In Statu Nascendi : Journal of Political Philosophy and International Relations 2020/1 9783838274294

Citation preview

Eliza Emily Campbell Dueling with Disinformation: Disinformation and Information and Communication Technologies in the Middle East Piotr Pietrzak How Would Realists Interpret People Republic of China’s Wish to “Cultivate the Image of a Responsible Great Power”? What Are the Limitations to Such Interpretations? Anastasia Pranindita & Anak Agung Banyu Perwita The Republic Of Korea—United States Of America’s “Strategic Patience”

Part II: Philosophy, Aesthetics Zoran Kojcic & Piotr Pietrzak Interview With Dr. Zoran Kojcic Andreas Georgallides The unclarity of the ontological frame of the Tractatus Dimitris M. Moschos Paul Tillich’s Critical and Political Theology and His Critique of Modernity Venera Russo The Phenomenology of Women. On Female Discourse in Julia Kristeva and Simone de Beauvoir Venera Russo Cross-Language Relation. The Implications of Relativity in Translation and Vice Versa

IN STATU NASCENDI—Journal of Political and International Relations, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2020)

Part I: Politics & Theory of International Relations

ibidem

Journal of Political Philosophy and International Relations

Vol. 3, No. 1 (2020)

Part III: Reviews & Responses

ISBN: 978-3-8382-1429-0

IN STATU NASCENDI

3:1

ibidem

IN STATU NASCENDI JOURNAL OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Vol. 3, No. 1 (2020)

About In Statu Nascendi In Statu Nascendi (ISN) is a peer-reviewed journal that aspires to be a worldclass scholarly platform encompassing original academic research dedicated to the circle of Political Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Theory of International Relations, Foreign Policy, and the political Decision-making process. The journal investigates specific issues through a socio-cultural, philosophical, and anthropological approach to raise a new type of civic awareness about the complexity of contemporary crisis, instability, and warfare situations, where the “stage-of-becoming” plays a vital role. Any views expressed in this publication are the views of the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editorial board of this journal. In Statu Nascendi is committed to freedom, liberty, and pluralism of opinions and endeavors to contribute to unconstrained public discourse and debate on relevant social, political and philosophical matters. ISN welcomes all types of partnership and collaboration for fostering a knowledge-based society, organizing events and framing new projects. If you are an academic institution, research institute, and investigation team or group, a non-profitorganization, research center, research funder and you are willing to become a long-term partner for ISN’s activities, please contact us on [email protected], and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

More information about IS N, including information on the editorial board, membership information, and on all our initiatives can be found on the ISN website at

https://irinstatunascendi.wixsite.com/journal

ISN Editorial Board: EVANGELOS KOUMPAROUDIS, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Bulgaria

PIOTR PIETRZAK, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Bulgaria (Editor in chief)

MARCIN GRABOWSKI, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland

HRISTIYANA STOYANOVA, College of Europe, Natolin, Poland

STAVROS S. PANAGIOTOU, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Bulgaria

ISN Advisory Board: TAMARA ALBERTINI, Hawaii University, USA ABIOLA BAMIJOKO-OKANGBAYE, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Bulgaria ELIZA EMILY CAMPBELL, Georgetown University, USA SOPHIE GRACE CHAPPELL, the Open University, UK DIMITRIS M. MOSCHOS, Panteion University, Greece MALWINA HOPEJ, University of Wroclaw, Poland

ANAK AGUNG BANYU PERWITA, President University, Indonesia ANASTASIA PRANINDITA, President University, Indonesia MOLLY PRENDERGAST, the University of Oslo, Norway ANDREA GIUSEPPE RAGNO, London School of Economics, UK VENERA RUSSO, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Bulgaria IVAN SOLAKOV, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Bulgaria

ZORAN KOJCIC, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Bulgaria

IVAN SIMIĆ, University of Calgary, Canada

MARYIA LAPPO, Belarusian State University, Minsk, Belarus

GALINA STOYANOVA, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Bulgaria

SAMI MEHMETI, Southeast European University, North Macedonia

BÁLINT LÁSZLÓ TÓTH Corvinus University of Budapest

NIEVES TURÉGANO MUÑOZ, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

KRZYSZTOF ŻĘGOTA, University of Warmia and Mazury, Poland

Proofreading: MATTHEW GILL, M. Phil., Sofia U.

  Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. In Statu Nascendi—Journal of Political Philosophy and International Relations Vol. 3, No. 1 (2020) Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press Erscheinungsweise: halbjährlich / Frequency: biannual ISSN 2568-7638 ISBN-13: 978-3-8382-7429-4

    

© ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press Stuttgart, Germany 2020 Alle Rechte vorbehalten Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Dies gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und elektronische Speicherformen sowie die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who performs any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

In statu nascendi (Latin) In the process of creation, emerging, becoming

Table of Contents

Editorial .......................................................................................................... IX PART I: POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY ................. 1 Eliza Emily Campbell Dueling with Disinformation: Disinformation and Information and Communication Technologies in the Middle East .....................................3 Piotr Pietrzak How Would Realists Interpret People Republic of China’s Wish to “Cultivate the Image of a Responsible Great Power”? What Are the Limitations to Such Interpretations? ................................................... 19 Anastasia Pranindita & Anak Agung Banyu Perwita The Republic Of Korea—United States Of America’s “Strategic Patience”: A Counter Measurement of the Alliance in Responding Democratic People’s Republic Of Korea’s Nuclear Development Program (2013–2017) ................................................................................... 47 PART II: PHILOSOPHY ................................................................................ 83 Zoran Kojcic & Piotr Pietrzak Interview With Dr. Zoran Kojcic .............................................................. 85 Andreas Georgallides The unclarity of the ontological frame of the Tractatus ........................... 93 Dimitris M. Moschos Paul Tillich’s Critical and Political Theology and His Critique of Modernity ................................................................................................ 103

VII

Venera Russo The Phenomenology of Women. On Female Discourse in Julia Kristeva and Simone de Beauvoir ................................................... 115 Venera Russo Cross-Language Relation. The Implications of Relativity in Translation and Vice Versa ....................................................................... 127 PART III: IN STATU NASCENDI’S REVIEWS & RESPONSES ........................ 137 Bálint L. Tóth In Response to Sergey Sukhankin’s “Russian Regionalism in Action: The Case of the North-Western Federal District (1991–2017)” ......... 139 Hristiyana Stoyanova In Response to Natalia Moussienko’s “Cultural and Performative Dimensions of the Kyiv Maidan (2013–2014)” ....................................... 145 Piotr Pietrzak In Response to Salvatore Babones’ “The Middling Kingdom: The Hype and the Reality of China’s Rise” ............................................ 147 Call for Papers ............................................................................................. 153 Biographic Notes ........................................................................................ 155 What We Stand for in Fourteen Different Languages .......................... 159 Coming up Next on In Statu Nascendi ................................................... 163

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Editorial Dear Readers, Let me take this opportunity to welcome you to the brand-new Volume 3, Number 1 (2020) of our journal that proudly features several important and timely contributions to both philosophy and international relations theory. This edition’s main message is “Quality not quantity”, which is borrowed from one of the most famous Neoplatonic philosophers of the Italian Renaissance, Marsilio Ficino, who was recently brought to our attention by Prof. Tamara Albertini from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Ficino’s philosophical writings and translations are thought to have made a significant contribution to the development of early modern philosophy, for they are comprised of the ideas of Plato, such as the use of Reason as a method of finding the Truth (…). That is exactly what we try to do in our International Relations section, for just like Hans Morgenthau, who was committed to discovering the truth of politics which led him to formulate realism as a skeptical theory of power politics, we crave to reanimate the truth of politics which is very often purposefully hidden from our sight, on a number of levels. This section starts with a paper related to the hidden truth by a very talented young academic, Eliza Emily Campbell, from Georgetown University, who deliberates on a very complex and multidimensional investigation of the very pressing issue of Dueling with Disinformation: Disinformation and Information and Communication Technologies in the Middle East. As for me, I added to this section my humble inquiry into the validity of the Realists’ Interpretations of the People’s Republic of China’s wish to “cultivate the image of a responsible great power” I look at this issue through the prism of four realist thinkers: Hans Morgenthau, John J. Mearsheimer, Kenneth Watz, and Henry Kissinger. The main question that I deal with in this paper sets the limits of the realist explanations against the reality at hand of the difficulties Beijing has faced in recent months in its response to the Hong Kong protests of 2019 and the coronavirus outbreak of 2020. Subsequently, this paper is followed by an article by Anastasia Pranindita and Anak Agung Banyu Perwita from President University on the Republic of Korea and United States’s “Strategic Patience”, disIX

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cussed in the context of a counter measurement of the Alliance in Responding to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s Nuclear Development Program (2013–2017). This inquiry is truly unique for it offers us a very truthful account of the situation at hand in Southeast Asia prior to the Trump-Kim summits, by a tandem of some of the most fascinating Indonesian scholars that we have ever come across. We encourage more scholars from this region to take part in our initiative, for Southeast Asia has so much more to offer. The philosophy section (that traditionally tries to find the way to combine truth with wisdom) is opened up with a very strong interview that was conducted with Zoran Kojcic who brings to our attention his unique form of philosophical counseling that involves a lot of interdisciplinary work, related to philosophy, psychology, philosophical counseling, and philosophical practice. The first paper in our philosophy section is reserved for Andreas Georgallides, whose article on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ontology was printed with some serious mistakes last year. These mistakes were unintended and what’s worse they were perfectly preventable, if we would have only applied our usual due diligence. What is more important to emphasize is that they occurred not because of the author but because of our actions, and the actions of the editor in chief in particular, for which I am very sorry. That is why we strongly encourage you to read this paper and disregard its previous version published in Volume 2.2 last year. Subsequently, this article is followed by Dimitris M. Moschos and his fascinating piece on Paul Tillich’s Critical and Political Theology and his Critique of Modernity; a very interesting individual who is widely regarded as one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. The third article in this section belongs to Venera Russo who brings to the fore her wonderful debate on The Phenomenology of Women. On Female Discourse in Julia Kristeva’s and Simone de Beauvoir’s work. In her second paper, Venera Russo deliberates on Cross-language Relations. The Implications of Relativity in Translation and vice versa. Both papers are incredibly interesting and thought provoking, I recommend them to our international relations theorists as well, especially those scholars who deal with feminist and gender studies. Subsequently, our Review and Recommendations section begins with Balint L. Tooth’s review of the article “Russian Regionalism in Action: the case of the North-Western Federal District (1997–2017) by Sergey

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Sukhankin, for this work can be seen as one of the most comprehensive academic reviews that In Statu Nascendi has had the pleasure of publishing. This piece is followed by the review of Natalia Moussienko’s Cultural and Performative Dimensions of the Kyiv Maidan (2013–2014) by Hristijana Stoyanova—that proves that such a form of academic expression like an academic review does not always need to either critical or negative; for Hristijana Stoyanova offers us a totally different perception of the issue in question. Subsequently, my humble self brings to the fore a little reminder of Salvatore Babones’s 2011 article published in Foreign Affairs titled “The middling kingdom: the hype and the reality of China’s rise”, which tells us a great deal about the ways this country hopes to overcome its economic slowdown so it can strengthen its position in the global architecture of power. On this note, I would like to express my gratitude to Delyana Boyadzhieva-Pietrzak, Marcin Grabowski, Sami Mehmeti, Stavros Panayiotou, Ivan Solakov, Galina Stoyanova, Hristiyana Stoyanova, and Koumparoudis Evangelos, for their unyielding support in helping to put all of the little pieces of this issue together so it could arrive at your doorsteps in its current shape and form. I can always count on the abovementioned individuals; this has proven true during our First International Interdisciplinary Conference that was held at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” that they helped me to organize on the 11th and 12th of October 2019. This interdisciplinary event, just like our journal, was dedicated to discussing various leading new developments in the fields ranging from philosophy, politics, literature, art, to International Relations Theory. A special thank you goes to Matthew Gill for his exceptional support with various proofreading jobs that have helped to strengthen my communication with our readers, and finally my last thank you goes to Valerie Lange and Christian Schön from ibidem-Verlag and the unyielding support of their respective teams, especially Malisa Mahler, for thanks to their support we can reach out to you in so many places all over the world. Finally, without any further ado, I would like to reassure our readers that we listen to your comments and suggestions very carefully. Thank you very much for your warm words of encouragement, your feedback and your recommendations. We are very committed to keeping you updated about all of our initiatives and publishing the next volume of this journal by the beginning of the autumn of 2020. We also encourage our prospective authors to take part in —In Statu Nascendi 3:1 (2020)—

XII Piotr Pietrzak our great adventure and submit their proposals. We are open to various forms of academic and non-academic collaborations. We publish scholarly articles, book reviews, political commentary, comments, polemics, and interviews. So please don’t hesitate to email us with your proposals. I promise that we will get back to you within a reasonable amount of time. Thank you for purchasing this volume. We hope that you enjoy it. Please don’t hesitate to offer us your feedback. Yours sincerely,

Piotr Pietrzak Editor-in-chief In Statu Nascendi Journal of Political Philosophy and International Relations [email protected] [email protected]

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PART I: POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY

Eliza Emily Campbell

Dueling with Disinformation: Disinformation and Information and Communication Technologies in the Middle East Introduction As many have noted, it may be that the digital sphere of news and information consumption may soon completely overtake all others. What is the relationship between disinformation and media in the Middle East, and how does an increasingly digitalized region conceive of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in this context?Answering this question will require a greater understanding of how technology, new media, and Internet access use is changing in the contemporary Middle East. A 2013 study by Qatar Northwestern University of citizens in the region showed that 58 percent surveyed felt that they had better understanding of politics because of their Internet use, while 47 percent reported feeling more politically empowered as a result.1 But what is behind these numbers, and what are the implications for how such information disseminated online is used? Conflicting narratives about ICT usage in the Middle East were widely proliferated in the wake of the Arab Uprisings of 2011, with many after 2015 calling for greater investigations of how erroneous or misleading information was being disseminated online, either by private or governmental actors, and contributing to a rapidly changing media climate that may have actually supported the aims of authoritarian states. How does disinformation impact media consumption, and how will such media useinteract with the political and social conditions of the modern Middle East? This investigation will attempt to address these questions. The structure of this paper will proceed as follows: first, I will provide a theoretical framework and background for understanding ICTs and new media in the Middle East and elsewhere. Second, I will present an 1

Wheeler, Deborah L. Digital Resistance in the Middle East: New Media Activism in Everyday Life (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017): xi.

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investigation of the concept of disinformation as a tool both in the governmental and private sector in the Middle East, and ultimately, present a theory of disinformation in the Middle East that accounts for its evolving usages in the newly digitized sphere. I will then offer a discussion of two types of ‘infoclimates’ that can be used to understand and analyze states in the region, and then offer conclusions and some policy recommendations for how to address these ongoing issues. Background: New Media, the Middle East, and Global Implications New Media and Information & Communication Technologies (ICTs) For the purposes of this study, I have chosen to examine the implications of new media usage as it relates to a broad field of media and technology tools and technologies that scholars in the field of media and communication studies refer to as information and communication technologies, or ICTs. New media, broadly defined for the purposes of this study, will follow Wheeler’s definition and include media that is accessed primarily online or through non-print mediums, including news websites, mobile applications, and streaming video. Because of the increasingly porous and multifaceted nature of technology use and its interaction with media access, as noted and discussed by Tufekci, Sussman, Wheeler and others, I have made the decision to include new media and ICTs under the same broad definition, since they frequently interact with each other, or work together, or are effectively the same thing (i.e., mobile phones used to stream news videos, or social media applications or websites that are used to host third-party news links). For the purposes of this paper, the term ‘ICTs’ will be used to refer to information and communication technologies that include electronic devices used to access information, as well as the social networking applications and platforms they are used to access, and the new media that these platforms host. Although there is certainly a need to study these types of ICTs separately, the limitations of this course of study have directed me to use this broader definition of ICTs. Finally, it is necessary at the outset to address an ongoing policy debate about the relationship between what scholars and activists sometimes refer to as ‘information security’ and what governments and the private sector has referred to as ‘cybersecurity’. Actors in the government and private sector have disagreed over definitions about the overlap between these two sectors, with some insisting that the domain of cybersecurity has nothing to —In Statu Nascendi 3:1 (2020)—

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do with information security and ICT usage in new media whatsoever, since the domains of how ICTs are used and what ICTs actually do are fundamentally different.2 Ultimately, I agree with approaches that seek to show the ways that these fields are separate while remaining intertwined and interdependent. To discuss the way in which platforms are used to disseminate disinformation is to discuss the medium of the platform itself, and approaches that recognize this fundamental truth are more likely to approach solutions to the issue of disinformation dissemination in the Middle East and elsewhere. ICTs, Disinformation, and Global Implications The topic of global disinformation and the role of technology in sowing political disharmony has serious and almost certainly permanent resonance for every region of the world, particularly those with authoritarian tendencies and a newly developing ICT sector, as in the Middle East. There are special implications regarding this topic for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as well, which will be discussed in this section. It is not an exaggeration to say that the consequences of ICT usage and disinformation in the 21st century may be key to the very survival of global democratic regimes and the freedoms they espouse. As of this writing, scholars, activists, policymakers and others have remained preoccupied with a series of revelations and reporting about disinformation campaigns initiated by adverse actors and governments that were knowingly supported and conducted under the business auspices of the world’s largest ICT monopolies, including Alphabet (Google), Facebook, and Twitter. A pair of reports commissioned by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee and released in December 2018 show clear and compelling evidence that these companies knowingly worked with clients on specific projects related to the spread of disinformation in the U.S. new media environment during the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.3 Perhaps more importantly, however, the reports show that these platforms are well-equipped to facilitate the spread of such disinformation in any given ICT environment, and that they were non-cooperative with state efforts to investigate and reign in such use of their platforms.4 Such power and ability by these 2 3

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Landau, Susan. “Cybersecurity: Time for a New Definition,” Lawfare Blog, January 12, 2018, https://www.lawfareblog.com/cybersecurity-time-new-definition. Shane, Scott, “Five Takeaways from New Reports on Russia’s Social Media Operations,” The New York Times, December 17, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/ 12/17/us/politics/takeaways-russia-social-media-operations.html. Shane, “Five Takeaways.”

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private sector actors, as well as the unwillingness of state institutions to acknowledge and document such behavior, has serious resonance for the survival of media freedom and the media’s role as a watchdog and disseminator of accurate and useful information in democratic societies. ICTs, Disinformation, and the MENA Region So, what significance do these issues have in the MENA region in particular, and why is such a regional examination useful in creating larger theories of understanding? First of all, much of the literature on the impact of new media usage has been limited to highly specific cultural and economic contexts, such as those in the U.S. and Europe, where widespread Internet availability was first diffused and new media usage developed, monetized and intensified. For this reason, other contexts have not been widely examined in depth, and since (despite erroneous assumptions to the contrary) both new media and Internet usage do not adapt or replicate the models of usage that come from their ‘original’ context, an examination of these ‘nonnative contexts’ is crucially needed.5 And secondly, as many have noted, and as Freedom House ranking continue to confirm, the Middle East is characterized in its patterns of governance by authoritarian rule, a lack of freedom of expression, and lower than average levels of human development.6 As Wheeler and others note, ICTs (especially forms of new media and social media) can be especially volatile and unpredictable when they are adapted into media climates that are not protected by the same levels of human development and rule of law as the countries in which those technologies were originally developed and ‘tested.’7 And as Hussain and Wheeler have discussed at length, there were many optimistic predictions made during the dissemination of ICTs in the Middle East during the early and late 2000s about its potential to facilitate health, human development, and even greater levels of civic engagement and capacity to resist authoritarianism.8 Hussain and others have discussed at length the ways in which the ultimate culmination of these expectations, the Arab Uprisings of 2011 and beyond, initially seemed to confirm this optimistic hypothesis.9 However, 5 6 7 8 9

Wheeler, Digital Resistance, 3. Wheeler, Digital Resistance, 6. Zayani, Mohamed. Digital Middle East: State and Society in the Information Age, Oxford University Press (2018): 15. Wheeler, Digital Activism, 20. Hussain in Zayani, Digital Middle East: 198.

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ultimately as those Uprisings largely gave way to the same patterns of repression and strengthened state capacity to limit dissent, new conclusions were drawn about the role of ICTs in such climates. Scholars and policymakers began again to grapple with questions about ICTs themselves: were there ways in which, in fact, ICTs did not necessarily facilitate greater human development or civic freedoms, but might actually hinder them? Tufekci, among others, has grappled with this question, and discusses responses she received from Tunisian and Egyptian activists who lamented the role of “fake news” in fermenting losses for progressive parties and prodemocracy social movements in the aftermath of the Arab Uprisings.10 In this analysis, I ultimately conclude that the more nuanced answer to this question taken up by scholars like Tufekci is a more helpful way to approaching the question of ICT usage and disinformation in the Middle East. As regimes in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, and elsewhere in the Middle East begin to conceive of ICTs as a potential weapon in their fight to repress their own citizens as well as carry out attacks beyond their borders, a view of ICTs in the Middle East that allows for this nuanced approach will continue to be vital. In short, an examination of the role of ICTs in the MENA region in particular is crucial because of its potential to begin addressing questions of regional and international security, as well as the future of human rights in the region and elsewhere. Theoretical Framework: Disinformation and MENA Trends Disinformation In order to ground the findings of this research as it relates to the Middle East, it is critical to discuss relevant definitions and claims of disinformation in media spaces and climates as they have been used by scholars and policymakers to this point. In this section, I will discuss a variety of theoretical approaches to the concept of disinformation, especially as they relate to ICTs, and ultimately show how a definition grounded in the work of Hussain, Sussman and Wedeen is most helpful in analyzing how ICTs have been weaponized for the purpose of profit and consolidation of power by means of disinformation in the Middle East. Basic definitions of disinformation are divergent and critical for understanding the issue as a whole, since the term is relatively new and has new

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Tufekci, Zeynep, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest (New Haven: Yale University Press): 266.

