ACTA UNIVERSITATIS UPSALIENSIS Skrifter Utgivna Av Statsvetenskapliga Föreningen I Uppsala 191

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

ACTA UNIVERSITATIS UPSALIENSIS Skrifter Utgivna Av Statsvetenskapliga Föreningen I Uppsala 191 ACTA UNIVERSITATIS UPSALIENSIS Skrifter utgivna av Statsvetenskapliga föreningen i Uppsala 191 Jaakko Turunen Semiotics of Politics Dialogicality of Parliamentary Talk Dissertation presented at Uppsala University to be publicly examined in Brusevitzsalen, Gamla Torget 6, Uppsala, Friday, 13 February 2015 at 13:15 for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The examination will be conducted in English. Faculty examiner: Professor Jens Bartelson (Lunds universitet). Abstract Turunen, J. 2015. Semiotics of Politics. Dialogicality of Parliamentary Talk. Skrifter utgivna av Statsvetenskapliga föreningen i Uppsala 191. 396 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsali- ensis. ISBN 978-91-554-9131-4. Parliamentary talk, despite its central place in politics, has not been the focus of many qualita- tive studies. The present study investigates how parliamentary talk emerges in a dialogue between different arguments in the parliament. At the same time, this is a study of politics, of how human interaction gives birth to laws that regulate life in two contemporary democracies, Slovakia and Poland. It provides a close-reading of two political debates: on the state lan- guage in Slovakia and on gender parity in Poland. This study draws on hermeneutic and semiotic thinkers such as Gadamer, Bakhtin and Lotman to elaborate a dialogical understanding of language that can provide the basis for a method of textual analysis. The dialogical understanding of language emphasises that text and talk must be studied in the context of an interaction. The unit of analysis is a pair of utteranc- es, a question and an answer. Until an utterance has been interpreted, it carries only the poten- tial of meaning; its meaning is materialised by the responses it receives. The study further argues that conversation analysis and its tools can usefully be applied to the study of political debate. The method provides for the analysis of the dynamics between micro-scale interaction in the parliament and the macro-scale dynamics of culture. These dynamics assume two different forms that Lotman termed as “translation” and “explosion”. The study shows that parliamentary debate is characterised by a constantly evolving topic of discussion, namely that the meaning of the bill at the start of the debate and at the end of the debate are really two different bills. This is not because the content of the bill has under- gone changes, but because in the course of the debate, the bill has generated new cultural connections. Casting a vote in support of the bill does not approve just the bill itself but a whole set of interconnected political, social and cultural values—what Lotman approached as the semiosphere. This study suggests Lotman’s cultural semiotics can provide for “imperfect hermeneutics” that is sensitive to the dynamic and contested nature of tradition in politics whilst acknowledging the inevitability of culture in mediating political talk. Keywords: language, dialogicality, parliamentary talk, Mikhail Bakhtin, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Yuri Lotman, Poland, Slovakia Jaakko Turunen, , Department of Government, Box 514, Uppsala University, SE-75120 Uppsala, Sweden. © Jaakko Turunen 2015 ISSN 0346-7538 ISBN 978-91-554-9131-4 urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-238631 (http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-238631) Cover picture: Igor Tajiev, Untitled, 1989. Printed by DanagårdLiTHO AB, 2015 To Joanna and Sofia Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................9 TRANSCRIPTION SYMBOLS ........................................................................13 ABBREVIATIONS ......................................................................................15 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .....................................................................17 Need for a Method .............................................................................26 Text as the Object of Study ...............................................................35 Structure of the Book and the Empirical Studies ...............................38 Contributions .....................................................................................40 CHAPTER 2: LINGUISTIC TURN AND BEYOND IN POLITICS ..........................45 Stephen Toulmin’s Field-Dependent Logic .......................................48 Quentin Skinner and Illocutionary Force ..........................................55 Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis ............................69 Monologism and Dialogism ..............................................................80 Towards Dialogic Language ..............................................................89 CHAPTER 3: TALK AND IMMANENT CONTEXT ............................................93 Context and Linguistics .....................................................................94 Conversation Analysis and Social Action .........................................97 Institutional Talk and Context ...........................................................105 Context and Culture ...........................................................................121 CHAPTER 4: DIALOGICALITY OF POLITICAL TALK ......................................125 Dialogicality of Understanding ..........................................................127 