bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Matzpen
Authors: Fiedler Lutz
Published: September 2021

This book explores the history of the Israeli Socialist Organization – Matzpen (compass) – that splintered off from the Communist Party of Israel in 1962. After the Six Day War of June 1967, Matzpen shook Israeli society, calling for a withdrawal from the recently occupied territories, and placing itself outside the national consensus. Even before the war, the group emphasised the colonial dimension of the conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, which was irresolvable within the paradigm of the nation-state. Matzpen instead advocated for Israel’s de-Zionisation and a socialist revolution in the Middle East in order to both restore the rights of Palestinian Arabs and guarantee the existence of Israeli Jews as a new Hebrew nation. However, in the era after Auschwitz, when the Jewish world stood in almost unanimous solidarity with the Jewish state, Matzpen’s radical perspective was at odds with the history and memory of the Holocaust. Against this backdrop, this study places Matzpen’s political stance in its historical context and sheds new light on the political culture of Israel.
The Israel–Palestine Question
Authors: Fiedler Lutz
Published: September 2021

The second chapter, ‘The Israel–Palestine Question’, discusses Matzpen’s independent engagement with, and analysis of, the Palestine problem. It elaborates on how they came to interpret it as a colonial-type conflict between nationalities: a clash between a European population aiming to establish a state and a native population, residing there since before the foundation of Israel. This is analysed, first, in view of the Trotskyist traditions of dissidence that already existed in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel. Second, it is situated in the context of Algerian decolonisation, as the dramatic fate of the French Algerians gave the Israeli Left a new conception of their own circumstances in the Israel–Palestine conflict. Applying Albert Memmi’s writings on the coloniser and the colonised and comparing them to Albert Camus’s stance on the Algerian question, the chapter discusses in detail Matzpen’s programme for Israel’s de-Zionisation: A plea to cut ties with the legacy of Zionism which equally entailed the demand towards the Arab world to recognise Israeli Jews’ transformation into a new Hebrew nation who belongs to the region.
Hal’a HaKibush! – Down with the Occupation
Authors: Fiedler Lutz
Published: September 2021

The chapter focuses on the developments in the period after the Six-Day War. Matzpen’s immediate rejection of the occupation and its solidarity with the occupied Palestinians placed the group at the extreme political fringes of Israeli society. Against this background, the chapter discusses how Matzpen’s members differed over possible solutions to the Israel-Palestine conflict and in their stance towards the Palestinian organizations (for example the DFLP), which caused several splits of the group. The chapter tells the story of Ilan Halevi, who sought to introduce a kind of Third-World nationalism into the group and later became the first Jewish representative of the PLO. It continues with the story of Udi Adiv, who first split from the group and later chose to go underground, entering the parallel world of Jewish-Palestinian armed resistance. The chapter ends with a discussion of political developments after the October 1973 War, when a new era of diplomacy in the Middle East also triggered a discussion on “state or revolution” within Matzpen. In November 1975 this led to a meeting between Moshé Machover and Said Hammami, the London representative of the PLO, where they discussed a two-state solution in the near and a shared country in the far future.
Beyond the Holocaust: Jewish Past, Hebrew Present, Socialist Future
Authors: Fiedler Lutz
Published: September 2021

The last chapter deals with the complex place of the Holocaust in the worldview of the Israeli Left. The chapter explores the degree to which Israeli leftists’ social and national utopias of socialist revolution and Hebrew nationhood contributed to their avoidance of the significance of the Holocaust and its impact on Jewish consciousness. The chapter illustrates that, from the outset, the notion of a new Hebrew nation was somehow detached from the Jewish experiences in Europe. By sticking to their faith in progress that was rooted in the Socialist teleology of history, the distance to the consequences of mass extermination increased further – despite the fact that Matzpen had inherited the revolutionary hopes of Eastern European Jewish Communists of the interwar period for whom this utopia had proven terribly futile. Thus, the book provides insight into a historical aporia: the tension between the effects of the Holocaust, on the one hand, and the unresolved Israel–Palestine conflict, on the other. Turning eventually to the activities of the Frankfurt Jewish group (in Germany) during the Lebanon war of 1982, the chapter shows how the quest for a road out of that aporia and to detach the interpretation of the Israel–Palestine conflict from the memories of the Holocaust is also part of Matzpen’s history and legacy.
Blood-red shoes?
Authors: Christie Ian
Published: September 2021

This chapter examines the motif of red shoes in The Red Shoes (Powell and Pressburger, 1948) and The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939), in light of the intervening World War. Whereas Dorothy’s ruby slippers are linked to positive transformation, Vicky’s bloody shoes in the later film stand for the rejection of domesticity in the context of post-war gender politics. They take her far from home, to be torn apart by the forces at war in her psyche.
Men in boots: on spectacular masculinity and its desublimation
Authors: Wallenberg Louise
Published: September 2021