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relevance in a post-digital world. Many see the concept of disinformation as being grounded in its adaption from the Russian term disinformatsiya, which traces back to its use by Soviet policymakers and planners in the 1950s and was defined as a dissemination of false information through media channels as a way to “mislead public opinion.”11 Most agree that disinformation involves the deliberate dissemination of selective information alongside some reputable information, for the purpose of leading public opinion.12 In the modern context, some have described its usage by states deliberately seeking to undermine or attack other states through the “4D” paradigm, which includes the intend to dismiss correct claims, distort information that might serve a political purpose, distract from one’s own activities or goals, and dismay those who might oppose the goals of that state.13 Still other theories help to define disinformation as it relates to a state or actor’s goals in promoting messages, but also seek to show how such disinformation in a 21st century ICT-heavy context can become more complex as ICT use blends deliberate disinformation with social, commercial, and entertainment uses of ICTs, which makes its goals more insidious and its detection more difficult. Fallis develops his theory of disinformation as including false or misleading advertising, both in business and in politics, as well as new media usages such as forged or doctored photographs or documents and websites.14 Others have discussed the need to understand socalled ‘fake news’ in this new disinformation context, which I define as part of the ICT landscape. While some classify such ‘fake news’ (deliberately false or inflammatory online news content posing as legitimate news) as separate from disinformation or propaganda, since it is usually rooted in profit rather than deliberate political aims, I maintain that this misleading news functions as disinformation in practice, especially as it relates to profit motives.15 Because such false news is designed to exploit media consumers’ confirmation bias and create and encourage political polarization, I maintain that Wedeen’s theory of 21st century neoliberal views of ideological authoritarianism helps to show that such news content can be considered part of the disinformation landscape.16 11 12 13 14 15 16

National Endowment on Democracy, Distinguishing Propaganda from Misinformation and Fake News, National Endowment on Democracy Issue Brief (October 17, 2018): 3. NED: 3. NED: 4. Fallis: 404. Sussman: 6. NED Report: 4.

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Disinformation in the MENA Context Using a view of disinformation that takes into account the profit-driven model of ICT usage, I draw upon the theories of Lisa Wedeen and Zeynep Tufekci, who have both written extensively about specific cases of disinformation in the ICT context in the MENA region specifically. Ultimately, I conclude that the most useful analysis is based in specific case studies, which must be considered separately as different media ‘infoclimates’ that are subject to their own specific traits and environmental considerations.17 While drawing patterns about the MENA region’s use of disinformation in the ICT age is useful, only approaches that seek to understand its usage in a specific context will capture the individual purposes and motives behind its usage in that context, and more importantly, how it can be addressed and combatted.18 Case Studies and ‘Infoclimates’ in the Middle East Using the model of ICT usage and disinformation discussed previously, I present here two models as case studies of ICT disinformation use in the Middle East. These cases will be grounded in a framework of what can be termed ‘infoclimates,’ using Youmans’ discussion of media’s relationship to place and context.19 A given ‘infoclimate,’ is defined by the complex and interlacing patterns of media usage, political factors, and profit motives in a specific geographical or conceptual media climate. Ultimately, I present two basic models of infoclimates that prevail in the current Middle East. Although more models and patterns certainly exist, a limited look at two patterns of media usage in the region—targeted repression and targeted distraction—are helpful in framing discussions about ICT and disinformation in the region going forward. Infoclimate: Targeted Repression This specific type of infoclimate pertains best to states that have been subject to patterns of civilian dissent or that have cultures of political activism, but which have experienced redoubled state efforts at repression of ICT usage and media freedom. Examples of this type of infoclimate can be found in Egypt, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Turkey.

17 18 19

Youmans, An Unlikely Audience. Wedeen 2013: 842. Youmans, An Unlikely Audience: 3.

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An extensive state surveillance regime is a key feature of this infoclimate. Morozov, Wheeler, Zayani, and others have discussed the capacity of authoritarian states to co-opt new media tools for the purpose of deliberately disseminating inaccurate information or disinformation for the purpose of sowing political turmoil and mistrust. Morozov discusses the newer phenomenon of states using paid bloggers and trolls on social media for both domestic and international political aims.20 While some are optimistic about the power of these “new media micro-empowerments” to prevail over state usage and give citizens power to enact small acts of resistance and exercise agency in the face of authoritarian rule, others are less optimistic.21 However, she rightly points out the capacity that new media has to at least make citizens more aware of and discuss issues in the region relating to previously taboo issues such as corruption, giving the examples of Egypt and Turkey’s leaders attempts to shut down new media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook in light of growing calls to examine their governments’ complicity in such crimes.22 This type of infoclimate is generally characterized by a state security apparatus that was slow to catch up to the realities of the emerging ICT world in the early 2000s, but which quickly learned its power to instrumentalize these tools in its favor, and which continues to do so in an atmosphere of targeted repression. Wheeler outlines other forms of repressive behavior specifically within the MENA region that are centered around ICT and new media, including digital surveillance tools enacted widely by states such as Morocco, the UAE, and others.23 These tools include intrusion software used to monitor private cell phone activity in the UAE and Morocco, and are instrumentalized in the punishment of citizens who have been surveilled and found to be aligned with dissident political movements or journalistic efforts, as in Kuwait, Egypt, the UAE, and elsewhere.24 States in this infoclimate often give the appearance of partial media freedom, or are at least characterized by past patterns of dissent. Egypt proves a telling case here; Peterson discusses the ways in which ICT usage during the Arab Uprisings of 2011 in Egypt can be framed through a kind of “mediation” narrative that accounts more for the real lim20 21 22 23 24

Wheeler: 25. Wheeler: 27 Wheeler 2017: 123. Wheeler 2017: 123. Wheeler 2017: 133.

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itations being placed on such citizen-journalists.25 In his view, a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which ICTs and state media were being used, and the very real limitations and consequences for those actually using it, provides a fuller understanding of the current Egyptian political reality. Ultimately, this model of targeted repression can extend to one of targeted attacks, as in the deliberate manipulation of online media in Saudi Arabia to harass and monitor its journalists and outside critics, as in the deliberate state disinformation carried out following the death of Jamal Khashoggi.26 The model of an infoclimate in the Middle East is a useful one in analyzing how states are currently able to use and mitigate ICT usage for the purpose of disinformation, both in state and private media. Infoclimate: Targeted Distraction This type of infoclimate is primarily characterized by state and private sector usage of ICTs as a way to distract and disengage citizens. Some have characterized prevailing views on new media usage in the developing media world as one that is either optimistic or pessimistic about its ability to play a role in developing human security and civil liberties. Wheeler makes the distinction between approaches that view ICTs as a potential boon to human freedom and civil liberties (society-centric cyber-optimism) and those that view ICTs as a weapon that adverse powers can use to limit and obscure safe information access (state-centric cyber-pessimism).27 As Tufecki and others have noted, a nuanced view that accepts both of these views as equally true is most helpful in understanding this kind of infoclimate.28 Zayani outlines a variety of ways in which analysis of ICT usage in an increasingly digital-savvy Middle Eustis not “a simple story of adaption.”29 He gives the example of the right to drive campaign that was conducted largely over social media, and its relative success in its goals, largely as a result of activists’ ability to connect, legitimize themselves, and popularize their movement online, using ICTs such as social media.30 However, as he shows, this was overshadowed by the later use of state ICT and surveillance 25 26

27 28 29 30

Peterson in Zayani 2018: 86. Katie Benner, Mark Mazzetti, Ben Hubbard and Mike Isaac, “Saudis’ Image Makers: A Troll Army and a Twitter Insider” New York Times, Oct 20, 2018. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/20/us/politics/saudi-image-campaign-twitter.html [Accessed on 12.03.2020]. Wheeler 2017:131. Zayani, Digital Middle East: 6. Zayani, Digital Middle East: 7. Zayani, Digital Middle East: 8.

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networks to arrest and detain some of these online activists, while simultaneously projecting a successful narrative of media freedom and human rights to the Western media.31 There are therefore both positive and negative consequences for digital adaption and ICT usage in these contexts, and both must be addressed. In some ways, the cases of Morocco, Tunisia, and Jordan can be seen as examples of this type of infoclimate. Wheeler argues that a special example of this can be found in Jordan in particular, a country which is considered more relatively open in certain areas of human freedoms, but in which a similar climate of distraction and state media projection took place, especially after the Uprisings throughout the region in 2011. A gradual opening of the ICT sector in Jordan coincided with a greater sense of openness and dialogue in public life in the country, but which eventually gave way to a returned sense of control and loyalty to the monarchy by 2015.32 Wheeler also discusses the ways in which ICT use formed a version of alternate engagement and entertainment for users in Jordan, even to the point of distraction. One user discussed how chatting online and spending time in the Internet café allowed him to “forget [his] troubles,” while others discussed their social engagements and educational activities in similar ways (Wheeler 2017: 74). Over the years leading up to the Arab uprisings, Jordan moved from being designated as a ‘partially free’ state to ‘not free,’ and much of the changes in freedoms that lead to this change in classification centered around press and political.33 With a majority of young Jordanians educated, wired, and out of work, much has been made of the impending youth bulge and its potentially dangerous impact on society.34 In some ways, ICTs came to fill this gap perfectly, both by allowing citizens the chance to feel engaged and connected online, while also providing many routes for distraction and entertainment from social and political. An enhanced electronic surveillance and repression machine, including steep gains in the powers and ubiquity of the state secret police, the mukhabarat, may be part of the explanatory factors for this. But there seems to be something more insidious and undefined at work here, which can be connected to increasing ICT access, entertainment on mobile phones, and web connections to forms of new media on platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Instagram, all platforms that are designed to keep users in31 32 33 34

Zayani, Digital Middle East: 8. Wheeler 2017: 57. Wheeler 2017: 73. RAND Corporation Report: 2014.

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creasingly and more consistently engaged, entertained, and distracted.35 Another interesting example exists in the cases of the GCC states, which as Suzi Mirgani discusses, have embarked on a new project of intellectual property laws in the digital age with an eye toward facilitating a kind of neoliberal approach to ICT and Internet freedom in general that encourages ecommerce and business development over other forms of ICT usage.36 In conclusion, the kind of targeted distraction model outlined here is one which takes into account the ways in which states have instrumentalized ICTs and increasing digitalization of daily life in these states, in part, to distract from dissent and to keep citizens occupied with activities that do not include the consumption of accurate and well-regulated media. An increase in this version of ICT use in the region will require further analysis, attention and study in the MENA region and elsewhere. Policy Recommendations and Conclusion As noted at the outset of this study, the timeliness and importance of addressing the issue of ICT usage and disinformation has never been greater, and an increasing number of voices in academia, policymaking, law and technology fields have made a variety of claims and calls to action to address the danger of targeted disinformation throughout the Middle East and elsewhere. I add here my own brief suggestions for how to address and discuss these issues going forward. In general, strategies aimed at documenting and understanding ICT and disinformation strategies in the Middle East are vitally needed, including more in-depth and large-n studies that try to do a better job of capturing how ICTs—including digital news media, social media, and other technology tools such as smart phones and applications—are used in the Middle East. As Wheeler notes, a dearth of up to date and accurate information about ICT usage in the region greatly complicates attempts to draw helpful conclusions about patterns of ICT behavior and usage, especially at the individual level. More variety in research and different types of studies tracking use of ICTs in the Middle East is a critical first step on the journey to addressing ICT use and disinformation in the region. It will also be vital for policymakers, journalists, and scholars in the region to strive for more general transparency, dialogue, and cooperation between government and private sector actors. Such transparency and dia35 36

Alter 2017. Mirgani in Zayani, Digital Middle East: 126.

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logue can and should take place in the context of conferences, journalistic studies and meet-ups, and collaborations between local governments and media companies. As Fabris notes, there is also a vitally needed discussion about the nature of ethics in the digital age, one which will establish some kind of regulation or governing system to think about the structures of power in digital and ICT media that are currently going unregulated and unchecked.37 I join Tufecki, Bishop, Sussman and others in calling for a more rights-based approach to ICT usage, one which recognizes that free and safe information access is a basic human right, and should be treated as such.38 Finally, I agree with the assertions made by Roger McNamee and others about the need for a more closely regulated and watched private sector sphere as it relates to ICT usage, and greater educational opportunities for civilians who use such technologies.39 International and national legal frameworks must begin to address the complicated web of user agreements, data privacy, and right to consent that are involved in ICT usage in the Middle East and elsewhere, and regional governments must commit to greater transparency about how and why they are using such technologies, as well as their impact on civilians. Taking cues from Human Rights Watch and other actors, international and local organizations should strive to develop educational tools that are aimed at users in the Middle East and accessible to a variety of types of users that explain in clear language the dangers and threats associated with ICT usage, and teach them about good information hygiene and personal security.40 In conclusion, there are no easy answers to the spread of disinformation through ICT technologies, either in the Middle East or elsewhere. An approach that recognizes the need for nuance, especially as it relates to profit motives and a rights-based approach to information security, is vitally needed in a region that threatens to weaponize ICT usage in favor of its most authoritarian tendencies. More private and public collaboration, as well as greater opportunities for research and awareness of these issues, will do much to address the spread of adverse use of disinformation over ICTs in the Middle East. Addressing such information usage in the media and 37 38 39

40

Fabris: 59. Bishop: 10. Mcnamee, Roger. “How To Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us, Washington Monthly (March 2018) https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january-february-march-201 8/how-to-fix-facebook-before-it-fixes-us. Protecting Your Security and Rights Online. Human Rights Watch (December 11, 2018): https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/12/11/protecting-your-security-and-rights-online.

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elsewhere will play a vital role in addressing the needed changes and issues raised in the region during the 2011 Uprisings, as well as the future stability and survival of journalistic freedom and human rights in the future in the Middle East and beyond. Works Cited “A Seven-Nation Survey.” http://www.mideastmedia.org/survey/2017/ov erview. Northwestern University in Qatar. (accessed 19 Oct. 2018). Alter, Adam L. Irresistible: the Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked. New York: Penguin Press, 2017. Anderson, Jon (1995), “Cybarites, Knowledge Works and New Creoles of the Information Superhighway.” Anthropology Today, 11.4 (August): 13–15. Ansorge, Josef Teboho (2016). Identify and Sort: How Digital Power Changed World Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Aziza, Sarah. “Don’t Lose Sight of the Real Stakes: Jamal Khashoggi’s Murder Is About Repression of Free Speech in the Middle East.” The Intercept, 25 Oct. 2018, https://theintercept.com/2018/10/25/jamalkhashoggi-death-freedom-of-speech. Bishop, Cheryl Ann. Access to Information as a Human Right. El Paso: LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC, 2011. Brown, Ryan Andrew, Louay Constant, Peter Glick, and Audra K. Grant, Youth in Jordan: Transitions from Education to Employment. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2014. https://www.rand.org/pubs/ research_reports/RR556.html Earp, Madeline, Kelly, Sanja, Shahbaz, Adrian, Truong, Mai, and Jessica White. “Freedom on the Net 2017: Manipulating Social Media to Undermine Democracy.” Freedom House. 2017: Washington, D.C. https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/FOTN_2017_Final.pdf, (accessed 2 October, 2018). Fallis, Don. “What Is Disinformation?” Library Trends 63, no. 3 (2015): 401–426. https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/library_trends/v063/63.3.fall is.html (accessed 13 December, 2018). Fabris, Adriano. Ethics of Information and Communication Technologies. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Science and Business Media, 2018. Landau, Susan. “Cybersecurity: Time for a New Definition,” Lawfare Blog, January 12, 2018, https://www.lawfareblog.com/cybersecurity-time-ne w-definition (accessed 12 December, 2018).

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Piccone, Ted. “Democracy and Cybersecurity.” Community of Democracies’ Democracy and Security Dialogue. Brookings Institute. September 2017. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/ 08/fp_20170905_democracy_cyber_security.pdf, (accessed 23 October 2018). Polyakova, Alina and Daniel Fried. “Democratic Defense Against Disinformation.” Atlantic Council: Eurasia Center. February 2018. http:// www.atlanticcouncil.org/images/publications/Democratic_Defense_ Against_Disinformation_FINAL.pdf, (accessed 24 October 2018). “Protecting Your Security and Rights Online: A Guide.” Human Rights Watch (December 2018):https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/12/11/pr otecting-your-security-and-rights-online (first accessed December 15, 2018). Madrigal, Alexis C. “India’s Lynching Epidemic and the Problem With Blaming Tech.” The Atlantic, 25 Sept. 2018, https://www.theatlantic. com/technology/archive/2018/09/whatsapp/571276/. Madrigal, Alexis C. “The Education of Mark Zuckerberg.” The Atlantic, 20 Nov. 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/1 1/the-mark-zuckerberg-theory-of-community/546290/. Madrigal, Alexis C. “Were We Destined to Live in Facebook’s World?” The Atlantic, 24 July 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/arch ive/2018/07/were-we-destined-to-live-in-facebooks-world/565877/. Mcnamee, Roger. “How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes Us.” Washington Monthly (March 2018): https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/ja nuary-february-march-2018/how-to-fix-facebook-before-it-fixes-us (first accessed October 18 2018). National Endowment on Democracy. “Issue Brief: Distinguishing Disinformation from Propaganda, Misinformation, and ‘Fake News.’” Plus Company Updates. Plus Media Solutions, October 26, 2017. Rotich, Juliana and Joshua Goldstein. “Digitally Networked Technology in Kenya’s 2007–2008 Post-Election Crisis.” The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. September 2008. http://unp an1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un-dpadm/unpan042 523.pdf, (accessed 15 October 2018). “Social Media Strategy Framework.” Internews Gaza Humanitarian Information Service. Advanced Human Technologies Project. Internews. https://www.internews.org/resource/social-media-strategy-framewor k-arabic. Shepp, Jonah. “The Fake News That Provoked a Crisis in the Middle East.” Intelligencer, 19 July 2017, http://nymag.com/intelligencer/20 17/07/the-fake-news-that-provoked-a-crisis-in-the-middle-east.html. —In Statu Nascendi 3:1 (2020)—

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Taneja, Harsh, Webster, James G, Malthouse, Edward C, and Ksiazek, Thomas B. “Media Consumption Across Platforms: Identifying UserDefined Repertoires.” New Media & Society 14, no. 6 (n.d.): 951–968. “The European Union Steps Up Its Fight Against Fake News.” Lawfare, 14 Nov. 2017, https://www.lawfareblog.com/european-union-steps-its-fi ght-against-fake-news. “The Source of Fake News in the Middle East.” Washington Institute. February 2018. https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policyanalysis/vi ew/the-source-of-fake-news-in-the-middle-east, (accessed 23 Oct. 2018). Tufekci, Zeynep. Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. Wheeler, Deborah L. Digital Resistance in the Middle East: New Media Activism in Everyday Life Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017. “Why WhatsApp is Brazil’s go-to political weapon.” NIC.br—Núcleo de Informação e Coordenação do Ponto BR, https://nic.br/noticia/namidia/why-whatsapp-is-brazil-s-go-to-political-weapon/, (accessed 20 October 2018). Yoo, Eunae, Rand, William, Eftekhar, Mahyar, and Rabinovich, Elliot. “Evaluating Information Diffusion Speed and Its Determinants in Social Media Networks During Humanitarian Crises.” Journal of Operations Management 45 (2016). Youmans, William Lafi. An Unlikely Audience: Al Jazeera’s Struggle in America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017. Zayani, Mohamed, ed. Digital Middle East: State and Society in the Information Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to [email protected]. —In Statu Nascendi 3:1 (2020)—

Piotr Pietrzak

How Would Realists Interpret People Republic of China’s Wish to “Cultivate the Image of a Responsible Great Power”? What Are the Limitations to Such Interpretations? I offer my warmest gratitude to two amazing academics, Dr Elena Barabantseva 41 and Dr Shogo Suzuki 42, whose work inspired my fascination with China, back in the last Year of the Dragon at the University of Manchester. Introduction: China on the rise It is largely certain that the time when its economy can maintain an annual double-digit rise in Gross Domestic Product may be largely over, but today’s the People’s Republic of China leadership still looks as busy as bees trying to maintain appearances. Naturally, the government in Beijing is able to utilize the country’s four decades of consistent economic growth to sustain far-reaching structural and technological reforms, push for modernization of its society and its armed forces, and possibly even find a way to increase its political influence, expand its cultural outreach, and keep its momentum going, but sadly the Middle Kingdom’s engine is slowly but surely slowing down (Babones 2011, p. 79–88). Far too long the well-being of an ordinary Wang, Li, or Zhang has been compromised by Beijing’s wish to attain the country’s collective desire for global power and status at any cost. The funds that could be allocated towards, for instance, improving social stability were actually appropriated in a more instrumental manner that was meant to result in turning the entire global architecture of power upside-down, projecting the country’s interna41 42