Dialogicality of Language .................................................................133 Dialogicality of Culture .....................................................................140 Understanding, Explosion and Translation Reconsidered .................153 CHAPTER 5: ANALYSING OBSERVED TALK ................................................157 Dialogicality and Understanding .......................................................157 Conversation Analysis as a Method ..................................................162 Material and Validity .........................................................................176 CHAPTER 6: DEBATING LANGUAGE ..........................................................181 The Language and the State ...............................................................181 The Slovakian Legislative and the Routines of the National Council ................................................................................184 Talk in the National Council ..............................................................187 The Draft for a New State Language Law .........................................190 Debating Language ............................................................................212 State Language Law and the Public Contact .....................................247 State Language Law as Translation and Explosion ...........................255 Conclusions ........................................................................................269 CHAPTER 7: MAKING GENDER POLITICAL .................................................277 The Polish Legislative and the Sejm Routines ..................................280 Talk in the Sejm .................................................................................284 Talk in the Committee .......................................................................285 The Citizens’ Initiative and the Debate in Short ...............................286 Equal Chances or Equal Representation ............................................293 Equal Chances in Law and Practice ...................................................297 Talking Femininity as a Political Identity into Being ........................307 The Letter of Law and Good Democracy ..........................................324 Gender as Translation and Explosion ................................................332 Conclusions ........................................................................................342 CHAPTER 8: TOWARDS IMPERFECT HERMENEUTICS ....................................351 Dialogicality of Politics .....................................................................352 Methods of Interpretation and Analysis ............................................365 Towards Imperfect Hermeneutics ......................................................370 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................379 8 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my main supervisor Inga Brandell for your support for this work at different stages, on different levels, and on different fronts. While for a doctoral student the text is the primary focus, I have come to realise that the ideal supervisor acts on multiple fronts simultaneously. I want to thank you for letting me pursue my own path but keeping a careful eye on where I was heading. It has been a privilege to have you as my main supervisor. Above all, you have always understood that a deadline for any presentation text also marks the date you will first see it. And you have still been able to come back to me with comments! I would also like to thank Johan Tralau, my other supervisor, for your op- timism for the project as well as the ecumenical stance on science you have introduced to my work. I have truly enjoyed our discussions and the intellec- tual depth you have brought into our discussions. I also want to thank you for helping me out with many practical issues at Uppsala. Irina Sandomirskaja, not officially my supervisor you nevertheless took up the task with great professionalism and you were always available to read and discuss my texts. You have taught me so much that it is impossible to re- count it all here. Let me just mention the day you showed
Recommended publications
  • Chaosmosis : an Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm I Felix Guattari ; Translated by Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis
    Chaosmosis an ethico-aesthetic paradigm Felix Guattari translated by Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS BLOOMINGTON & INDIANAPOLIS English translation© 1995, Power Institute, Paul Bains, and Julian Pefanis Chaosmosis was originally published in French as Chaosmose. © 1992, Editions Galilee All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses' Resolutions on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39 .48-1984. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Guattari, Felix. [Chaosmose. English] Chaosmosis : an ethico-aesthetic paradigm I Felix Guattari ; translated by Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-253-32945-0 (alk. paper). - ISBN 0-253-21004-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Psychoanalysis-Philosophy. 2. Subjectivity. I. Title. BFl 75.G81313 1995' 95-31403 194-dc20 1 2 3 4 5 00 99 98 97 96 95 On the planking, on the ship's bulwarks, on the sea, with the course of the sun through the sky and the ship, an unreadable and wrenching script takes shape, takes shape and destroys itself at the same slow pace - shadows, spines, shafts of broken light refocused in the angles, the triangles of a fleeting geometry that yields to the shadow of the ocean waves.