The proposed essay focuses on a piece of costume that is often both dirty and worn out: the man’s leather boot. The boot has been a constant in cinema, appearing first in Westerns films made at the beginning of the 20th century. As an iconic piece of male costume, the boot has populated male-oriented genres, signaling either masculinity en masse (as in war films), or a kind of masculinity closer to nature and to animals than to civilization (as in the Western film). Departing from earlier scholarship on masculinity as spectacle (e.g. Tasker; Holmlund), and engaging in textual analysis, this essay investigates how the boot, as a hyper male piece of costume, can be read as a masquerading prop, and as a tool for hiding (what is not there). Films to be analyzed include Lives of A Bengal Lancer (Henry Hathaway, 1935); Picnic (Joshua Logan, 1955); Midnight Cowboy (Johan Schlesinger, 1969); and Blaze (Ron Shelton, 1989).
Slippers and heels: In the Mood for Love and sartorial investigation
Authors: Parks Tyler
Published: September 2021

This chapter deals with three sequences from Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love that endow two pairs of footwear with pronounced expressive and symbolic dimensions. Ultimately, it contends that a focus on these sequences helps to bring out both the film’s engagement an uncertainty that arose in the midst of waning moral values in 1960s Hong Kong, as well as Wong’s signature philosophical - and more “universal” – emphasis on a distinctive vertigo of time and memory. Footwear in the film functions as expressive of the conflict between desire and decorum, but it also reveals the instability of our grasp of the challenges posed by the film to spectatorial orientation.
‘Nice shoes’: Will Smith, mid-2000s (post) racial discourse and the symbolic significance of shoes in I, Robot and The Pursuit of Happyness
Authors: Hamad Hannah
Published: September 2021

This chapter contextualises the symbolic significance of shoes as they pertain to the mid-2000s stardom of Will Smith. Beginning with a discussion of the meanings underpinning Smith’s character’s fetishization of his Converse trainers in I, Robot, it goes on to interrogate the semiotic power of shoes in his subsequent film The Pursuit of Happyness (Gabriele Muccino, 2006). In both films, shoes serve an ideologically loaded communicative function with respect to the negotiation of post-racial discourse at the intersection of blackness, masculinity and social class—a function that enables Smith’s start text to successfully negotiate the cultural logic of post-racial America at the dawn of the Obama era.
Language and Dialect Contact in Ireland
Authors: Maguire Warren
Published: September 2021

This book presents an investigation into the phonological origins of Mid-Ulster English (MUE), one of the primary dialects of English in Ireland. Specifically it is an analysis of the development of the segmental phonology of the dialect and the input to this from English, Scots and Irish. Like other varieties of Irish English, MUE is an extra-territorial, new dialect of English, albeit one which has a history of over 400 years, making it one of the oldest ‘new’ dialects of the language. It developed in a context of contact between English, Scots and Irish in Ulster, the northernmost province of Ireland, as a result of English and Scottish migration to the island during the Plantation of Ulster and its associated settlements in the 17th and early 18th centuries. Understanding the phonological development of MUE requires us to take into account the nature of the contact that occurred between English, Scots and Irish in Ulster as this has determined the kind of dialect that evolved in this part of Ireland. In turn, an analysis of the phonological origins of MUE can help us to clarify aspects of this linguistic history, since the dialect which developed is one of the chief witnesses of this history. This study seeks to determine the phonological origins of MUE, and to understand why the dialect developed the way it did and what the phonology of the dialect can tell us about the nature of contact between the input language varieties.
Background
Authors: Maguire Warren
Published: September 2021

This chapter explores the linguistic history of Ulster, briefly examining (lack of) evidence for English in the province before the 17th century, describing the Plantation of Ulster and its associated settlements (a process of settlement colonisation), and discussing the demographic and linguistic transformation of the province that resulted. It explores the decline in Irish in the province in detail, not only in the Plantation period but in subsequent centuries, showing that the loss of Irish in most of Ulster was a result of the settlements and a slow process of language shift thereafter, being almost complete by the end of the 19th century. The chapter also touches upon the possible linguistic significance of the ethno-religious divide in the province, how it might relate to the linguistic history just described, and how it might have affected the phonological development of MUE.
Discussion
Authors: Maguire Warren
Published: September 2021

This chapter considers three main topics in the phonological development of MUE: contact with Irish; the input from English dialects; and input from Scots. The lack of direct input from Irish is discussed, as is the notion of ‘reinforcement’ and the problems there are with it. Irish input was minimal because of the large native English speaker population, unidirectional bilingualism, a long term shift from Irish with small numbers of English learners at any one time, and the lower social status of Irish speakers. The English input is considered in terms of New Dialect Formation, which was instrumental in the formation of the dialect, and Colonial Lag, which is probably not a useful notion in this context despite some apparent conservatism on the part of the dialect. Scots input was of specific kinds, affecting the phonetic realisation of vowels and certain kinds of lexical distribution of them, suggesting that Scots speakers shifted to English as adults, imposing certain Scots phonetic and phonotactic rules on it.
The comedic actor
Authors: Kelly Gillian
Published: September 2021

