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The politics of displacement: the Far Right narrative of Europe and its 'others'
The racial demographic shift occurring in many Western countries provides a unique context to study the reactions of a high-power group (White people) to the potential loss of their privileged position in society. Three experiments ( N = 77, N = 302, N = 555) conducted in Canada, the US, and the UK showed that White people who are reminded about the ongoing demographic changes and who see race relations as a zero-sum game whereby any gains by minorities must come at the expense of the majority, experience stronger collective angst and, to a lesser extent, fear (but not anger). In turn, collective angst, but not the other negative group-based emotions, fuels their motivation to protect the existing intergroup hierarchy by withdrawing support for progressive social movements and increases anti-immigration sentiments. Downregulating the existential threat experienced by White majorities in the face of a racial demographic shift may be one way to reduce acrimonious behavioral intentions aimed at preserving their place in the social hierarchy.
Across Eastern Germany, where political allegiances are shifting to the right, the wolf is increasingly seen as a trespasser and threat to the local way of life. Styled by populist right-wing actors as an 'invasive species', the wolf evokes and resonates with anti-immigration sentiments and widespread fears of demographic catastrophe. To many people in Eastern Germany, the immigrant and the wolf are an indistinguishable problem that nobody in power is doing anything about. In this account of Eastern German agitation of wolves and migrants, Eastern German hunters, farmers, rioters and self-appointed 'saviours of the nation', Pates and Leser move beyond stereotypic representations of 'the East' and shine a light on the complexities of post-socialist life and losses.
As nationalist parties are on the rise across Europe, The wolves are coming back offers an insight into the rise of the far right in Germany. The nationalist Alternative for Germany represents the third-largest party in the German federal parliament, with representation in the vast majority of German states. They draw much of their support from the 'post-traumatic places' in Eastern Germany, regions structured by realities of disownment, disenfranchisement and a lack of democratic infrastructure. Pates and Leser provide an account of the societal roots of a new group of radical right parties, whose existence and success we always assumed to be impossible.
This paper examines Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s theories of writing and the State in Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, teasing out issues of gender, primitivism and academic expertise in the authors’ claims about power and politics. While noting the benefits of politically analysing social customs and traditions, Laurie highlights the complicities between Deleuze and Guattari's theories and the assumptions embedded in their anthropological sources. He further argues that the cultural and historical speculations in Anti-Oedipus cannot be divorced from the authors' privilege of philosophy as a uniquely European creative space. Seeking an alternative perspective on cultural translation, the paper turns to Walter Mignolo’s study of the 'book' in Spanish-Amerindian colonial encounters. Foregrounding the critical value of philology for ‘de-colonising’ theory, Mignolo argues that Eurocentric cultural comparisons serve to legitimate particular ways of knowing within contested fields of representation. However, in both Deleuze and Guattari and Mignolo, the paper questions the gender dynamics of writing practices implicitly articulated in meta-narratives about the State and/or colonialism. Laurie suggests that these authors frequently remain oblivious to the role of women in the historical contexts examined, and that understanding political dynamics within cultural groups requires questioning the privilege of writing itself, both in and outside the academy. While sympathetic to the role of political philosophy in negotiating complex historical issues, this paper also advocates a rethinking of the subordinate place attributed to anthropological and historical research practices in the theoretical exegeses of Deleuze, Guattari and Mignolo.
This lively book interrogates the African postcolonial condition with a focus on the thematics of liberation predicament and the long standing crisis of dependence (epistemological, cultural, economic, and political) created by colonialism and coloniality. A sophisticated deployment of historical, philosophical, and political knowledge in combination with the equi-primordial concepts of coloniality of power, coloniality of being, and coloniality of knowledge yields a comprehensive and truly refreshing understanding of African realities of subalternity. How global imperial designs and coloniality of power shaped the architecture of African social formations and disciplined the social forces towards a convoluted ëpostcolonial neocolonizedí paralysis dominated by myths of decolonization and illusions of freedom emerges poignantly in this important book. What distinguishes this book is its decolonial entry that enables a critical examination of the grammar of decolonization that is often wrongly conflated with that of emancipation; bold engagement with the intractable question of what and who is an African; systematic explication of the role of coloniality in sustaining Euro-American hegemony; and unmasking of how the ëpostcolonialí is interlocked with the ëneocolonialí paradoxically. It is within this context that the postcolonial African state emerges as a leviathan, and the ëpostcolonialí reality becomes a terrain of contradictions mediated by the logic of violence. No doubt, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheniís handling of complex concepts and difficult questions of the day is remarkable, particularly the decoding and mixing of complex theoretical interventions from Africa and Latin America to enlighten the present, without losing historical perspicacity. To buttress the theoretical arguments, detailed empirical case studies of South Africa, Zimbabwe, DRC and Namibia completes this timely contribution to African Studies.
CR: The New Centennial Review 3.3 (2003) 257-337
Manifesto for a European Renaissance
- Alain Benoist De
- Charles Champetier
Benoist de, Alain, and Charles Champetier. 2012. Manifesto for a European Renaissance.
London: Arktos Media.
London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson
- John Berger
Berger, John. 1972. G. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
I confini sconsacrati
- Beppe Grillo
Grillo, Beppe. 2007. "I confini sconsacrati." Il blog di Beppe Grillo. http://www.beppegrillo.it/iconfini-sconsacrati/. Accessed July 25, 2018.