    [Show full text]
  • Bakhtin's Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives
    literary.chronotope.book Page 3 Tuesday, May 4, 2010 5:47 PM BAKHTIN'S THEORY OF THE LITERARY CHRONOTOPE: REFLECTIONS, APPLICATIONS, PERSPECTIVES Nele Bemong, Pieter Borghart, Michel De Dobbeleer, Kristoffel Demoen, Koen De Temmerman & Bart Keunen (eds.) literary.chronotope.book Page 4 Tuesday, May 4, 2010 5:47 PM © Academia Press Eekhout 2 9000 Gent T. (+32) (0)9 233 80 88 F. (+32) (0)9 233 14 09 [email protected] www.academiapress.be The publications of Academia Press are distributed by: Belgium: J. Story-Scientia nv Wetenschappelijke Boekhandel Sint-Kwintensberg 87 B-9000 Gent T. 09 255 57 57 F. 09 233 14 09 [email protected] www.story.be The Netherlands: Ef & Ef Eind 36 NL-6017 BH Thorn T. 0475 561501 F. 0475 561660 Rest of the world: UPNE, Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA (www.upne.com) Nele Bemong, Pieter Borghart, Michel De Dobbeleer, Kristoffel Demoen, Koen De Temmerman & Bart Keunen (eds.) Bakhtin's Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives Proceedings of the workshop entitled “Bakhtin’s Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives” (27-28 June 2008) supported by the Royal Flemish Academy for Sciences and the Arts. Gent, Academia Press, 2010, v + 213 pp. ISBN 978 90 382 1563 1 D/2010/4804/84 U 1414 Layout: proxess.be Cover: Steebz/KHUAN No part of this publication may be reproduced in print, by photocopy, microfilm or any other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher. literary.chronotope.book Page i Tuesday, May 4, 2010 5:47 PM I CONTENTS Preface .
    [Show full text]
  • Characters in Bakhtin's Theory
    Studies in 20th Century Literature Volume 9 Issue 1 Special Issue on Mikhail Bakhtin Article 5 9-1-1984 Characters in Bakhtin's Theory Anthony Wall Queen's University Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/sttcl Part of the Modern Literature Commons, and the Russian Literature Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Wall, Anthony (1984) "Characters in Bakhtin's Theory," Studies in 20th Century Literature: Vol. 9: Iss. 1, Article 5. https://doi.org/10.4148/2334-4415.1151 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in 20th Century Literature by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Characters in Bakhtin's Theory Abstract A common focus in many modern theories of literature is a reassessment of the traditional view of the character in a narrative text. The position that this article defends is that a revised conception is necessary for an understanding of the means by which dialogism is said to function in novelistic discourse. Revising the notion does not, however, involve discarding it outright as recent theories of the subject would have us do. Nor can we simply void it of all "psychological" content as suggested by many structuralist proposals. To retain Bakhtin's concept of the notion of character, we must understand the term "psychological" in the context of his early book on Freud. In artificially combining Bakhtin's isolated remarks on the literary character, we arrive at a view which postulates textualized voice-sources in the novel.
    [Show full text]
  • Dialogic Pedagogy and Semiotic-Dialogic Inquiry Into Visual Literacies and Augmented Reality
    ISSN: 2325-3290 (online) Dialogic pedagogy and semiotic-dialogic inquiry into visual literacies and augmented reality Zoe Hurley Zayed University, Dubai Abstract Technological determinism has been driving conceptions of technology enhanced learning for the last two decades at least. The abrupt shift to the emergency delivery of online courses during COVID-19 has accelerated big tech’s coup d’état of higher education, perhaps irrevocably. Yet, commercial technologies are not necessarily aligned with dialogic conceptions of learning while a technological transmission model negates learners’ input and interactions. Mikhail Bakhtin viewed words as the multivocal bridge to social thought. His theory of the polysemy of language, that has subsequently been termed dialogism, has strong correlations with the semiotic philosophy of American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce’s semiotic philosophy of signs extends far beyond words, speech acts, linguistics, literary genres, and/or indeed human activity. This study traces links between Bakhtin’s dialogism with Peirce’s semiotics. Conceptual synthesis develops the semiotic-dialogic framework. Taking augmented reality as a theoretical case, inquiry illustrates that while technologies are subsuming traditional pedagogies, teachers and learners, this does not necessarily open dialogic learning. This is because technologies are never dialogic, in and of themselves, although semiotic learning always involves social actors’ interpretations of signs. Crucially, semiotic-dialogism generates theorising of the visual literacies required by learners to optimise technologies for dialogic learning. Key Words: Dialogism / signs / semiotics / questioning / opening / augmented reality / technologies Zoe Hurley (PhD, Lancaster University, UK) is the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs in the College of Communication and Media Sciences at Zayed University, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
