DOCSLIB.ORG

Fourth Estate 1 Fourth Estate

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Fourth Estate 1 Fourth Estate Fourth Estate 1 Fourth Estate The Fourth Estate (or fourth estate) is a societal or political force or institution whose influence is not consistently or officially recognized. "Fourth Estate" most commonly refers to the news media; especially print journalism or "The Press". Thomas Carlyle attributed the origin of the term to Edmund Burke, who used it in a parliamentary debate in 1787 on the opening up of Press reporting of the House of Commons of Great Britain.[1] Earlier writers have applied the term to lawyers, to the British queens consort (acting as a free agent, independent of the king), and to the proletariat. The term makes implicit reference to the earlier division of the three Estates of the Realm. The Press In current use the term is applied to the Press,[2] with the earliest use in this sense described by Thomas Carlyle in his book On Heroes and Hero Worship: Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.[3] In Burke's 1787 coining he would have been making reference to the traditional three estates of Parliament: The Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal and the Commons.[4] If, indeed, Burke did make the statement Carlyle attributes to him, the remark may have been in the back of Carlyle's mind when he wrote in his French Revolution (1837) that "A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up; increases and multiplies, irrepressible, incalculable."[5] In this context, the other three estates are those of the French States-General: the church, the nobility and the townsmen.[4] Carlyle, however, may have mistaken his attribution: Thomas Macknight, writing in 1858, observes that Burke was merely a teller at the "illustrious nativity of the Fourth Estate".[6] If Burke is excluded, other candidates for coining the term are Henry Brougham speaking in Parliament in 1823 or 1824[7] and Thomas Macaulay in an essay of 1828 reviewing Hallam's Constitutional History: "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm."[8] By 1835, when William Hazlitt (another editor of Michel de Montaigne—see below) applied the term to an individual journalist, William Cobbett, the phrase was well established.[9][10] Oscar Wilde wrote: In old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and “demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the [11] House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism. ” In American English, the phrase "fourth estate" is contrasted with the "fourth branch of government", a term that originated because no direct equivalents to the estates of the realm exist in the United States. The "fourth estate" is used to emphasize the independence of the Press, while the "fourth branch" suggests that the Press is not independent of the government.[12] Alternative meanings In European law In 1580 Montaigne proposed that governments should hold in check a fourth estate of lawyers selling justice to the rich and denying it to rightful litigants who do not bribe their way to a verdict:[13][14] What is more barbarous than to see a nation [...] where justice is lawfully denied him, that hath not wherewithall to pay for it; and that this merchandize hath so great credit, that in a politicall government there should be set up a fourth estate [tr. Latin: quatriesme estat] of Lawyers, breathsellers and pettifoggers [...]. —Michel de Montaigne, in the translation by John Florio, 1603 Fourth Estate 2 The proletariat An early citation for this is Henry Fielding in The Covent Garden Journal (1752): None of our political writers...take notice of any more than three estates, namely, Kings, Lords, and Commons...passing by in silence that very large and powerful body which form the fourth estate in this community...The Mob.[15] (This is an early use of "mob" to mean the mobile vulgus, the common Il quarto stato (1901): a march of strikers in Turin, Italy masses.) This sense has prevailed in other countries: In Italy, for example, striking workers in 1890s Turin were depicted as Il quarto stato—The Fourth Estate—in a painting by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo.[16] A political journal of the left, Quarto Stato, published in Milan, Italy, in 1926, also reflected this meaning.[17] British Queens Consort In a parliamentary debate of 1789 Thomas Powys, 1st Baron Lilford, MP, demanded of minister William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham that he should not allow powers of regency to "a fourth estate: the queen".[18] This was reported by Burke, who, as noted above, went on to use the phrase with the meaning of "press". Fiction In his novel The Fourth Estate Jeffrey Archer wrote "In May 1789, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the 'Estates General'. The First Estate consisted of three hundred clergy. The Second Estate, three hundred nobles. The Third Estate, six hundred commoners." The book is a fictionalization from episodes in the lives of two real-life Press Barons: Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch. Notes [1] Schultz, Julianne (1998). Reviving the fourth estate. