Critique internationale - Content
No Abstract
No Abstract
No Abstract
No Abstract
No Abstract
Manuel Castells, L’ère de l’information, trois volumes, Paris, Fayard
I. La société en réseaux (traduction Philippe Delamare), 1998, 613 pages ;
II. Le pouvoir de l’identité (traduction Paul Chemla), 1999, 538 pages ;
III. Fin de millénaire (traduction Jean- Pierre Bardos), 1999, 492 pages.
(traduit de The Information Age, Oxford, Blackwell : The Rise of the Network Society, 1996 ; The Power of Identity, 1997 ; End of Millenium, 1998)
Murphy (Emma C.), Economic and Political Change in Tunisia. From Bourguiba to Ben Ali,Londres, Macmillan et New York, St Martin Press, 1999, 285 pages.
Hartmann (Florence), Milosevic. La Diagonale du fou, Paris, Denoël, 1999, 441 pages.
Roux (Michel), Le Kosovo. Dix clés pour comprendre, Paris, La Découverte, 1999, 126 pages.
Tardy (Thierry), La France et la gestion des conflits yougoslaves (1991-1995). Enjeux et leçons d’une opération de maintien de la paix de l’ONU; Bruxelles, Bruylant, 1999, 505 pages.
Palumbo-Liu(David), Asian/American. Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999, 504 pages.
Ellis (Stephen), The Mask of Anarchy. The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War, Londres, Hurst & Co., 1999, 350 pages.
Detienne (Marcel), Comparer l’incomparable, Paris, Le Seuil, 2000, 135 pages.
Habermas (Jürgen), Après l’État-nation. Une nouvelle constellation politique, Paris, Fayard, 2000, 150 pages.
Anderson (Lisa), ed., Transitions to Democracy, New York, Columbia University Press, 1999, 316 pages.
[The cross, the scarf, and German identity]
The heated debates that have swept Germany over the past few years over crosses in classrooms and a Muslim teacher wearing a scarf reveal problems with identity politics that surpass these particular events. Solutions to problems in terms of identity put forth just after Germany's defeat are now suffering from long-term trends (generational changes, internal migrations, the permanent settlement of Muslim immigrants, the weakening of the Christian referent, the diversification of society), reunification and the construction of Europe (especially in its monetary form). This fragmentation leads to a conception of society in terms of an open framework for multiple logics of action. The German term for "public space", Öffentlichkeit, which conveys the idea of "being open", seems particularly apt for this ensemble of social interactions lacking a center.
[NATO after the Cold War. A second youth?]
NATO has waited fifty years and the disappearance of the conditions of its original raison d'être in order to prove itself. First, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe have aspired to admission to NATO as vehemently as they have demanded inclusion into the European Union. Second, at a certain point, the war in Yugoslavia gave NATO the occasion to respond to both American and European interests, which were not identical. Through a pragmatic management style, the United States achieved profound transformations in the Alliance, which was not self-evident. Nonetheless, the seeds of future crises are in the air: the politics of ambiguity has its limits in Russian hostility, the problems of Euro-American relations and more or less latent conflicts linked to the defense industry.
No Abstract
[Dechoukaj in music: The end of dictatorship in Haiti]
" Popular" music (defined for our purposes as music which is neither erudite nor traditional or even folk) has played an important political — and hardly unequivocal — role in Haiti. Some of its styles and modalities served Duvalier's dictatorship; others (or sometimes the very same ones) served the democratic movement. Jean-Bertand Aristide is himself the author of songs and often spread his message through this means. The study of the multiple interventions of this music in the unfolding of political events from 1985 to 1995 highlights these very diverse modes, in which musical style can be as significant as text.
[A clean slate from the past? Akira or the self-service revolution]
Born out of the ruins of defeat, manga (cartoon strip) draws its legitimacy and its most specific recurrent themes from its rootedness in the trauma that reshaped contemporary Japan. Manga slowly conquered its place as a constituent element of national culture; today, it represents almost 40 % of total Japanese publications. The epic of Akira by Otomo Katsuhiro, first published in1982 and read throughout the world, takes up the theme of the great founding destruction. Despite apparent indifference to all existing systems of value, Akira is not devoid of a certain political correctness, and the slate upon which readers are invited to construct the future is not as clean as it seems.
[Popular Indian cinema: A whiff of opium...]
India has appropriated cinema in a very precocious and passionate manner. The first "mythological" films, which adapted popular, traditional narrative modes, played an important role in the construction of the nation. This was less a matter of explicit mobilization against the colonial power than the mythical representation of an "eternal" India whose god-heroes are necessarily victorious over their enemies. Certain idolized actors have reutilized this "capital" to establish both dazzling and long-lasting political careers. Since then, the themes of popular cinema have been adapted to social trends; and yet they have remained far removed from reality. The most consistent element of popular Indian film, which assures its loyal public, is the "awakened dream". The opiate of the masses
[Seeking "the people"... "popular" culture and the political]
Is it useful or even possible to study the relationships between "popular culture" and the political? Under certain conditions. By grasping "culture" through practices and creative works, by deciding whether or not it is "popular" according to a concrete definition of what "popular" signifies in precise contexts, one avoids 1) the dissolution of the political in the cultural and 2) the dissolution of culture in everyday practices or "manners of doing". In this way, one can explore its relations to power. Cultural practices and products are in no way politically oriented by nature; they are neither submissive nor resistant. Nonetheless, they are never simply neutral since, as vehicles of social representations of power, they express an ethical point of view about society and constitute spaces of political struggle.