This second genre chapter explores Power’s work within comedies, most of which were made in the mid-1930s. In his comedic roles, Power was able to establish himself as an extremely handsome cocky young American that helped him appeal to audiences at the time, particularly female film fans. His comedies allowed Power to express a diverse range of facial expressions, distinct vocal intonation and wide grins which soon became established features of his star image. Perhaps most importantly for his developing star image, the analysis of his comedies in this chapter reveal how Power was being established as a star with erotic appeal whom audiences are invited to gaze at and desire, an element of his star image that endured throughout his career.
The rugged adventurer
Authors: Kelly Gillian
Published: September 2021

This chapter explores the final genre with which Power was associated and perhaps best remembered for: the action-adventure film. Second only to his output in drama, Power starred in 11 action-adventure films between 1939 and 1957, some of which have very different themes and production values. While The Rains Came (Clarence Brown, 1939) was his only action-adventure film of the 1930s, in which he plays an Indian doctor with a turban and moustache, Power made an additional six action-adventure films in the 1940s and another four in the 1950s. Primarily remembered today as a swashbuckler as a result of his role in The Mark of Zorro (Rouben Mamoulian, 1940), Power’s other action-adventure films include The Black Swan (Henry King, 1942), Untamed (Henry King, 1955) and his final film of the genre: Abandon Ship! (Richard Sale, 1957). The latter was based on true events and made by Power’s own company, Copa Productions. Filmed in stark black and white and set on a small lifeboat, when the captain of a destroyed cruise ship dies, Power’s character is put in charge and must decide who lives and who dies since the vessel they are on cannot possibly hold them all.
Power off-screen
Authors: Kelly Gillian
Published: September 2021

This final chapter uses extrafilmic material, such as fan magazines, to explore the construction and development of Power’s off-screen image throughout his career. The careful manufacture of star images was a device used by studios to attract audiences to films, and ultimately sell tickets and Power received extensive publicity from early on, fan magazines depicting his off-screen life in ways that often resonated with his on-screen persona, particularly in the 1930s. This chapter explores the development of Power’s off-screen image in fan magazines from his bachelor days in the 1930s, his marriage to French actress Annabella and subsequent divorce when he returned from active war duty. His high-profile romance with Lana Turner preceded his marriage to Mexican actress Linda Christian and the birth of their two daughters, before another divorce and remarriage just before his death in 1958. Magazines then ran stories of his sudden death and subsequent birth of his only son, Tyrone Power Jr, a few months later for months to come. Additionally, while Power’s professional acting career began in the theatre in 1933, he returned to regular stage work in the 1950s in a move that was mostly well received by critics as the chapter discusses.
The Military-Peace Complex
Authors: Partis-Jennings Hannah
Published: September 2021

This book focuses on the military and statebuilding components of the international project in Afghanistan since 2001. It posits and discusses the military-peace complex as a framework for understanding the international project in Afghanistan, pointing to the sliding together and collapse between military and peace actors, mandates, and ideational frameworks. Focusing on the role of gender as well as material and spatial entanglements, the author argues that military and peace work in the liberal mode cannot be logically separated but rather are co-constituted and operate in a dynamic relationship to each other with fluid and shifting boundaries.
Based on original interviews and wider research, the book offers a holistic way of viewing the international project in Afghanistan, drawing attention to its under-noticed elements, and providing a new way of understanding its politics.
Afghanistan in Context
Authors: Partis-Jennings Hannah
Published: September 2021

Chapter one discusses the context of Afghanistan by drawing out themes and narratives which circulate around the country and have been politically and historically influential.
A Final Conclusion
Authors: Partis-Jennings Hannah
Published: September 2021

I will keep this conclusion brief and discuss just a few final points. First, I want to articulate again what engaging with the international project in Afghanistan through the framework of the military–peace complex does. Then I move to consider tensions that I suggest are drawn out by this book and how those tensions might make for productive lines of thinking or imagining....
Introduction
Authors: Tortolani Erica , Norden Martin F.
Published: September 2021

The introduction provides an overview of Leni’s career and serves as a context for the chapters to follow. It covers Leni’s early work as an illustrator and theatrical set designer, and then it explores his eventual migration to the German film industry during the World War I period and his burgeoning career during the early phases of Weimar cinema. The introduction also surveys the transnational aspects of Leni’s filmmaking career, including his early collaborations with fellow European directors, his later work with American and expatriate casts, crews, and executives in Hollywood, and, to a limited extent, the global distribution of his films. Lastly, the introduction addresses gaps in the scholarship and offers suggestions for further research.
Cinema Panopticum: Wax, Work, Waxworks
Authors: Born Erik
Published: September 2021

“Cinema Panopticum” explores the central conceit of Waxworks—wax figures that come to life and threaten their creator—in the context of popular wax displays in the Weimar Republic. Commonly credited as a cult classic horror film, Waxworks is better understood in the period’s terminology as an “Episodenfilm,” a popular form of early narrative cinema that presented distinct episodes within a unifying frame narrative. Like other early German anthology films, Waxworks participates in the Weimar critique of historicism, foregoing the particularities of historical periods in favour of universal drives and philosophical themes. In this case, the framing narrative updates the classical Pygmalion myth for film-obsessed German modernity. The film is a testament to early cinema’s so-called “encyclopaedic ambition” and a cautionary tale about the potential fetishisation of the filmic image during the transitional period when cinema was establishing itself in opposition to older forms of representation such as wax figure displays.
Masculinity and Facial Disfigurement in The Man Who Laughs
Authors: Henderson Bruce
Published: September 2021