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-521-62970-6. [2] "estate, n, 7b". Oxford English Dictionary (2 ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. 1989. [3] Carlyle, Thomas (19 May 1840). "Lecture V: The Hero as Man of Letters. Johnson, Rousseau, Burns" (http:/ / www. gutenberg. org/ files/ 20585/ 20585-h/ 20585-h. htm). On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History. Six Lectures. Reported with emendations and additions (Dent, 1908 ed.). London: James Fraser. p. 392. OCLC 2158602. [4] OED: "estate, n, 6a" [5] "Chapter V. The Fourth Estate" (http:/ / www. worldwideschool. org/ library/ books/ hst/ european/ TheFrenchRevolution/ chap39. html), The French Revolution, Sixth, London: Griffith Farrane Browne, pp. 146–148, , retrieved November 12, 2009 [6] Macknight, Thomas (1858). History of the life and times of Edmund Burke. 1. London: Chapman and Hall. p. 462. OCLC 3565018. [7] Ross, Charles (9 June 1855). "Replies to Minor Queries". Notes and Queries (London: William Thoms) 11 (294): 452. Ross (October 1800–6 December 1884) was chief parliamentary reporter for The Times. [8] Macaulay, Thomas (September 1828). "Hallam's constitutional history". The Edinburgh Review (London: Longmans) 48: 165. [9] Hazlitt, William (1835). Character of W. Cobbett M. P. Finsbury, London: J Watson. p. 3. OCLC 4451746. "He is too much for any single newspaper antagonist...He is a kind of fourth estate in the politics of the country." [10] de Montaigne, Michel; Cotton, Charles (1680). Hazlitt, William. ed. The Complete Works of Michael de Montaigne (1842 ed.). London: J Templeman. [11] Wilde, Oscar (February 1891). "The Soul of Man under Socialism". Fortnightly Review 49 (290): 292–319. [12] Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon. Unreliable Sources (New York, NY: Lyle Stuart, 1990) ISBN 0-8184-0521-X [13] John Florio (tr.) (1603), Michel de Montaigne, 1, Folio Society (published 2006), p. 104 [14] For a more recent translation, see Hazlitt's edition of 1842:"What can be more outrageous than to see a nation where, by lawful custom, the office of a Judge is to be bought and sold, where judgments are paid for with ready money, and where justice may be legally denied him that has not the wherewithal to pay...a fourth estate of wrangling lawyers to add to the three ancient ones of the church, nobility and people, which fourth estate, having the laws in their hands, and sovereign power over men's lives and fortunes, make a body separate from the nobility." (Hazlitt 1842: 45) [15] Fielding, Henry (13 June 1752). Covent Garden Journal (London) (47)., Quoted in OED "estate, n, 7b". Fourth Estate 3 [16] Paulicelli, Eugenia (2001). Barański, Zygmunt G.; West, Rebecca J.. ed. The Cambridge companion to modern Italian culture. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 248. ISBN 978-0-521-55982-9. For his painting, Pellizza transferred the action to his home village of Volpedo. [17] Pugliese, Stanislao G. (1999). Carlo Rosselli: socialist heretic and antifascist exile. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 67–69. ISBN 978-0-674-00053-7. [18] Edmund Burke, ed. (1792). Dodsley's Annual Register for 1789. 31. London: J Dodsley. p. 112. The Whigs in parliament supported the transfer of power to the Regent, rather than the sick king's consort, Queen Charlotte. External links • " The Fourth Estate (http:/ / www. worldwideschool. org/ library/ books/ hst/ european/ TheFrenchRevolution/ chap39. html)", Section V of French Revolution by Thomas Carlyle, as posted in the online library of World Wide School Article Sources and Contributors 4 Article Sources and Contributors Fourth Estate Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=513235168 Contributors: AMittelman, Ariedartin, Armeria, Ashley Pomeroy, Bhuston, Broonaldo, Burschik, CBinParadise, Calicocat, Chivista, Cleverboy, Ctbolt, DARTH SIDIOUS 2, Dan Forester, Dante Alighieri, Earth, Eusebeus, Evolauxia, Ewlyahoocom, Excirial, FraFZ, Hairy Dude, HectorRodriguez, Hux, Infinity0, Jack1956, Jmabel, Jorfer, Kbdank71, Kenyon, Lacrimosus, Lionni, MK8, Magnoliasucks, Mailer diablo, Maurreen, Mcom411, Melchoir, Mithent, Mmyotis, NYScholar, Nbarth, Nsemotiuk, Nurg, OlEnglish, Old Moonraker, Peter Ellis, Pigkeeper, Pinethicket, Randwicked, Richardchilton, Ringbang, Rlitwin, Rpresser, Sam Hocevar, Sfahey, Shredidiah, SimonTrew, Sinblox, Sobolewski, Sparkit, Sphilbrick, StevenLLL122, Stevertigo, Stevietheman, StradivariusTV, The Jacobin, Tuckerresearch, Whkoh, Wikipietime, Wolfkeeper, Yamamoto Ichiro, Yomangan, Ziggypowe, 87 anonymous edits Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors File:Il quarto stato (Volpedo).jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Il_quarto_stato_(Volpedo).jpg License: Public Domain Contributors: Cherubino License Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported //creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Ethics in Photojournalism: Past, Present, and Future