Please see: Elena Barabantseva, Overseas Chinese, Ethnic Minorities and Nationalism. De-centering China. London, Routledge, 2010, 202 p. Vanessa Frangville. Please see: Suzuki, S & Prantl, J (ed.) 2013, Effective Multilateralism and Sino-Japanese Reconciliation. In: Effective Multilateralism: Through the Looking Glass of East Asia. St Antony’ Series, Palgrave Macmillan Ltd, New York, pp. 153–176, Effective Multilateralism: Through the Looking Glass of East Asia conference, organised by the University of Oxford and Fudan University, China, Shanghai, China, 11–13 December, Fudan University, Shanghai, China, 11/12/08. Suzuki S. Why does China participate in intrusive peacekeeping? Understanding paternalistic Chinese discourses on development and intervention. International Peacekeeping. 2011 Jun; 18(3):271–285. https://doi.org/10.10 80/13533312.2011.563079

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tional influence beyond the wildest imaginations or fulfilling other even more unthinkable delusions of grandeur. Indeed, the policymakers in Beijing were not only willing to pay for it but were somehow excited to pay this bill; for the currencies in which this country was expected to be reimbursed were power, influence, and the tangible prospect of becoming one of the most important actors in the global architecture of power. Interestingly, unlike, for instance, the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China has shown a far-reaching restraint in emulating unnecessary hawkish attitudes towards its close neighbors (Pietrzak 2019, p. 137– 172). Beijing also keeps the information about its nuclear arsenal and nuclear technology under the shadow of secrecy. Its official figures regarding its conventional military spending were consistently kept at a steady level to mitigate the chances of escalating any regional arms race. Indeed, instead of projecting its increased self-confidence, assertiveness, and ultimately actual strength towards some military posturing the authorities in Beijing did their very best to appear as an international player that is willing to socialize with their partners on a more formal basis by becoming a member or associated member of such organizations as the United Nations, World Trade Organization, International Labor Organization, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, APEC, BRIC, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, G20, G77, and ASEAN+3 (Johnson 2003, p. 22–31). Naturally, this self-imposed restraint has translated into China’s growing regulatory, economic, and political influence that to any careful observer of the global architecture of power is evidently much stronger than in the 1970s or the 1980s. But as much as we can acknowledge noticeable change in Beijing’s attitudes towards an outside world that gives us hope that the Chinese rise in the international architecture of power may be in fact largely peaceful, we are yet to properly conceptualize China’s role and its real intentions, for there is a strong group of very skeptical IR scholars who tend to be very suspicious about any characterizations portraying China (or any other country) as a peaceful nation, for a number of reasons. They emphasize the lack of consistency in such arguments, and are inclined to see countries that enjoy a superior position in a regional architecture of power as potentially revisionist. The group in question is formed by the leading Realist scholars who very often show a propensity to resort to historical examples to prove their point, and in China’s case, they don’t even need to dig deep to recall China’s imperial past to demonstrate this country’s alleged trouble in following international norms and regulations. They can just bring to the fore and weigh China’s supposed peaceful intentions against Communist China’s leading ideology; for such principles as not intervening in other courtiers’ internal affairs, resolving international issues through peaceful means, and showing —In Statu Nascendi 3:1 (2020)—

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far-reaching restraint from using military force are very much foreign to Marxist or Maoist ideology (Buruma 2020). Naturally, projecting the image of China as a responsible great power that hopes to attain its goals and objectives through peaceful means and still remain Communist could be difficult to attain in practice but it’s important to clarify that the Chinese Communists are not as red as they would want us to believe. If they really were, they would definitely be more hostile towards the idea of capitalism, imperialism, and the economic oppression of working classes. Instead of entertaining even the idea of such an endeavor, the PRC’s leaders have decided to show their ultimate devotion to the international cooperation and peaceful coexistence among nations by externalizing their dedication to the Confucian standard of harmonious society (和諧社會, héxié shèhuì). Naturally there is a lot of instrumentality in this choice, but this paper raises this issue just for the purpose of observation. What is more important from the perspective of this research is to look at the declarations of Chinese officials from the perspective of various examples contradicting selected aspects of responsible power status and confirming others, for it is only after an explanation of the real nature of the controversies in this case that we can move this debate towards a more realistic evaluation of the issue in question. Explaining the nature of the controversies The Chinese authorities’ aspiration to present the Middle Kingdom as a responsible great power can be controversial for a number of reasons and one of the most recent ones comes down to the Chinese government’s response to the coronavirus43 outbreak. Naturally, at first, both foreign and domestic commentators were all very much impressed by the mobilization and involvement of the central government and the dynamism with which the local authorities in Wuhan province built a temporary hospital (and later on a second one) that treated affected individuals in less than ten days; but it actually turned out that what we witnessed in early February 2020 was a very much delayed reaction to an epidemic that had broken out more than a month earlier, and worse, the Chinese political leadership was perfectly aware of the danger of adopting their delayed tactic, but they still did it in order not to scare foreign investors off. As a matter of fact there were a

43

As of 11 March 2020, acording to World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Coronavirus disease (known as COVID-19) can be characterized as a pandemic, for “There are now more than 118,000 cases in 114 countries and 4,291 people have lost their lives. Thousands more are fighting for their lives in hospitals”. For more information on this highly infectious desease please see: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Situation Summary. Available at: [Accessed on 12.03.2020, at 02:58 am].

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great deal of disturbing similarities between the Chinese Communist Party’s handling of the outbreak of this epidemic and the Soviet Union’s reaction to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, for in both cases, the communist regimes waited until it was to too late, and entered the trap of prioritizing the preservation of the illusion of government control and stability over the necessity of the protection of the ordinary man’s life. Again, similar to the Soviet case of Prof. Valery Alekseyevich Legasov and the firefighters, if it had not been for the bravery of Dr. Li Wenliang, other whistleblowers, as well as masses of volunteers who have risked their lives to stop this epidemic, this virus would have spread even more, far beyond 785,807 affected globally (As per the latest statistics on 31/03/2020). Unfortunately, the case of Chinese authorities’ reaction to the coronavirus outbreak cannot be seen as an isolated example that puts China’s wish to appear as a responsible international actor in question. On the contrary, the mishandling of this crisis at its initial stage opens a rather long list of very unfortunate mishaps by the Chinese government and makes us wonder whether Chinese leaders are really serious about their declarations (Trofimov 2020). The way the Chinese authorities have reacted to the peaceful demonstrations in Hong Kong (2019–present) also does not inspire too much confidence, for the authorities in Beijing did not even attempt to act impartial in this conflict, or to hide their strong support of the pro-Beijing local loyalists and their strong antipathy to any pro-democracy trends characteristic of the actions of the pro-autonomy protesters. The protests in question erupted largely because of the Hong Kongese government’s attempts to enact a highly controversial Extradition Bill that attempted to subject the local residents to mainland China’s jurisdiction; that in turn would also indirectly undermine this province’s post-1997 far-reaching autonomy, its judicial independence, transparency, and Western-style accountability. The locals have taken these liberties for granted for they thought that they are guaranteed under the “one country, two systems” policy, yet, instead of trying to mitigate the unnecessary tensions or suggest any workable solution that would allow both sides to agree to disagree or meet halfway, China’s President Xi Jinping and his inner circle have attempted to escalate the tensions. From the outset Beijing has chosen to treat this situation as secessionists’ attempt to separate the province to divide and weaken China, despite the fact that it was the local pro-Beijing loyalists who tried to tweak the local balance of power in their favor. At one point that could be characterized as a peak of the tensions Xi Jinping even threatened hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who took to the streets in Hong Kong that if they did not obey the rule of law, they would see the bodies and spilling of the blood on the ground. Such a declaration surely did not sound very presidential, but it fortunately was fol—In Statu Nascendi 3:1 (2020)—

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lowed by the more conciliatory action of the local pro-Beijing leader Carrie Lam who in the heat of the moment declared that she would not push for the controversial bill in question and that she was willing to suspend the legislation indefinitely. It remains unclear whether these two declarations were coordinated to micromanage the events or whether the People’s Republic of China had attempted to resort to “good cop/bad cop” tactics to avoid any unnecessary bloodbath; but the way the entire situation was managed has left a bad taste in many Hong Kongers’ and Chinese’s mouths. Surely the very fact that Beijing has made it clear that it is ready to resort to its hard power arsenal could be seen as a factor in the de-escalation of the conflict, but the very fact that the pro-Beijing loyalists lost 17 out of 18 councils to pro-democracy candidates in the local elections held in November 2019 suggests that it may not be as easy as they thought to curb the discontent and find a magical way to please both pro-Beijing and prodemocracy groups. Paradoxically the protests in Hong Kong have deescalated also because of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak in mainland China that (thus far) has discouraged any potential protesters from taking part in large-scale rallies or demonstrations in Hong Kong. The instrumentality, violence, and decisiveness in the way in which the government in Beijing have decided to deal with the unrest in Hong Kong puts a deep shadow on China’s aspirations to be seen as a responsible global power, but this region definitely cannot be seen as a unique example; on the contrary, the People’s Republic of China’s human rights records in general across the country could account for a subject of a separate inquiry, but what is especially alarming is the country’s treatment of minorities, the Tibetans44 and the Uyghurs45 in particular. This may lead us to the inevitable 44

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The early attitudes of the government in Beijing to Tibet and the Tibetan people are well documented both in the literature of the subject and in popular culture. One of the most famous of them is Harrer, Heinrich. n.d. Seven years in Tibet. London: Reprint Society, 1953. & Harrer, Heinrich, and Tim Carruthers. 2008. Beyond seven years in Tibet. South Yarra, Vic: Labyrynth Press. As well as their respective dramatization Annaud, Jean-Jacques, Heinrich Harrer, Becky Johnston, Robert Fraisse, John Williams, Claude Debussy, David Thewlis, et al. 2005. Seven years in Tibet (1997). For more information on Sinicization of Tibet as well as the Chinese Communist Party’s policy towards Tibet please see International Campaign for Tibet, “New developments in China’s Tibet policy as Communist Party’s 19th Congress begins” October 17, 2017, Available at: ’t understand it. (Wittgenstein, 1973, p. 46)

What Wittgenstein might mean when he refers to the ‘understanding’ is that the reader must understand him and familiarise with his spirit. This would help the reader to perceive the sentences of the work as nonsense. He states:

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Wittgenstein uses the term ‘bestehen’ (TLP 2.0121) and not the term ‘existieren’. Both terms ‘bestehen’ and ‘existieren’ are commonly translated into English as ‘exist’ but they have a different character. The term ‘bestehen’ states a relation—connexion of standing. Wittgenstein uses the term ‘existieren’ for other things (TLP 3.032, 3.24 and 3.323) but not for objects.

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100 Andreas Georgallides My sentences serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps— to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these sentences, and then he will see the world aright. (TLP 6.54)

The nonsense of sentences encourages the whole paradox. While Wittgenstein claims that all of his sentences function as ‘elucidations’ (‘Erläuterungen’), at the same time he claims that all of them (he does not say some of them) are ‘nonsense’ (‘Unsinn’) (TLP 6.54). Therefore, the question that arises is: how is it possible for nonsense to serve as an elucidation? (See Georgallides, 2018, p. 122–124). Thus, the paradox encourages the reader to think that the only way to ‘escape’ from the notion of nonsense is to transcend the sentences of the Tractatus, just like Wittgenstein did, and to be led to a kind of mysticism which transcends the sense of things. According to the Tractatus, that which is surprising for the mystic is not how things are in the world but that this world exists (TLP 6.44). The crucial idea encouraged by the Tractatus is that the existence of the world itself constitutes the reason so that the mystic experiences and reflects upon the nature of reality. Bibliography Allaire, E.B. (1966). The Tractatus: Nominalistic or Realistic?, in I.M. Copi and R.W. Beard (eds.). Essays on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. New York: Macmillan, p.325–341. Anscombe, G.E.M. (1996). An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Bristol: Thoemmes Press. Carruthers, P. (1989). Tractarian Semantics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers. Copi, I.M. (1966). Objects, Properties, and Relations in the Tractatus, in I.M. Copi and R.W. Beard (eds.). Essays on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, p.167–186. Fogelin, R.J. (2004). Wittgenstein. London: Routledge Publishers. Georgallides, A. (2018). From Theory to Mysticism. The Unclarity of the Notion ‘Object’ in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Hacker, P.M.S. (1975). Insight and Illusion. London: Oxford University Press. Hintikka, M.B. and Hintikka, J. (1986). Investigating Wittgenstein. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Ishiguro, H. (1969). Use and Reference of Names, in P. Winch (ed.). Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, p.20–50. —In Statu Nascendi 3:1 (2020)—

The unclarity of the ontological frame of the Tractatus 101 Malcolm, N. (2001). Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Morris, M. (2008). Wittgenstein and the Tractatus. London: Routledge. Ramsey, F.P. (1923). Critical Notice of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Mind, Vol.32, p. 465–478. Ricketts, T. (1996). Pictures, Logic, and the Limits of Sense in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, in H. Sluga and D. Stern (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 59–99. Stenius, E. (1960). Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Waismann, F. (1983). Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, Conversations recorded by F. Waismann, in B.F. McGuinness (ed.), translated by J. Schulte and B.F. McGuinness. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wittgenstein, L. (1973). Letters to C.K. Ogden, in G.H. von Wright (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, L. (1992). Notebooks 1914–1916, in G.H. von Wright and G.E.M. Anscombe (eds.), translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers. Wittgenstein, L. (2002). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by C.K. Ogden. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Wittgenstein, L. (2004). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuiness. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

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Dimitris M. Moschos

Paul Tillich’s Critical and Political Theology and His Critique of Modernity Abstract: Modern radical theology, informed by contemporary continental philosophy and strongly influenced by the historical event of WW2, tries to close the gap between the secular and the religious world. A modern religious movement on the one hand, has to move away from an anachronistic traditional view of God that fails to provide a political path in an era where politics are important. On the other hand, a path of complete atheism has proven to be hopeless. After the events of WW2 many philosophers and theologians were willing to reform their disciplines, being unable to conceptualize or to explain what happened. The time for radical and critical theology and philosophy was exactly this moment. A reintroduction of the concept of utopia against the rationalization of Reason was experienced by many as essential need. Paul Tillich was one of the first how tried to radically reform the idea of religion in a way that can be inclusive of many different faiths, with only as a common denominator the political path that the faith leads to. Even though that he started his philosophical and theological work before the WW2 his main contributions and impacts in his contemporaries were written during and after the war. His theology and philosophy are more than needed today. Keywords: Hope, ultimate concern, absolute faith, socialism, religion, Paul Tillich, existentialism Introduction It is no secret that church and religion in general, over the past two hundred years, are in defensive status. This conclusion has nothing to do, as is often believed, with the victory of enlightenment and materialism, the so-called modernity. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the vulgar enlightenment of the fully secularized world brought the final blow to a body that was already weak, and that continued to suffer during the 19th and 20th centuries. Technical progress has given incredible self-confidence to humanity’s ego while Auschwitz and the atomic bomb have shown that the classical perception of an unknown divine providence whose human is somehow a part, cannot be right. The enormous successes and failures in modernity convinced humans that they are alone. With this loneliness, the idea of a better 103

104 Dimitris M. Moschos world was lost from massive culture but also from the domain of religion. Religion, especially in its Judeo-Christian variant had an internal contradiction. On the one hand it was a form of mystification, a paralysis of reason and companion of state-power cruelty. On the other hand, it kept alive the dream of salvation, the fantasy of an ideal better world that it is yet to come. This tradition was in fact already half-forgotten in the church, and then the modernity completely erased it from the public religious and secular perspective. After the French revolution, this contradiction was transferred in the so called “public natural religion” of the natural rights theory63. Yet this forgotten tradition is the deeper content of religion par excellence. The belief in the possibility of the end of pain. With the end of WW2, the natural rights theory and the general belief in rationality had started to fade away as ideological dominants and a general problematisation of the situation of human existence and its relation to belief. Reason and logic took a good root in human thought and philosophy. From exactly this suspicion of “western rationalization and Reason” the Frankfurt school, the French moment and more recently the post-colonial turn, emerged as possible philosophical answers. Here we are willing to present a marginal tradition in the Frankfurt school. This stream of thought became famous through its main figures T. W. Adorno, M. Horkheimer and H. Marcuse. But a lesser known figure connected with them was Paul Tillich, a non-Jewish person on the limit between philosophy and theology, closely affiliated with Adorno. Tillich, a protestant himself, was one of the first people who tried to construct a combination of theology and philosophy apart from its classical medieval form. Tillich didn’t want just to create a philosophical theology, but in modern, post-enlightenment terms to abolish the distinction between atheism and theism, religion and secular thought. For him this was not just a theoretical passion of personal taste. He thought that the abolition of this distinction was able to politicize religion and religious people and to connect them in common front with the more secular socialists and communists of his time against the rising powers of fascism. So, he became one of the first philosophers to develop an existential philosophy of faith and hope, concepts which would become more popularized later by Ernst Bloch and Jürgen Moltmann in different ways. For them Hope and existential anxiety were the keys to understand the human condition and psyche. 63

Bloch, Ernst. 1996. Natural Law and Human Dignity, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: MIT press. p. 54–59.

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Paul Tillich’s critical and political theology 105 They were also necessary for a more political theory of existentialism and phenomenology.64 Tillich puts human existence into a historical and existential perspective. Humans suffer in this world. As long as misery exists, there is still hope. Unhappiness points to its opposite, hope. Where there is hope, thought does not waive the claim to find for human a life of worth. The church sojourns65 on Earth, and this means nothing more than being in tension with its historical reality. Intensity means however, that it does not ignore this reality but it criticizes it, while knowing it in depth. Enlightenment created two currents of thought, on the one hand, the purely technical, functionalist spirit that treats humans and nature as simple things of no value, as means to be exploited, and on the other hand a self-critical thinking, which for Tillich comes close to the history of Protestantism since it rescues its very essence: to protest. After the Auschwitz, the sock was extremely heavy among theologians and also philosophers and political thinkers, especially since the protestant mass in Germany was more or less friendly to Hitler’s cause. Modern theologians did not take long to understand that there is need not to save religion as an institution, but a need for a more radical perspective and intersection between religion, radical politics and critical philosophy. Somehow the hope for a better future had to be made possible again as a political force, especially in the face of the failures of Reason. Radical theology was born so that it would overcome the clear separation of atheism-theism, philosophy and theology, modernity and past. To do this, however, a radical critique of the traditional religion and the concept of God had to be carried out in parallel with the criticism of the modern world. Tillich was among the theologians who carried out this work with methodological consistency, even before the tragedy of WW2 in Germany. His theology vowed to fulfill the goal of uniting religion, modern atheism and political action. God as absolute faith The theology of Tillich initially processes a new concept of God and faith, trying to reconnect them in an inextricable way. His theory must begin with the human psyche and its need. Human has as a basic feature of her being 64

65

An interesting aspect to keep in mind is that Tillich even though he was an out spoken socialist and anti-fascist and close friend to Theodor Adorno, he mainly draws his philosophy from Heidegger and not Hegel. I am drawing here on the First epistle of S.Clements. The word sojourn translates the greek παροικώ—pariko, meaning, staying somewhere where you don’t fully belong.

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106 Dimitris M. Moschos the continuous productivity of thought and the anxiety of existence.66 This anxiety, although having its root in thought and appears within the concepts of thought, it cannot find its answer there, nor is it a concept with the classical meaning of the term. On the contrary, it appears as an opposition to thought.67 By the moment that thought realizes its existence, appears the radical possibility that once it exists, it could also not exist at all. Also, when thought conceives its finite character, the possibility of the infinite, the endless, the absolute emerges within it as opposite.68 The anxiety of existence as non-existence is a void, something unanswered that always remains within thought, but at the same time motivates it to become productive. It is productive in thought but also in social praxis. Human constantly conceives temporary responses, (concepts, symbols, stories etc.) to fill the nakedness of thought. Anxiety is defined as the ultimate concern.69 Human gives a relatively stable answer to this anxiety through absolute faith.70 Absolute faith is the elevation of a concept, symbol or state of things in the sphere of the Holy, that is, as an absolute answer to the ultimate concern. The act of this elevation is religion as an act. The absolute faith is when we take something with absolute severity for our existence. What is exalted as a holy one, is made the Absolute, that is God. In fact for Tillich it has little importance what it is called, since the absolute has no name, it cannot be contained. But this answer never erases the craving for the ultimate concern. Instead, the Absolute as holy appears as the answer to the anxiety and the cause of anxiety at the same time.71 In this way, Tillich rephrases in a philosophical and psychological way the classical conception of the God as both distant, omnipotent and personal.72 Absolute faith, regardless of the mythological and allegorical form it takes, is correct when, as an absolute answer, recognizes the very vastness 66

67 68 69

70 71 72

Tillich picks this part of his argumantation from Heidegger and Freud, for more information in this respect please see Chapman, Christopher. 2007. Freud, Religion and Anxiety. Morrisville: Lulu.com, p. 56–61. Tillich, Paul. 1951. Systematic theology Ι, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 190– 197. Tillich, Paul. 1957. Dynamics of Faith. New York: Harper and Row, p. 76–77 and Tillich, Paul. 1951. Systematic theology, p. 189–190. Tillich, Paul. 1955. Biblical Religion and the Search of Ultimate Reality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 59. […] The ultimate concern of the believer is concern about that which is really ultimate and therefore the ground of his being and meaning […]. Tillich develops this concept from Kierkegaard’s thought, for more information please see: Tillich, Paul. 1957. Dynamics of faith, p. 4 and p. 34 & Systematic theology, p. 12. Tillich, Paul. 1957. Dynamics of faith, p. 8–9. Tillich, Paul. Ultimate concern, p. 50–51.