“Masculinity and Facial Disfigurement” examines Leni’s film through the lens of disability studies in film. This chapter offers a reading of The Man Who Laughs that addresses the creative liberties that Leni took when adapting the Hugo novel to the screen and that accounted for the representation of physical disfigurement otherwise lost in Hugo’s original text. As the chapter shows, the cinematic representation of Gwynplaine’s disability, in contrast to that in the novelization, “restores a kind of lost masculinity to Gwynplaine, reminding us, in ways the novel never quite does, that Gwynplaine’s body was as ‘fit’ as any other man’s,” in Henderson’s words. This chapter thus reconceptualizes Leni’s adaptation as a positive portrayal of disability, finding equilibrium between Gwynplaine’s contrasting characteristics of masculinity-femininity and ability-disability that are absent in both the novel and other films in this era.
The Last Warning: Uncertainty, Exploitation, and Horror
Authors: Shimpach Shawn
Published: September 2021

This chapter considers Universal’s relationship with its audiences at the end of the silent period of Hollywood cinema. Specifically, it presents The Last Warning as a case study and focuses on the ways that Universal promoted this film—a “partial-talkie”—to exhibitors and advertised it to the public. This analysis suggests how Universal imagined the audience for this film and explores the studio’s strategies for connecting the film’s narrative to this imagined audience during the transitional period to synchronised sound. For example, Universal tried to entice exhibitors to book the film by providing survey cards that audience members could fill out during a break in the film’s narrative. The cards would allow them to guess “whodunnit” before the film resumed. Universal therefore engaged in a creative and playful approach to making the film experience more interactive, albeit in a decidedly low-tech way. The studio imagined a specific, rather sophisticated type of audience engagement with a stylistically creative but narratively banal genre film at the end of the silent era.
‘It Takes All Sorts to Make a Type’: Scottish Great War Prose
Authors: Rennie David A.
Published: September 2021

Addressing the under-discussed area of Scottish Great War prose, this chapter argues that Scots with first-hand wartime experience did generate accounts comparable with those emerging in other countries throughout the 1920s, such as All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) and The Middle Parts of Fortune (1929). Rennie highlights John Reith’s Wearing Spurs (1966), David Rorie’s A Medico’s Luck in the War (1929), George Blake’s The Path of Glory (1929), and Edward Gaitens’s Dance of the Apprentices (1948) as notable examples – stylistically and thematically – of Scottish writers engaging with the topics of militaristic bureaucracy, the general physical discomfort of army life, and graphic wounding. Furthermore, this chapter challenges the notion that Scottish writing was dominated by North Britons, arguing these works present specifically Scottish war experience not necessarily subsumed within a wider British identity.
Scottish Philosophy and the First World War
Authors: Craig Cairns
Published: September 2021

Now overshadowed by the Scottish Enlightenment, it was the idealism of Edward Caird, Craig notes, which was the dominant philosophy of the Anglophone world on the eve of the First World War. The conflict, however, threatened to undermine Caird’s evolutionary conception of philosophy as an ever closer approach to the understanding of God’s presence. Scottish idealism survived the war – in the work of philosophers such as W. R. Sorley (the father of Charles Hamilton Sorley) – albeit maintaining itself in a world which had rejected the basis of idealist metaphysics.
What Next?: Nan Shepherd and the First World War
Authors: Lumsden Alison
Published: September 2021

Alison Lumsden’s essay on Nan Shepherd discusses the war’s oblique traces in The Quarry Wood (1928) and Shepherd’s more deliberate engagement with the conflict – and post-war social reconstruction – in The Weatherhouse (1930). Lumsden discusses the influence of John Macmurray – a philosopher and friend of Shepherd’s who posited a rejection of Cartesian separation between intellect and body – on her portrayal of Gary Forbes in The Weatherhouse.
Pagan Modernism: First World War and Spiritual Revival in Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song and Neil M. Gunn’s Highland River
Authors: Lyall Scott
Published: September 2021

Looking at numinous relationships with Scottish landscape in Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song (1932) and Neil M. Gunn’s Highland River (1937), Scott Lyall addresses literary engagement with strategies for post-war reconstruction. He suggests that, for Gibbon and Gunn, post war redemption is presented as possible through a return to a pre-Christion autochthonous spirituality connected to the land, not as patrie, but as a site of radical political and personal awakening.
Charles Murray and A Sough o’ War
Authors: Crawford Robert
Published: September 2021

Robert Crawford discusses Charles Murray, an Aberdeenshire-born poet who published most of his verse while living in South Africa. Writing in Doric – with a density and nostalgia intensified by his exilic longing for home – Murray produced A Sough o’ War (1917). Although Murray is, certainly from a modern perspective, unpalatably committed to imperial militarism, he nevertheless produced enduring works with a fervent sense of connection to the Aberdeenshire countryside.
‘But Change, Nothing Abides’: Sunset Song and the Nature of Change
Authors: Lucas John
Published: September 2021