    Ethics in Photojournalism: Past, Present, and Future By Daniel R. Bersak S.B. Comparative Media Studies & Electrical Engineering/Computer Science Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003 SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES AT THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SEPTEMBER, 2006 Copyright 2006 Daniel R. Bersak, All Rights Reserved The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Signature of Author: _____________________________________________________ Department of Comparative Media Studies, August 11, 2006 Certified By: ___________________________________________________________ Edward Barrett Senior Lecturer, Department of Writing Thesis Supervisor Accepted By: __________________________________________________________ William Uricchio Professor of Comparative Media Studies Director Ethics In Photojournalism: Past, Present, and Future By Daniel R. Bersak Submitted to the Department of Comparative Media Studies, School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences on August 11, 2006, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Comparative Media Studies Abstract Like writers and editors, photojournalists are held to a standard of ethics. Each publication has a set of rules, sometimes written, sometimes unwritten, that governs what that publication considers to be a truthful and faithful representation of images to the public. These rules cover a wide range of topics such as how a photographer should act while taking pictures, what he or she can and can’t photograph, and whether and how an image can be altered in the darkroom or on the computer.
    [Show full text]
  • Combatting Fake News
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Southern Methodist University Science and Technology Law Review Volume 20 | Number 2 Article 17 2017 Combatting Fake News: Alternatives to Limiting Social Media Misinformation and Rehabilitating Quality Journalism Dallas Flick Southern Methodist University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.smu.edu/scitech Part of the Internet Law Commons Recommended Citation Dallas Flick, Combatting Fake News: Alternatives to Limiting Social Media Misinformation and Rehabilitating Quality Journalism, 20 SMU Sci. & Tech. L. Rev. 375 (2017) https://scholar.smu.edu/scitech/vol20/iss2/17 This Comment is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at SMU Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Science and Technology Law Review by an authorized administrator of SMU Scholar. For more information, please visit http://digitalrepository.smu.edu. Combatting Fake News: Alternatives to Limiting Social Media Misinformation and Rehabilitating Quality Journalism Dallas Flick* I. INTRODUCTION The continued expansion and development of the Internet has generated a malicious side effect: social media intermediaries such as Facebook and Google permit the dispersion of third-party generated fake news and misin- formation. While the term “fake news” tends to shift in definition, it most frequently denotes blatantly false information posted on the Internet intended to sway opinion.1 The social and political implications for
    [Show full text]
  • Through the Network (Of Networks) – the Fifth Estate* By
    Through the Network (of Networks) – the Fifth Estate* by William H. Dutton Professor of Internet Studies Oxford Internet Institute University of Oxford *Prepared for an Inaugural Lecture, Examination Schools, University of Oxford, 15 October 2007. I thank Martin Elton, Linda Frankland, Ellen Helsper, Malcolm Peltu and Juliet Webster for their comments and encouragement to discuss this topic. 1 It is an honour for me to present my inaugural lecture to you, and to do so here in The Examination Schools. This is a special place and – as we all know – place matters. Today, I will focus on how – in Internet time and space – users are able to reconfigure their access to information, people and other resources in new ways that are of major significance for society. The Rise of a Fifth Estate in Internet Time and Space In an earlier era, printing was tied to the rise of the press as a major institution. Its subsequent growing role in conjunction with the development of radio, television and other mass media has created an independent institution in many nations, which has become known as the ‘Fourth Estate’. This has become central to pluralist democratic processes. Today I would like to explain why I believe it would not be an exaggeration to argue that a new form of social accountability is emerging in what I am calling the ‘Fifth Estate’. It is enabled by the growing use of the Internet and related information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as the personal computer and World Wide Web. Essentially, the Internet is enabling people to network with other individuals and with a vast range of information, services and technical resources.
