal side of nationalism. D'Annunzio, like Byron, both a major poet and charismatic war leader, was a key figure in transforming nineteenth‐century democratic nationalism into twentieth‐century dictatorial fascism. The poet's ‘lyrical dictatorship’ at Fiume (1919–20) inspired Mussolini's seizure of power in 1922, with far‐reaching political consequences. The poet became the dangerous example of a Nietzschean Übermensch, above common morality, predatory and morally irresponsible. This article shows how the meaning of nationalism was partly determined and transformed by poets, illustrating their role as ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world’.
Speaking in the discourse of a culture and tradition in which the notion of the 'national' is equal to 'hindu', articulated to jargons of authenticity, foreignness and 'sons of the soil' criteria of ...citizenship, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its base community of the hindu right in India hope to hegemonize the Indian political terrain. This article revisits Marx's and Gramsci's notions and critiques of civil society, ideology and hegemony to analyse the cultural politics of the hindu right, which through an aggressive masculinity and organized violence attempts to erase muslims from the national space.
The article discusses four facets of the subject of legitimacy. The first issue concerns the understanding of the concept of legitimacy. The Author opts for a definition which treats "belief in ...legitimacy" (Legitimitatsglaube) as central for the whole concept and regards legitimacy as a "popular philosophy of power". The second issue deals with the Weberian type of legal rational legitimacy. Following Mommsen the Author proposes to treat substantive and procedural brands of democracy as separate sub types of legal rational legitimacy. The third issue concerns the inclusion of views on the economic system as part of beliefs about state legitimacy (which was not explicitly stated by Weber). Finally, the fourth postulates introducing to academic discourse national democratic legitimacy as a significant form of justification of a political system. The final part of the paper discusses, quite extensive, many specific details of the typology suggested by the Author. Adapted from the source document.
It is well known that mahatma gandhi felt that sexuality and desire were intimately connected to social life and politics, and that self-control translated directly into power of various kinds, both ...public and private. Gandhi's enigmatic genius and his popular appeal among India's masses may be attributed, at least in part, to the degree he was able to embody a powerful ideal of sexual self-control that linked his sociopolitical projects to pervasive Hindu notions of renunciation (S. Rudolph 1967). Affecting the persona of a world-renouncer, Gandhi was able to mix political, religious, and moral power, thus translating personal self-control into radical social criticism and nationalist goals. Gandhi's mass appeal was partly effected on a visceral level at which many Hindu men were able to fully appreciate the logic of celibacy as a means to psychological security, self-improvement, and national reform. Although my concern in this paper is not directly with Gandhi's notion of self-control, it is against the larger backdrop of his political legacy that I situate this discussion of sexuality, gender, and nationalism in contemporary India.
This article compares the content and impact of two iconic lectures concerned with language revival in Ireland and Wales. The lectures are Douglas Hyde's 'The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland' of ...1892 and Saunders Lewis's Tynged yr Iaith (Fate of the Language) of 1962. It explores the different types of 'public' addressed by these lecturers and contrasts the languages used to address those publics, as well as assessing the significance of the media of communication for how the two lectures were received. This diachronic comparison raises questions about how public intellectuals have, at different times, sought to defend and enhance the position of non-state languages in the United Kingdom and illuminates the role of cultural nationalism in different parts of that state. In addition, it argues that a diachronic comparison enjoins a clearer evaluation of historical context, a feature of the analysis that can be both problematic and illuminating.
...the modular processes of postcolonial musical nationalism, especially the 'modernist reform' or folklorization of indigenous and African-American traditions also became common. ...this situation ...correlated with the increasingly inclusive notions of the nation marked by the expansion of the franchise, concessions such as labor and land reforms, and increased forging of cultural links with subaltern groups within the state's territory. Hobsbawm illustrates that throughout much of the nineteenth century in Europe, conceptions surrounding the viability of 'nations' involved a threshold of sufficient size and productivity as an economic unit, and longevity and strength as a political-military unit, rather than the contemporary idea of coterminous relations between a cultural unit and a state. ...nation-building' involved incorporating different groups to expand the nation-state territory, and not the processes of cultural homogenization of populations that we associate with 'nation-building' in the twentieth century (ibid., 25-38). ...as the economic blizzard swept across the global economy, world capitalism retreated into t
Chun considers Chinese culture and Chinese identity, focusing on the ambiguities of ethnicity as culture and identity. He asserts that discourses of culture are really attempts by the state to grasp ...and rationalize the nature of its own modernity.
Slauter's diagnostic apparatus-in the form of numbers, notes, charts, and bulletsis impressive and wholly persuasive on the lack of reciprocity between scholarship in literature and history, but the ...enterprise of the essay as a whole and the affective subtext that threads through it raise for me questions about value and desire that seem to underpin the issues of evidence (the force of literary evidence and analysis with respect to historical trends or truths) that receive primary attention in Slauter's probing essay. In his account of the development of Atlantic studies, Bernard Bailyn traces the origins of historical engagement in the field to political strategies of Atlantic alliance among Western nations following World War II, evident in such multinational organizations as NATO or in what journalist Walter Lippman called the "profound web of interest which joins together the western world."
In considering religio-political problems, the term public religion has been utilized by not a few scholars during the last decade. The Yasukuni Shrine, the largest memorial institution for the war ...dead in Japan, is a typical case in the discourse on public religion, which has been discussed from various viewpoints in many contexts. I propose to analyze the issue of the Yasukuni Shrine in a triangular scheme that relates three realms of the social: politics, religion, and culture. Manifestations of public religion in the broadest sense can be analyzed as forms of inter-mobilization between these three camps. Further, mobilization occurs within several spheres, i.e., the state, political society, civil society, folk society and global society. This wide scope allows analyzing the so-called Yasukuni problem as well as other religio-political problems multi-dimensionally. This approach, supposedly, leads to a better understanding of the issue and, ultimately, to a more stable situation.
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