John Lucas discuses Sunset Song and the novel’s engagement with temporality and change. Gibbon’s novel seems unable to resolve the tension between regret for a lost way of life and forward-looking hopes. Ultimately, Lucas suggests, the character of Chris Guthrie – married to a farmer, Ewan, who brutally rapes her on his return from the front, then scandalously married to the Socialist minster, Colquhoun – embodies a process which absorbs catastrophe into change.
Introduction
Authors: Jacknick Christine M.
Published: September 2021

This chapter presents an example of classroom interaction to highlight the varied and complex ways that students use their bodies to display their (non-)participation and (dis)engagement, underscoring the importance of multimodal analysis for a full understanding of students’ actions. Key concepts for the book are introduced in this chapter, including action, alignment, and participation, and a new reconceptualization of participation and engagement is proposed. Finally, an overview of the remaining chapters is provided.
Student Participation and Engagement
Authors: Jacknick Christine M.
Published: September 2021

This first data-based chapter shows how the sequentiality and temporality of student actions can be used to characterize their participation and engagement in classroom interaction. Traditionally, researchers and teachers have focused on students’ verbal participation, and this chapter likewise focuses on students’ verbal contributions to demonstrate how participation and engagement might be disambiguated. A new term, studenting, is introduced here as well. This concept refers to student actions which may be characterized as a category-bound action of the role “student” undertaken at the “wrong” time or as a performance of participation. The analysis also shows how individual student actions may be visualized as a wave of student responses. Examples include choral responses, teacher-student interaction, and student-student interaction.
Non-Participation and Disengagement
Authors: Jacknick Christine M.
Published: September 2021

This chapter examines instances of non-participation and disengagement, focusing on their dynamic nature, as well as the ways in which they may be disambiguated from one another. Students’ (un)willingness to participate is shown to include many and varied ways that students fail to participate or resist particular forms of participation. Notably, some of these forms of non-participation are ignored by the teacher, while others are oriented to as accountable actions. The analysis here shows how students use their bodies to demonstrate their non-participation and disengagement, while also problematizing a simple read of these embodied actions as always indexical of disengagement. Examples are provided of embodied unwillingness to participate, (dis)engagement at transition, and postural disengagement. Finally, this chapter focuses on how students orient to and interact with objects as they disengage from interaction, including clocks, bags, materials, and personal electronic devices.
Visions of Council Democracy
Authors: Popp-Madsen Benjamin Ask
Published: September 2021

This book examines the historical emergence of the council system in Russia and Germany by the end of the First World War, it reconstructs the intellectual history of council democracy in 20th century political theory and provides in-depth analysis of council democracy in the political thought of Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort and Hannah Arendt.
The book argues that council democracy can productively be interpreted through the prism of constituent power: the form-giving power of the people to decide on their own institutional forms of political co-existence. Whereas other interpreters of constituent power claim an unbridgeable gap between constituent power and constituted power, this book asserts that council democracy discloses a historically grounded way of institutionalising the constituent power. Council democracy, in this interpretation, becomes a way of controlling the constituent power without completely exhausting it, thereby giving the citizenry continual access to the powers of self-transformation, co-creation and constituent freedom.
The Historical Councils in Twentieth-Century Europe
Authors: Popp-Madsen Benjamin Ask
Published: September 2021

The chapter analyses the three primary examples of council democratic organization in the 20th century, that is, during the Russian Revolution of 1917, the German Revolution of 1918-19 and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The chapter argues that despite obvious differences between these council formations, the European council movements were united in their attempts to democratise the economy, dismantle the bourgeois state apparatus, and introduce self-governing practices in social, economic, and political life.
Political Theory of Council Democracy from Bakunin to Luxemburg
Authors: Popp-Madsen Benjamin Ask
Published: September 2021

The chapter reconstructs the intellectual history of council democracy from early anarchist interpretations of the Paris Commune over Karl Marx famous analysis of the Commune in The Civil War in France and Vladimir Lenin’s writings on the Russian Soviets to the Interwar council communists’ engagement with the German workers’ councils. The chapter argues, firstly, that Marx’ interpretation of the Commune sets the parameter for many subsequent theories of council democracy, and secondly, that Lenin’s analysis of the Russian soviets delivers an alternative theory of council democracy, insofar as he subordinates the councils to the Bolshevik party. The chapter ends with a preliminary discussion of the relation between the historical councils, theories of council democracy and the concept of the constituent power.
Institutionalising the Instituting Power? Castoriadis and the Councils
Authors: Popp-Madsen Benjamin Ask
Published: September 2021