    [Show full text]
  • AN INTRODUCTION to INTERTEXTUALITY AS a LITERARY THEORY: DEFINITIONS, AXIOMS and the ORIGINATORS Mevlüde ZENGİN∗ “The Good of a Book Lies in Its Being Read
    Pamukkale Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi Sayı 25/1, 2016, Sayfa 299-326 AN INTRODUCTION TO INTERTEXTUALITY AS A LITERARY THEORY: DEFINITIONS, AXIOMS AND THE ORIGINATORS Mevlüde ZENGİN∗ “The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.” Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose Abstract The aim of this study is to provide a succinct discussion of intertextuality from a theoretical perspective. The concept of intertextuality dates back to the ancient times when the first human history and the discourses about texts began to exist. As a phenomenon it has sometimes been defined as a set of relations which a text has with other texts and/or discourses belonging to various fields and cultural domains. Yet the commencement of intertextuality as a critical theory and an approach to texts was provided by the formulations of such theorists as Ferdinand de Saussure, Mikhail Bakhtin and Roland Barthes before the term ‘intertextuality’ was coined by Julia Kristeva in 1966. This study, focusing on firstly, the path from ‘work’ to ‘text’ and ‘intertext’, both of which ultimately became synonymous, and secondly, the shifting position of the reader/interpreter becoming significant in the discipline of literary studies, aims to define intertextuality as a critical theory and state its fundamentals and axioms formulated by the mentioned originators of the intertextual theory and thus to betray the fact that intertextuality had a poststructuralist and postmodern vein at the outset.
    [Show full text]
  • Dialogue in Peirce, Lotman, and Bakhtin: a Comparative Study
    Dialogue in Peirce, Lotman, andSign Bakhtin: Systems AStudies comparative 44(4), 2016, study 469–493 469 Dialogue in Peirce, Lotman, and Bakhtin: A comparative study Oliver Laas School of Humanities, Tallinn University Narva mnt 25, 10120, Tallinn, Estonia/ The Chair of Graphic Art, Faculty of Fine Arts Estonian Academy of Art, Lembitu 12, 10114, Tallinn, Estonia e-mail: [email protected] Abstract. Th e notion of dialogue is foundational for both Juri Lotman and Mikhail Bakhtin. It is also central in Charles S. Peirce’s semeiotics and logic. While there are several scholarly comparisons of Bakhtin’s and Lotman’s dialogisms, these have yet to be compared with Peirce’s semeiotic dialogues. Th is article takes tentative steps toward a comparative study of dialogue in Peirce, Lotman, and Bakhtin. Peirce’s understanding of dialogue is explicated, and compared with both Lotman’s as well as Bakhtin’s con- ceptions. Lotman saw dialogue as the basic meaning-making mechanism in the semio sphere. Th e benefi ts and shortcomings of reconceptualizing the semiosphere on the basis of Peircean and Bakhtinian dialogues are weighed. Th e aim is to explore methodological alternatives in semiotics, not to challenge Lotman’s initial model. It is claimed that the semiosphere qua model operating with Bakhtinian dialogues is narrower in scope than Lotman’s original conception, while the semiosphere qua model operating with Peircean dialogues appears to be broader in scope. It is concluded that the choice between alternative dialogical foundations must be informed by attentiveness to their diff erences, and should be motivated by the researcher’s goals and theoretical commitments.
    [Show full text]
  • The Semiosphere, Between Informational Modernity and Ecological Postmodernity Pierre-Louis Patoine Et Jonathan Hope
    Document généré le 28 sept. 2021 03:48 Recherches sémiotiques Semiotic Inquiry The Semiosphere, Between Informational Modernity and Ecological Postmodernity Pierre-Louis Patoine et Jonathan Hope J. M. Lotman Résumé de l'article Volume 35, numéro 1, 2015 Parmi les notions développées par Lotman, celle de sémiopshère est certainement celle qui a été la plus commentée. Dans cet article, nous URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1050984ar explorons ses dimensions écologiques et biologiques, en remontant au concept DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/1050984ar de biosphère proposé par Vernadsky et à la vision environnementale de l’art qui apparaît chez Lotman dès La Structure du texte artistique. Notre enquête Aller au sommaire du numéro expose les aspects biosémiotiques de la pensée lotmanienne, aspects qui permettent l’émergence, en son sein, d’un modèle cyclique, homéostatique de la culture, contrebalançant ainsi une vision moderniste où l’art participe à un progrès naïvement linéaire. Éditeur(s) Association canadienne de sémiotique / Canadian Semiotic Association ISSN 0229-8651 (imprimé) 1923-9920 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer cet article Patoine, P.-L. & Hope, J. (2015). The Semiosphere, Between Informational Modernity and Ecological Postmodernity. Recherches sémiotiques / Semiotic Inquiry, 35(1), 11–26. https://doi.org/10.7202/1050984ar Tous droits réservés © Association canadienne de sémiotique / Canadian Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des Semiotic Association, 2018 services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit.