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Paul Tillich’s critical and political theology 107 of thought and its ability to overcome the individual, the finite, when it is universal in character. Universality, infinite, absolute and God are synonyms for Tillich. Faith, therefore, in the vastness of being, which is not limited to anything but embodies everything, is the only criterion of good faith. Correct faith is therefore nothing but belief in the essence of existence, which is a finite bodily existence, but precisely for this reason it tends practically, materially and spiritually towards the infinite, the productive, in order to overcome the opposition partial-universal, subject-object, finite-infinite, being and non-being.73 What human creates, from the most miraculous to the most vulgar, is a response to anxiety. This property of thinking and “being” in general will be defined as love.74 Love is the tendency for unity, to overcome the ontological divisions as well as the social ones. Love is also not limited to humans. It is a virtue of all living things. Love is the tendency to develop the potential of each “being” to the maximum through their effort to respond to the ultimate concern. Correct faith, therefore, is the expectation of a response to existence through affirmation and creativity of life. This belief points to the union, the integration of the Other. On the other hand, demonic or idolatrous faith appears also. The demonic appears when, at the height of the absolute answer as a holy, something partial, finite and ephemeral is lifted.75 This is a false absolute. This situation has specific implications for the individual as well as for society. For the individual and society, the demonic results in self-destruction. First, because human tries to get an eternal response from something ephemeral; when this object stops being then human stays without a response to her existence, which is equivalent to stopping her very existence as a subject, breaking down her personality and her mental health.76 Secondly, by lifting a finite thing to the ultimate alienates human and encapsulates her in the limited possibilities, aspects and modes of the thing, depriving her of the endless possibilities and subsumes her under the social, natural or even imaginary laws of the object. Finally, for society, the demonic is catastrophic as it leads to competition and fragmentation. Since each individual has a finite as absolute answer, a disastrous contradiction appears: the partial that is 73 74 75 76

Tillich, Paul. Dynamics of faith, p. 11–13. Tillich, Paul. 1954. Love, Power and Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954, p. 25– 40. Tillich, Paul. Systematic theology, p. 13 & Tillich, Paul. 1973. What is Religion. New York: Harper and Row, p. 85–87. Tillich, Paul. 1951. Ultimate concern, p. 24–25. In general see the essay of John Dourley, “Tillich in dialogue with psychology”, in Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich, Russell Re Manning (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

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108 Dimitris M. Moschos projected as an absolute cannot embrace all the creativity of life, probabilities and forms, and that is why it rules them out.77 Thus a confrontational situation exists between the faiths, between existential responses to the world, as the partial is a false absolute that cannot tolerate anything besides itself. Only faith in the infinite, the endless can embrace the multiplicity of life in itself, since this belief means precisely the proclamation and realization of this multiplicity. With the purely abstract comparison between demonic and the true absolute, Tillich creates the first preconditions for the use of theological categories in political criticism. The truth of religion is not in what a doctrine says but in what it does: true is the faith in something holy that constantly resists the complete finite conceptualization. Continuous thinking, the continuous production of new forms of life that increase joy is itself the practical approach towards the endless, the absolute. A religion is worthy when it embraces anything worldly that suffices to promote life at a practical level. This kind of argumentation makes the distinction between theism and atheism a difficult one. Exactly because of that Tillich was accused for pantheism or for atheism hidden behind theological terminology by the more traditional theologians of his time. But it is obvious here that this approach can be used for a real interfaith dialog, the denial of a sterile and obsolete morality, but above all—and this is most important—for the interpretation of atheism, as real holy or demonic faith. For Tillich, atheism is within religion and by itself is neither good nor bad. As even the atheist takes his atheism completely seriously in response to his ultimate concern, he actually remains faithful to God’s immanence as he refuses to enshrine him in a symbol, doctrine or ceremony.78 If in practice she promotes through this atheism a life that leads to love, then she is part of the right religion, even if she does not define it this way himself. If on the other hand, the practice of atheism leads to the sacrament of a partial thing, such as a nation, a race, a desire that refuses any negation, and thus leads to the exclusion of the Other, then it is demonic. This of course has one more consequence: under this definition, even deeply religious people can be considered to belong to the demonic, to the enemies of life and God. Theists, atheists, agnostics, ration77 78

Tillich, Paul. 1957. Dynamics of Faith, p. 16. This argument is quite often in Tillich’s theology. For example: Paul Tillich, the lost dimension of religion, Saturday Evening post, Indianapolis, june 1958, p. 28 […] They feel that the concrete religions fail to express their profound concern adequately. They are religious while rejecting religions […] also Tillich, Dynamics of faith, p. 20 and Tillich, Systematic theology Ι, p. 133–134.

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Paul Tillich’s critical and political theology 109 alists, they all have a god to the extent that something gives them meaning in life. There is no non-faith, everyone believes in something. But there are faiths with unworthy content, and this is judged by the practical dimension of religion. At this point religion becomes political. God and the machine Critique of Liberal Democracy and Capitalist Society The problem of a just society is for Tillich a religious problem. But religion for him means to be related to suffering of people. This is associated with “Protestant morality” but in a reverse manner to Max Weber’s argument. Protestant morality, with the abolition of ecclesiastical authority, the professional clergy, and the overthrow of the personal relationship with God, arouses capitalist autonomy and democracy. The common feature that links democracy, capitalism and Protestantism is their rupture with the category of “root” or “origin”.79 The liberation of human from personal bonds of domination, bonds of blood or tradition is a prerequisite for his freedom and a just society.80 Protestantism is breaking with what Tillich calls “sacramental”, which is generally described as political and cultural puritanism. On the other hand, capitalist society is contradictory. There is an opposite tendency in it of destructive antagonism. So, socialism as a movement, as it appears especially in Marxist theory81, is the closest to the law of God according to Tillich.82 79 80 81

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Francis Ching-Wah Yip. 2010. Capitalism as Religion? A Study of Paul Tillich’s Interpretation of Modernity. Harvard: Harvard Divinity School Theological Studies, p. 74–75. Paul Tillich. 1957. The Protestant Era, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. xxvii & p. 157. It has to be noted that Tillich never states clearly on which part of Marxist corpus he mainly focuses. Nevertheless it is my belief from the general look of his writings that he draws mainly from the Paris manuscripts of 1844 and not from Das Kapital since he mainly focuses on aspects of alienation and human dignity. Also Adorno in his ‘Negative Dialectics’ in the section about “Objectivity and Reification”even though he doesn’t explicitly mentions Tillich by his name, he makes a pass reference that “It is to this that the earlier texts of Marx, in contrast to Capital, owe their contemporary popularity, especially among theologians”. Adorno when he speaks about theologians he is referring mainly to Tillich, since Tillich other than his friend was also his teacher and supervisor when Adorno wrote his PhD. Paul Tillich, The Interpretation of History (http://media.sabda.org/alkitab-2/Religion-Onl ine.org%20Books/Tillich%2C%20Paul%20-%20The%20Interpretation%20of%20Hist ory.pdf, (last accessed February 28, 2019), p. 24–36; and Tillich, The protestant Era, p. 253–254 also Tillich’s rare “the political expectation” is the most coherent work on the political dimension of his theory and the relation between Marxism and theological thought.

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110 Dimitris M. Moschos Capitalism is typically coloured as a competitive society. Following here a classical Marxist and in general, sociological analysis of his time, he considers that modern democracy appears gradually with the generalization of capitalism. At both economic and legal level, the problem of the modern world is the over-emphasis of autonomy. Although autonomy had appeared in the past, either socially or as a philosophical tendency, at the time of modernity it has achieved a complete victory over all other forms of spirituality. Autonomy preserves personal freedom, the demand for creativity and rationalization, but it lacks depth.83 By the concept of depth, here is meant the realization that although people have freedom and rational power, they are not alone in the world, their possibilities are not without limit. With autonomy being a social dominant as holy, it leads to a contradiction. On the one hand the individual tends to dominate everything, considering that he is not subject to any determination, material, social or moral, having faith only in profit. The world revolves around the “ego”. On the other hand, people still need to cooperate. That’s why they come in contact, but this contact is contradictory and competitive. The partner is at the same time an enemy. An “asocial sociability” is created, a society shaken by internal antagonisms and by legally opposed rights.84 This classical Marxist portrayal of modernity finds its counterpart in the theological concept of the demonic. The modern democratic regime, ultimately shaken by internal antagonisms, may lead to militaristic totalitarianism and fascism, as these are the absolution of the “will for power” and at the same time a reaction to internal contradictions. This power is rational to such an extent that it becomes irrational.85 This situation is rooted in the development of the technocratic culture and the spirit of capitalism that comes to replace the revolutionary spirit of enlightenment after the “victory of the bourgeoisie”.86 In capitalism, because of generalized competition, every sacred dimension of things is completely lost. Things have no self-sufficiency, no own existence and dignity. They are useful only to the extent that they can perform some function in the production process. The rationalist autonomous subject, with its tendency for freedom, ends up in a tendency for sovereignty. The very con83 84 85 86

Tillich, Paul. 1951. Systematic theology I, p 83–89. Tillich here seems to accuse extreme modern autonomy as cynical. Tillich, Paul. 1965. Τhe World Situation. Philadelphia: Fortress press, 1965, p. 14–15 & Tillich. 2011. The Protestant Era., Nabu Press; 2nd Print edition, p. 127. Tillich, Paul. 1952. The courage to be. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, p. 97, 107, 152. Tillich, Paul. 1952. The courage to be, p. 116 and Tillich, The World Situation, p. 4–6.

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Paul Tillich’s critical and political theology 111 sciousness and Reason lose their moral self-criticism. “Industrial production” ultimately ends up from being just a mean, imposing on people, so it ends up equally “sacramental” as the ancien regime. Socially dominated and dominant people cannot be the moral and inviolable person of “ich und du”. Individuals become machine parts, useful or useless according to the necessities of the economy. Industrial production is therefore demonic, as it raises the ultimate goal of industrial productivity and the expansion of production, at the expense of every other existence, of any other choice. It is an “autonomous system, subject only to its own terms”.87 In this situation, the goal of choice and dignity is neglected, as “every new possibility is only being explored just because it is available. Capitalism gives us the means to realize our goals, but it deprives us of the ability to define what is the goal”.88 What is it that drives the industrial rational dynamic itself? How does Tillich explain this? It would certainly be problematic to determine the cause in the technical means themselves, the development of technology itself, as this would be simply romantic anti-modernity.89 The capitalist economy is playing its special and definitive historical role as a demonic cause.90 In particular, on the one hand, it generates an abstract and uncontrolled economic process that, instead of being an instrument, is a goal, and on the other hand its organization through the structural generalization of the autonomous profit-led individual leads to class conflict. The state of class struggle presupposes working exploitation. And this situation in Tillich, violates dignity, as a human becomes a means to achieve some other goal. But for Tillich, the working class cannot be freed from the chains of capital. Class struggle is part of the problem, not a solution. In other words, in his thinking, the goal is not the emancipation of class or the seizure of state power.91 That would be equally demonic. Tillich argues that at a theoretical level, socialism must have an entirely new ontology, meaning by that the abolition of social relations leading to class relations. But even this is not enough. The proletariat must move away from its totally materialistic motives, as they remain captive of the logic of rationalistically calculated (and economic) interest of the autonomous subject. Tillich sides himself 87 88 89 90

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Tillich, Paul. 1951, 1957 & 1963. Systematic theology III, 3 volumes at one. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 61–62 and p. 74. Tillich, Paul. 1965. The World situation, p. 5. Tillich is not hostile to technology at all, see Systematic theology III, p. 259. Tillich, Paul. The Religious Situation, (http://media.sabda.org/alkitab-2/Religion-Online.o rg%20Books/Tillich,%20Paul%20-%20The%20Religious%20Situation.pdf, last accessed February 28, 2019) see chapter “the political sphere”. Tillich, Paul. 1936. The Interpretation of History, see chapter on “the problem of power”.

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112 Dimitris M. Moschos with the working class or the “suffering” in general, but moves away from a concept that sees as a right cause the mere seize of state power by these oppressed social strata. The working class, while experiencing the highest exploitation, and the demonicity of all capitalist society, remains a partial category, therefore it cannot be an objective as absolute.92 Here’s where Tillich considers that his “religious socialism” can give new impetus: faith in the absolute can reveal the Messianic conception of the theonomy, namely the association of Reason and progress with “depth”, respect for things, nature and the other persons as sacred. The emergence of depth is nothing more than the emergence of the interaction of the ego and its creativity with nature and others in terms of communion. This will be done both by changing material relationships and by highlighting the ideological power of modern morality. Then the world becomes sacred again, but not sacramental or mystified because there still exists the “self-reflexivity” of autonomous modern thought. Theonomy remains and obscure concept in Tillich’s philosophy and theology, especial for a person who is not used in theological language or religious belief. As a concept needs more space to clarify. But in general, it could be described as the intersection of the self-reflexivity of modern reason with the aim that this self-reflexivity leads to the selfdemystification of the omnipotence of modern humanity.93 This is the kingdom of God—Theonomy. A general remark may be done here so to understand better the concept. Tillich by theonomy mainly aims to a much-debated problem of its times in general, the objection to technical reason and the domination of nature and humans by the modern “alienated” human and its concepts. Tillich and Adorno had quite different perspectives about the “non conceptual” part of existence. Tillich was trying to grasp the non-conceptual, noninstrumentalist, in a Heideggerian philosophical way of anxiety of existence. On the other hand, for Adorno this anthropological-philosophical background was unacceptable since for him existential angst was a modern capitalistic phenomenon. Nevertheless, their conceptions were more distorted because of philosophical language differences than in essence. Tillich conception of theonomy is closely connected with the Adorno’s priority of the object that can be glimpsed only through the dialectic self-reflexion of Reason. For both of them the non-conceptual can be reached through a pro92 93

Terence M. O’Keefe, “Paul Tillich’s Marxism”, Social Research, Vol. 48, No. 3 (Autumn 1981), p. 472–499. Tillich, Paul. 1968. A Complete History of Christian Thought, ed. Carl E. Braaten, 2 vols. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, I, p. 160.

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Paul Tillich’s critical and political theology 113 cess of self-reflexion and self-critique of the historical subject. This selfreflexion for both of them is not a purely subjective though, just trying to think beyond its own conceptual limits but a practical transformation of historical-material reality. It remains true however that Tillich was keener on imagining theonomy as a state of things to come, and was putting much more emphasis on the subjective existential will to self-reflexion at the first place and then the material transformation. Adorno in this part is openly Marxist and Hegelian. His own utopian concept does not have a subjective will, fueled by existential anxiety as longing behind it. He treats the subject as the conjunction of libidinal desire and historical-logical contradictions. For this reason, utopia in Adorno could not have any presuppositions or a stable state of things.94 Tillich’s more theological background was driving him to think in more messianic terms, that theonomy could at some point become a state of historical reality. In the End What is then the core of Tillichian theology and philosophy? For Tillich true religion can only side with those who suffer, so it can only be anticapitalist. Religion is an answer to anxiety and a hope beyond pain. Even though anxiety is a human constant nowadays there is the worst kind: the dominant form is despair, emptiness. This form is not in contrast to the older forms; on the contrary, it is in a way the absolutization of all forms of anxiety, depriving them through rationalism, of the corresponding form of hope in faith. Because that’s exactly what despair means: without hope.95 Yet despair itself is an expression of the demand for a new hope, against the ephemeral hopes and delusions. Contrary to the arguments of medieval theology that the existence of the omnipotent God is the guarantee that this is the best possible world, in Tillich’s radical theology God is the proof that inexperienced better worlds are possible through human act. We carefully choose the words we write: from all the eras of history, this may not be the worst, but it is the most desperate. Tillichian theology wants to re-inculcate the light of the stars in the gloomy lights of the cities that shine through the nights. But he does not advocate at the same time that the new cities should be shattered so the constellations of an old romantic era would shine again. He wants to paint the Enlightenment, with a shade that was lost. 94

95

For the difference between their perspectives on human essence and nature see Hammond, G. B. (1991).”Tillich, Adorno, and the Debate about Existentialism”. Laval théologique et philosophique, 47, (3), 343–355. https://doi.org/10.7202/400627ar. Paul Tillich, “The Right to Hope”, Christian Century, (November 14, 1990), p. 1064– l067.

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114 Dimitris M. Moschos Works Cited96 Bloch, Ernst. 1996. Natural Law and Human Dignity, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: MIT press. Chapman, Christopher. 2007. Freud, Religion and Anxiety, Morrisville: Lulu.com. Ching-Wah Yip Francis. 2010. Capitalism as Religion? A Study of Paul Tillich’s Interpretation of Modernity. Harvard: Harvard Divinity School Theological Studies. Dourley, John. 2009. “Tillich in dialogue with psychology”, in Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich, Russell Re Manning (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Hammond, G. B. (1991). “Tillich, Adorno, and the Debate about Existentialism”. Laval théologique et philosophique, 47, (3), 343–355. https://doi.org/10.7202/400627ar. O’Keefe, Terence M., “Paul Tillich’s Marxism”, Social Research, Vol. 48, No. 3 (Autumn 1981), p. 472–499. Tillich, Paul. 1936. The Interpretation of History. Available at: [Accessed on 28th February 2019]. Tillich, Paul. 1951. Systematic Theology Ι, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tillich, Paul. 1951, 1957 & 1963. Systematic Theology III, 3 volumes at one. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tillich, Paul. 1952. The courage to be. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press Tillich, Paul. 1954. Love, Power and Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954. Tillich, Paul. 1955. Biblical Religion and the Search of Ultimate Reality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tillich, Paul. 1957. Dynamics of Faith. New York: Harper and Row. Paul Tillich. 1957. The protestant Era, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tillich. 1965. Τhe World Situation. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Tillich, Paul. 1968. A Complete History of Christian Thought, ed. Carl E. Braaten, 2 vols. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, I. Tillich, Paul. 1973. What is Religion. New York: Harper and Row. Tillich. 2011.The Protestant Era. Nabu Press; 2nd Print edition.

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Editorial Disclaimer: The original style referencing in this secion has been convered to Chicago Style by the editor on 13.03.2020.