This chapter engages with the Greek French political thinker Cornelius Castoriadis and his interpretation of the workers’ councils’ movement. The chapter argues that Castoriadis developed two different theories of council democracy; an early theory developed while he was the figure head of the radical French group Socialisme ou Barberie, and a late theory developed in tandem with his overarching theory of autonomy, the imaginary, and the instituting power. While Castoriadis has often been criticised, for example by Jürgen Habermas, for not theorising the institutional preconditions for democratic autonomy and for deploying a groundless and normless account of political action as instituting ex nihilo, the chapter argues that Castoriadis’ late theory of council democracy provides a vantage point through which Castoriadis’ concepts of ‘instituting power’ and ‘autonomy’ can grounded in institutional structures, i.e., the council system.
Why Council Democracy, Why Now?
Authors: Popp-Madsen Benjamin Ask
Published: September 2021

The chapter introduces the main objective of the book, namely, to reconstruct a theory of democracy based on the historical experiences of workers’ councils in 20th century Europe. The chapter argues for the contemporary relevance of this endeavour, as the ideal of democratic self-government is being pressured by both right-wing populism and unaccountable technocracy.
Translation
Authors: Michelucci Stefania
Published: September 2021

This chapter discusses D. H. Lawrence and his art of translation. After an introductory paragraph on Lawrence’s use of foreign languages to represent the otherness of the reality observed in his works, the chapter examines how he thought creatively in more than one language. Selective examples include German translations of poems originally composed in Arabic and rewritings of Russian literary texts translated into English by S. S. Koteliansky. A detailed discussion of Lawrence’s translation of Giovanni Verga’s Mastro Don Gesualdo and Little Novels of Sicily follows, with particular attention paid to his insight into Verga’s extraordinary but difficult Sicilian language. Lawrence did not use a particular English dialect. Rather he created a new idiom to convey the orality and the physicality of Verga’s language free from any local specificity in English. Lawrence’s translations reflect the creativity of an artist who was constantly open to literary experiments which were rooted in a deep knowledge of other cultures, the transmission and sharing of which he always perceived as a never-ending enrichment of his own.
Biblical Aesthetics
Authors: Bricout Shirley
Published: September 2021

Biblical stories, tropes and images, and also the diction and syntax of the King James Version, are manifest throughout Lawrence’s oeuvre at the levels of form, plot and character. By approaching formal and thematic borrowings through the prism of recent developments in studies of Biblical aesthetics, this chapter demonstrates how Lawrence’s textual dynamics proceed from a sustained dialogue with the Bible that both demotes conventional beliefs and articulates his vision of the world. First, Lawrence’s pervasive use of Old Testament features and Hebrew poetry is reassessed to show how he valued the Bible as an aesthetic text. The chapter then instantiates how the Parables’ rhetorical strength is embedded in Lawrence’s narratives. Lastly, it examines how Lawrence’s artistic appropriation of Hebrew poetic forms and pagan imagery from the Book of Revelation restores pre-Christian image-thought.
Historiography and Life Writing
Authors: Harrison Andrew
Published: September 2021

This chapter opens by situating Lawrence’s engagement with historiography in relation to early twentieth-century debates about the status of history as an art or a science. It examines Lawrence’s school textbook Movements in European History, showing how he incorporated the contemporary graphic and scientific approaches in his narrative to articulate a distinctive epochal approach to history. It then explores Lawrence’s innovative engagement with life writing as an historiographical form, demonstrating Lawrence’s contribution to the issues raised by the modernist ‘New Biography’. It traces his reflections on, and experiments in, fictional autobiography, autobiography (taking account of his late essays and the poem ‘A Life History in Harmonies and Discords’), biography (the ‘Memoir of Maurice Magnus’) and auto/biografiction.
Technology
Authors: Trotter David
Published: September 2021

The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate that there was more to Lawrence’s understanding of technology than the long and increasingly bitter campaign he mounted against the ‘machine’ (or sometimes ‘great machine’) as the epitome of industrial capitalism at its most oppressive. Rather than scan the poems, novels and short stories for quotable technological awareness, the chapter will aim to throw some light on two of his distinctive qualities as a writer: his feeling for sound, and for its effects on mind and body; and his skilful organisation of narrative matter. Key texts discussed are ‘Bare Almond Trees’, ‘The Witch à la Mode’, and The Rainbow. Particular emphasis is given to Lawrence’s exploration of the challenge posed to the sovereignty of human consciousness by the discovery and measurement, in the final decades of the nineteenth century, of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Practitioner Criticism: Poetry
Authors: Laird Holly A.
Published: September 2021

This chapter places Lawrence’s poetics, as developed in his poetry, in relation to his responses to other poets and poetic tendencies or movements, such as Pre-Raphaelitism, Symbolism and Aestheticism as well as contemporary free verse, Realism and Imagism. Lawrence knew and corresponded with many poets throughout his career, from Yeats and Pound to Amy Lowell and H. D. The extent to which he assimilated or resisted such diverse influences is the focus of this re-evaluation of Lawrence’s paradoxical status as an outsider inside. His poetics elude simple definition. So dissimilar are the kinds of verse to which Lawrence responded that his general openness to old and new voices, alike, helps account not only for this maverick status, but for the sheer variety of verse forms practiced in his poetry. Through the poetry of Whitman, Lawrence recovered the sense of ‘wonder’ that he had felt as a child hearing the Bible and listening to church hymns. Poetry also became a form of play. He soon discovered, too, how much work, or ‘groping’, was entailed in writing and resisted falsifying perfection. Double-edged, the ‘jagged’ edges perceived by Conrad Aiken became a signature trait. Dialectical and conflictual relationalism inflects his Whitmanesque style.
Music
Authors: Reid Susan
Published: September 2021

