Search Result for “me too”

Fidgety and a little bored in the crammed pews of the Church of St. Francis Xavier, my eight-year-old son waited with us for the service to begin. For distraction and readiness, he etched on his program, with his parents’ help: “Today we reflect on the life of Daniel Berrigan. He was a great priest, prophet, poet and peacemaker. He touched many lives with his actions and words. It is nice to be in such a beautiful church with so many people honoring a man they loved.” Simple and true, these words presaged a ceremony that edified and even transformed the two thousand or so people blessed to have been there. The death on April 30 of the 94-year-old Fr. Dan Berrigan, S.J. at a Jesuit infirmary in New York City has been big news. Heartfelt obituaries have poured forth: from fellow priest and political troublemaker John Dear; from the rogue Washington Post columnist Coleman McCarthy, …

It is election time. I am almost done with the course “Gender and Domination.” However, the echoes of conversations started in that class are proving to be difficult to silence. Among the questions that this seminar has left lingering, the one that has stayed with me the most has to do with the little use that historically psychoanalytic theory seems to have had for political philosophy. Maybe the problem is that I do not know enough about the topic, but it is my impression that the existing collaborations between the two disciplines are scarce at best. Yet I do not think it has to be this way. Thus, in what follows, I present my attempt to engage psychoanalysis with certain political attitudes that I consider problematic. The starting point of my reflection is an article that Drucilla Cornell wrote back in the 1990s as a response to the debate on pornography initiated by Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin.  …

There was a time, not so long ago, when men were men and women were women, when hetero-normativity prevailed, with the alternatives relegated to the margins, in closets, and in the shadows of lesbian and homosexual hidden locales, which were constantly under attack. Under such conditions, two sociologists explored the constitution of sex and gender: Harold Garfinkel, in his illuminating ethnomethodological study of sexuality, a case study of “Agnes,” and Erving Goffman, in his nuanced analysis of gender advertisements. Neither had a normative or political agenda. Both were careful observers of social life, and came to their specific insights as part of their overall intellectual projects: Garfinkel in his studies of the active way common sense is constituted and sustained, and Goffman in his studies of the drama in social order. …

These days the entire world is trying hard to make sense of Donald Trump’s surprising march towards the Republican convention in Cleveland. Like it or not, he is possibly also on his way to becoming America’s next president. Trump seems hard to place within any of our available categories: Is he a conservative populist? Is he a revolutionary? Is he left or right wing Republican — or is he both, or is he neither? Is he a demagogue? Is he a “charismatic” figure? Or is Trump really just a (bad) joke?

When bewildered, we search for historical analogies. To many observers, Trump resembles Silvio Berlusconi, the (in)famous tycoon who was prime Minister of Italy on and off from 1994 to 2011. Rula Jebreal was quick to point out such similarities in a Washington Post …

An exhibition now touring several cities in Europe is worth visiting and thinking about, as it reflects both the political and cultural sensibility of Europe. PIGS is curated by Blanca de la Torre, a Spanish art curator who develops projects throughout the world and understands art as a social tool to disclose political injustices and prejudices. The “pigs” to which this exhibition refers are not simply the four countries (Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain) …

Several days ago, at the end of March, the conservative party Kukiz15, the ruling party of Mr. Kaczynski, Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc (PiS), the Polish Prime Minister, Mrs. Beata Szydlo, the national council of bishops, and the majority of MPs declared their support for banning abortion completely. A new law proposal, submitted to the Parliament last week by members of a pro-life organization, “Ordo Juris”, allows the surveillance and investigation of women who are known to be pregnant; requires a statement from women who miscarry;and enforces imprisonment between 3 months and 5 years of not only the doctor who performs the abortion, but also to the woman, regardless of how the pregnancy was initiated (i.e. whether it resulted from rape) the possible consequences for the life and health of the woman,  …

On October 24, 1973, the Egyptian military, under the command of General Hosni Mubarak, and under instructions from President Anwar Sadat, dealt an unprecedented blow to the most powerful regime in the Middle East: Israel. As the Egyptian army crossed the Suez Canal and established bridgeheads in the Sinai peninsula, it changed the fortunes of a hitherto shaky Egyptian presidency. Until this victory over IDF forces, Sadat had struggled to appear as the legitimate heir to the iconic Gamal Abdel Nasser, but this victory, which wiped out the stain of defeat of 1967, in one stroke turned Sadat from a hesitant, accidental president into the batal al-‘ubur or Hero of the Crossing.This event and this moniker were all the more significant in light of what followed. …

Phyllis Schlafly’s conservative manifesto, A Choice, Not an Echo, has a quote on the cover that is as fresh today as when it was first published in May 1964. Under a picture of the author (in perfectly styled hair and two strings of pearls) a caption promises to tell “the inside story of how American Presidents are chosen.” Comparing GOP leaders to Paris couturiers who “brainwash” unthinking female consumers, she revealed in the introduction that the presidential nominating process had been stolen from the people. Between 1936 and 1960, she wrote, “a few secret kingmakers based in New York selected Republican presidential nominees…and successfully forced their choice on a free country where there are more than 34 million voters.”

As Donald Trump’s unexpected electoral strength potentially leads  …