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The Phenomenology of Women. On Female Discourse in Julia Kristeva and Simone de Beauvoir Abstract: The following essay is an endeavour to detect the core points in the feminist positions of Simone de Beauvoir and Julia Kristeva through a comparison between their most explicit and representative contributions in the field of female struggle for equal opportunities and, above all, for social recognition. Triggered by an ontological issue, de Beauvoir’s Deuxième Sexe (1949) and Kristeva’s Women’s Time (1979) are two attempts to investigate female subjectivity in the space of otherness occupied by women throughout history, in search of a strategy to overcome the condition of subjection set by a “male-oriented” socio-symbolic system. For the both of them, the access to the Discourse, as place of meaning attribution, is the pivotal necessity in which the feminist struggle seems to have to concentrate its efforts. It is essentially on the field of symbols that women’s fight takes place. An ontological (historical?) issue “Are there women, really?”. On posing this question at the very beginning of her Introduction to The Second Sex, in 1949, Simone de Beauvoir put as a premise that “the subject is irritating, especially to women”. A few pages further the cause of this feeling is clearly expressed: a man would never engage in a similar enterprise as writing a book on the situation of men. A woman would do it; de Beauvoir was doing it at that moment, she was enquiring her own condition, searching significance for her own existence as female human being. What de Beauvoir was completely conscious of, during her writing, was a sort of mandatory, predetermined standpoint she could not avert to occupy in her analysis: negation. The only categories available for her description were those of differentiation. The undeniable merit of de Beauvoir’s contribution to female discourse is to have successfully faced the male Absolute, thus making room for the female voice. Of course, it was a shrill voice, a counter-voice arguing about its frustrations— the same raging sounds emitted by the first feminists—but it was, nevertheless, expression (i.e. existence/recognition). The shape that Beauvoir chose to give to her ontological research is mostly historical. After a first section

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116 Venera Russo significantly titled Déstin—in evident opposition with the conception of history as human will, and given the existentialist position of de Beauvoir the word is even more enriched with meanings—in which an explication of female subjection is searched in vain in the domains of Biology, Psychoanalysis and Materialism, the real starting point of The Second Sex is historical. The first part of the book, with the exception of a brief digression in chapter two of the third section, is indeed entirely dedicated to the historical analysis of the role of women in the past societies and to the feminine myths created over time by the male ideologies. The second part is mostly developed as an account of an experienced personal female (hi)story from infancy to oldness. De Beauvoir’s Deuxième Sexe has clearly an encyclopedic feature, it aims to inquiry any aspect of the matter, and even to provide practical solutions, though it has been claimed that in her work the prescriptive part is less clear than the descriptive one (Butler, 1986). The pattern chosen for this detailed account seems to be an historical one. However, since de Beauvoir openly rejected the historical materialist model (chapter 3, first part, tome 1), her investigation moves on a combination of strategies borrowed both from history and literature, that confers to the female narrative of The Second Sex a character of novelty. Hence, the ontological nature of the question what is a woman tangles itself with the issue of subjectivity (what is a woman now and in her context?) and conveys inevitably the inquiry on Past and Future (what was a woman? What will she be?). Any discourse on subjectivity, in fact, in the existentialist view shared by De Beauvoir, entails to take into account Time as a crucial perspective: “On ne naît pas femme: on le devient.” (De Beauvoir, 1986, p.13) i.e. ‘It is time that makes us what we are.’ Kristeva’s contribution to the feminist thinking is effectively summarized in her well-known article Women’s Time, first published in 1979, that assumes, in my opinion, the role of a proper Manifesto. Again, as a mandatory issue, the focus of the female struggle seems to be related to temporal features. After exactly thirty years from the appearance of de Beauvoir’s Deuxième Sexe, nothing apparently seems to have been solved, but many things, indeed, have changed. Kristeva mentions de Beauvoir continually in her text, but she always does it, and I would like to pay attention on this aspect, in an indirect way. “Existential feminists”, “the second sex” for women, maybe also the stress put on the word essential in the section on the need of sexual equality,

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The Phenomenology of Women 117 are the ways in which several times Kristeva refers to de Beauvoir’s discourse, as taking it for granted as part of a common phenomenology. In questioning the time of/for women, Kristeva splits it in linear and cyclical. Whilst the former is recognized as an historical linearity, belonging to a male tradition, the latter is a somehow eternal repetition, traditionally bounded to the myth of feminine and maternity attributed to women. The mistake committed by the first/existentialist (de Beauvoir?) generation of feminists is to have forced their condition of foreigners to enter the linear time of male history according to a “logic of identification with certain values: not with ideological (these are combated, and rightly so, as reactionary) but, rather, with the logical and ontological values of a rationality dominant in the nation-state.” (Kristeva, 1996, p. 384). Though the benefits of this attitude in the progression in the feminist struggle (that in Kristeva’s account takes the form of a Hegelian dialectical movement) are acknowledged by Kristeva, it has to be overcome by a second generation of feminists aware of the contributions of psychoanalysis and socialism for the change of the ideological status quo. But which is the women’s time suggested by Kristeva? Alice Jardine (1981) clarifies the issue in declaring that Kristeva makes use of a sort of future perfect to describe a moment that is contemporarily before and after its time. If on one hand Kristeva advocates a time for women outside of the male linearity, considered unpropitious to female subjectivity, on the other hand she replaces linearity with the linguistic enunciation order, operating a clear rejection of the historical line. “History is linked to the cogito, to the paternal function, representation, meaning, denotation, sign, syntax, narration and so forth.” (Jardine, 1981). This shift of perspective maintains some features of ambiguity and has raised some critics that could hardly be rejected, as we will see some pages further. In the thirty years that separate de Beauvoir from Kristeva, the world undergoes what Jardine (1981) describes well as a loss of grip of the Hegelian and Heideggerian time that made room for the interiorization of the disruptive suspicion of Nietzschean disillusion and Psychoanalytical subversion, so amplifying the horizon of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. In reason of this new consciousness Kristeva is able to reject what she considers the existentialist attempt to gain access to linearity in order to develop the claim from equality to identity, probably inscribing herself in the second generation of feminists that seek no more only to have a place in the syntactic contract but to achieve the right of producing and reproducing it; in other words: to be subject and not object of significance. —In Statu Nascendi 3:1 (2020)—

118 Venera Russo What appears to be clear to me is that the dialectic in which Kristeva moves her analysis on feminism—first generation (existentialist), second generation (psychoanalytical), third generation (poetic?) up to move—is grounded in de Beauvoir’s thesis. Through entering linearity, and, as has been claimed, (re)inventing the female discourse, de Beauvoir posited the space in which the second generation of feminists could interrogate on their condition (Zerilli, 1992). Among them Kristeva, could deviate in reason of the pre-existing path set up by The Second Sex. On the Body/Locus: the Other … and the M-other De Beauvoir’s Deuxième Sexe rejects the traditional conception according to which the biological features are responsible for the dichotomy male/women and all its implications in terms of hegemony and dominance based on differences. However, de Beauvoir did not reject biology as a state of affairs but only the network of interpretations spread by a certain traditional biological policy. Before de Beauvoir’s contribution, there is not a single book on the condition of women, in my knowledge, so corporal and carnal as The Second Sex. Far from seeking the female identity in a void debodied abstract truth, de Beauvoir writes on the body and with the body. The second tome is titled L’expérience vécue, with an almost tautological remark on the empirical starting point. The female experience narrated is “fleshly” and rich of physical details that are traditionally casted off from literature. The focus on the body is essential in de Beauvoir’s discourse and responds to the necessity of destructuration of the senses and meanings traditionally inherited by women. The refusal of the female body finds its hidden reasons in a wider male ontological conception of life and subjectivity. “Humanity is male and man defines women not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being” (de Beauvoir, in eds. Kearney & Rainwater, 1996, p.97). This conception is not caused by empirical facts as “otherness is a fundamental category of human thought” (ibid., p.97), it is a process of arbitrary interpretation. As Foucault (1976) elucidated very clearly, the fact that social rules are justified by the so-called natural features is a myth. The body is not a natural phenomenon but a locus for meaning and significance (Butler, 1986). The Cartesian ego that implies the refusal of the body could be read in this perspective as the affirmation of a pretended self-generation and universalization of the male absolute. In the Hegelian dichotomy MasterSlave, the dominant is self-defined and is the only model of and for meaning. The subversion of this model must start from the de-negation of the —In Statu Nascendi 3:1 (2020)—

The Phenomenology of Women 119 female body, not to affirm its biological existence but to place new signs for a new, arbitrary, possible interpretation. In Kristeva’s analysis of the Freudian castration complex/envy of the penis, the physical attributes are replaced in a symbolic dimension. The sexual peculiarities are nothing but referents of a process of separation from the totality of the maternal unity, it is, in other words, an unavoidable step in the achievement of self-consciousness and subjectivity. The biological features are space for meaning. In Powers of Horror (1982), Kristeva analyses the abjection caused by the view of menstrual blood as a response to the “perpetual danger” of loss of subjectivity in the summons of the maternal entity. Similarly, de Beauvoir analyzes the refusal of the maternal (carnal) body as a generative potential, claiming that it constitutes a threat for the idea of self as absolutely self-contained and independent. Some interpretations of de Beauvoir’s focus on the body (i.e. Butler, 1986) see in it an attempt to radicalize the Sartrian tension body/soul expressed in Being and Nothingness. The existentialist transcendence does not get rid of the body but starts from it the process towards infinite possibilities. The subject in itself goes beyond itself. In this view the female movement drawn in The Second Sex is an incessant project. The claim that the existentialist feminism is simply an effort to gain a role in linearity—which it seems to me to be Kristeva’s starting point to overcome de Beauvoir’s position—appears quite inappropriate in this new scenario. The subject in progress that Kristeva uses to solve the problem of the female time, or better, the problem of time in general, is not opposed to the conception of subjectivity in de Beauvoir. “I am obviously maintaining the notion of subject for women […] and am thereby avoiding the, in effect, fetishic reification of a feminine in and out of itself” (Kristeva, 1979; in Jardine, 1981, p.10). In Kristeva the problem of female subjectivity in the male dominant symbolic contract is identified in reification, whereas de Beauvoir refers to “the inessential, the object” (de Beauvoir, 1996, p.98). The object is set by the subject, it is the product of the raise of self-consciousness. De Beauvoir claims that the problem of women subjection could be read under the light of the Hegelian idea of subject. The word “Otherness” clearly summarizes the matter. Otherness is objectivation, deprivation of action and discourse, means to be sign in the complete sway of the arbitrary Master/producer of meaning. According to de Beauvoir the inability of women in self-defining themselves as subjects is mostly due to the fact that “they have no past, no history, no religion of their own” (de Beauvoir, 1996, p.99). The matter is then originated in history (no mention to —In Statu Nascendi 3:1 (2020)—

120 Venera Russo a linear one, though!) and in the hegemonic myths produced over time, and it is through history that, as seen previously, it has to be solved. Kristeva, by her side, rejects Time by quoting Joyce: ‘Father’s time, mother’s species’, moving slowly the problem from time to space, the “imaginary space” of creation. If time has been invented by men, is it still meaningful the question “which is the women’s time”? According to Kristeva the linearity of time is the syntactic order of language. Separation from the totality is the key process that makes the discourse possible. Separation in this context conveys an evident conception of human existence as a space where the unity/division takes place. The first, violent and essential separation is the division from the mother (see Kristeva’s Powers of Horrors). “Pregnancy seems to be experienced as the radical ordeal of the splitting of the subject: redoubling up of the body, separation and coexistence of the self and of another, of nature and consciousness, of physiology and speech” (Kristeva, 1996, p. 395). In Kristeva’s conception the idea of maternity occupies a crucial position, even though controversial. Her interpretation of the subject-in-progress is grounded in the psychoanalytic response to the division from the mother in the infant as a trauma that is never solved and brings the subject to a continual struggle against the temptation to melt again with the mother/unity. If the reward of this process is language, namely order, self-consciousness, subjectivity, the terror that raises from this access to the discourse is unavoidable. According to Kristeva this process is more problematic for women, who tend to deny the division whereas men are both terrified and pleased of the possibility of mastery the speech. The cause for women’s separation from language is so explained in a psychoanalytic field, replacing Freud’s sexual referents with the paradigm of significance and discourse. In this scenario the historical investigation, the traditional one, on the female subjection seems to be useless for it is a reproduction of the male discourse. Any attempt to investigate female subjectivity without facing the problem of the production and reproduction of discourse is condemned to failure. The liberation of women is, according to Kristeva, related to creation and she advocates the development of the aesthetic creative practices for women. However, the myth of sacrifice continues to threaten any kind of female creation, even in the experience of maternity. “The arrival of the child […] leads the mother into the labyrinths of an experience that, without the child, she would only rarely encounter: love for another. […] The ability to succeed in this path without masochism and without annihilating one’s af—In Statu Nascendi 3:1 (2020)—

The Phenomenology of Women 121 fective, intellectual and professional personality—such would seem to be the stakes to be won through guiltless maternity” (Kristeva 1996, p. 395). In averting the menace of annihilation, motherhood could then be a powerful experience of “creation in the strong sense of the term”. De Beauvoir’s description of maternity is notoriously horrific. Like Kristeva, she sees in maternity a loss of subjectivity but, differently from Kristeva, it takes the form of a nightmarish experience that causes in women dismay. The reading of the Second Sex apparently suggests a refusal of motherhood as the sole possibility to keep intact one’s own unity and avoid the objectivation that makes of all women wombs of reproduction of the species. A deeper reading, as the one proposed by Zerilli (1991; 1992), reveals that the position of de Beauvoir is ambiguous and the connotative sense of her writing could be misleading. The fact that de Beauvoir refused maternity in her own life, probably, influences the commentators, pushing the interpretation towards the sense of a proposal of refusal of maternity. Beauvoir’s rejection of the maternal body, however, could be seen as a discursive strategy. As Zerilli points out, de Beauvoir moves in a male narrative path and, having only the male discourse at her disposal, she operates a selfdisplacement. Through the stylistic choice of “Speaking deviously” (Zerilli, 1992), de Beauvoir offers a counter-view and disrupts the traditional myth of maternity from the inside. Using a non-traditional narration, negating the affirmative, de Beauvoir achieved a place for a new narrative (feminine) discourse and gave a way for other possible narrations. She created, in this perspective, a path in which the subsequent female discourse on maternity, including Kristeva’s, could have moved. Language: prison or escape from the otherness? The third part of the first tome of The Second Sex is dedicated to the feminine myths that, throughout history, have been produced and reproduced to enforce (apparently justify) male hegemony and submit women. At the end of the tome, follows a final chapter on the contributions of writers that have effectively spread those myths in the official literature, with the result of conferring to these myths even more strength. Being objects in the duality Self-Other, women could have been used as signs to which meanings were assigned in the arbitrary process of interpretation. Kristeva, in Women’s Time, claims the necessity to challenge the “myth of the archaic mother” that confines women is the logic of sacrifice outside —In Statu Nascendi 3:1 (2020)—

122 Venera Russo of time, that is to say in an absolute eternal space. De Beauvoir, on her side, draws the attention of the myth of the mystery of woman, a dread declaration of otherness and impossibility of expression, since nobody, women included, is supposed to solve the mystery. It seems clear that both Kristeva and de Beauvoir, even though in different historical periods and theoretical backgrounds, relate the problem of female subjection essentially to the field of Discourse. It is above all narrative and argumentative speech in de Beauvoir, whilst it is more specifically a sociosymbolic contract in Kristeva. It is, however, a problem related to the Word. “According to the meanings that have become common and shared through the Word, everything is in its proper place in the world, including those who communicate with each other” (Dimitrova, 2012). The Discourse here could be conceived in the Hegelian sense of selfexpression of the Absolute, namely dominance. What is naively viewed as a neutral instrument for the sharing of meanings and experience is itself meaning and experience. In the space of the so called intersubjectivity, the male discourse has created, in fact, what we could call with Ioannidis (2017) “Intersubjection”. In the brilliant expression “socio-symbolic contract”, Kristeva summarizes effectively any term of the matter: the social order is made of significance arbitrary attributed to signs whose use is permitted by the acceptance of the participants to the conversation. More precisely, as expressed in Powers of Horror: the “(social) symbolic system corresponds to a specific structuration of the speaking subject within the symbolic order” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 67). Further discussion Both Kristeva and de Beauvoir acknowledge women’s participation to the order and their responsibility. De Beauvoir uses the existential categories of lack of authenticity and risk of liberty to explain the phenomenon whereas Kristeva identifies the process in a kind of female self-identification in the system in the status of foreigners. Both of them, at the same time, face the problem of the access to language denied to women. De Beauvoir, due to the historical time she belonged to, could do it indirectly, through her attempt to choose a form for her narration in the realm of the male discourse. Her solution was the subversion of the myths, the plurality of voices over that confer to her writing the alienated standpoint that overturn tradition. Kristeva, thirty years later, could go further, clearly identifying and naming the problem of the access to the process of symbolic production and repro-

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The Phenomenology of Women 123 duction (“signifying space, a both corporeal and desiring mental space”, as it calls it Kristeva, 1996; p. 397). Nowadays the question is still there: have women achieved the right to produce true and authentic female discourse? The same fact that I am writing this question would suggest to me a negative answer. Then, which are the directions and the feats in which women have to engage to achieve the goal? De Beauvoir, as said above, is not completely clear in describing the ways that bring to (authentic) female subjectivity except in her declarations about the necessity of contraception and economic independence. Kristeva advocates the female engagement in what she calls the “aesthetic practices” and literature: beyond the threshold of creation, there subjectivity is. Anyway, since the syntactic language is a male domain, Kristeva refers to a not well specified “poetic” that would have the ability to replace the law, as well as literature would do the same with history (Jardine, 1981). The generality of this position has, however, raised the doubt that, in fact, “Kristeva fails to provide a language for female destiny” (Silverman, 1988). I would wonder, moreover, whether, in stating that the access to language is generally easier to men than to women in the process of separation from the mother and placing the question in the field of psychoanalysis, Kristeva is not proposing the same scheme of Freud’s theory of castration, with the only difference of the referents. The denial to language is in this way justified not by historical but by psychological truths. Jardine (1981) correctly claims that “to change the system, we have to change the speaking subject, but changing its gender or its cause alone is not sufficient. The subject must be thought in entirely new ways.” Kristeva provides an attempt of solution to this issue, speaking of gaining subjectivity through the recognition of the singularity of each woman, her “multiplicities” and “her plural languages”. Kristeva mentions a “fluid and free subjectivity”, an overcoming of “sexual identity” that could be naively interpreted as a sexual polimorphy. I do assume that the meaning conveyed by Kristeva’s discourse has not a meaning in terms of sexual orientation but that it is deeply inspired by considerations on the dichotomy male/woman, the same dichotomy that de Beauvoir considers a category of thought. Kristeva refers to an “interiorization of the founding separation of the socio symbolic contract” (Kristeva, 1996, p. 398) thus evading the dichotomy and desexualizing the discourse in the sense of its hegemonic implications. If it is true, that in a community people are able to gather not “thanks to the fact that they are principally the same [but] because they are not the same” (Goranov, 2013, p. 64). Kristeva’s proposal, that somehow echoed —In Statu Nascendi 3:1 (2020)—

124 Venera Russo de Beauvoir’s claim of collaboration of the two sexes in overcoming inequality, could be a starting point towards the horizon in which no woman will still have the need to question “what is a woman?” References Butler, Judith. “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex”. Yale French Studies. No. 72, Simone de Beauvoir: Witness to a Century (1986): 35–49. Accessed May, 2018. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29 30225. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1999 (first edition 1990). Available at https:// selforganizedseminar.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/butler-gender_tro uble.pdf. De Beauvoir, Simone. “Introduction to ‘The Second Sex’”. In The Continental Philosophy Reader, Edited by Richard Kearney and Mara Rainwater, 95–108. New York: Routledge, 1996. De Beauvoir, Simone. Le Deuxième Sexe (tomes 1 et 2). Paris: Gallimard, 1986 (first edition 1949). Dimitrova, Maria. “The Language of Dialectics”. Sofia Philosophical Review VI, No. 1 (2012): 89–94. http://sphr-bg.org/16/60.html. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol.1. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Bantam, 1978 (French first edition La volonté de savoir, 1976). Available at https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/cur rentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/special/endsandbeginni ngs/foucaultrepressiveen278.pdf. Goranov, Peter. “Tolerance: an Attempt to Overcome Character (An Ethical Point of View)”. Sofia Philosophical Review VII, No. 2 (2013): 59–76. http://sphr-bg.org/16/66/237.html. Grosz, Elizabeth. Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1989. Ioannidis, Iraklis. “Broaching the Difference Between Intersubjectivity and Intersubjection Inspired by The Feminist Critique”. Sofia Philosophical Review X, No. 2 (2017): 38–68. http://sphr-bg.org/16/94/ 345.html Jardine, Alice. “Introduction to Julia Kristeva’s ‘Women’s Time’”. Signs 7, No. 1 (Autumn, 1981): 5–12. Accessed May, 2018. http://www.jstor. org/stable/3173502.

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The Phenomenology of Women 125 Jackson, Stevi. “Théoriser le genre: l’héritage de Beauvoir”. Nouvelles Questions Féministes 20, No. 4 Le Naturalisme depuis Beauvoir (1999 November): 9–28. Accessed May, 2018. Http://www.jstor.org/stab le/40619720. Kristeva, Julia. “Women’s Time”. In The Continental Philosophy Reader, Edited by Richard Kearney and Mara Rainwater, 380–401. New York: Routledge, 1996. Kristeva, Julia. “Il n’y a pas de maître à langage,” Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse 20 (Fall 1979): 119–40. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982 (French first edition: Les pouvoirs de l’horreur, 1980). Available at http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt /touchyfeelingsmaliciousobjects/Kristevapowersofhorrorabjection.pdf. Sartre, Jean-Paul. L’être et le néant. Paris: Gallimard, 1994 (first edition 1943). Silverman, Kaya. The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. Wittig, Monique. “One is not Born a Woman”. Feminist Issues 1, No 2 (1981). https://www.scribd.com/document/268746242/WITTIG-On e-Not-Born-Woman. Zerilli, Linda M. G. “A Process without a Subject: Simone de Beauvoir and Julia Kristeva on Maternity”. Signs 18, No. 1 (Autumn, 1992): 111– 135. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174729. Zerilli, Linda M. G. “‘I am a Woman’: Female Voice and Ambiguity in The Second Sex.” Women and Politics 11, No.1 (1991): 93–108. https: //www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1300/J014v11n01_06?needAcce ss=true.

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Cross-Language Relation. The Implications of Relativity in Translation and Vice Versa Abstract: This essay is a reflection on the relativist approach to language and cross-language relation with reference to its implications on the field of translation. After a brief overview on the origins and the main concepts of linguistic relativity, the focus is on the idea of relation and its closeness to relativity. A very peculiar relation is identified in the practice of translation that constitutes a cross-language phenomenon implying not only the text and its levels of structure, but also a much more complex series of relations on the level of pragmatic uses and “functions”. The awareness that linguistic and anthropological relativity necessary overlap is the result of the application of the issues of relativity to the self-reflective translation practice. A final survey on the effects of the relativist perspective on the ground of the Translation Studies reveals how these latter ones have been enriched by the perspective of relativity and how, on an opposite point of view, linguistic relativity in embedded in the comparative studies and in the theory of translation. Linguistic Relativity: unity and desegregation The Sapir-Whorf insights in the theory of language continue nowadays, after almost a century of their first formulation, to exert both charm and disappointment. Anyone that for many different reasons has to cope with the study of language cannot help to be stricken by the way the relativist view completely subverts the framework of the traditional linguistic analysis. After many decades of debate, the relativist view, though the recognition it has received, is still not completely integrated in any theory of language and it is staying a little aside in the linguistic scenario, labelled as radical. My personal opinion is that around the term relativity, applied to Linguistics, there will always be some suspicious hesitation, because, by its own nature, linguistic relativity (in the way it has been formulated by Sapir and Whorf) is more a warning than a proper method, as we will see in a few pages. For now, I would like to provide a very concise sketch of the historical background of Linguistic Relativism.