    [Show full text]
  • Jls 725 Editorial Writing
    EDITORIAL JLS 725 WRITING JLS725 EDITORIAL WRITING Course Code JLS725 Course Title Editorial Writing Course Developer/Writer Andrew Asan Ate. Igbinedion University, Okada, Benin City. Course Editor Mr Oloruntola Sunday Department of Mass Communication, University of Lagos, Akoka. Course Coordinator Chidinma H. Onwubere National Open University of Nigeria Victoria Island, Lagos. Programme Leader Christine I. Ofulue , Ph.D National Open University of Nigeria Victoria Island, Lagos. NATIONAL OPEN UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA ii JLS725 EDITORIAL WRITING National Open University of Nigeria Headquarters 14/16 Ahmadu Bello Way Victoria Island Lagos Abuja Office National Open University of Nigeria 5, Dar Es Salaam Street, Off Aminu Kano Crescent Wuse 11 Abuja, Nigeria. e-mail: [email protected] URL : www.nou.edu.ng Published by: National Open University of Nigeria 2008 First Printed 2008 ISBN: 978-058-748-9 All Rights Reserved iii JLS725 EDITORIAL WRITING CONTETS PAGE Module 1……………………………………………………. 1 Unit 1 Meaning of Editorial and Qualities of Good Editorials……………………………………… 1-6 Unit 2 Public Opinion and Editorials...……………… 7-14 Unit 3 Editorials and other Forms of Writing………... 15-21 Module 2……………………………………………………. 22 Unit 1 Sourcing the Editorial Materials……………… 22-27 Unit 2 Editorial Audience and Qualities of Editorial Writers………………………………………... 28-34 Unit 3 Editorial Board………………..……………… 35-40 Unit 4 Techniques in Editorial Writing…. ………….. 41-48 Module 3……………………………………………………. 49 Unit 1 Determinants of Editorial Subjects …………... 49-53 Unit 2 Classification
    [Show full text]
  • UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Romantic Liberalism
    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Romantic Liberalism DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in English by Brent Lewis Russo Dissertation Committee: Professor Jerome Christensen, Chair Professor Andrea Henderson Associate Professor Irene Tucker 2014 Chapter 1 © 2013 Trustees of Boston University All other materials © 2014 Brent Lewis Russo TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii CURRICULUM VITAE iv ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION v INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: Charles Lamb’s Beloved Liberalism: Eccentricity in the Familiar Essays 9 CHAPTER 2: Liberalism as Plenitude: The Symbolic Leigh Hunt 33 CHAPTER 3: Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Illiberalism and the Early Reform Movement 58 CHAPTER 4: William Hazlitt’s Fatalism 84 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Charles Rzepka and the Trustees of Boston University for permission to include Chapter One of my dissertation, which was originally published in Studies in Romanticism (Fall 2013). Financial support was provided by the University of California, Irvine Department of English, School of Humanities, and Graduate Division. iii CURRICULUM VITAE Brent Lewis Russo 2005 B.A. in English Pepperdine University 2007 M.A. in English University of California, Irvine 2014 Ph.D. in English with Graduate Emphasis in Critical Theory University of California, Irvine PUBLICATIONS “Charles Lamb’s Beloved Liberalism: Eccentricity in the Familiar Essays.” Studies in Romanticism. Fall 2013. iv ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Romantic Liberalism By Brent Lewis Russo Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Irvine, 2014 Professor Jerome Christensen, Chair This dissertation examines the Romantic beginnings of nineteenth-century British liberalism. It argues that Romantic authors both helped to shape and attempted to resist liberalism while its politics were still inchoate.