Music resounds throughout Lawrence’s work; from hymns, folk songs, classical music and opera to Native American singing and drumming. This chapter considers the various ways in which he deployed music in his art, beginning with the culturally engaged way of listening evident in Aaron’s Rod; a novel that critiques musical listeners with features of what Adorno later described as ‘culture consumers’, while displaying its author’s propensity to be both a ‘good’ and ‘emotional’ listener. For Lawrence music suggests a similar potential to fill a perceived gap in our language for the emotions that we find in the ideas of thinkers from Schopenhauer to Lefebvre, and particularly in the latter’s concept of bodily rhythm. This chapter’s readings of piano music in The Lost Girl, music hall in Mr Noon and the sacred rhythms of David (for which Lawrence composed ten songs) explore how Lawrence uses music as a bridge between individual and communal experiences, with an ever-increasing awareness of embodiment and interrelationship with other bodies and places.
Architecture
Authors: Edwards Sarah
Published: September 2021

This chapter surveys Lawrence’s responses to architecture – European and otherwise, domestic and religious, ancient and modern - in the range of literary genres that Lawrence experimented with in the course of his career, including his novels, travel writing, poetry, essays and architectural criticism. It locates these ideas within late Edwardian and Georgian, as well as early modernist, literary contexts and the wider social contexts of war, urban and industrial development. The chapter also considers how Lawrence’s work can be situated in relation to some of his contemporaries’ responses to architecture, including the emergence of modern architecture, such as the Crystal Palace; the country house and the inter-war preservation movement; mock-Gothic and the cathedral; the development of suburbia; and European, African and American ruins and new styles, as well as art and interior design.
Lawrence Set to Music
Authors: Jones Bethan
Published: September 2021

This chapter considers a number of ways in which musical composers have engaged with and assimilated Lawrence’s poetry (as well as some of his other works and, indeed, his life story), over a 100-year period. Foregrounding texts selected for musical setting, the chapter begins with an analysis of sound, silence, rhythm, repetition and movement in Lawrence’s verse. Subsequently, it explores the various strategies adopted by composers when setting these poems to music. Some create a song from a single poem; some compose song-cycles by combining poems from within a single collection, such as Birds, Beasts and Flowers. Others juxtapose poems from across a range of Lawrence’s verse-books – or combine Lawrence poems with those of other poets. This chapter explores the implications of such choices, offering analyses of musical compositions in which words and sounds have been creatively combined. Composers discussed include Peter Warlock, Benjamin Britten and Arnold Cooke, alongside a number of lesser-known contemporary figures, whose works (spanning a number of genres) bring Lawrence to a new generation.
Objections to the Fatwa of Assassination1
Authors: Kadivar Mohsen
Published: September 2021

This chapter is the second part of the ‘The Background of the Treatise’ and it is the open letter of Mohsen Kadivar to his former classmate Mohammad Javād Fāzel Lankarānī (Lankarānī Jr.) on 28 November 2011.
It has two sections: Objections to the Assassination Fatwa and the Lawfulness of Shedding Blood with Impunity (mahdūr al-dam) and Strategies to Confront the Insults and Mockery of Religious Beliefs.
Kadivar argued that calling for the execution of an apostate or a blasphemer and shedding their blood lack any reliable Qur’anic justification. Rather, the Qur’an’s very tenor goes against such a legal ruling. The justification for both legal rulings (i.e., the lawfulness of executing an apostate or a blasphemer) is based on “isolated reports” (khabar al-wāḥid al-thiqa). As such, its probative force and reliability rests upon rational beings. On a matter so crucial and vital, in contrast to other issues, rational beings would not find such hadith reports sufficient.
Kadivar concluded “In contrast to you, not only am I not jubilant at the execution of this impudent Azeri citizen, but I am also ashamed at this savage and cowardly deed done in the name of Islam, Shiʿism, marja‘iyya and fatwa.”
Claiming the Validity of the Death Penalty for Blasphemy and Apostasy is Based on One Deficient “Isolated Report”
Authors: Kadivar Mohsen
Published: September 2021

This chapter is the second section of Kadivar’s ‘Treatise on Refuting the Punishment for Blasphemy and Apostasy’. Lankarani claimed: “Killing an apostate does not require a juridical ruling. Therefore, any Muslim can implement it.” Kadivar regarded this as a dangerous “terror fatwa” that is null and void from the perspective of both shar‘ and reason, and have warned him that its only possible aftermath is anarchy and social disorder.
The chapter has three sections: Interrogating the Death Penalty for Apostasy, Analysis of the Death Penalty for Blasphemy, and What is the Position of the Jurists on one who Denigrates the Prophet?
The death penalty for blasphemy and apostasy is supported by no more than two “isolated hadiths” (khabar al-wāḥid), both of which have strongly contested chains of transmission and indication. Such an important judgement cannot be supported by such extremely weak and shaky proofs. Thus, pronouncing the death penalty for blasphemy and apostasy in the absence of reliable proofs contradicts the shar‘, debilitates Islam and violates the Qur’anic dictates.
Refuting the Claim of Consensus (ijmā‘) and the Necessity to Implement the Death Penalty for Blasphemy and Apostasy
Authors: Kadivar Mohsen
Published: September 2021