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128 Venera Russo It is well known that Enlightenment universalism has received several critics since the very 18th century. Herder’s relativism was a rejection of the pretension of absoluteness of his time. He maintained that there is not a real unique human perspective on life but several communities with different world views and, above all, languages, conceived as systems that contribute to shape the thought. As Gabriele Pallotti97 points out, Herder’s position was typically romantic; he enthusiastically valued the individual and the original in a sort of “eulogy of Babel”. Herder was among the first thinkers that stressed the conception of languages as conditioning instruments of thought rather than mere tools of the mind, conceived in a mentalist view. Von Humboldt went farther, comparing the different languages to a prism whose faces show the world from diverse standpoints. A language is a circle of understanding of reality that could be crossed only through entering in another linguistic circle. Again Pallotti (1999) stresses the point that both Herder and Humboldt, despite their praise of linguistic variety, show a tension toward a universal essence within language that remains ungraspable like a linguistic utopia. I have noticed that the same tension could be found in Whorf but that it is usually discarded when the stress is put on the “radicality” of his work. This one, in my opinion, is commonly depicted as more fragmenting than it is in reality. Whorf, disciple of Sapir, brings forth his master’s idea on the fact that “the network of cultural patterns of a civilization is indexed in the language which expresses that civilization98.” In Science and Linguistics (1940)99, Whorf maintains that the pretension of objectivity in natural science is destined to failure because there is no possibility of looking at nature without preconceptions. The organization of our perceptions is, as a point of fact, indexed in our language system and we are not able to discard it. Whorf stresses that our certainties of the objectivity of logic fall apart with the encounter with other systems of language, especially with those deeply different from ours (not SAE). The whole of Whorf’s work is developed around the “difficulty of standing aside from our own language, which is a habit and a cultural non 97 98 99

Gabriele Pallotti, “Relatività linguistica e traduzione”, Versus. Quaderni di studi semiotici 82 (1999): p. 109–138. Edward Sapir, “The Status of Linguistics as a Science”, Language 5 no.4 (December 1929), p. 209. In Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, World and Reality, ed. John B. Carroll (USA: MIT press, 1956).

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Cross-language Relation 129 est disputandum, and scrutinizing it objectively100”. On one side, his work is also the search of a theoretical solution and a practical method to overcome the linguistic barriers between different linguistic systems. To this aim Whorf tries to elaborate a descriptive system that could account for the linguistic diversity, looking at the Gestalt’s rules of perception as a guideline that stands above all the differences. In his faithful trust in a possibility of a true science, Whorf’s projects are a tension towards “a noumenal world—a world of hyperspace, of higher dimensions [that] awaits discovery by all the sciences, which it will unite and unify, awaits discovery under its first aspect of a realm of Patterned Relations101.” Despite the accent on desegregation that is usually used when referring to the relativist perspective on language, those who get closer to the work of Whorf could clearly perceive how it is more inclined to unity than to separation. The problem of relativity digresses from the field of linguistics and becomes an ontological matter as well as an anthropological reflection. Sandra Laugier102, commenting Quine’s theory of indeterminacy of translation, stresses that the crisis of the “myth of meaning” implies not only a linguistic problem but a crucial point for anthropology. To focus in translation, especially, allows to grasp how linguistics and anthropology are strictly interwoven and to what degree a linguistic matter, above all outside the level of structure, is essentially an anthropological one. In Laugier’s words: “Le problème, c’est d’établir une équivalence, une relation. Dans sa formulation même, c’est un problème anthropologique: établir une équivalence entre des usages du langage. Le point est, au sens général, anthropologique parce que ce qui est visé dans la question de la synonymie, c’est l’idée même d’un noyau commun à des langages et à des cultures103”. This is exactly Quince’s idea, when he stresses the necessity of having a behaviorist approach in linguistics104. Since we learn languages imitating 100 101 102 103

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The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language (1939), in Whorf, Language, World and Reality, p.138. Ibidem, p. 247. Sandra Laugier, “Relativité linguistique, relativité anthropologique”, Histoire Épistémologie Langage, tome 18, fascicule 2 (1996), in L’esprit et le langage, p. 45–73. Ibidem, p. 51. Translation: “the problem is to establish an equivalence, a relation. In its own formulation is an anthropological problem: establish an equivalence between uses of language. The point is, in general, anthropological, because it is the very idea of a common kernel in different languages and cultures that is at stake on the matter of synonymy. Willard V. Quine, “Indeterminacy of Translation Again”, The Journal of Philosophy 84, no. 1 (January 1987).

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130 Venera Russo other’s language behavior, we could not confine our observation on the field of grammatical structures. Beyond the fact of sharing or not a behaviorist perspective, the crucial point is here the awareness of the necessity of an anthropological vision in linguistic studies. The same final goal could be found in Whorf. Overcoming the structural analysis framework that characterizes his work, we could have in sight that: to analyze [language] structure is a lesson in brotherhood which is brotherhood in the universal human principle—the brotherhood of the “Sons of Manas.” […] It causes us to transcend the boundaries of local cultures, nationalities, physical peculiarities dubbed “race,” and to find that in their linguistic systems, though these systems differ widely, yet in the order, harmony, and beauty of the systems, and in their respective subtleties and penetrating analysis of reality, all men are equal. This fact is independent of the state of evolution as regards material culture, savagery, civilization, moral or ethical development105.

The message conveyed through the passage quoted above is, in my opinion, very praiseworthy from an ethical point of view; moreover it well expresses the very kernel of linguistic relativism: not fragmentation but unity, not negation of mutual understanding but, quite the opposite, an affirmation of the possibility of a potential cross-cultural and cross-linguistic relation.I agree with Pallotti when he states that only in a state of “linguistic estrangement” (it. “straniamento linguistico”) that permits the multiplication of views and perspectives, the unity of humanity can be grasped. Solipsism and communication difficulties are states of affairs that the principle of relativity ascertains and aims to overcome; it is a claim for unity beyond appearances, not a declaration of an impossible communication. A few pages above I stated that linguistic relativity is, by its own nature, a warning. I would add that, as some commentators have already shown (i.e. Lakoff, 1987), it is an anthropological warning that stresses that a certain way of reading diversity, in terms of superiority and inferiority, is deceptive and has no foundation. Whorf’s final point was probably the scientific demonstration of this lack of foundation. As Geertz ironically uncovers with using the term “anti anti-relativism”, Relativism “serves these days largely as a specter to scare us away from certain ways of thinking106.” By giving room not only to the problem of differences (initially introduced by Humboldt), but above all to the necessity of finding a system in the differences, that in Saussure’s model represents the complexity (and the 105 106

Whorf, “Language, Mind and Reality”, in Whorf (1956), p. 263. Clifford Geertz, “Distinguished Lecture: Anti Anti-Relativism”, American Anthropologist New Series 86, No. 2 (Jun., 1984), p. 263.

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Cross-language Relation 131 necessary basis) of the unity, linguistic relativism constitutes a pivotal starting point for cross-language analysis and an unavoidable basis for the Translation Studies. It is in translation, as a point of fact, that linguistic encounters of cultures find their practical field of realization. A translation is, actually, the build of a textual relation. Relativity and Relation We could interpret the debate around relativity as the hint of the necessity of a new mode of relation, caused by the widening of the idea of world towards a multicultural conception that characterized the 20th century. The concept of “relativity” implies a “relation” and the two words’ etymologies have in common the Latin root of relatio, meaning a correlation between two elements107. Serghey Gherdjikov defines a “relation”108 as a definition to the extent that each element is defined with reference to the other; anyway, there is not definition for the relation itself that could be consequently considered “virtual”. Since “definitions of the world are made in languages […] prior to languages there isn’t so far anything definite beyond spontaneous sense perceptions109.” I would deduce that “relativity” is not only an approach to language but the very nature of language itself. Language puts in relation and at the same time is our relation with the world when we share it with our community. There is no other way to give form to our perception that the linguistic one. This is the meaning, in my opinion, both of the Heideggerian image of reality that presents to us in speech (“the world is speakable”)110 and Gadamer’s reference to the infinite power of the word (“everything is susceptible of being worded”)111. That entails, on the other hand, that language regulates our thought, intended as definitory faculty.

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108 109 110 111

“Relative”—Online Etymology Dictionary. Available at: [Accessed on 12/03/2020, at. 00:50], Relation—Online Etymology Dictionary: Available at: [Accessed on 12/03/2020, at. 00:50]. Serghey Gherdjikov, “Virtual and Real Relativity,” Sofia Philosophical Review 3 No. 2 (2010): p. 81–102. Ibidem, p. 83. Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1982). Hans-Georg Gadamer, Praise of Theory: Speeches and Essays. Trans. Chris Dawson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

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132 Venera Russo The act of putting in relation is a linguistic process that creates virtual connections with the world and that could never be objective by its own nature. Any reflection on language that aims to do not be deceptive must take relativity into account and does not deal with absolutes but with relations. Relativity and Translation The field of linguistics that was enriched the most from the relativist contributions is that one of the Translation Studies. On this ground a very prolific debate has endowed the practical act of translation with theoretical selfawareness. Many contributions have stressed the difficulties of translation, that is essentially an interlinguistic process whose starting points, procedures and results are always an act of putting in relation. Ricœur recognizes in the text the linguistic unit of any act of interpretation112. Even though his definition of “emplotement” that builds up a text in relation to time could be put into question in a relativist perspective, for the linear conception of time that it includes, I find that the final concept of “être-à-dire” is particularly suitable in describing what a translator has to deal with. A translation is a linguistic relation with an “être-à-dire” (communicative intention) reified in a text composed in a different symbolic system. The main challenge of the translator is to recover this intentional act and to build a textual relation in his/her own system. I partly agree with Laugier when she states, on Quine’s steps, that the activity of translation remains an internal act and that “là où le linguiste croit découvrir quelque chose, il ne fait que projeter, se « catapulter » dans la langue indigène avec les catégories de sa langue113”. Nevertheless, if the very process of translation is intra-linguistic, the relation that built is a crosslinguistic one, that always permeates the fluid nature of language and culture. In fact, as Swanson114 points out, the presence of some categories in a language does not absolutely determines what a speaker is able to say, but only what he will probably will be disposed to say. The same fact that translation is possible is not necessarily the hint of a common linguistic faculty, 112 113

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Paul Ricoeur, “On Interpretation”, in: The Continental Philosophy Reader, eds. Richard Kearney & Mara Rainwater (New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 138–155. Laugier, “Relativité linguistique, relativité anthropologique”, p. 56. Translation: “there where the linguist believes to discover something, he only projects; he launches himself in the indigenous language with the categories of his own language.” J. W. Swanson, “Linguistic Relativity and Translation”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 22, No. 2 (Dec., 1961), p. 185–192.

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Cross-language Relation 133 in a mentalist view, but the simple proof of the infinite potential of language, according to which everything could be put in relation and thus be defined. There is not a unique translation but infinite translations possible; this is the crucial point of the indeterminacy of translation, formulated by Quine. As Gherdjikov clarifies115, while in formalized systems like the numbers, the information could be simply transmitted without any loss, in languages there is not proper information but sense and the translation is a projection from a frame of reference to another, so it remains always more or less indefinite because of the structural differences between the two languages. Consequently, every translation is a “mirror”. And, we could also add with Laugier, an “hypothesis”. The writer, linguist and translator Umberto Eco synthesized the experience of translation with the sentence “To say almost the same thing” (it. “Dire quasi la stessa cosa” [2003]). The very center of his definition is the word “Almost” (it. “quasi”) that very effectively conveys the opposite actions required by any translation (inter-linguistic or even inter-semiotic): subtraction and addiction. What a translator tries to preserve, of the original work, is what Eco calls intentio operis, the inner kernel of the communicative act expressed in the text. A translation is essentially an act of interpretation that works on several layers. It is impossible to define a priori which one is the most relevant, because every text is supposed to have within itself some priorities of communication, and, for instance, to privilege a content-oriented translation of Queneau’s Exercices de style would mean to do not consider the inner intention of the text. Moreover, Eco clarifies that the type of negotiation required by a translation involves several subjects (editor, target-reader, author etc.) and opens up a scenario in which the process of translation is not only a relation between two texts but a real social phenomenon of research of agreement. Finally, Eco refers to the necessity to reproduce the same function, or the most similar one, implying that the translation does not occur only on the level of structure. This last consideration is an insight that sheds some light not only on the field of translation studies but that confirms a feature of linguistic communication as a system where every element is mutually defined by relation. In the debate on translation and its relativity, what is striking is the 115

Serghey Gherdjikov, Philosophy of Relativity, (Sophia: Extreme press Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, 2008.) English version, 2009).

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134 Venera Russo radical distance from the opposite positions: from the untranslatability to the universal translatability (ex. Jakobson). It must be said, however, that all these perspectives are grounded on the theoretical layer whereas the common practice of translation provides a less extremist vision of a “translation with some difficulties”, that is more or less hard according to how wide is the structural distance between the language source and the language target. Such a distance implies a parallel cultural difference, usually at the same degree of the grammatical one. To this regard the linguistic reflection has felt the need to stress and define those differences, for example Whorf’s SAE and not SAE languages, Gherdjikov’s linear and non-linear translation. These considerations usually overlap with anthropological ones on cultural difference, thing that witnesses the awareness of the relativist message. House116 notes a revival of the relativist studies reporting Lucy’s (1997) classification of the recent studies in structure-centered (influence of structures in thought), domain-centered (experience of reality encoded by language), behaviour-centered (comparison of behaviour in different linguistic cultures). On the theme of translation, strictly related to any relativist interest, she maintains that flexibility and creativity of language make every individual capable of describing any state of affairs that entails possibility of translation. Translatability is provided by the concept of application that refers to the pragmatic layer of language. If the structures are different, their application in “knowable cultural context” to convey meaning allows to find an equivalent. She stresses, moreover, that every translation occurs on the level of discourse and must necessary take into major account the pragmatic uses: “Social, contextual considerations and the frame of reference which define culture are thus of prime importance for translation117” and the use of cultural filters are a prime necessity for both covert and overt translation. If we compare the perspective Whorf adopted in facing the problem of language variety, we notice that it was majorly structure-oriented whereas the recent studies on translation are primarily centered in a pragmatic approach. This could also be considered as an embryonal practical proposal of solution to the problem of diversity, finally subtracted to the theoretical level of linguistic investigation to a wider anthropological-linguistic field.

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Juliane House, Linguistic Relativity and Translation, ineds. Püts and Verspoor, Explorations in Linguistic Relativity. (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 2000), p. 69–88. Ibibem, p. 82.

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Cross-language Relation 135 Final considerations The relativist perspective is implied in translation both theoretically, with the development of the translation studies, and in practice, because it gives to the translators important warnings about the essentiality of cultural filters and cross-cultural reflection. Translation is an experience of relativity whereas linguistic relativity operates with translation and maybe also for translation. As Pallotti (1999) stresses, the hypothesis empirically verifiable that could be formulated by the principle of linguistic relativity could be considered parts of a theory of translation. The analysis of the relativism is a fundamental critical activity that has the consequence of improving translation practices.Relativity stands to translation as a necessary tension: translation is a fight against relativity but it is at the same time possible because of relativity. On the opposite side, the linguistic relativist theories strive against the limits of translation but, nevertheless, are engendered by translation itself. References Althusser, Louis. “From ‘Capital’ to Marx’s Philosophy. From Althusser & Balibar. Reading Capital (1968).” In The Continental Philosophy Reader, eds. Richard Kearney & Mara Rainwater, p. 257–274. New York: Routledge, 1996. Eco, Umberto. Dire quasi la stessa cosa. Esperienze di traduzione. Milano: Bompiani, 2003. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Praise of Theory: Speeches and Essays. Translated by Chris Dawson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Gherdjikov, Serghey. “Virtual and Real Relativity.” Sofia Philosophical Review vol.3 No. 2 (2010): p. 81–102. Gherdjikov, Serghey. Philosophy of Relativity. Sophia: Extreme press Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, 2008. (Consulted in the English version, 2009). Geertz, Clifford. “Distinguished Lecture: Anti Anti-Relativism”. American Anthropologist New Series, Vol. 86, No. 2 (Jun., 1984), pp. 263–278. https://www.jstor.org/stable/678960?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents. Heidegger, Martin. On the Way to Language. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1982. House, Juliane. Translation: the Basics. New York: Routledge, 2018.

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136 Venera Russo Laugier, Sandra. “Relativité linguistique, relativité anthropologique”. In: Histoire Épistémologie Langage, tome 18, fascicule 2 (1996). L’esprit et le langage, pp. 45–73. https://www.persee.fr/doc/hel_0750-8069_ 1996_num_18_2_2460. Lakoff, George. Women, fire and dangerous things. Chicago, London: Chicago University Press, 1987. Pallotti, Gabriele. “Relatività linguistica e traduzione”. Versus. Quaderni di studi semiotici 82 (1999): p. 109–138. http://www.intralinea.org/arch ive/article/Relativita_linguistica_e_traduzione Püts, Martin, and Marjolijn H. Verspoor, eds. Explorations in Linguistic Relativity. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 2000. Ricoeur, Paul. “Imagination in discourse and in action”. In Rethinking Imagination: Culture and Creativity, eds. Gillian Robinson and John R. Randell, 118–135. London: Routledge, 1994. Ricoeur, Paul. “On Interpretation”. In The Continental Philosophy Reader, eds. Richard Kearney & Mara Rainwater, p. 138–155. New York: Routledge, 1996. Sapir, Edward. “The Status of Linguistics as a Science”. Language, vol.5 no.4 (December 1929): 207–214. Saussure, Ferdinand. Cours de Linguistique Générale [1916]. https://fr.m. wikisource.org/wiki/Cours_de_linguistique_générale/Texte_entier. Swanson, J. W. “Linguistic Relativity and Translation”. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 22, No. 2 (Dec., 1961), p. 185–192. https:// www.jstor.org/stable/2104839?read-now=1&refreqid=excelsior%3Ac 154007a9911ea4a74fc85025f2b8ea9&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Quine, Willard V. “Indeterminacy of Translation Again”. The Journal of Philosophy 84, no. 1 (January 1987). Whorf, Benjamin Lee. Language, World and Reality. Edited by John B. Carroll. USA: MIT press, 1956.

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PART III: IN STATU NASCENDI’S REVIEWS & RESPONSES

Bálint L. Tóth In Response to Sergey Sukhankin’s “Russian Regionalism in Action: The Case of the North-Western Federal District (1991–2017)” Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, Identity Clashes: Russian and Ukrainian Debates on Culture, History, and Politics, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2019) The article “Russian Regionalism in Action: The Case of the North-Western Federal District (1991–2017)” was written by Sergey Sukhankin, whose realm of scientific interest includes political and economic development and security issues of former Soviet states, with particular emphasis on in the Baltic Sea region. In the article the Author attempts to define in its complexity the issue of regionalism and the centerperiphery dichotomy in the Russian Federation through the case study of the country’s North-Western territory in a time frame dated from 1991 to 2017. The Author principally focuses on the major economic, politic and demographic tendencies and trends present in the above-noted geographic area. The article’s main aim is to shad a light upon the effects of the post-Cold War changes in Russian interior policies, economic growth and the redistributive financial system on the evolution of a region that is neighboring with European Union (“EU”) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (“NATO”) member states. The key field of political science addressed in the paper is regional studies evidently embracing economic, cultural and security issues as well.

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By normative arguments and teleological reasoning, the article offers adequate explanation why the issue of considerable differences between the developed central parts and less developed border regions of Russia is deeply rooted in the political elite’s cautious interpretation of regionalism. Sukhankin quotes the introduction of the system of federal districts in 2000, the 2004 tax reform (that centralized the redistribution of revenues within the country), and the political movements that oppressed regional identities as the major factors that caused, deepened and preserved the center-periphery dichotomy in the Russian Federation since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1990–1991. Sukhankin blames the way too moderate presence of interregional business and cultural relations as one of the major reasons for the current provincial status of the North-Western Federal District. The lack of sufficient foreign development investment, the modest inflows of foreign technology, and the humble presence of international business entities, cultural as well as educational activities and non-governmental organizations prevent the region’s economy from being competitive both on national and global levels.