    [Show full text]
  • The Trouble with the Fourth Estate
    The Trouble with the Fourth Estate Axel Bruns, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, QUT [email protected] – http://snurb.info/ – @snurb_dot_info Hello. We’re here tonight to discuss the potential for bloggers to become the new fourth estate – which immediately raises two questions: 1) which bloggers? and 2) what do we mean by fourth estate? Let me start with the first. I think we need to be careful not to overclaim on what the role of bloggers in political discourse is, or can be – and I’ve done my research in this field for the best part of the past decade, and am probably as guilty of overestimating the impact of blogging as the next person. When we’re speaking of bloggers as a potential fourth estate, we’re really mainly speaking of the minority of news and political bloggers, and much less so of the majority of bloggers who cover all manner of other themes, from providing updates on their or their company’s professional activities all the way through individuals blogging on themes like sports, crafts, food, or highly personal matters. From the research that we’ve done in the past few years, in Australia there are probably some 200 bloggers who can be said to deal with news and politics on a regular basis – and that’s already starting to include the so- called ‘bloggers’ on the opinion pages of many newspaper Websites, and the commentary feeds of sites like Crikey and On Line Opinion, which are really far more than simple blogs.
    [Show full text]
  • Our Fourth Estate (H.C
    Our Fourth Estate (H.C. Frisbee and other early editors of local newspapers) By Douglas Shepard / Barker Museum Newsletter (Winter 1997) Over the years in this newsletter we have drawn heavily on material from the Censor as well as from the other newspapers serving our region. But, although we have used these sources, we have never actually focused on them for their own sake. Well, we intend to remedy that grievous lack starting right now. Let us begin, like Alice, at the beginning: the “masthead”. If you are an old-timer here, you are so used to it that you probably do not even hear anything odd when we say the name of our main source, the Censor. But stop for a minute and try and imagine what in the world Mr. Frisbee had in mind when he named it in February, 1821. Was he going to carefully not print what he found objectionable in the news? No. Actually, in naming his paper, he was working within a long and venerable tradition. As the nation states of Europe and the British Isles began to shape themselves – and each other – from the Renaissance period on, the need for information began to grow. Large banking establishments and other important cross-border merchant groups began circulating what we would call newsletters or house organs which quickly became important to others outside the group as well. At the same time, increased literacy and improvements in the printing press encouraged the dissemination of court circulars about the official schedule of the monarch and his/her entourage.
    [Show full text]
  • 'What Is Life?' Mathelinda Nabugodi Antae, Vol. 3, No. 2. (Oct., 2016)
    148 166 Answering the Question: ‘What is Life?’ Mathelinda Nabugodi antae, Vol. 3, No. 2. (Oct., 2016), 149-166 Proposed Creative Commons Copyright Notices Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms: a. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. b. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access). antae is an international refereed postgraduate journal aimed at exploring current issues and debates within English Studies, with a particular interest in literature, criticism and their various contemporary interfaces. Set up in 2013 by postgraduate students in the Department of English at the University of Malta, it welcomes submissions situated across the interdisciplinary spaces provided by diverse forms and expressions within narrative, poetry, theatre, literary theory, cultural criticism, media studies, digital cultures, philosophy and language studies. Creative writing and book reviews are also accepted. Nabugodi, ‘Answering the Question: “What is Life”’ 149 Answering the Question: ‘What is Life?’ Mathelinda Nabugodi University College London Percy Bysshe Shelley’s final poem, ‘The Triumph of Life’—cut short by Shelley’s death by drowning on the 8th of July 1822—offers a series of dream visions in which life’s triumphal procession appears.
    [Show full text]
  • Anglo-Saxon Constitutional History
    English Legal History—Outline (former l16) 11/5/2018 Page 1 THE DEPOSITION OF KINGS 1. The slow changes in the English constitution of the 14th and 15th centuries: a. the development of a bicameral Parliament b. its gradual growth of involvement in taxation and legislation and the of the custom of consulting it on great matters of the realm. c. the growth of the power and, at least to a certain extent, of the independence of the departments of state (the chancery and the exchequer) and of the courts d. the attempt of the magnates to control the departments of state by controlling appointments, and of the king to control both the departments of state and the magnates through the wardrobe and chamber—and of the ultimate failure, at least in the 14th century, of both efforts e. the rise in the middle of the 14th century of the importance of the council. In the Lancastrian period two lines of authority emerge, which did not conflict: one between the signet and the secretary, the other between the privy seal and the council, both leading ultimately to the great seal and the chancery. f. the experimentatation of Edward III with chamber finance and the return of chamber finance in the reign of Edward IV a hundred years later and the increasingly tight control that Henry VII had over finance. 2. The medieval depositions: a. Edward II—1327. b. Richard II—1399. c. Henry VI—1460. (Not a deposition, an act of accord, though a deposition of sorts took place in March of 1461.