This chapter is the fourth section of Kadivar’s ‘Treatise on Refuting the Punishment for Blasphemy and Apostasy’. In this section, these issues are discussed: Examining the Claim of Consensus on the Necessity to Kill Apostates, Examining the Death Penalty for Apostasy as an Essential Component of Religion, Is the Ruling on Executing Apostates Part of the Essentials of Religion? Examining the Claim of Consensus on Killing Blasphemers.
The ruling on killing apostates and blasphemers lacks a reliable proof from the Qur’an; and there is no presence of a mutawātir narration, either verbatim, in meaning or ijmālī. In addition, less than one-third of the twenty-one relevant narrations are reliable as regards the chains of transmission. Moreover, an ijmā‘ madrakī is inadmissible as an independent proof to discover the infallible Imam’s statements. Hence, on the basis of conventional ijtihād, the death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy relies upon few thiqa “isolated reports” (khabar al-wāḥid) and is consolidated with an ijmā‘ madrakī, the invoking of which will be analysed in other parts of this book.
No One, during the Time of the Prophet, Imam Ali, and the Other Imams, was Sentenced to Death Solely for Apostasy
Authors: Kadivar Mohsen
Published: September 2021

This chapter is the fifth section of Kadivar’s ‘Treatise on Refuting the Punishment for Blasphemy and Apostasy’. It discusses the subject in four periods:
No one during the time of the Prophet was killed solely on the charge of apostasy. Rather, it was for some other transgression. The Ahl al-Bayt did not endorse those killed during the reigns of the first three caliphs (632–656) under the title of ahl al-ridda (the people of “apostasy”). No reliable evidence indicates that Imam Ali executed anyone for apostasy during his caliphate. The other Imams never ordered anyone to be executed for abandoning Islam. No one disputes that the Umayyad and ‘Abbasid caliphs sentenced people to death for apostasy. However, no reliable proof substantiates that these executions were carried out in accord with the Imams’ instructions or implicit consent.
The author concludes: No reliable evidence proves that the Prophet, Imam Ali or the other Imams ordered people to be executed solely for apostasy. The death penalty meted out to the apostates under the first three caliphs, as well as under the Umayyads and the ‘Abbasids, cannot be advanced as proofs in the school of Ahl al-Bayt.
The Absolute Cessation of the Ḥudūd Punishments or Those that Necessitate the Death Penalty and Injury, and Suspension during the Time of the Imam’s Occultation
Authors: Kadivar Mohsen
Published: September 2021

This chapter is the sixth section of Kadivar’s ‘Treatise on Refuting the Punishment for Blasphemy and Apostasy’. Many of the early and the most prominent jurists opined that implementing the ḥudūd and calling for jihad are considered to be the exclusive prerogative of the Prophet and the Imams.
This chapter categorizes the jurists who are absolutely opposed to implementing the ḥudūd during the occultation to three groups: First, Full Suspension of the ḥudūd during the Imam’s Occultation; second, Discontinuation of the ḥudūd in Cases Leading to Death or Injury during the Occultation; third, Suspension of the ḥudūd during the Occultation.
The author concludes that the opinion of those who oppose implementing the ḥudūd during the Imam’s occultation, as well as the opinion of those who adopted a stance of suspension is stronger and more profound than those who advocate permission, regardless of their numerical strength.
Issuing Fatwas on Killing an Apostate or a Blasphemer Weakens and Impairs (wahn) Islam
Authors: Kadivar Mohsen
Published: September 2021

This chapter is the eighth section of Kadivar’s ‘Treatise on Refuting the Punishment for Blasphemy and Apostasy’.
There are two levels of impairing (wahn) formulation for deccriminalization of apostasy and blasphemy: First, impairing (wahn) Islam Means to Deface its Visage so that it Becomes One of Violence, Repugnance, and Ferociousness; second, Wahn as “Secondary” (ḥukm thānawī) and “Primary Injunction” (ḥukm awwalī).
In the case of merely apostatising, any form of temporal punishment would deface Islam, not to mention execution or permanent imprisonment accompanied by harsh acts such as whipping the person at the time of the five daily prayers.
Invoking the prohibition of wahn under the rubric of “primary injunction” is a contextual indicator of an error in the ruling’s deduction (of killing an apostate) from the proofs pertaining to killing apostates.
Three more subjects of this chapter: One that is Distant from Mercy and Compassion; Contemporary ijtihād is Far Away from the Standard of the Prophet’s Mercy; Unbelief and Apostasy have no Temporal Punishment.