140 Reviews and Responses The Author has come up with huge variety of reasonable evidences supporting his main idea that certain structural weaknesses (e.g. the highly centralized nature of internal politics, the lack of strategic thinking, and the statesmen’s fear of potential separatism or secessionist movements) prevented the North-Western territory from establishing prosperous and long-standing economic, cultural, and political relations with the nearby regions of neighboring countries. Sukhankin states that in spite of a decade of rapid economic growth in Russia, the gap has deepened between the economically and industrially advanced regions and the less developed periphery as the central government has refrained from supporting the international competitiveness of local businesses amid appropriate investments in education or research & development activities. In addition, the centralized nature of Russian politics impeded the regions’ ability to manage interregional relations with neighboring countries on their own. The consolidation of political power in the Russian Federation between 1999 and 2008 was backed by a significant economic boom. Such phenomenon was fostered by structuralinstitutional changes after the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (“USSR”) and the global increase of basic commodity prices; especially that of crude oil and natural gas. However, the central government of the country preferred to support its federal districts through a redistributive financial system that preserved the relatively underdeveloped production structure of the periphery and made it difficult for

the border regions to catch up with the economic centers. The situation got even worse when in 2014–2015 the Russian economy was hit by a currency crisis resulting in the depreciation of ruble. Such negative performance (caused by a sharp decline in the international price of oil, the trade embargoes on Russia after the annexation of Crimea, as well as the subsequent conflict with Ukraine) mean another burden on the Russian periphery’s economic development. The paper fits well into the literature on regional studies, interregional relations, as well as security and defense affairs. The study complements the Author’s previous, primarily militaryfocused researches with social, cultural and economic viewpoints. As far as regions and sub-state entities are considered, Sukhankin has published a number of articles about the current military challenges with special focus to the Kaliningrad oblast (“Kaliningrad and Baltic Sea Region Security” [2017], “The Kaliningrad Oblast Today …” [2017], etc.). On a global level, the Author has also engaged in researching the evolution of the NATO-Russia relationship (“The Western Alliance in the Face of the Russian (Dis)information Machine” [2019], “War, Business and Ideology …” [2019], etc.). Additionally, the current paper brings into the discourse the perspective of border regions. The article builds principally upon Russianlanguage sources, however, in a certain sense it also reflects the ideas of Marc Schelhase (2008:3), who suggests that the most adequate way to study and understand the processes of transformation of regions is to rely on the theo-

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Reviews and Responses ries of region-building and region formation (regionalization and regionalism). Sukhankin places the subject of research in a global context to identify linkages between regional and global levels of governance. It is essential, however, to keep in mind that it is academically challenging (or almost impossible) to come up with a general approach to regionalism and its links to globalization. The paper reinforces the claims of Tuomas Forsberg and Sirke Mäkinen (2019:240), who state that despite the annexation of Crimea, Russia insists on maintaining the status quo as far as borders and the rights of federal districts and autonomous regions are concerned. Similarly to Sukhankin, Vladimir N. Streletsky (2017:232) also highlights that ethnic structures and linguistic, confessional as well as regional cultural patterns of the modern-day Russia are all inherited from Soviet times. However, both authors claim that there have been some cultural geographic changes and shifts in demographic trends on the turn of the century as far as the reproduction of population belonging to various sub-state entities and the process of modernization of the society are considered. As it is proposed by Markus Perkmann and Ngai-Ling Sum (2002:17), in Europe, public and private actors operating in border areas are encouraged by supranational authorities (like the European Commission) to engage in cross-border cooperation structures in order to improve the economic development opportunities of border areas. By citing the case of the “Euroregions” trans-national cooperation (from 1997–

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2010), Sukhankin’s paper gives practical examples for the operation of crossborder regionalism. The European Union’s partnership programs with third countries, and co-operation structures between cross-border regions have provided opportunities to local Russian authorities to establish closer ties to EU sub-state entities. Yet, mainly due to the lack of interest and the skeptical approach towards regional initiatives from the central government’s side, such programs could not spill over into stronger interregional cooperation. The article also addresses the topic of border economics as it shows how the new frontiers drawn between the Baltic States and the Russian Federation after the dissolution of the USSR affected economic transactions by putting barriers to friction-free flows and raising the marginal costs of cross-border transactions leading to the peripheralization of the region. Trade and urbanization go hand in hand. As Dávid K. Nagy (2018) puts it, border regions offer worse trading opportunities and result in less urbanization around trading places. Just like in the case of the postFirst World War Hungary, the new borders drawn by the Allied Powers in 1920 cut the economic centers located in the middle of the country away from its internal trade partners leading to negative demographic trends and economic regression. A similar phenomenon can be identified in the case of the Pskov oblast, for instance. The article is written in outstanding English, and uses clearly defined central concepts (regionalism, center– periphery dichotomy, centralization, federalization, economic development,

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142 Reviews and Responses etc.). Sukhankin’s paper has a welldefined geographical focus: The NorthWestern Federal District of Russia. The Russian Federation consists of republics, krays, oblasts, cities of federal significance, an autonomous oblast and autonomous okrugs, which have equal rights as constituent entities of the Russian Federation (Government of the Russian Federation, 2020: Art. 5.). The North-Western Federal District is one of the eight federal districts (okrugs) of the country. As the article puts it, there is no inner security challenge or ethnic conflict within the region, while the territory is rich in natural resources. The North-Western Federal District comprises eleven federal subjects, and Sukhankin’s paper provides detailed insights into three of these entities: the Republic of Karelia, and the oblasts of Pskov and Kaliningrad. The article brings into the research the tool of comparative economic and political analysis by offering case studies for the post-Cold War structural changes of the aforementioned regions. The Author is very clear in his thoughts, explanations and examples. Through the wellelaborated case studies of the Republic of Karelia, and the oblasts of Pskov and Kaliningrad, the article provides a logical basis and practical evidences for the initial allegations. One of the major strengths of the article is that it presents a clear summary of the mainstream skeptical Russian political thinking about regionalism and its consequences on the development of peripheral territories. Another great contribution of the work is that the Author puts the issue of regional development of a Russian sub-state en-

tity into a global context. Sukhankin’s paper suggests that interregional cooperation is an opportunity to overcome transnational challenges, to revitalize the economy in marginalized boarder areas, to construct an efficient infrastructure across national borders and to bring people with different nationalities together. Nevertheless, the contribution of the article to academic literature on regionalism perhaps could have been even more outstanding if it offered possible ways for the approximation of the levels of development between the prosperous center and the less advanced periphery in Russia. The Author provides a well-built and logical reasoning on how such gap has evolved, he does not, however, give potential suggestions on how such situation could be eased. Due to its primarily descriptive nature, the article correctly evites quoting lengthy statistic figures. However, besides the mandatory economic and demographic background information, in a certain sense it could be appropriate to bring into the research another tool for the measurement interregional discrepancies: the human development index (HDI). With its 0.827 HDI figure reported for the year 2017, the NorthWestern sub-state entity ranks among the first three in the country, topped only by the “Urals” and the “Central” federal districts (0.833 and 0.838, respectively). Moreover, as compared to the indices of the neighboring countries, the HDI level of the NorthWestern Federal District does not stand far below the Estonian (0.872), Finnish (0.919), Latvian (0.847), Lithuanian

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Reviews and Responses (0.859), and Polish (0.865) average values, as of the above-noted year (Institute for Management Research, 2017). The western territories as a whole of the Russian Federation are often quoted in media and academic literature as the most developed region of the country, whereas the article makes it clear that such entity is far from being homogeneous as far as economic or demographic evolution is concerned. On the other hand, while the paper puts proper focus on economic, financial, and defense issues, the matter of international transport and transit routes is somewhat missing in a study that deals with a border region. The North-Western Federal District is crossed by important freight corridors between the EU and the inner territories of the Russian Federation making it an unquestionable gateway in the Baltic region. The international shipment of goods is an important pillar of the economy as it fosters interregional trade. Talking about interregional business relations, the Finnish railway conglomerate VR Group, for instance, has recently established a subsidiary in Russia in order to operate a fleet of wagons for cross-border freight flows of forestry products, in the first place (Barrow, 2019). In addition, Kaliningrad oblast could be an alternative gateway between the European railway network and that of the Commonwealth of Independent States (“CIS”) to boost freight traffic between Europe and the Far East. The Dzerzhinskaya-Novaya multimodal terminal currently re-routes freight trains from Western and Northern European countries on the roughly 9,560 kilometer journey on the Eurasian rail

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corridor through Lithuania, Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan, and the other way around. With the decrease of transit times, this option could easily become an alternative to Polish hubs on the socalled “New Silk Roads” in the future (van Leijen, 2018). The efficiency of a regional development cooperation principally depends on the complexity of socioeconomic processes and the harmony of different development factors. Hence it is crucial to integrate national and sub-national levels connecting different areas (economic–financial, geographical, scientific–technical, moral– historical, natural, social, infrastructural, legal–institutional, political, and strategic), while the improvement of transport infrastructure is a significant precondition for sustainable development (Tóth, 2018). Mainly due to the expansion of trade between EU member states and the Asian countries, supply chains are primarily formed on an east–west axis, where the NorthWestern Federal District of Russia is a gateway to Scandinavia. Additionally, the Author provides a detailed insight into how the NATO’s presence in the three Baltic countries affects Russian territorial thinking, geopolitics and national defense strategies. However, perhaps the case of the militarily non-aligned Finland also should be emphasized here. Although the country is not part of the NATO, its military is highly interoperable with those of the countries of the alliance, and it has been involved in a number of NATO-led operations in the Balkans and the Middle East. Since the end of the Cold War, Finland has purchased

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144 Reviews and Responses highly sophisticated military hardware and modern air-defense systems made in the US. In addition, in May 2018, the Finnish, the Swedish ministries of defense and the US Secretary of Defense signed a trilateral statement of intent to improve and solidify defense cooperation between the three countries (Järvenpää, 2019). This critical review has evaluated the article “Russian Regionalism in Action: The Case of the North-Western Federal District (1991–2017)” by Sergey Sukhankin. The arguments in the paper show the presence of a vast knowledge about political and economic development of the former Soviet states (especially the Baltic region) that undoubtedly strengthens the Author’s arguments and credibility. The paper advances thinking on the subjects of interregional relations, and the economic development of border regions with special focus on the center–periphery dichotomy. The Author’s work provides a perfect substratum for further debates of Russian territorial thinking and regionalism while generating ideas for further researches.

Bibliography Barrow, Keith (2019): VR Group to establish Russian rail freight subsidiary railjournal.com/freight /vr-group-to-establish-russian-rail -freight-subsidiary (2020-01-31). Forsberg, Tuomas—Mäkinen, Sirke (2019): Russian Discourse on Borders and Territorial Questions —Crimea as a Watershed? Russian Politics 2019/4. p. 211–241.

Government of the Russian Federation (2020): Constitution of the Russian Federation. http://archive.govern ment.ru/eng/gov/base/54.html (2020-01-31). Institute for Management Research (2017): Subnational Human Development Index (3.0)—Global data Lab, Radboud University https://globa ldatalab.org/shdi/shdi/RUS/?inte rpolation=0&extrapolation=0&ne arest_real=0 (2020-01-31). Järvenpää, Pauli (2019): Finland and NATO: So Close, Yet So Far. ICDS. icds.ee/finland-and-nato-s o-close-yet-so-far (2020-01-31). van Leijen, Majorie (2018): Kaliningrad: a multimodal solution to connect China with Europe. www.railfreig ht.com/beltandroad/2018/09/17 /kaliningrad-a-multimodal-solutio n-to-connect-china-with-europe (2020-01-31). Perkmann, Markus—Sum, Ngai-Ling (2002): Globalization, Regionalization and Cross-Border Regions. Palgrave Macmillan. Houndmills. Schelhase, Marc (2008): Globalization, Regionalization and Business— Conflict, Convergence and Influence. Palgrave Macmillan. Houndmills. Nagy, Dávid Krisztián (2018): Trade and urbanization: Evidence from Hungary. Streletsky, Vladimir N. (2017): Ethnic, confessional and cultural patterns of regionalism in the post-Soviet Russia. Hungarian Geographical Bulletin 66(3) 219–233. Tóth, Bálint L. (2018): V4: A Political Tool for Advancing State Interest, Polgári Szemle. 14: (1–3) p. 330– 341.

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Reviews and Responses

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Hristiyana Stoyanova In Response to Natalia Moussienko’s “Cultural and Performative Dimensions of the Kyiv Maidan (2013–2014)” Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, Identity Clashes: Russian and Ukrainian Debates on Culture, History, and Politics, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2019) The journal article “Cultural and Performative Dimensions of the Kyiv Maidan (2013–2014)” by Ms. Natalia Moussienko researches the place of art in the events of the Ukrainian Revolution of late 2013, early 2014, known as Euromaidan. Moussienko makes an original and authentic interpretation of the events by accentuating her research on art, music, performances, creativity and personal artistic presence of Euromaidan. In the first part, the reader would expect a bit more background of the events, which could set the scene of her work. Nevertheless, instead of placing her work in the mainstream of research that try to decipher the rationale of the protests, she takes an original turn and shows how the power and symbolism of art can describe complex political events. She conducted a field work in November/December 2013, by exploring photographic artistic manifestations, while conducting several interviews with artists on the ground. The author argues that art holds a special place in Maidan with its different manifestations—music, sculpture, photographs, cinema, music, literature etc. Revolutionary art could be expressed in a wide range of artistic behaviour. It is well observed that throughout the paper, the

artistic side of revolution is compared to the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring Uprisings. Moussienko interprets the Maidan through the frame of Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of carnival in which the historical events in Kyiv in 2014 are seen through the prisms of conventional hierarchies, their overturning and oppositions. The active artists’ involvement in politics in late 20th C is seen by Moussienko as an example of the long historical legacy of art in the political life of Ukraine and the near abroad. She makes a direct reference to Estonian’s Singing Revolution, the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003 and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004. Had she written her paper a year later, she could have also made a reference to the most recent Presidential elections in Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is known for his experience in comedy and TV shows—another demonstration that art has a special place in the history of Ukraine. This could have accentuated the culmination of examples in Ukrainian history, in which artistic behaviour wins the hearts and minds of Ukrainians. Nevertheless, her article was written a year before the elections took place, so she could not have foreseen the unfolding of events at that stage.

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146 Reviews and Responses The author gives different examples of art recreation on the Maidan square before, during and after the protests and even though it lacks factuality, she demonstrates a good level of awareness. She reports paintings that have tried to portray the clashes, cinema productions, mini-documentaries, theatre plays, paintings, banners, songs and others. The message of the author unequivocally demonstrates that art is used to express what is otherwise not easy to express, including political confrontation. And if the Maidan protests happened physically only in Ukraine, the symbolic resonance of the event went overseas and Moussienko well noted that. Signs of solidarity were shown all over the world, including Berlin, Paris, Warsaw, New York, and famous actors, musicians and artists had shown their respect and solidarity for the Ukrainian cause. A good deal of the article accentuates on the idea of Bakhtinian carnival, in which certain political events are described through the personal experience of the narrator. At the same time, Moussienko describes the role of antiMaidan, as a requisite of the carnival. In her reading, the anti-Maidan movement is represented by the Government, which on its side organises anti-Maidan spectacles, trying to convey the message of the beauty of the established order. The author cites several of her interviewees, who claim that the dividing line between the protestors goes first through their’ consciousness in that the new and the old in peoples’ perceptions of the Maidan events were coming out in the form of songs. In other words, through the expression of Bakhtinian carnival, the Maidan people were those

who would share the universal spirit of freedom, while anti-Maidan pro-status quo performers would support the existing order, praising the past and denouncing the present. The author continues to provide examples of art installation, which was inspired by the events of Euromaidan. The presence of the barricade, for example, is interpreted as an art object itself, enabling the emergence of new models of art communication. The Christmas tree, covered in banners, was another attempt to portray the scale of importance of Maidan, during one of the most sacred holidays of the year. People who sang the Ukrainian anthem were those who signalled the enduring vision of the Revolution. An authentic touch of the work of Moussienko is her attempt to distinguish between three phases of the Euromaidan protest, which was also seen by the evolution of art manifestations. The first phase focused on Ukraine’s place in Europe and lasted until 30th Nov. This was rather calm and eventless period. The second included the first dead protestor and lasted through 19 Jan. The last period was the culmination of power, including live ammunition and snipers and ended with the victory of Maidan protestors. Moussienko rightly observed that the art in this last period already anticipated the war in Donbas. The article concludes by drawing upon the symbolism behind art manifestations at Maidan square. New forms of narratives have emerged with new forms of social mobilisation. Indeed, the role of the social media had become an important instrument of presenting

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Reviews and Responses the public unrest, beginning from the Arab Uprisings and it could have been quite persuading if Moussienko pointed that once again in her conclusion. Up until today, pieces of art remain present in the most public sites in the city centre of Ukraine, reminding the future generations of the struggle between past and present, the conflict between old and new and the idea of revolution at the backdrop of status-quo.

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Bibliography Natalia Moussienko, “Cultural and Performative Dimensions of the Kyiv Maidan (2013–2014) in: Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, Identity Clashes: Russian and Ukrainian Debates on Culture, History, and Politics, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2019).

Piotr Pietrzak In Response to Salvatore Babones’ “The Middling Kingdom: The Hype and the Reality of China’s Rise” Foreign Affairs 90 (5): 79–88, 2001

Table 1. PRC economy’ double-digit growth in real GDP between 1992 and 2007 Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp-growth-annual Prior to the end of 1980s the ordinary Chinese was very much accustomed to extended periods of economic downturns, famines, hyperinflation, and unemployment, but this has changed thanks to the booming economy, increased political influence, expanded

cultural reach, growing hard and soft power arsenals, and accompanying rapid modernization as the People Republic of China’s global influence has grown considerably for the last 30–40 years. While the political transition to a more transparent and accountable polit-

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148 Reviews and Responses ical system has been rather sluggish in the same period, the country’s economy has been thriving. Indeed, the results of implementing a number of important and at times costly liberal reforms have helped the Chinese political leadership to sustain double-digit growth in real GDP (This is especially true to the period between 1992 and 2007; see Table 1); that in turn has accelerated the booming economy and led to the substantial rise in the overall standard of living of the population at large. These developments have led more optimist economists to conclude that the overall success of this Chinese hybrid that paradoxically found a “healthy middle ground” between the Communist political system and liberal economy accounts for an anomaly that has put the validity of some leading liberal theorists (such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman) into a massive

question. This upgrade of China’s economic position has inadvertently translated into a gigantic jump in the overall global perception of its political position and elevated its geostrategic position to one of the strongest in the global architecture of power. Stephen Kotkin even suggested in his recent Foreign Affairs paper that China should be seen as an emerging superpower that is destined to challenge various aspects of Washington’s global position in the coming years and decades (Kotkin 2019, p. 10−15; Pietrzak 2019, p. 187– 200)118. 118

For more information in this respect please also see “Piotr Pietrzak in response to Stephen Kotkin’s The Players Change, but the Game Remains, Foreign Affairs Magazine, July/August 2018 Issue, Volume 94, Number 4, p. 10–15”.

Table 2. PRC economy’ growth in real GDP between 2008 and 2019 Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp-growth-annual Yet, as Table 2. clearly illustrates, the dynamism of the Chinese economy has had a downward trajectory in recent

years, and looking at the likely consequences of the coronavirus outbreak, its economy is inevitably going to slow

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Reviews and Responses down in 2020, if not also in the years to come, for foreign investors are likely to have a more conservative approach to investment in the Middle Kingdom, which in turn will translate into the downgrade of the overall global perception of China’s prospects in coming years. China’s political influence, geopolitical and cultural outreach, and soft and hard power capacities will suffer as a consequence. Naturally it is easy to describe the reality from the perspective of hindsight, but there were researchers who have warned us about the implausibility of far-reaching optimistic attitudes towards China’s prospects; one of the most prominent of them was Salvatore Babones from the University of Sydney, who brought to the fore a number of important limitations casting a shadow on the prospects of China’s economic performance and questioned the likelihood of the sustainability of this country’s economic miracle as early as in 2011 (Babones 2011, p. 79–88). In his article published by Foreign Affairs Magazine, he offered a very systematic account that contrasted very optimistic descriptions of China’s prospects with far more gloomy demographic statistical data that suggested that the one-child policy adopted by the regime in the early 1970’s may have a far more serious impact on the condition of the Chinese economy than was anticipated. Babone clearly pointed out the fact that this policy was just one of many policies that have brought China temporary economic relief but will start producing a number of serious negative repercussions in the decades to come (Babones 2009, 2011).