    [Show full text]
  • Semiosphere As a Model of Human Cognition
    494 Aleksei Semenenko Sign Systems Studies 44(4), 2016, 494–510 Homo polyglottus: Semiosphere as a model of human cognition Aleksei Semenenko Department of Slavic and Baltic Languages Stockholm University 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] Abstract. Th e semiosphere is arguably the most infl uential concept developed by Juri Lotman, which has been reinterpreted in a variety of ways. Th is paper returns to Lotman’s original “anthropocentric” understanding of semiosphere as a collective intellect/consciousness and revisits the main arguments of Lotman’s discussion of human vs. nonhuman semiosis in order to position it in the modern context of cognitive semiotics and the question of human uniqueness in particular. In contrast to the majority of works that focus on symbolic consciousness and multimodal communication as specifi cally human traits, Lotman accentuates polyglottism and dialogicity as the unique features of human culture. Formulated in this manner, the concept of semiosphere is used as a conceptual framework for the study of human cognition as well as human cognitive evolution. Keywords: semiosphere; cognition; polyglottism; dialogue; multimodality; Juri Lotman Th e concept of semiosphere is arguably the most infl uential concept developed by the semiotician and literary scholar Juri Lotman (1922–1993), a leader of the Tartu- Moscow School of Semiotics and a founder of semiotics of culture. In a way, it was the pinnacle of Lotman’s lifelong study of culture as an intrinsic component of human individual
    [Show full text]
  • I Russian Formalism and Prague Structuralism
    I RUSSIAN FORMALISM AND PRAGUE STRUCTURALISM The origins of Russian Formalism date back before the Russian Revolution to the activities of the Moscow Linguistic Circle and the St Petersburg-based group, Opojaz, both of which con­ cerned themselves with the study of poetic language. The major figures were Victor Shklovsky, Roman Jakobson, Boris Eikhenbaum, Osip Brik and Yury Tynyanov. The Russian Formalists rejected the unsystematic and eclectic critical ap­ proaches which had previously dominated literary study and endeavoured to create a 'literary science'. As Jakobson put it: The subject of literary science is not literature, but literariness, i.e. that which makes a given work a literary work'. The Formalists were uninterested, therefore, in the representational or expressive aspects of literary texts; they focused on those elements of texts which they considered to be uniquely literary in character. Initially they emphasised the differences between literary language and non-literary or practical language. The best known Formalist concept is that of 'defamiliarisation' (ostranenie) , a concept particularly associated with Shklovsky and discussed in his 'Art as Device', first published in 1917, where he argues that art renews human perception through creating devices which undercut and undermine habitual and automatised forms of perception. In later Formalism the emphasis shifted from the relation between literary and non-literary language to the linguistic and formal aspects ofliterary texts themselves. Jakobson and Tynyanov argued that literary devices themselves also became familiar. They shifted the focus to the means by which certain devices become dominant in literary texts and take on a defamiliarising role in relation to other devices or aspects of the text which are perceived in familiar or automatic terms.