    [Show full text]
  • Literature, Emotions, and the Possible: Hazlitt and Stendhal
    Literature, Emotions, and the Possible: Hazlitt and Stendhal “A possible experience or a possible truth does not equate to real experience or real truth minus the value ’real’; but at least in the opinion of its devotees, it has in it something out-and- out divine, a fiery, soaring quality, a constructive will, a conscious utopianism that does not shrink from reality but treats it, on the contrary, as a mission and an invention.” (Robert Musil, The Man without Qualities) Since the 1970s, literary criticism has been dominated first by formalist and then by cultural studies approaches with a general attitude of contempt for science, reason, and the truth. Paradoxically, in the last decades, literary critics have avoided confronting what is fundamental in literature: its intrinsic value as literature, and its ability to represent and express human psychology. The ethical and the aesthetic dimensions of literary forms have been neglected in favour of a sometimes vague sociological vision and a repetitive Freudian- Lacanian interpretation; they reduce the immense variety of affective phenomena to a few complexes (Oedipus, castration) or to an empty linguistic game. Fortunately, for the sake of literature, since the 1980s, some analytical philosophers have been interested in the affective dimension, and have been reflecting on the emotions elicited by the arts and on the knowledge value of literature. As evident nowadays, several disciplines are undergoing what can be called the affective turn, and a new vision of literary and artistic phenomena, revisiting some questions debated since Aristotle and very important in the eighteenth century, is shattering the structuralist, poststructuralist, deconstructionist, and postmodern spell.
    [Show full text]
  • Media and Mass Disempowerment of Civil Society in Africa
    The African e-Journals Project has digitized full text of articles of eleven social science and humanities journals. This item is from the digital archive maintained by Michigan State University Library. Find more at: http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/africanjournals/ Available through a partnership with Scroll down to read the article. The Sleeping Dog Cannot Bark: Media and Mass Disempowerment of Civil Society in Africa By Danladi Musa Abstract The concepts of media as the fourth estate and the society's watchdog are popular among communication scholars. However, a consideration of the actualization of this concept is indicative of the media's failing in playing these roles. Very often, the media marginalise and disempower the masses whose causes they ought to promote. If the media were to truly play the watchdog role as the fourth estate, then both the structure and ownership of the media must be reviewed with a view to redressing the imbalances that make them tools for the disempowerment of civil society in Africa. Dr. Danladi Musa teaches at the Department of English, Communication and Media Studies, University of Zimbabwe. 79 Un Chien Dormant n'Aboit pas: Les Medias et le Passage du Pouvoir a la Societe Civile en Afrique Par Dr Danladi Musa Resume Le concept que les medias constituent le quatrieme quartier et le chien de garde de la societe" n'est rien de nouveau chez les specialistes en communication. On remarque, cependant, que les choses se passent autrement en realite, ce qui revient au meme qu'accuser les medias de ne pas jouer leur role comme il faut.
    [Show full text]
  • Oligarchic Democracy Call for Papers
    CALL FOR PAPERS Constitutional Responses to the Crisis of Representation and Oligarchic Democracy Introduction This Call for Papers is issued by the Constitution Building Programme of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), as part of a research project on Constitutional Responses to the Crisis of Representation and Oligarchic Democracy. The project seeks to examine the problem of ‘oligarchic democracy’ and to consider whether, and how, constitutional design may provide a useful corrective to the oligarchic tendencies in liberal-democracies. The expectation is that the papers will inspire a focused debate around the issue of oligarchic democracy and anti-oligarchic constitution-making. Selected papers will be synthesized into one report that will be addressed to a mixed audience of academics and reflective practitioners in various fields of constitutional practice, whether as constitutional lawyers, politicians, international advisors, or civil society activists working in constitutional reform, public policy or poverty-reduction fields. It is also intended that the best papers will be selected for inclusion in an edited volume or special edition of an academic journal. Papers should be written in English. The length of each paper should between 5000 and 8000 words, including all notes and references. Papers are invited in response to any aspect arising from or connected with any of the five thematic areas outlined in the attached Framing Document. It is expected that there will be a panel of the workshop discussing each of these five thematic areas. Selected applicants will be invited to present their papers at an Authors’ Workshop to be held in The Netherlands during 2017, with a view to eventual publication on the International IDEA Constitution Building website (www.constitutionnet.org).
    [Show full text]