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Indeed, thanks to adopting a very specific statistical method that Babone “inherited” from the Nobel Prizewinning economist Robert Fogel, known as cliometrics; he was able to look at the issue in question from a more systematic perspective, for Fogel can be seen as a strong advocate of very comprehensive econometric techniques and mathematical methods that draw a strong connection between reality and complex historic data. By adopting this method, Babones managed to outline the real scope and extent of the damage the global financial turmoil of 2008 has had on the Chinese economy (Fogel 1975; Fogel 2004). In this respect it is worth emphasizing that the core of Babones’ analysis relied heavily on a very strong comparison of Chinese, American, and European traceable GDP figures from the last 200 years of economic history. This analysis produced a rather unfavorable appraisal of Beijing’s potential and suggested that China will inevitably struggle to maintain doubledigit economic growth rates in the long run, for when an economy grows; its growth gets harder to sustain. Furthermore, this economist suggested that the Chinese Communist Party is also responsible for not devoting a sufficient amount of attention to the pressing issues of social stability and the long-term sustainability of growth and named a number of other serious challenges that are likely to derail the Chinese economy in the future, such as the Chinese political leadership’s propensity to be more interested in exploiting short term advantageous global circumstances at the expense of a long term vision for the

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150 Reviews and Responses country’s development, underestimating most of the political demands for further political liberalization, predatory exploitation of China’s natural reserves, and utter neglect of the natural environment. Taken together, these findings led Babones to conclude that as much Beijing certainly remains an important international actor in the global structure of power and nothing is going to change it, there is a strong likelihood that this country will struggle to gain global supremacy in the twenty-first century and is more likely (together with Brazil, Mexico, and Russia) to find itself on the economic periphery of the world. As much as we may be skeptical of the suggestion that China is destined to end up on the economic periphery, for one would really need a strong pair of elbows to push it towards any periphery, I would still strongly recommend this paper, as well as other work of Salvatore Babones (2009, 2011, 2013a, 2013b, 2018), to any undergraduate and postgraduate students of microeconomics, geopolitics, and international relations. Being successful in explaining global economic patterns and relating them to the broader picture is definitely an art that Babones is very skillful at, but he also supplements his observations with a healthy dose of skepticism capable of disarming any delusions of grandeur or those who take social reality for granted or believe that a nation can become an economic superpower overnight. There is however one important aspect of Chinese nature that Babones seems to underestimate, namely the fact that its people are known for their pa-

tience, which can really help them overcome their current economic difficulties, and allow them to emerge far stronger than ever before. The only question is whether the people will tolerate the regime that is not able to keep its end of the bargain, and fulfill its part of the social contract that compensates the lack of certain political freedoms with economic perks and benefits. Naturally, the PRC can also end up following in the footsteps of the old good Soviet Union, for the way they have reacted in the initial phase of the coronavirus outbreak has clearly shown that the local authorities from Wuhan province are capable of repeating the same mistakes the Soviet Union committed in 1986 in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Having said that, unlike the Soviet Union, which resembled a giant with clay feet more than a superpower at the end of 1980s, the Chinese regime is definitely not weakened by any prolonged or openending confrontation similar to Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. As a matter of fact, the Communist Party of China, which currently has 90.59 million party members (making it the second largest political party in the world after India’s Bharatiya Janata Party), is stronger than ever before and it definitely maintains a very strong grip on power in the most populous country in the world. So, the status quo in China is likely to survive. For these reasons, instead of entertaining political science fiction scenarios, it is worth considering whether the current economic slowdown is likely to mobilize this country political leadership to socialize with other international members and in turn enhance global

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Reviews and Responses economic interdependence or rather push Xi Jinping and his court towards more hawkish and unpredictable hardpower-orientated strategies.

Further reading: Babones, Salvatore J. 2009. The international structure of income: its implications for economic growth. Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag. Babones, Salvatore 2011. “The middling kingdom: the hype and the reality of China’s rise”. Foreign Affairs. 90 (5): 79–88. Babones, Salvatore. 2013a. Applied statistical modeling. Los Angeles: SAGE. Babones, Salvatore. 2013b. Regression modeling. Babones, Salvatore J. 2018. The new authoritarianism: Trump, populism, and the tyranny of experts. Fogel, Robert. 1975. Insect mycophagy: a preliminary bibliography. Portland Or: Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Forest Service.

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Fogel, Robert. 2004. The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100: Europe, America, and the Third World. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pietrzak, Piotr 2019. In response to Stephen Kotkin’s The Players Change, but the Game Remains” in: Pietrzak, Piotr, Piotr Pietrzak, Gordon Freeman, Abiola Bamijoko-Okungbaye, Joel Patomäki, Molly Prendergast, Deniz Ertin, et al. 2019. In Statu Nascendi Journal of Political Philosophy and International Relations 2019/2. Lyons, John S., Louis P. Cain, and Samuel H. Williamson. 2013. Reflections on the cliometrics revolution: conversations with economic historians. Diebolt, Claude, and Michael Haupert. 2019. Handbook of Cliometrics. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0 30-00181-0. Greasley, David, and Les Oxley. 2011. Economics and History: Surveys in Cliometrics. Somerset: Wiley. http://www.vlebooks.com/vlewe b/product/openreader?id=none& isbn=9781444346701.

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Biographic Notes ELIZA EMILY CAMPBELL is an M.A. student at Georgetown University, and U.S. Fulbright Fellow conducting fieldwork on refugee issues in Bulgaria between 2017 and 2018. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Political Science, Women’s Studies, and Arabic at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, United States, and was previously an intern at UNHCR, UNICEF, and Generations for Peace. LinkedIn: https://bg.linkedin.com/in/eliza-emily-campbell-9069a013 E-mail: [email protected]

ANDREAS GEORGALLIDES studied Pedagogical Sciences, History and Archaeology and Philosophy at the University of Cyprus followed by postgraduate studies in Philosophy at the University of Paris I-PanthéonSorbonne. He received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Sussex (UK). His Greek translation of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was published by Iambos (2016) and his monograph From Theory to Mysticism: The Unclarity of the Notion ‘Object’ in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus was published by Cambridge Scholars (2018). ZORAN KOJCIC holds a PhD degree in Philosophy from Sofia University and MA degrees in Philosophy and Croatian Philology from University of Osijek, Croatia. He specializes in Philosophical Counselling. His main professional focus is in three areas: dialogue, critical thinking and project implementation. As a certified Philosophical Counsellor, Zoran deals with Socratic dialogue and philosophical counselling in helping individuals in finding solutions for everyday problems on Performance Oriented Method (POM) he develops. Zoran also delivers critical thinking workshops for schools, organizations, local government, NGO’s, etc., with strong belief in the importance of implementing philosophy in practice, rather than just theorizing about it. With Petit Philosophy Association, Zoran works on several ongoing international projects dealing with ethics, diversity, civic action, and implementing critical thinking. E-mail: [email protected]

DIMITRIS M. MOSCHOS is a PhD Candidate and a member of faculty of the Department of History and Anthropology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, specializing in modern history, anthropology, and Eastern Europe. He was awarded a Master’s in Political Philosophy from Panteion University, Athens. His research interests include Marxsolo155

156 Biographic Notes gy and theories of the state, critical theory, sociolinguistics, psychologypsychoanalysis, schizoanalysis, ethics and aesthetics, and Theology ACADEMIA: https://220.academia.edu/DimitrisMoschos E-mail: [email protected]

ANAK AGUNG BANYU PERWITA obtained his MA in Strategic Studies and International Relations from Lancaster University, UK, funded by British Chevening Scholarship and got his PhD from Flinders University, Australia, funded by Australian Development Scholarship. He is also a Fulbright Fellow and has also become a visiting fellow at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen, Denmark and at Giessen University, Germany. He is actively involved with Dewan Ketahanan Nasional, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defence, Republic of Indonesia and has special interests in foreign policy, security, and strategic studies. Prof. Perwita has been a keynote speaker at many domestic and international conferences/seminars/workshops and has also written extensively in many domestic and international journals and books in International Relations and or strategic studies. WEBSITE: http://president.ac.id/people/banyu-perwita E-mail: [email protected]

PIOTR PIETRZAK specializes in the politics of the Middle East and the Islamic world and focuses his attention on the theory of international relations; geopolitics, conflict resolution strategies, and international law; and primarily matters related to superpower competition during and after the Cold War. Piotr is editor-in-chief of In Statu Nascendi—Journal of Political Philosophy and International Relations and a Ph.D. Candidate at the Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridiski” (Bulgaria). He holds a Master’s Degree in International Politics & International Relations from the University of Manchester (UK), and Master’s Degree in Politics from the University of Warmia and Mazury (Poland). Piotr was also awarded an Erasmus Scholarship from the University of Cyprus in 2007. ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0464-1991 E-mail: [email protected]

ANASTASIA TRINATA PRANINDITA is associated with School of International Relations, President University, Indonesia. E-mail: [email protected]

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Biographic Notes 157

VENERA RUSSO is a Ph.D. Candidate at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridiski”. She works as pre-school teacher and is interested in semiotics and philosophy of language as well as in other subjects linked to philosophy. Email: [email protected]

HRISTIYANA STOYANOVA is a Junior Policy Analyst and peerreviewer at In Statu Nascendi, where she also publishes journal articles. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Legal Studies and Politics from the University of Aberdeen, as well as a Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Amsterdam and another Master’s degree in European Interdisciplinary Studies from the College of Europe in Natolin. Her main areas of expertise revolve around: EU external relations and the EU Neighbourhood Policy, EU conflict resolution, state-building, and democracy promotion in the Middle-East, EU Counter-terrorism strategies, and Political Islam. ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0108-5555 Email: [email protected]

BÁLINT LÁSZLÓ TÓTH serves as an international relations expert at MÁV Hungarian State Railways Co. and is a bursar researcher, lecturer, and PhD student at the Corvinus University of Budapest (International Relations Multidisciplinary Doctoral School). Tóth specializes in Visegrád Four (V4) and Western Balkans affairs as well as global migration issues. His university teaching activities include World Economics and European Economic Governance, both for MA students, in the English language. WEBSITE: https://doktori.hu/index.php?menuid=192&lang=EN& sz_ID=27436 E-mail: [email protected] Profreading of selected parts of this volume:

MATTHEW GILL holds a Master’s in Philosophy from Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridiski” and a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. E-mail: [email protected]

—In Statu Nascendi 3:1 (2020)—

What We Stand for in Fourteen Different Languages Arabic In Statu Nascendi ‫ﻳﻮﺟﺪ ﻣﺠﻠﺔ ﺟﺪﻳﺪﺓ ﻻﺳﺘﻌﺮﺍﺽ ﺍﻷﻗﺮﺍﻥ ﺗﻄﻤﺢ ﺇﻟﻰ ﺃﻥ ﺗﻜﻮﻥ‬ ‫ﻣﻨﺼﺔ ﻋﻠﻤﻴﺔ ﻣﻦ ﺍﻟﻄﺮﺍﺯ ﺍﻟﻌﺎﻟﻤﻲ ﺗﺸﻤﻞ ﺍﻟﺒﺤﻮﺙ ﺍﻷﻛﺎﺩﻳﻤﻴﺔ ﺍﻷﺻﻠﻴﺔ ﺍﻟﻤﺨﺼﺼﺔ ﻟﺪﺍﺋﺮﺓ‬ ، ‫ ﺍﻟﺴﻴﺎﺳﺔ ﺍﻟﺨﺎﺭﺟﻴﺔ‬، ‫ ﻧﻈﺮﻳﺔ ﺍﻟﻌﻼﻗﺎﺕ ﺍﻟﺪﻭﻟﻴﺔ‬، ‫ ﺍﻟﺪﺭﺍﺳﺎﺕ ﺍﻟﺜﻘﺎﻓﻴﺔ‬، ‫ﺍﻟﻔﻠﺴﻔﺔ ﺍﻟﺴﻴﺎﺳﻴﺔ‬ ‫ ﻭﺗﺤﻘﻖ ﺍﻟﻤﺠﻠﺔ ﻓﻲ ﻗﻀﺎﻳﺎ ﻣﺤﺪﺩﺓ ﻣﻦ ﺧﻼﻝ ﻧﻬﺞ ﺍﺟﺘﻤﺎﻋﻲ‬. ‫ﻭﻋﻤﻠﻴﺔ ﺻﻨﻊ ﺍﻟﻘﺮﺍﺭ ﺍﻟﺴﻴﺎﺳﻲ‬ ‫ﺛﻘﺎﻓﻲ ﻭﻓﻠﺴﻔﻲ ﻭﺃﻧﺜﺮﻭﺑﻮﻟﻮﺟﻲ ﻟﺮﻓﻊ ﻧﻮﻉ ﺟﺪﻳﺪ ﻣﻦ ﺍﻟﻮﻋﻲ ﺍﻟﻤﺪﻧﻲ ﺣﻮﻝ ﺗﻌﻘﻴﺪ ﺍﻷﺯﻣﺎﺕ‬ ً ‫ ﺣﻴﺚ ﺗﻠﻌﺐ "ﻣﺮﺣﻠﺔ ﺍﻻﻧﻄﻼﻕ" ﺩﻭﺭﺍ ً ﺣﻴﻮﻳﺎ‬، ‫ﺍﻟﻤﻌﺎﺻﺮﺓ ﻭﻋﺪﻡ ﺍﻻﺳﺘﻘﺮﺍﺭ ﻭﺍﻟﺤﺮﺏ‬ Bulgarian In Statu Nascendi (Ин Стату Насенди)–е нов академичен журнал, който се стреми да бъде научна платформа от световна класа, включваща оригинални академични изследвания, посветени на политическата философия, културните изследвания, теорията на международните отношения, външната политика и политическия процес на вземане на решения. Журналът изследва конкретни проблеми чрез социалнокултурен, философски и антропологичен подход за издигане на нов тип гражданска осведоменост относно сложността на съвременните кризи, нестабилност и военни ситуации, където “състоянието на зараждане” (in statu nascendi) играе жизненоважна роля. Belarusian In Statu Nascendi–гэта новы часопіс, які рэцэнзуюць эксперты. Мэта часопіса—стаць навуковай пляцоўкай сусветнага ўзроўню. In Statu Nascendi публікуе акадэмічныя даследаванні, прысвечаныя палітычнай філасофіі, культурным пытанням, тэорыі міжнародных адносінаў, замежнай палітыцы і палітычнаму працэсу прыняцця рашэнняў. Задача публікуемых даследаванняў—спрыяць фарміраванню новага тыпу грамадзянскай свядомасці ва ўмовах сучаснага крызісу, нестабільнасці і ваенных сітуацый. Dutch In Statu Nascendi is een nieuw wetenschappelijk getoetst tijdschrift dat ernaar streeft een academisch platform van wereldklasse te zijn en te vormen. Het omvat origineel academisch onderzoek met een focus naar politieke filosofie, culturele studies, theorie van internationale betrekkingen, buitenlands 159

160 What We Stand for beleid en het politieke besluitvormingsproces. Het tijdschrift onderzoekt specifieke kwesties door middel van een sociaal-culturele, filosofische en antropologische benadering om een nieuw type van burgerbewustzijn op te wekken. Aangaande de complexiteit van de hedendaagse crisis, instabiliteit en oorlogssituaties, waarbij het ‘stadium van wording’ een vitale rol speelt. French In Statu Nascendi est un nouveau journal des revues par les pairs qui aspire à devenir une plate-forme scolaire globale. Il englobe des recherches académiques dédiées aux: Philosophie politique, études culturels, théories des relations internationales, politiques étrangères et les procédés des décisions politiques. Le journal étudie des questions particulières, par une approche socio-culturelle, philosophique et anthropologique, afin d’accroître un nouveau type de sensibilisation civique concernant la crise contemporaine ; sa complexité, instabilité et situations de guerre, dont la phase de lancement joue un rôle vital. German In Statu Nascendi ist eine neue, wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift, die Beiträge der politischen Philosophie, Kulturwissenschaften, Theorie internationaler Beziehungen, Außenpolitik und politischer Entscheidungsprozesse veröffentlicht. Die Artikel werden im Peer-Review-Verfahren geprüft und untersuchen konkrete Themen mithilfe einer soziokulturellen, philosophischen und anthropologischen Herangehensweise. Ziel ist es, zu einem neuen Bürgerbewusstsein über die Komplexität von gegenwärtigen Krisen, Instabilität und Kriegssituationen, bei denen die Phase der Entstehung eine wesentliche Rolle spielt, beizutragen. Greek Το επιστημονικό περιοδικό In Statu Nascendi δημοσιεύει μετά από κρίση πρωτότυπες μελέτες πάνω σε θέματα Πολιτικής Φιλοσοφίας, Κοινωνικών και Πολιτισμικών Σπουδών, Θεωρίες Διεθνών Σχέσεων, Εξωτερικής Πολιτικής, Πολιτικής Διπλωματίας και Ανθρωπολογίας. Το περιοδικό πραγματεύεται κυρίως εξειδικευμένα άρθρα που προσεγγίζουν πτυχές της κοινωνικοπολιτισμικής, φιλοσοφικής και ανθρωπολογικής επιστήμης και έρευνας με σκοπό την διαμόρφωση ορθής πολιτικής και κοινωνικής συνείδησης σχετικά με την πολυπλοκότητα της σύγχρονης ‘κρίσης’, την αστάθεια και τις εμπόλεμες καταστάσεις που αναδύονται στην σύγχρονη πραγματικότητα, όπου το πλαίσιο του κοινωνικο-πολιτικού γίγνεσθαι χρίζει ιδιαίτερης αναφοράς.

—In Statu Nascendi 3:1 (2020)—

What We Stand for

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Italian In Statu Nascendi–è una nuova rivista accademica che aspira a essere una internazionale piattaforma di ricerca dedicata allo studio di tematiche legate alla Filosofia Politica, gli Affari Internazionali, gli Studi Culturali e le diverse Teorie delle Relazioni Internazionali. La rivista analizza tali specificità tematiche attraverso un approccio socio-culturale, filosofico e antropologico per costruir una nuova consapevolezza civile sulle tante complessità della società odierna, della sua instabilità e conflittualità, all’interno della quale nuovi “processi-in-divenire” interagiscono tra loro in modo rilevante Polish In Statu Nascendi jest nowym recenzowanym czasopismem akademickim, które aspiruje do światowej klasy platformy naukowej obejmującej oryginalne badania naukowe poświęcone kręgowi zagadnień zwiazanych z filozofią polityczną, kulturoznawstwem, teorią stosunków międzynarodowych, polityką zagraniczną i złożonością współczesnego procesu decyzyjnego. To czasopismo analizuje konkretne zagadnienia za pomocą podejścia społeczno kulturowego, filozoficznego i antropologicznego, w celu podniesienia poziom świadomości obywatelskiej na temat złożoności współczesnych sytuacji kryzysowych, niestabilnosci miedzynarodowej, i wojen w których kluczową rolę odgrywa „etap stawania się”. Russian In Statu Nascendi–это новый журнал, рецензируемый экспертами, цель которого–стать научной платформой мирового уровня. In Statu Nascendi публикует академические исследования, посвященные политической философии, культурным вопросам, теории международных отношений, зарубежной политике и политическому процессу принятия решений. Задача публикуемых исследований– способствовать формированию нового типа гражданской осознанности в условиях современного кризиса, нестабильности и военных ситуаций. Spanish In Statu Nascendi es una nueva revista con revisión paritaria que aspira a convertirse en una plataforma de investigación académica mundial dedicada al campo de la Filosofía Política, Estudios Culturales, teorías de las Relaciones Internacionales, Política Exterior, y procesos de toma de decisión política. Esta revista analiza asuntos de relevancia internacional a través de un enfoque socio-cultural, filosófico y antropológico. Nuestro —In Statu Nascendi 3:1 (2020)—

162 What We Stand for objetivo es crear un nuevo tipo de conciencia cívica que tenga en cuenta la complejidad de las crisis coetáneas y la problemática de la inestabilidad y la guerra en las que el ‘stage-of-becoming’ juega un rol crucial. Turkish In Statu Nascendi–Siyaset Felsefesi, Kültürel Çalışmalar, Uluslararası İlişkiler Teorisi, Dış Politika ve siyasi Karar verme sürecine adanmış özgün akademik araştırmaları kapsayan dünya çapında bir akademik platform olmayı amaçlayan yeni bir hakemli dergidir. Dergi, “kriz aşamasının” hayati bir rol oynadığı çağdaş kriz, istikrarsızlık ve savaş durumlarının karmaşıklığı hakkında yeni bir sivil farkındalık yaratmak için sosyo-kültürel, felsefi ve antropolojik bir yaklaşımla belirli konuları araştırıyor. Ukrainian In Statu Nascendi–це новий рецензований науковий журнал метою якого стати науковою платформою на світовому рівні. Опубліковані академічні вивчення присвячені політичній філософії, культурології, міжнародним відносинам та зарубіжній політиці, і також політичному процесу прийняття питань. Вивчатимуться дослідження соціальнокультурними, філософськими та антропологічними підходами та направлені на створення нового виду громадської свідомості в умовах сучасного кризисну в світі, нестабільності та військових ситуацій.

—In Statu Nascendi 3:1 (2020)—

Coming up Next on In Statu Nascendi In Statu Nascendi is a peer-reviewed journal that aspires to be a world-class scholarly platform encompassing original academic research dedicated to the circle of Political Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Theory of International Relations, Foreign Policy, and the political Decisionmaking process. The journal investigates specific issues through a socio-cultural, philosophical, and anthropological approach to raise a new type of civic awareness about the complexity of contemporary crisis, instability, and warfare situations, where the “stage-of-becoming” plays a vital role. Issue 2020: 2 comprises, amongst others, the following interviews & articles:      

Clarity is what I seek first: An interview with Professor Tamara Albertini by Piotr Pietrzak Reinventing Politics: An Epistemic Conversion of Information Technologies Information society and a new form of embodiment The analysis of the economic and political determinants of the Venezuelan presidential crisis (2019–) Balance of Power and the 21st Century—Iron Law of International Relations or an Outdated Idea North-south Railway Construction Projects in Visegrád Four Countries (V4). Spillovers of Central East European intergovernmental transport development initiatives

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