    [Show full text]
  • The Semiosphere, Between Informational Modernity and Ecological Postmodernity Pierre-Louis Patoine and Jonathan Hope
    Document generated on 09/29/2021 12:07 a.m. Recherches sémiotiques Semiotic Inquiry The Semiosphere, Between Informational Modernity and Ecological Postmodernity Pierre-Louis Patoine and Jonathan Hope J. M. Lotman Article abstract Volume 35, Number 1, 2015 The notion of semiosphere is certainly one of Lotman’s most discussed ideas. In this essay, we propose to investigate its ecological and biological dimensions, URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1050984ar tracing them back to Vernadsky’s concept of biosphere and to Lotman’s DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1050984ar environmental vision of art articulated in his early work, The Structure of the Artistic Text. Our investigation reveals how the biosemiotic undercurrents in See table of contents Lotmanian thought enable the emergence of a cyclical, homeostatic model of culture that counterbalances a Modernist vision of art as a force working for unquestioned linear progress. Publisher(s) Association canadienne de sémiotique / Canadian Semiotic Association ISSN 0229-8651 (print) 1923-9920 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this article Patoine, P.-L. & Hope, J. (2015). The Semiosphere, Between Informational Modernity and Ecological Postmodernity. Recherches sémiotiques / Semiotic Inquiry, 35(1), 11–26. https://doi.org/10.7202/1050984ar Tous droits réservés © Association canadienne de sémiotique / Canadian This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit Semiotic Association, 2018 (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal.
    [Show full text]
  • Gender Quotas in the Post-Communist World: Voice of the Parliamentarians by Joshua Dubrow and Adrianna Zabrzewska (Eds.) Was Reviewed by Julia Kubisa (D.Sc
    1 Voice of the Parliamentarians Voice of the Parliamentarians IFiS PAN Publishers Warszawa 2020 This book was funded by the National Science Centre, Poland (project number //B/HS/). The monograph Gender Quotas in the Post-Communist World: Voice of the Parliamentarians by Joshua Dubrow and Adrianna Zabrzewska (eds.) was reviewed by Julia Kubisa (d.sc. Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw). Cover design Joshua Dubrow, Adrianna Zabrzewska, Andrzej Łubniewski The cover art is by Zamir Dubrow. Proofreading Active Communication & Transaltion Burzyński Golubiewski s.c. Copyright © by Authors and Wydawnictwo IFiS PAN ISBN ---- IFiS PAN Publishers - Warsaw, Nowy Świat e-mail: publish@ifi span.edu.pl www.ifi span.waw.pl Table of Contents Preface ............................................................................................. About the Contributors ................................................................... Introduction: Voice, Inequality, and Representation ................... Joshua K. Dubrow and Adrianna Zabrzewska Chapter One: An Introduction to Gender Quotas in Europe ....... Joshua K. Dubrow and Adrianna Zabrzewska Chapter Two: Women in the Parliaments of the Communist and Post-Communist World, – ............................................. Joshua K. Dubrow Chapter Three: Electoral Gender Quotas in Post-Communist Countries as of ........................................................................ Anna Sedysheva, with Joshua K. Dubrow Chapter Four: Polish Parliamentarian Arguments on Gender Descriptive
    [Show full text]
  • Abstracts 325 LINNAR PRIIMÄGI. the Border of the Semiosphere Yuri M
    Abstracts 325 LINNAR PRIIMÄGI. The border of the semiosphere Yuri M. Lotman’s idea of “semiosphere” resulted from the concept of a “collective memory” as a “model of the “culture as such””. Its genuine meaning can be unveiled by comparison with the “biosphere” of Vladimir Vernadsky, the “monads” of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the “Ent” of Parmenides, the “transfinite number” of Georg Cantor, the fractal theory of Benoit Mandelbrot and the “morphology” of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Keywords: semiosphere, collective memory, Yuri Lotman, biosphere, Vladimir Vernadsky, monad, Leibniz, Parmenides, transfinite number, Georg Cantor, fractal, Benoit Mandelbrot, morphology, J. W. Goethe. BERK VAHER. Creating self in utopian exoticism: Abdul Mati Klarwein's “Milk N' Honey” Inspired by the recent resurgence of academic interest in exoticism, the article elaborates on some of the theoretical vindications of the phenomenon by concentrating on its aspects as the Romantic/Modernist artist’s ultimate act of creating Self through the Other. Not being content with the (largely Westernised) genuine exotic cultures, an exote creates his/her own hybrid utopian sign system where elements of various exotic cultures are blended in order to resolve the overabundance of competing identities and establish a superior, transcendent and all-inclusive identity. The artist Abdul Mati Klarwein is a complex and exciting example of this practice. His aesthetic and spiritual act of creating a utopian exotic Self in the book “Milk N’ Honey” (1973) is essentially a radical rewriting of the Old and New Testaments, including pictures from his self-designed Aleph Sanctuary chapel and texts blending black slang with Jewish humour.
    [Show full text]